And That's Why We Drink - E309 A Haunted Doll Book Club and a Murder Comic

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

It's episode 309 and there continue to be no hinges to speak of in the new year! First Em kicks off 2023 with the many UFO encounters of Terrell Copeland in their home state of Virginia. Then Christine covers the tale of Cordelia Botkin, the first murder by mail and a story of people with way too much privilege. And be sure to tune in if you've ever wanted to know how the different alien close encounters relate to sea monkeys of the 90s... and that's why we drink!New year, new live show! Don't miss out on tickets to our brand new "On the Rocks" tour starting next month! andthatswhywedrink.com/live

oh christine what did i do now you did nothing but it is a whole new year and uh it is i i don't know i here i here i go actively trying not to comment about what's to come because we both know i'm the worst predictor or somehow i conjure things so good or bad here's a new year period does this come out when does this come out uh it's either the first or second week of the new year i think yeah i thought we already did the new year episode, but I could be wrong. No, 308 was Christmas, homie. Oh, wait, really? No, 307 was Christmas.

So now we're 309. Are we two weeks into the new year? Yeah, this one comes out the 8th. So we did, we already did an episode that comes out the 1st of January and we didn't even talk about it. Sure. Probably for the best because I would have found a way to. It's probably for the best that Eva tries to trick us into thinking the episodes land on other days. Because if we try to force conversation about things, it never ends well.

For all we know, this comes out a month later. I mean, we don't know anymore. Yeah, it's a Valentine's episode. We're all in love it's great that does mean that uh it's now been several weeks since we re-announced that we're going back on tour okay that was why i drink this week thanks a lot oh here here let's fill it let's pretend okay christine one important question we have just never asked on the show. And I just got a note today only. Why,

why, why does Christine, her scene shifter drink? Man, let me think for a reason. I can't, I can't think. I actually can't think of anything.

Yeah. Tuffy. Thanks for asking. No, that's okay. I you'll come up with it. Um, why do you drink?

I drink because we're going on tour next week. Not next week. Not next week. No, no, no. Stop it. Next month, we're going back on tour. We are recording this pre, like, December 12th, 12-12th, to give everybody kind of the inside scoop. And so we are, like, not even remotely done with, like, prepping for the tour. And by done with prepping, I mean, like, not even started uh done not even probably for the tour and by done

with prepping i mean like not even start it well no that's not true we did we did a lot of the heavy lifting already but there's a lot of um of work to be done a lot of prep to be done so a lot of prep well if you noticed christine before we recorded i said um i have to go get a drink and i that also meant i had to get a xanax because I remembered instantly that we were going to talk about something that in this exact moment as we're recording, we have no script written. We have no nothing. And it's on me currently because I guess now we can openly talk about our show format, right? Yeah, that's true. Fuck yeah.

Let's do it. Oh, my God. Em has not let me talk about this for years, okay? And I'm so ready. I tried a few weeks ago. I know, but I'm a big blabbermouth and I'm worried that like, I just need to keep my mouth shut.

You know, we hadn't really, okay, sorry. You talk, you talk, you talk. I'll just insert myself when I feel like I'm ready. This is, this is, I tried to give you your moment a few weeks ago, but now, apparently now you're caught up. So let's do your turn. Finally. I tried i tried no no i did all the chatting last time i

got all my things out i want you to talk about it say i forget what we said on patreon versus what we said on the show did we that's a good point i don't think maybe we did it maybe it's leaked somewhere by now but our it's leaked because people are just so desperate to know i'm sure there's's somewhere out there who was like, please, someone give me the information. I'm so sick of waiting. But now that we can, you know, our first tour is over and it will become a running theme for future tours. It's not that much of a secret anymore. We can talk about what the format of the first one was, which is that we went, we did our very first ghost hunt uh paranormal investigation and uh we the whole show is us showing you all of the really creepy fucking footage we got and uh

the last year's tour i guess now we have to say last year's tour which is so weird but here for the booze we somehow got a cameo with zach bagans involved in the show um this year so far there are no plans for a zach bagans cameo but i'm sure we could find a way to insert him oh you know we have one i i inserted one don't worry i i don't worry actually you're very right i spoke to you since see we haven't written the script yet so this is one of the reasons i drink is that zach bagans posted a photo with joe rogan and i was like seriously guy yeah and did you see that i did and this again will be old news by the time it comes out but for us in the moment we're both like of course he posted it like a week ago and i like immediately ignored it but then people keep tagging us in it so i'm like okay well like i get like, someone came to your museum and you have to be welcoming of everyone.

But, like, you had to post a picture of it. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not like. You had to brag about it. Yeah, he's like, so great to meet my man, Joe Rogan. If I found out Joe Rogan listened to our podcast, I'd be like, okay, that, moving on quickly. I would invite him to sing Pass the Cranberry Sauce with me and I would ask him to replace you. Just kidding.

Oh, what a difference of an opinion. Wow. Joe Rogan would never listen to our show, but that's fine. Anyway, yeah, so basically we had quite a time. We've done the heavy lifting for the next tour. We just need to rein it in, so to speak speak to make sure you're not there for 400 hours at every live show that so basically without we're trying to keep it vague without keeping it because we still want there to be a surprise we're going to start doing a thing we're at our tours or on

our tours before we announce um before you actually see the show we're not announcing the location so that way you you'll have something new to look forward to when you go to the new show of like oh what location did they ghost hunt at but uh you know we did try to throw in little cameos we made a new logo with the same little ghosty guys from our here for the booze logo but we dressed them up a little differently so with enough context clues in the logo you know you can have some fun trying to guess uh where we went but we can't officially say that our our running format for every tour will be us going ghost hunting and at a different location every time and us writing a script around that just to you know the thing that's taking a long time is i'm the one that goes through all the footage and so i'm currently going through hours and hours and

hours of pitch black and radio silence looking for all the footage. And so I'm currently going through hours and hours and hours of pitch black and radio silence, looking for all the jump scares in the middle, which is, uh, horrific on my soul. And, uh,

and then we, we write, um, we, we try our best to write jokes around it every now and then. It's just us telling the truth about how scared we are. And let's just say the location we went to this time was pretty scary. Uh,

yeah, uh, uh yeah it was scary um i was afraid we were all afraid uh it was spooky there were there was alcohol but don't you don't need to tell anybody about that because i don't want to get in trouble um and yeah i guess i basically i'm in this fun phase where i like the work is like impending because um yeah poor christina just has to wait until i know which like No, which you have the longer, more arduous, more tedious job of just sifting through everything and then sending me the highlights, which ends up being hours and hours. But then I do the cutting, editing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, boring stuff.

But yeah, so I'm just waiting on pins and needles yeah and so this will be a christmas uh project for me it'll be a project at some point hopefully not christmas day uh but uh we definitely yeah it's a weird it's a weird dance we're doing because i'm currently very stressed with the additional pressure of knowing Christine is waiting. Like, she can't do her part until I'm done on my part. So we're both in a weird dance where we're just a little frantic at the moment. Just a little. Anyway, by the time this comes out, hopefully we are more prepared, fingers crossed.

I hope so. If we're not, we're both going to be crying. If not, send us edible arrangements, because I would love a chocolate-covered strawberry strawberry right now i can just tell in the future i'm i'm just craving it you know yeah well just uh everybody just know that we are working very hard in this moment and uh we're very excited that when we when this episode does come out we will have our we'll have had our dates written out for a while now publicly so exciting just a reminder to everybody if you for some reason are not on social media or you have just missed this all together we have new tour dates and uh we are very excited and i will say uh i don't want anyone to worry that like we're uh like if we're going out on tour too soon or anything i was i was so jazzed after here for the

booze it was such a good show we did and i had so much fun and i feel like we got really close during all of that especially during my own medical stuff so i when we first thought about going back on tour we were both worried that maybe we needed some time off or something but i'm i like could not be more excited to go back out especially now like i've got my meds figured out and like i i feel so i'm just so excited to go back on tour with you i want you to keep worrying everybody because i i like that like maybe that means i get more edible arrangements but um but that aside yes i didn't mean just i didn't mean to steal your food thunder. You're really like stepping in my zone here where I'm hungry.

But anyway, no, I'm very excited. We're just amped because we loved our last tour so much. But it's also really exciting to come up with like a new one. And a lot of people are asking in the comments like, oh, is this the same thing? No. What we announced on Instagram, the new shows, the new tour dates, that's something we haven't even seen yet. So you have definitely not seen it. We haven't even announced our new tour name.

You want to do that? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. I'm proud of this one. So our new tour for 2023 uh at all hopefully not hopefully just 2023 but you know you never know um is and that's why we drink live on the rocks isn't that fun just another splendid another alcohol pun just another one we're full of them we're full of them

and hopefully i think the logo has come out by now and you can start doing your own little guessing on where we might have gone so uh yeah that's that's it for now oh maybe uh do we know if the fall tour is going to be the same show but different cities i think so that's the goal so if i think there might be round. I'm not doing a whole nother show for fall. Me either. Because there's so many cities we didn't get to announce yet. So I'm hoping that there are more that we can add later in the year. So if you missed out, don't worry. Fingers crossed there's going to be a fall tour.

And if your city did not end up on the original list, just wait till fall. So we don't know yet 100%. What we have up is what we know. Yes. But don't be offended. We don't really get to say where we go that's true our team handles that and tells us so we certainly try to put in as many requests as possible i don't even think i have a hometown show yet so in fall in fall just know that uh if we're doing more shows my hometown will be uh because christine's hometown is on this one so i'll get my my shot at it to be fair we did sell mine mine out so maybe your hometown needs to sell more tickets huh well technically my hometown one would be uh

we always do a dc show but we haven't done a Richmond show yet. So that's, that's the goal. No, no, I'm just saying we've never, we've never gone to Richmond. So that would be fun. Anyway, 12 minutes later,

everybody, I hope you enjoy a little blabbing about, uh, well, we didn't tell you what happened with Zach Bagans, but you know, come to our show, figure it out. We'll,

we'll tell you all about it then. And I guess that's why we both drink oh also if you want tickets go to and that's why drink.com slash live they will be out by then by now by the time this comes out good call so oh well i'm very excited to go back on tour with you i'm also very excited uh this is our last episode for a while no one else will notice in the yeah you know for us recording wise we're about to have our and that's why we drink team holiday break except it won't really be a break i'll be uh crunching yeah we'll be working as much as possible but uh other than that i i'm excited to to hang out with you and i'm sad that this is probably the last time we'll be hanging out for an extended period of time for a little bit.

I know. Well, I know it's tragic and I want to postpone it as long as possible. Just drag this out. Just keep talking about things no one wants to hear. Keep repeating ourselves. Keep complaining about life. But I guess we should probably, we should probably bite the bullet and you can tell me a story i can tell you a ufo story if you'd like please yay okay so uh this is and this speaking of hometowns this is a story from my college town near my college town um so this is a story from my college town, near my college town. So this is the story of Terrell Copeland. And Terrell grew up in Suffolk, Virginia, which I went to school in Newport News. They are of the Hampton Roads of Virginia.

And they're very nearby. So and so he grew up in Suffolk. so and so he grew up uh in suffolk and in 2000 he graduated from high school and joined the marines pretty much immediately um in 1997 three years earlier he was 15 and he had his very first ufo encounter so it started even before he joined a place where he'd be engaging with military aircraft right um so he was stationed at northwest naval base in chesapeake also very close by um where he continued having very strange encounters so because of his military training terrell says that it gave him the ability to observe carefully especially in the nighttime sky um and he also said that in the marines he saw aircraft all the time that civilians wouldn't so he knows the difference between commercial and

military aircraft just throwing it out there now though like this man knew what he was talking about when it came to planes um so one night he's working outside by himself and he sees a UFO in the sky and it's only a hundred feet away. Oh no. Which is too close. It's certainly too close. Just need that bumper sticker that says, if you can read this, which by the way, I was just telling my brother on an episode of Beachy's Candy that I am always guilty of that. Cause I'm like, I want to know what it says.

And then I just keep inching closer. And then it's like, if you can read this and I'm like, then don put it on your car because I want to know what it says do you have a personal favorite bumper sticker oh no um I I used to have one that I loved which just said 0.0 in the same format of like all the people who run races and put like how many kilometers they run you know on their car so I had a 0.0 I think that was my favorite i felt like it really encompassed all of me in one sticker that's fair that's a good one uh yeah i my favorite is the one you got me for my birthday a few years ago do you know what that one is i'm going to waffle house is that it yeah follow me or something follow me to waffle house i love that i forgot about that um which is so stupid because in California, there aren't Waffle Houses.

I know, but you're on your way. You're doing a cross-country trek to get there. Follow me and in a few years, maybe this car will land at a Waffle House. It'll be there eventually, to be fair. I'm sure it's not had its last rodeo at a Waffle House, that car of yours. Certainly not. Actually, whenever I get rid of that car, I'll probably just dump it at the nearest waffle house yeah figure it out it'll be like this i feel safe here thank you for leaving me here yeah yeah so uh okay so he saw this thing

100 feet away which in apparently bumper sticker terms is too fucking close too close so not only was this one of terrell's first encounters but this was an encounter that can be classified as a close encounter of the first kind do you know how many kinds there are are there four yeah yes um so quick 101 this classification system is used to categorize alien encounters and it was designed by an astronomer and professor named jay allen hynek who is pretty big in the ufo world uh he also worked for johns hopkins applied physics lab and the smithsonian astrophysical observatory uh and in 1948 the air force recruited him for project sign which the whole point of Project Sign was to investigate and hopefully debunk

UFO sightings throughout the U.S. Because again, in 1948, they were more worried about them being Soviet aircrafts than them being literal extraterrestrials. They were like, aliens are welcome. That's fine. But the rest of you, no, no. They're like, if you can't find out that this is a Soviet aircraft, that's fine. We just need to know that it's not that. just want to feel safe in that knowledge yeah it could be a meteor coming

for all of us we don't care so alan fielded a lot of ufo research a lot of claims from people because he was investigating all of their sightings so he ended up coming up with a system to differentiate sightings um which i like that there were so many in the 40s that he had to come up with the system. And this was before the craze in the 1950s where UFO sightings spiked. So just to give you an idea, even back then, there were a lot of people reporting them and they didn't know what to do with it. So he came up with a system just to keep himself organized. And sometimes it is called the Hynex scale. And it is the list of close encounters of certain kinds.

Of certain kinds. Of one or another of a kind. One or two or three or four or another. Do you happen to know? I'll just tell you if you don't, but I didn't know. I did. I used to, and I kind of forget the order, but one of them is seeing them face to face

right like seeing an actual extraterrestrial one of seeing a craft right uh maybe it's been it might have been updated and now i'm probably just wrong but thank you for trying to give me the benefit of the doubt i really am i that i'm serious i could have been updated i don't know but um the the list that i have is that the encounter an encounter of the first kind is seeing a ufo uh close enough that you can describe a lot of details oh okay yes i did i did know that in the past obviously not now interesting the range seems to be i'm sure this is like just a ballpark but they said if you can see a ufo anywhere from five feet to 600 feet away whoa too close five feet imagine the bumper sticker that's you might

as well just keep crash right into it seriously also five feet like i like how one foot is that's not it should be zero to 600 touch it you can like touch it, that's a different thing. But if you can like spit on it, that's a different thing. I don't know. If you bat your eyes and your little eyelashes give it a silly little kiss, a little butterfly kiss. If you can butterfly kiss a UFO that is somehow only an encounter of the first kind. As it should be. And a close encounter of the second kind is signs of an alleged presence.

So not a UFO itself, but like scorch marks on the ground or crop circles. Crop circles. Okay. Okay. Radiation levels, equipment isn't working, or even like animals are acting weird. You feel something's up. Gotcha. That's the second kind.

Okay. The third kind is when an entity like a the pilot of the UFO is seen or makes physical contact with you. Okay, that's what I meant. Like, sorry, like seeing the Oh, I did say that. You did say that I was gonna say the like of the third kind in that moment, but I decided to just go down the list. So thank you. Okay. But uh, no, if you see a person versus seeing the craft versus person is a stretch but like a it's a humanoid a being yes uh so that is or if it makes physical contact with you where i think it means like from the craft itself or touches you praying mantis guy he's like i'm not a fucking human how dare you yeah

and if the praying mantis uh just an example because you would think it would be two different kinds if you see the praying mantis creature versus if he gives you little butterfly kisses but apparently that's the same they're the same there's only wow so you could be like oh i got to second base with that alien guy but like nobody can really know what you mean right it's just implying yeah like it's like saying you hooked up and it's like well what what is that even really at what level yeah yeah so having a physical experience or physically witnessing is the third kind and the fourth kind is a full-blown abduction oh okay, okay. I was wondering if that was on there, but I thought surely not.

Well, they had to add it later. They had to add the fourth kind because I guess now there's such a thing as abductions. It's escalated. The praying mantis butterfly kissed you and then I guess took it too far and said, Let's go back to my place. Okay, so fun fact. Despite Alan's interest in the supernatural and also the occult he was also into the occult love it um he was mainly a skeptic at first and he even was quoted saying that he thought ufos were quote a post-war craze that would disappear as quickly as the hula hoop

and hold on hold on there's a lot to unpack here now i feel like we need to deep dive the history of the hula hoop sorry what is his deal what is his fucking problem with the hula hoop it sounds like it feels like he really enjoyed the hula hoop but then like his really strict dad was like that's for sissies or something it sounds like he's still hanging on out for that out for it but like in a way that's a little too personal where i'm like what happened to you there's some internalized hatred there for no reason what happened bud i think he one time told his buddies that he loved a good hula hoop and then they all made fun of him at lunch or something bad but man that guy like that for that to be our first thought yeah we don't all have to get rid of the hula hoop just because you had a bad experience was the also a

post-war craze that disappears quickly was is that the rid of the hula hoop just because you had a bad experience. Was it also a post-war craze that disappears quickly? Is that the history of the hula hoop? I mean, honestly, if it is not, then I need him to clarify because I feel like that's now the story I'm going to run with. Is that, oh, the hula hoop? Fun fact. That was actually a post-war craze that disappeared. It didn't disappear. People still have those.

I know. And also UFOs are still a big thing. So he was still wrong. he was wrong about it all here in ninth this is from museumofplay.com okay so in 1957 so like 10 years later ish i know this is a post-war 1957 wham-o toy company founders richard Richard Nur and Arthur Spudmelon. Love that there's a... Spudmelon? What is going on? There's a Spudmelon. Is he like the inspiration for Mr. Potato Head?

That's what that means, a Spudmelon. Oh my God. Close your tap. I'm creating the entire history here. We don't need these people. In 1957, Wham-O Toy Company founders Richard We Don't Care and Spud Mellon learned that kids in Australia twirled bamboo hoops around their waists in gym class. So they said, let's commercialize this and make it out of plastic. And also, I don't know if that's a cultural thing, especially now we're calling it a hula hoop.

And now maybe is it Samoan or is it Hawaiian? Yeah, that's a great question uh apparently these things have been used since 500 BC uh by various different um people throughout the world so they just took it and said let's turn it into uh a commercialized product that we can sell to children okay well okay that's its own problematic situation then uh and now we have to figure out spud melon on the fly hang on okay well okay that's its own problematic situation then uh and now we have to figure out spud melon on the fly hang on okay well if it's wrong if it doesn't say that then can we go with my version yes founder of mr potato head if it's not spud melon well maybe he's not the founder maybe he's just the inspiration like the maybe he was the muse

for mr potato head like someone I, you are my muse. And instead of painting a beautiful French ballerina, they painted Mr. Potato Head. Well, the guy's name is George Lermer, apparently. So that doesn't really do much for us. How Mr. Potato Head was created. That's the last thing I'll look up. Mr. Potato Head was invented and developed by George Lermer. George would often take photos from his mother.

Oh, not photos. Potatoes. Oh, my God. It was like, where is this going? Oh, my God. George Lerner, with an N, would often take potatoes from his mother's garden and using various fruits and vegetables as facial features, he would make dolls for his younger sisters to play with.

Oh, that's cute. Okay. That's not as fun as I want it, though. spud melon to make an appearance honestly i hope mr spud melon sued just for the sake of like you know this is my namesake i feel like that's my alias why would you take my likeness yeah that's my likeness and it's so weird because like he actually did have um like a giant red bulbous nose and like pink ears that stuck out and they were like his ears his ears and hands would just fall off they pink ears that stuck out and they were like his ears his ears and hands would just fall off they would just come off sometimes and it was like and then they'd

be placed in the wrong spot but like so he was like well this is a little too coincidental that this thing is he used basically a thesaurus of me like my name a thesaurus you translated my name into different words and then it looks exactly like me like i think nowadays this person would get compensation he's entitled to compensation for sure. I feel like in the middle of that courtroom, all of a sudden, like his ass fell out and a bunch of his own body parts came toppling down. And he went, this is proof, Your Honor. Yeah. And then the jury all gasped.

And they came back with a verdict in like four minutes. You know. So honestly, like I. Wow. i can't believe we figured this out i almost had a palpitation just i was thinking i almost literally died from laughing so hard honestly i just i just felt my chest cavity collapse nothing else would make me as happy as that if i ever died from laughing too hard at one of your jokes just like imagine the roger rabbit scene where like my soul is leaving and i can't figure it out imagine me at your funeral giving the eulogy and being like i guess you've all figured out how hilarious i am i could only imagine at that funeral you would take the stage just to go

i should probably step down i don't want to kill anyone else we don't need a we don't need a double homicide what is good what a spiral we've taken fun fact fucking spud melon also invented the frisbee no and he also steal that from like an ancient tribal civilization just like fucking hula hoop i mean i would imagine if he's getting the hula hoop as inspiration from australia like the frisbee seems a lot like it's like a boomerang like a broken boomerang yeah it just doesn't ever come back also he invented come back he also invented the super ball and the instant fish which is apparently a cool duds such as the instant fish

i'm really upset that that's a dud i want to bring it back instant fish toy is that the thing where you hold it in your hand no that's not it i i want to know why there wasn't an article put out called spud makes a dud oh spuds duds that's my new blog oh good instant fish dot angel fire dot com no wait it's not the thing i've never seen this before they hatch right before your eyes ah what ew look at it instant fish this ew what is happening i wow talk about a spiral we could go down very quickly the box the blue thing unbelievable real live instant fish with tropical aquarium by whammo this sounds like the most dystopian thing i've ever heard of it looks dystopian yeah it does it all right well spud obviously you know we can't win every time. You know, you had three massive successes. You had a dud. It's OK.

It's OK. They were. Oh, no. Oh, my God. OK, I'm going to tell you what they are. This is from MeTV.com. With the popularity of ant farms and sea monkeys, Wham-O saw the need to jump on the trend of micro pets with instant fish. The idea was to sell a dry mud substitute riddled with the dormant eggs of african killifish my god add it to water in theory the eggs would hatch and you had your own little aquarium but the reality was much more like having clumps of mud in a bowl as the eggs wouldn't hatch i gotta be honest what is wrong with people i gotta be honest the concept i don't know what happened because i don't know what

happened because i don't think kids still do this anymore but it was very much an 80s 90s thing they're like we fucking ate up the instant sea monkeys careful what you're saying careful what you're saying you use the freight that idiom ate up because i don't you're really feel like that's what we did but in a metaphorical way yes everybody i knew was obsessed with having sea monkeys and like wow i gotta tell you there was nothing more revolting to me as a child and still like i i was like i'm not getting on that we had an ant farm well i was also terrified of fish remember and so i thought like growing my own monster at home that is like exactly the my worst fear is inviting the monster into my house and then they come to

life and now i'm shocked that they're gonna attack me so i totally understand that that i would not enjoy that either i i definitely had a gross i definitely had an ant farm but i didn't enjoy it and also i always still felt kind of bad about it. I also, like, I don't know enough about ant farms, but I also feel like as a parent, absolutely not would I give my child a box of insects that they could then just, like, drop. Do with what they will. Yeah. And now we've got an infestation. Like, especially if we already had cats and stuff.

Like, that's enough of a pet. You don't need bugs yeah that's like like i think maybe i've just lived too long in a cockroach world where i feel like can i can you imagine just giving someone a loose box of bugs and then just uh-oh like how a child you don't like you don't get to be surprised when it doesn't go right i dropped ours and it was terrible they all died like what a horrible thing also with the um sea monkeys i think i had too much of like i was scared of the god complex of like am i actually creating life right now like five years old and it felt too much too much power it's like the power what if they die and like i didn't even just like to me i didn't even buy this from a store and then i got sick it's like no i i created and killed them

birthed this okay that's a little far but you know what no but it's true my head's true my head can't take it even now we they still sell them on amazon the derailing we've done in this episode is out of control step two instant live eggs like why, why? Stop. That sounds like a Jurassic Park situation to me. Thanks for listening, everyone. This isn't That's Why You Drink. We're going to go to therapy now. I think we need to all just take a breather and come back another time. Anyway, those are the four kinds of close encounters.

Four kinds of close encounters. I would argue that sea monkey encounter or live fish, African kill a fish encounters are like 0.5, like too way far. Or which one's the closest one? The first kind? Can you imagine a little sea monkey giving you butterfly kisses? Yeah, no. No, thank you. They have creepy little spines. so spines encounter i don't

know of the fifth kind is that what it would be it would be the fifth kind so these are the fifth sixth sure and seventh is the ant farm okay okay got it um this guy's rolling over in his grave he's like i should have never said that fucking hula hoop thing that's all it took he already had to live with the the extended popularity of the hula hoop you that's all it took he already had to live with the the extended popularity of the hula hoop you know right you already have to live with that failure yeah um okay so yeah he let's just say what i meant in that one bullet a half an hour ago was that he was a skeptic about ufos gotcha perfect and he became a believer uh first of all uh he became this is alan hynek not the guy that i'm going to talk about that gets uh abducted um we're still on

uh the guy who created the close encounter list okay so he's the skeptic and he also he became a believer when he got recruited to that project, Project Sign. And he has a quote about that where he said, everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well to be fairly well trained. So this is when I first began to think well maybe there is something to all this so it was just knowing that people who know what they're talking

about are freaked they're not all like kooks so to speak right as mentioned earlier terrell he is one of these kooks i guess because he actually had uh an experience of the first kind. And this was, again, in the year 2000 at 3.30 in the morning on his own when the UFO was 100 feet away. He thought that it was actually a helicopter at first, probably one because of its fucking boldness of being so close to you, but also because it shined a spotlight down onto the ground like a helicopter would. But here's the thing it

made no noise oh and that's fucking eerie because if you've ever been near a helicopter oh my god been in the in the state of a helicopter yeah you can fucking hear it it's loud uh so he realized it was making no noise and he went uh-oh something is awry. And the light became green. All of a sudden it was a yellow light and it now turned green. And as it passed by, he saw that the shape of this thing was actually perfectly resembling a classic UFO. Only two years into his contract. That was the first time he saw something in the military but only two years into his contract he had apparently had enough experiences uh seeing things like this that you know that what me saying that and me saying the next thing could be two separate um experiences but it is weird so he allegedly kept

seeing these ufos and only two years into his contract he ended up having to be medically discharged because he had developed a medical condition called hyper c chemia c chemia and it's basically it's developed because of a muscle injury or a muscle disorder where your creatine uh is too high in your blood system and to your bloodstream. That sounds painful. Yeah. But the weird part is he never suffered an injury that would have caused this.

There's no reason for him. Oh. So, and doctors couldn't figure out what set this off. Just out of nowhere, he all of a sudden had this disorder and he needed to leave and so later on we think that maybe there's a connection between something in his bloodstream happening after so many experiences that he's now getting sick um so because here's another thing for no reason at all terrell's numbers uh were 10 times higher than the average range for people his age. Oh, no.

And it was only after two years of having odd UFO encounters so often. So he ends up moving. We don't know for sure if those are related, but it is weird. Yeah. For no reason at all. Yeah, his numbers were 10 times higher and he ends up after being discharged moves back to suffolk and he has uh he still has encounters so that's even weirder because it's not like it was just because he was near military aircraft it's almost like this thing

is following him and keep in mind he had an encounter before he ever joined the military so um this thing might have been following him from before then and just being on a military base maybe that was just exacerbated it i don't know maybe they knew he would be in the military someday maybe they drew him to it i don't know spooky so in october 2005 uh here's a quote from terrell the first time i saw a jet maneuvering around a ball of light which at first he was seeing ufos as balls of light and it slowly turned into full blown sightings of ufos the first time i saw a jet maneuvering around a massive ball light was on east washington street i was facing downtown and the light was probably about two miles away and the jets were probably 15,000 feet up.

Three nights later, he saw the exact same thing. And also he was standing outside around seven o'clock at night and he saw a blue orb in the sky and he knew enough to know it was not a star or a satellite. So something weird was in the sky. Two more nights later,

he sees that exact same orb appear again and he tries to get into his car and follow it but he loses it pretty quickly so he kind of gives up on that two more nights later happens to be halloween and he sees the orb again just before midnight so it keeps showing up in increments can't escape it and it kept it keeps showing up in like his location so it could just be that he near he lived i mean suffolk isn't far from you know all of the hampton roads virginia is known to be kind of a military spot so interesting okay because it's uh also relatively close as norfolk which is a big naval base or also an air an air force base too so um it was very common in school that people ended up with military guys it was like a very common thing

um yeah so he maybe he's just close enough to a base that he's seeing something or maybe it's looking for him I don't know but either way by halloween he's like i'm ready to go chase this thing and so he gets in his car he brings his video camera with him uh and he tries to follow it and he realized basically he gets to the shopping area is where he stops chasing it and at the shopping area he sees a second orb. So now he sees two of these things, and he realizes that the orbs were actually lights on a massive UFO hovering above him. Oh, no. And the UFO itself was bigger than the entire shopping center he was parked next to. Oh, no.

So the UFO happened to be triangle-shaped, and it was only 500 feet above him. A.K.A. this is another close encounter of the first kind. And at first he thought it was a stealth bomber because he had seen that aircraft in the military and it has a very iconic triangular shape. But he did say he was I mean, he said it was bigger than a fucking shopping center. He was like, this is much bigger than any stealth bomb that's ever existed so um his quote his exact quote is i was not prepared for what i saw the light had been an illusion at first i thought it was just a stealth bomber but i realized a stealth wasn't that big oh god uh he said that the ufo moved really slowly around the shopping center and it took about seven minutes to get across the parking lot.

Which like if it's bigger than the shopping center from tip to tip, it took seven minutes to get across. It sounds like a blimp. Like it's just kind of floating. Yeah. Yeah. That's so eerie. So, so eerie. And then it takes off and flies away. So since that night, Terrell

has said that similar UFO experiences have happened to him. He's even claimed to see that UFO multiple times. And that's when he feels like it began to take more of an interest in him. Oh, no. Oh, I'd be like, no, I'm not that interesting. Yeah, I know. I'd be like no i'm not that interesting yeah i know i'd be like move on we're no no no i'm the last person you want to observe just go look in the jc penny over there i'm sure someone else you could find someone else more we just talked about cole's cash we did about that i was like that was us right yeah we did talk about yes cash in the listeners episode so although most of the sightings were near or at his apartment um terrell says that ufos also would quote use large waterways to hide in around landfills all over

well okay i mean i'm not going near any landfills so that's good not anymore not anymore certainly um but around to hide in waterways that's creepy i guess i also like i don't know what they're if it's bigger than a shopping center and you could only and you could only see it 500 feet in the sky does that mean it had like a cloaking thing before that's what i'm wondering like was it just trying to get to get you to see it and that's why it it must have been because how would something without the power of invisibility or growing rapidly in size yeah like how would we how did you only see it at 500 feet when it should have come from the fucking sky and a million people would have seen it coming down

odd so maybe it's there's some sort of power that just get you to see it or something yeah maybe like it only wants to be seen when it wants to be seen i don't know so terrell says that the ufos he's seen have ranged from balls of light to elliptical objects um also the triangle shaped one like the what he thought was the stealth bomber and two years later in 2007 Terrell has a weird feeling that something is outside. Oh, no. Don't check. When he gets out there.

Oh, this is where he has his video camera. He feels that something's outside. He brings his video camera with him, which I don't blame him at this point, because if after years, this is now like 10 years of having experiences. He's like, I'm going to get this documented. Yeah. Brings the camera with him. now like 10 years of having experiences he's like i'm gonna get this documented yeah brings the camera with him and when he gets out there he sees two circular glowing ufos hovering in place only only 35 feet away from him oh that's too close that is beyond how many times i need to tell him but that's too fucking close that's a butterfly kiss that's what i ever saw one

you can at least feel the heat from this thing or something i don't even know if there was heat but you would certainly be able to feel it um one of the two ufos because there were two of them all of a sudden starts changing multiple colors very quickly which a lot of well i don't know because a lot of experts think that that's party disco like this is like how i react like the jellyfish jam from spongebob uh no that i don't know if that's great because a lot of experts think that if all of a sudden it's now reacting when you can see it means that it's a communication attempt well they would just see me dancing be like this one is

we're not gonna make contact with this one let's move on this one's no good this one's defective let's move on can you imagine a ufo spotting somebody just erratically behaving and they're like oh that's not one we want yeah let's skip this one to go to the next i've never heard of a ufo encounter where someone danced in reaction and then got abducted so maybe you actually found the secret secret they don't want to they don't want that to deal with that are you kidding they're like that's a lot of energy we need to be able to sedate this person so uh one host of the show well hang on well no i have to go well that was fun how adorable doesn't that mean we're close well i was gonna say a close encounter of the i don't know oh i just meant isn't isn't yawning supposed to be like a like a caveman thing or it means like we're like we're part of the same pack

or something yeah i think anybody yawning can you make you yawn but i think if your pet yawns when you yawn that's a sign that like they um think they're part of your pack but i think human nature is just when anybody yawns no offense i do want to know what the science is oh god sorry let us know if you're all yawning because then we're all part of the pack together have fun i would be so scared to end up in a yawn chain with somebody where just you can't escape you can't you keep causing it from each other i think you might have created something pretty drastic just now with that yawn the yawn heard around the world is all it's my doing sometimes when allison's trying to fall asleep and she can't fall asleep, I'll basically pretend to yawn a bunch of times. And then somehow her body immediately feels more tired.

She's like, oh, I have to yawn now. And I'm like, well, oh, just talking about it. Okay. It's happening and I'm falling asleep. I can't. Okay. Sorry. Keep me awake.

can't okay sorry keep me awake so one of the one of the hosts of the show ufo hunters on history channel they think that this many close encounters that have happened to cherelle suggests that the ufo is putting in a lot of effort to reach out to him which i would believe that yeah it sounds like it sounds like they're attached in some way, whether chosen or not. And one of the hosts went so far, this is a little bananas. One of the hosts of that show went so far as to tell Terrell, but he thinks Terrell is some sort of alien human hybrid who is better connected to these things. Oh boy. And then the other host very quickly was like, maybe not though.

Like we could reel it in. Also could be the opposite of that there there could be an option more realistic than that right away um so terrell's opinion is that he witnessed one orb trying to communicate with another but when he got out of his car to film it the orb just kind of stopped talking to that one orb and then started to mirror his movements like it was now trying to talk to him i wonder if he just like walked in on a really like intense conversation between them and all of a sudden it tried to go like get the fuck out of here like this doesn't involve you off yeah well i we will never know but soon after he has so he followed these these things he found the

two glowing ufos one of them starts reacting to him by glowing a bunch of colors. Then it seems to now mirror his movements and is ignoring the other orb. Soon after, a military helicopter arrives in the area and the two orbs take off. Don't like that. And Terrell went home and he submitted this video that whatever he could get on video he submitted it to someone's youtube channel who's a journalist named william warwick uh-huh and uh you can still see terrell's original comment on the video 15 years later that's cool let me send it to you i'll put it in geos trio his username is va wolf w u l f 15 years ago

wow i am the witness who submitted this video to the investigator i can tell you that there were two of these objects i was only able to video one of them i felt that they wanted me to tape them and i am proud to have done so a helicopter showed up and chased them away thank you thank you thank you i like that i mean truly i think 15 years ago that was the youtube etiquette to go thank you for having me very polite um i love that uh he said that they he thinks they wanted him to film them which is so spooky it is because now it almost feels like he's seen enough of these things that he almost feels connected or that he knows what they're thinking from that understand them yeah uh anyway soon after that video got submitted to the youtube channel terrell says that a mysterious person showed up at his home yeah see that scares me that's a men in black

shit which again i think 15 years ago we didn't know the power of the internet and he maybe thought like oh look at this cool thing he didn't know like you better keep that shit to yourself yeah true and it wasn't even like his youtube channel like he just commented like oh that's my video and they were like it is which is creepy again because 15 years, you wouldn't think you could just look at someone's handle in a comment on YouTube and find their home. I mean, I could, but like maybe not the FBI or the CIA. That's certainly not. Yeah, right.

OK, yeah. Well, Christine, I do feel so bad for you because in another world you were just destined for the CIA. I really. I took you away from that. You know, I really. No, you didn't. I really actually after school was going to apply to the CIA. That's not a joke.

But I just know that I can't keep my mouth shut. As you know, as I've already said, I'm a blabbermouth. I did apply to the CIA in college. They recruited people. Yeah, because I was in D.C. too. So I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to apply. And then they were like, well, by the way, especially because they require a second language. And I was like, oh, that's why I didn't get in well i speak a second that's the only reason right well okay

that's the only reason they formally gave me um but yeah they said that you have to give up your other um citizenship and i'm like nah i think i'm gonna keep that one on the back burner just in case i need it and then i like how you turned them down you i don't think i turned them down i just was like talking to the recruiters and they were like just so you know you're gonna have to and i was like no because like and nowadays i think we can all understand the importance of keeping your second citizenship in a different continent you would be like oh i fucked up oopsie. Yeah. So I'm just kind of glad that I still have that. But anyway. Well, anyway, this guy shows up to his house and says he's a military contractor, which can't be good.

The day that that happens because of something I report on this show, I'll be like, okay, just don't hurt me. You win. just don't hurt me. I was like, Christina and I have said multiple times and Eva's included in this, that we do have a blind loyalty to each other of we've even told Eva, like if you, if we're at a show we're about to go on, or even if we're in the middle of our show, if you come out on stage and say, we have to leave right now, no questions asked, we would leave. We have enough trust with each other that if something were to happen, I don't need to know questions I'll ask later. Um, and I do feel like if I told you the show has to be done, we're done. We can't, we can't ever record another episode. I'd be like, just trust me on this. I don't want to rope you at anything. You'd be like,

okay, got it. And just know it would probably be for a situation like this. Yeah. And to be fair, I would be so nosy. That would be the only reason I needed to know why. Like I would need to know why, but it's only because I'm nosy. I would believe you a hundred percent. I would cancel the show, but then I would be like, but now you got to let me in on the gossip. Yeah. Well, just know if the show ever is randomly canceled is because a military contractor or a poltergeist came to our show. Either one, either one is equally dangerous in my mind so yeah i feel like if that happens um somebody like come check on us um or send an edible arrangement i guess wellness check is totally fine yeah yeah wellness check will be

great thanks uh so anyway this guy shows up says he's a military contractor and he asks Terrell if he is ready to learn the truth, which no, thanks. I'm good. I gotta say, this is where I kind of feel like the story can't be real because why would any government person just come up and be like, would you like to be clued in on what's going on? I feel like that is such a move to say when you're actually going to tell them a lie, like you're like, I'm going to tell you what's really going on, but then like tell them a lie so that they think they know. You know what I mean? I feel like that's a good bluff, like a red herring.

I also don't know, like maybe because it was so long ago, maybe like people were, maybe he was more willing to share that information. I don't have no idea. So is it actually, well, I guess you're about to tell me. So basically all the truth, the whole conversation kind of just leads to the fact that the guy says the u.s government has a relationship with extraterrestrials that's like why would you go to a random person's house and say that yeah when like it was a comment on a

youtube video and like maybe maybe he really was accidentally stepping into something where they needed to cover it up. I mean, maybe they knew more than that. Maybe they knew he had all these other videos. Maybe they knew that he was being visited by these crafts. But also, you can still see the YouTube comment today. Wouldn't they have taken that down? Yeah, probably. Like this, this is the part I am confused.

It's very odd. I mean, maybe they have some reason that we just don't get. Yeah. This is certainly the part I wish I could give people more information on. But like, why wouldn't the military just delete that comment? It's kind of odd. You're totally right. Or like leave some sort of ominous warning of like, don't continue this chase or something.

But doesn't he get more involved now? Like maybe they wanted. I don't know. I don't don't continue this chase or something but doesn't i don't know more involved now like maybe they wanted i don't know i don't know i don't i can't figure it out i can't figure it out either because it's kind of the end of that part of the story okay so i that's the part i need more context on um but then again maybe i don't want the context because i don't want a military contractor coming and apparently telling me while leaving this episode up that something's going on yeah no thanks i have no idea i truly wish i could give you guys more um so anyway that after that conversation i guess tyrell kind of goes on with his with his days and eventually he's now having weird moments where he is experiencing paralysis and more more um active pseudo abduction symptoms or signs that something's happening to his body so for one he woke up one

night he witnesses that someone's entering his apartment which I can't even imagine from a true crime perspective. Already terrifying. And he couldn't do anything because he was strangely paralyzed. He tried reaching for his gun and he heard a voice say, you don't need to get that. And I don't know if he heard it in his head or if something like telepathically told him or what. Oh, no. But finally, when he was able to move again he searched his apartment and nobody was there so this is now a close encounter of either the second

or third kind because i don't know if he witnessed somebody actually coming into his house or he heard it and now there's and it could have just been signs that someone was there intriguing um but after this encounter terrell experiences a new phenomena that he hadn't had before in all 10 years of his prior ufo experience which is time loss oh i that scares me a lot i was gonna say that's probably your least fear part of it all it's probably one of my it really just rubs me the wrong way i'm like just don't do that i don't yeah it's because i know what happened you know well it's because now you like at least there was one thing you knew with everything else, and it was whatever your mind could tell you. But now your mind can't tell you anything.

Exactly. Exactly. You have no frame of reference at all. So missing time is often thought to be when an abductor is erasing one's memory of the abduction, and thus you lose a portion of your own time frame. of the abduction and thus you lose a portion of your own time frame um aka now that he's losing time it implies that he is being abducted aka he's now having close encounters of the fourth kind so he said he doesn't know how or why he is being abducted or was chosen to be the one that's abducted but every time it happened he remembers being paralyzed so that he couldn't move and then he would experience time loss um this is a quote from him the first time was in february of 2008

and i went to sleep on my couch and woke up in a massive dining hall there were lots of there were lots of tables everything was white people were eating they all looked like human beings and so he's able to recall it because at first he was waking up from these moments and thinking he was dreaming. So it's interesting that he was experiencing time loss, but he wasn't totally losing his memory, which I feel like that's really weird. I feel like that's a new thing that I hadn't heard of before.

We're like, you can't remember it. Oh wait, I have heard something similar. I don't know if this is the same thing but like uh implanted memories where they like try to make you feel like you were doing something different but it's like not quite right like i've heard that with abductions in cars for example when they come back and they're like the time has skipped and like they have a weird memory of like something that like going to a weird building that so maybe that's decorations and they're like what it was

july like they just put a weird like memory in your mind that didn't actually happen it's like black eyed kids not like level knowledge trying to make you think something else oh i think it's called masking i think it's called masking and it's like the idea that you think you have like a almost dreamlike memory of something but it doesn't really make sense but it sort of like fills in the gaps in your mind weird it's gross well sounds like that's what happened sounds like it because yeah he would lose time but he would wake up thinking he had just had dreams but what really freaked him out was um he was waking up from what he thought were these dreams and eventually he started noticing on nights where he would have these dreams when he would wake up the speakers that he kept on his windowsill were being moved by themselves and a quote from him is it's not

something i would do the only conclusion for me was that they brought me in and out through the window and placed the speakers back there gross they were like let's put this back where it was yeah there was another night where terrell woke up at 308 a.m blinked and it was 5 30. Ew. And this, this apparently happened two nights in a row to the exact minute of three eight to five 30. That's weird timing. Yeah.

Which I guess now at least you have context that it takes what? Two hours and 20. Is that two hours, 22 minutes. Two, two, two. Is it?

I don't know. My math is not that good. That's two hours and 22 minutes. Well, that's extra gross for some reason. What does it mean? I don't like that that's my lucky number all of a sudden. That is, right? Like, that makes it extra creepy.

Like, they say things about, like, double numbers and angel numbers. Yeah. Really. Well, Terrell struggled with all these experiences obviously and he did it alone for a long time because he feared judgment from his friends and family and even co-workers he worked at a naval base like I mean for an air force base on he could have talked to the wrong person um although I imagine a lot of people on those bases have crazy stories so uh when he did talk about it, though, some people thought he was

like delusional. Some people thought he was just making it up. And eventually when he went on TV about his experiences, that's when he felt more validated because he said he had been losing friends. And then he says, but when you've been on TV, people think maybe he's got something to say. So he felt like at least other people would hear him out versus his close circle that's true yeah so when the one host from ufo hunter suggested he was an alien hybrid apparently his mom saw that tv episode oh no and then uh terrell said i expected her to lose it but she didn't she said there was always something strange about me which is like so sad in a few ways but also so creepy that like you would expect your own mother to freak out to that but she was like well yeah maybe they're

onto something oh well i guess yeah you know and i feel like i've heard i've definitely heard that um idea that like people who i mean you've talked about that too like people who have potential alien dna or something that are that are being tracked or visited repeatedly yeah something's up i don't like that i mean maybe she was also onto it years ahead and like just didn't want to admit it because remember he was having encounters when he was 15 so yeah yeah yeah yeah um one tv actually, I think it was also UFO Hunters. I can't remember anymore. But they actually took Terrell's footage from that UFO that he got.

They took that footage and compared it to another guy named Michael, who also had footage that was nearly identical phenomenon. But his was in Lake Erie. That's weird. But his was in Lake Erie. That's weird. And so Michael's experience where he filmed basically the same thing with the UFOs, one communicating with him and then helicopters coming in. So he filmed that in a no-fly zone.

And now they're wondering, like, why was it a no-fly zone? And it did happen to be near a nuclear power plant. So now the theory is one was near a power plant. One is within the vicinity of a military base. So maybe they both picked up on something that they shouldn't have picked up on. And also, I mean, it was a no-fly zone. It's not like it was any other aircraft. It was certainly something not of ours that was flying there yes um so even weirder uh ufo hunters ended up taking terrell and michael and they brought them to mass general for testing both of them had

elevated levels of creatine and had that disorder hypercytemia oh my god that's very weird like if that's a coincidence it's way too weird neither had a reason for their condition neither of them had a muscle injury or muscle weakness issues that's creepy so and so i guess i don't know if you think you've been abducted multiple times go get your uh creatine checked out um so he has terrell has been covered by abc's primetime and also again on the history channel and when asked if he believes in aliens which like of course he does at this point but he does remind us that there's a quote every culture talks about something coming from the sky. And he thinks that they're just really historical documents of aliens.

So even like talking about in the Bible, he's like, oh, no, they're probably aliens. And we just don't know better. Terrell also said, we've been blessed to think that we're on the top of the proverbial food chain. But that is not the case. One more or two more quotes from terrell this one uh asking like how it's changed him terrell says i just want to be a better person because i feel if someone from above took notice of me then maybe i'm doing something right and if i'm doing something right maybe i can do it better so that's a very nice way to look at it that's a very nice way to look at it because I would not have that opinion.

And just to end on a bit of a creepier undertone, here is my final quote from Terrell. This is, he was asked like kind of what he thinks is in store for him and his relationship with these beings. He said, they will reveal themselves and intervene in human affairs we need to get off our high horses people will not take the integration lightly they're going to

they're going to show themselves get ready you want change change is coming oh no oh no i mean that poor man has had so many experiences and i i there were um in these stories by the way there were some conflicting notes so i hope i was using the right sources um i hope i was but that is definitely the gist of it but i think he might have gotten tested earlier or later or you know think little things like that but for the most part i can tell you he has been having experiences his whole fucking life so i would trust him before anyone else i mean for a military contractor to show up that's that part of the story is the most um odd part to me because i feel like we should have more information but also maybe he was told he couldn't say anything else so I don't yeah I don't know um I don't know I think it's all very weird I hate

that I hate that it's like the integration I know coming I know which like makes me wonder like the integration I wonder you know when he found out that someone thought he was an alien human hybrid he did say like he thought he was like at that point, so many things that happened to me. It was like beyond the craziest thing I'd ever heard. Like it was not like that for all we know. That's true. Who knows anymore? Yeah.

But I mean, to really believe that there's like an integration coming is so eerie. I also would. I would trust him more than others. oh no oh no oh no i hope he's wrong i hope he's like that's the next level of like um that's good kids it's like oh the aliens are gonna come and get you if you're not bad well although he did say they were watching me because i was good so i'm well. That's also his maybe like way of coping with it. Of like, they just really like me and they don't want to hurt me. Yeah.

They're good guys. Man, I don't know. It's all very eerie to me. It is incredibly eerie. Wow. Well, thank you. You're welcome. I'm scared.

So that's great. I'm glad that that's from your hometown too or your college town good for you uh what was the oh dc was your college town i was like where did you go to school what was the name of your town okay well um it's where your girlfriend went i I know. I actually looked at American in high school because I was like, oh, that sounds very... I followed someone on YouTube early on who went to American. And I was like, oh, he seems cool. Maybe I'll go to American. No, unfortunately.

Bummer. Can you imagine, though, if I ever did bump into one of your videos on YouTube or something? Maybe you did. That'd be fun. I was just telling someone recently, I was like, one of my grandest YouTube or something. Maybe you did. That'd be fun. I was just telling someone recently, I was like, one of my grandest wishes that will never come true is I would like, when they say like at the end of your life,

when like you could ask any question. Yeah. I, the only thing I would want to do is I would want to get to be a fly on the wall and witness every time people that are important to me. Now we like, we're like we were just past each other on the street or we're two booths away at a restaurant or anything like that well i think maybe i was talking to maybe i was talking to eva about that because i think we were

talking about how we both were always hanging out and we were both from virginia and she said i think she said something about how we were in the same we both hung out in the same places as teenagers and so I was like oh what if we like we're in the same store oh I think we went to we were both talking about how much we loved Rainforest Cafe and we went we would go to the same Rainforest Cafe weird and so it's like I like for all I know like I we both were back to back at the restaurant and had no idea anyway that's my that's my big dream is i just want to like witness every moment that we almost met and then i would love to see again the moment where we did meet i would love that how cute would that be oh eva said it was. It's the Rainforest Cafe at Tyson's. So, Tyson's Corner.

Anyway. The end. Good story. Okay, so let's see. I have a story for you today and this is a pretty wild one. It's actually the first murder to ever be committed through the U.S. Postal Service. What?

Yeah. Murder through the... Okay. I don't even know what that means okay well you're gonna find out so this is the story of cordelia botkin oh cordelia botkin before you yeah before you start uh can we do elevator music real quick because i need to turn off my heat it is wait like an inferno in here what can i say something um speaking of elevator music we had somebody and i've been waiting for us to use elevator music because we had somebody um oh my gosh i don't i'm blanking on their name right now but who wrote in i don't know if you saw this on slack m but it's like a new version of the elevator music no i hadn't

okay good so we're gonna insert that here. Okay, I'm going to go fix my AC. Excuse me. Please stand by. We have to step away and go get mine. Answer the door. We just must discuss private things hastily. Thank you for waiting so patiently. All right, now I'm going to let you listen to this. I'm going to let you listen to this. I'm going to let you listen to this music now. I can't help but notice that you're also chewing, which means this was a double whammy break for you.

It was. Well, I was actually also very hungry, and I knew I wasn't going to give you my best if I didn't have something in the old belly. And I only accept your best. I don't accept you at your worst. Well, you you deserve my best and you certainly take me for my worst but uh i found another one of those i'm still so obsessed with them those public goods chocolate almonds oh yeah you have a problem uh here's the file so everybody just heard it so i

want you to hear it oh okay just send it to you okay let me know when you're playing it because i haven't listened to it in like months so i'm gonna play it too all right i'm gonna play it in three two one Private things hastily. Thank you for waiting so patiently. This is incredible. Elevator music. Please stand by. Okay. It like loops.

Oh, it keeps going? Yes. So let me, I also just want to send you, it chrissy who who made that and chrissy also sent this um i figure while we're here we can play this too i don't know if chrissy has a lot of excellent time on yes yes so um here here it is okay i'm ready. Three, two, one. Dangerous people are everywhere you go. Some people after death stay inside your home. The world is a scarier place than you think. And that's why we drink. And that's why we drink.

Holy shit. That's great. Hang on. There's... Oh, my God. Wow, that was oddly good. I'm saying. That's great. Hang on. Oh my God. Wow, that was oddly good. I'm saying. I'm saying. Chrissy, she's talented, man.

And I feel like if we ever needed a new intro, that's the one to do, you know? That's certainly maybe for our specials. Maybe like a bonus episode thing or something. I just love it. That sounded like a bunch of haunted little dolls were at their book club and just kind of burst into song together. That's an interesting visual. I love it.

I don't, I feel like they just like, it didn't, it just happened organically. They were like, Oh, I don't know. That's,

there's certainly haunted dolls. There's no, there's no other creature that that was that sang that song. Chrissy, you're a haunted doll. You have an incredible voice. Now we need an animator to step in and animate the haunted doll book club. Because I feel like that with the music would be beautiful. No, no, no.

I feel like those are haunted dolls that are also puppets or something. And they're being dangled. Oh, like marionettes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Something really, really off kilter. Upsetting. Yeah.

Wow. Snaps to Chrissy that was beyond um the elevator music there's just nothing more than I love than the like I don't know what else to call it except pleasant pleasant filled music yeah 50s commercial jingle jingle yeah it's very good so when you said elevator music I was like we have not done that in like probably a year so So it's about time we, you know, insert some some new. Chrissy probably gave up and was like, I'll do elevator music for someone else, I guess. But finally, your moment is here. Yeah, no, she wrote like she wrote actually, this is there's no expectation for you to use this, but I but you can have it if you want it so it was like very low key officially happening um thank you for that because it was beyond splendid really splendid um so anyway i'm so glad i finally got to force that into an episode uh so let's get back to cordelia botkin okay yeah so we're heading back to the 1860s first first of all. Ooh. Time travel. Okay. That's older than 1950s Pleasantville

jingles. It is by about 90 years. So John P. Dunning, he was born in Delaware in the 1860s, and he grew up fairly privileged. He had a good education, and he started studying law in Dover, Delaware as a young man. But I guess John decided his life wasn't exciting enough. So he started writing and he actually became a famous war correspondent. Oh, whoa. Yeah. And covered natural disasters. So he was like really good at his new hobby. And by 1890, he was a well-known and respected reporter in papers like the New York Times with international publication. Meanwhile, we hop over to his wife, his future wife. Her name is Mary Pennington, and she was also born in Delaware and was the daughter of a former congressman.

So she met John Dover, and in 1891, they got married, and John got a job for the Associated Press. So they moved across the country, which back then, big move, to San Francisco. Wow. This is 1891. So John and Mary, they get married, they have a daughter the year after that, and life is good, sort of. You know, they moved all the way across the country. sort of uh you know they moved all the way across the country he's a successful writer but he is also um very successful in that he doesn't come home much so it's sort of like the workaholic type setup so mary felt a little bit isolated especially i imagine after moving to a new yeah you don't know anybody like except him yeah and I feel underappreciated. And then you just had a baby, so I imagine you're kind of in that isolated space.

So she's kind of stuck at home. He does not come home very often. And he also had a gambling problem, mostly betting on the ponies, as they say. As you do. As you do. And unfortunately, he also had an alcohol dependency problem. So this is just all around a tough time for Mary. Yeah, he's going through it. She's going through it. Exactly. John was also bored. Remember when he got bored of being a lawyer and became a writer?

And that seemed like a healthy move. Well, he also got bored and was prone to start affairs with people and cheat on his wife. Okay. So he just liked, I guess, the adrenaline rush of cheating, as some do. And he was known to cheat pretty openly. So it wasn't even like that illicit. Yeah. He just kind of did it. And then she, also in the 1890s, I can't imagine she had a lot of power.

Yeah. What are you going to do? Yeah. And you're by yourself. It's not like you have your friends next to you across the country to to back you on this. You can't just like go to your parents house for the night with your baby or something like that. There wasn't FaceTime. You weren't like just you weren't getting to talk to people, maybe write a letter and maybe get one hope of encouragement back in a couple of weeks.

You know, my problem would be with a letter is that a lot of them first of all but one of them would be i would write it send it and then when i got a response weeks later i'd be like what did i even say like they're like responding to me and i'm like i know part of me thinks like oh i would just take a picture of it so i remembered but it's like that's so stupid that's so you would say you would hire one of those old-timey photographers with like the curtain and you would just like put up your letter and put a light on it i would at least have to write it on like trace paper or something so i had my own like kind of copies you gotta remember when you write on it like the yellow paper underneath i feel like that's how i would have to write all my letters just carbon

paper carbon yeah i don't even know if that existed then yeah i don't either um i feel like that would be the only way because somebody would say oh my gosh that's hilarious and i'd be like i'm sure it was but like what was it right what was the lol back in the day was like so delayed yeah um i also feel like if i wrote a letter and i was like pouring my guts out in it because i was so upset and then it took a week to get sent and then it probably took someone a couple days to get back to me and like write a letter. And then it took another week for it to get sent back. I imagine it took like two or three weeks to ever have constant connection with somebody. And in those two or three weeks, I have gone through the emotional waves already. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Or like you're now you're I'm in a different part of my grief or my

I'm in I'm I've moved on in some way and now your response is like not actually helping me yeah in this moment it's helping me from two weeks ago anger and you're still like trying to calm my tears and it's just not it's not really working it would almost feel condescending because like i would have moved on from the is everything going to be okay to like everything's going to be fine and i'm a bad bitch and i'm getting now i'm getting letters from people saying everything's gonna be fine you'll you'll stick it out i know that it's like i already did that so look at my bangs and also there were no pictures back then so people just had to trust you

i cut my bangs and it looks fucking great yeah no matter what everyone here is saying they wouldn't trust me they'd be like okay sure i wonder what the version of heartbreak was back then like oh well like you know everyone says oh and you have a drastic haircut something big has changed life change what was the big life change move of the time maybe writing a poem you like buy a new petticoat you know one that shows your ankles oh no well it wouldn't go that far i didn't mean it i didn't mean it that was too much scared me so anyway uh he's cheating on her openly and he is just not at home and she's isolated and feeling stuck he often often took walks in Golden Gate Park, which wasn't far from where they lived. And one day he was riding his bike through the park and it broke.

So he started walking at home. That's when he passed a woman sitting on a park bench who was apparently irresistible because he immediately began flirting with her. And trying to strike up a conversation, be charming, get her interested. Meanwhile, his wife and infant child are waiting for him back home. But this is more pressing, okay, to talk to this woman. Of course. Her name was Cordelia Botkin. And she had been born in 1854 and was around 41 years old, so about a decade older than him. And she had had a husband named Welcome Botkin. I did have to verify that source a couple different places to make sure I was reading that correctly.

His name was Welcome? Correct. I feel like the nurse got confused, the midwife. They were like, welcome to the world. Parents. Did that used to be a name or is that something like was it a one time thing? I don't know. I'm saying I think they said welcome. And he said they said, OK. And then they already wrote it down.

But like you said, they didn't have carbon paper. So it's too late. Welcome as a name name that's his name and also no so i just looked it up now the name welcome is primarily a female name huh that means welcome okay well that doesn't fucking help me if it didn't i'd be concerned oh weird i mean i guess well i've heard of. Babynames.com says it means welcome guest. A welcome guest. Hmm. Well, whatever.

I'm going to deep dive that later. Welcome. If we're just picking salutations, I would just, I feel like you can name someone like. Salutation. What up? Oh, salutation. Sal. There you go.

Workout. Okay. Yeah. So his There you go. Workout. Okay. Yeah. So his name was Welcome. Very interesting. Welcome Botkin. They had been married in 1874 and had an adult son together named Beverly. Beverly Botkin.

Also super catchy. Love it. It is catchy. The couple was estranged and Welcome lived in stockton about 80 miles away so cordelia was on the lookout for a new man in her life when john's bicycle breaks and out of a sitcom he comes strolling past and just can't take his eyes off her so she told john her last name was curtis and that she was single sort Sort of true. Sort of. Apparently, sparks flew because pretty immediately,

Cordelia and John start a secret affair. And once again, when I say secret, it's really not that secret. Everybody kind of knew about it, including his wife, Mary. So I feel like maybe they were just more open back then. If you really don't have phones, the information is going to take longer to get anywhere. Unless word of mouth and then you can just be like oh that's not true yeah but i also feel like it was so much harder to hide something like that because you wouldn't just be you couldn't sneak around hanging well you couldn't just be like seen with another a person of the opposite sex and have it not be scandalous you know oh that's true you can't just go grab a coffee and be like we're just friends

people would be like why are you together with her ankle showing you know that's that's true i guess i was thinking on the opposite side of like without technology you couldn't like make secret plans as easily oh that's true too you'd have to see each other so that you could arrange your next hangout intriguing another thing i'd like to be the fly on that you could arrange your next hangout. Mm-hmm. Intriguing. Another thing I'd like to be the fly on the wall for is like, how did people cheat back then? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But Mary definitely knew and she about this time had enough.

And so she took her daughter back to Delaware, which I think is great. She moved back to the East Coast with the baby in the 1890s because she was like, I'm not going to stick around here and be embarrassed by my husband and his philandering ways. And I said, hell yeah, take the kid and go, you know. So, of course, with Mary out of the picture, John and Cordelia are now like 110 percent in on this affair. They're all lovey dovey. People see them together at cafes, at restaurants, at horse races, at other public events. Now they just have no shame about this. John and Cordelia, you know, talk day in, day out.

One day John mentions how much his wife loves candy. And he also brought up her best friend in San Francisco, a woman named Mrs. Corbailey. friend in san francisco a woman named mrs corbaley so you know maybe strange to be talking about your estranged wife to your lover but can you imagine getting oh yeah i don't know but i can't imagine finally really getting away with the fact that now i'm i can be in a successful relationship with this person and still bringing up the awkwardness of, oh, my wife who left me because of you. Remember her? You met Mary, right?

Yeah. Oh, no, you didn't because we were having a secret affair. Okay, right. Anyway, she loved Snickers. Anyway, what's her... Did I ever tell you what her favorite candy is? Oh, it's the cutest thing. Yeah.

Big yikes. Okay. So he's telling her about like her friends and all this business, which I'm sure Cordelia didn't necessarily love. Meanwhile, Cordelia moves to a new building and John gets himself a room in the same building so that they can be closer to one another. But John is still gambling and he falls into extreme debt. At one point, he embezzles $4,000 from his workplace, the Associated Press, and the equivalent nowadays is $132,000. Oh, damn. Okay. So he embezzles this money from his workplace to pay his debts. So obviously, they fired him. And now he's fired. He's still in debt.

Despite his flaws, he and Cordelia are still together for quite a while. Cordelia is deeply invested, deeply in love with this new man in her life and finally has him to herself. And then John starts to get bored. Well, okay.

Tale as old as time. Yeah. What Cordelia didn't know is that john is still writing love letters back and forth with his wife mary no thanks what is he saying in these letters besides uh i told someone recently about your favorite candy bar i can't stop thinking about how you eat those snickers bars um the thing is not only is he writing mary cordelia was writing mary too what i should have told you to get your gargoyles out i'm sorry no i've got them i've got them so far there's only like three people so i'm okay okay good good good but so wait they're both writing her? Yes. Meanwhile, Cordelia is writing her letters anonymously.

Oh, wait, also, is this a gay thing? No. Okay, I didn't know if there was like a love triangle happening here. Well, no, definitely not. But there is a love triangle happening, but it's just between him and his ex and now his uh-huh okay makes sense makes sense okay so according to sfgate.com uh cordelia wrote letters including the following which by the way i will say you can still see the handwritten copies of the letters online which is so trippy to see it in her handwriting yeah but it says your husband is constantly with this

interesting and pretty woman, who by the way, is an English woman. She is now divorcing from her husband, all owing to the marked intimacy with Mr. Dunning. So okay, so is it is this going to become a thing? Where? Aha, I figured it out, I think. Okay, wait. Is this... So are the two of them now conspiring with each other? Like, we've both been burned by the same man? No. Oh, damn it. Okay. She's just writing his ex letters anonymously to talk about how great his new girlfriend is.

Hmm. Okay. She's saying, your husband is constantly with this beautiful woman. okay she's saying your husband is constantly with this beautiful woman oh the way i was hearing it was that she was writing to the ex about now a third person oh i'm sorry no she's writing about herself oh that's so bitchy okay yeah crazy i thought for a second she was like like help me how did you get out because i need out oh no no that would be a way better story but no she's just writing anonymously your husband is with this interesting and pretty woman herself uh who's now an english woman who's divorcing from her husband this is all during their relationship how nasty nasty nasty

rude mean okay and this woman is like across the country now with the child leave her alone like yeah are you still harassing her she's had enough she literally she literally walked out of the picture so you could have them all to yourself exactly she gave him to you oh my god okay so they're both writing to mary one anonymously one being mr dunning who is probably pining for her again i don't know so in march 1898 you'll never believe this john got his job i think i will okay he got his job back yeah okay despite all by the way i was not surprised yeah despite all of the money he stole they were like well you're really good at writing so you need to come back and we'll pay you and can you please cover the rising tensions between Spain and the United States? And they said to take this job means you would have to move.

And different sources said different things. One said Puerto Rico, one said Cuba. And you'd have to move right away because, as we now know, the Spanish-American War would start a month later in April of 1898. So John, who's already feeling bored and restless and is seeking a thrill and money, gets his job offer and is like, fuck yeah, I'm in and I'm going to move wherever you want me to move. And Cordelia is fucking devastated. Sure. Devastated.

She begs him to turn the job down and stay with her. But John is like, no, I am not interested in that he told her awful awful no but thank you so much for the opportunity um he told her not only were things over but he would never come back to san francisco again ever oh my god like you'll never see me again like fucking peace oh my god so after the war he planned to go home to delaware to reunite with his wife daughter and the rest of his family great i'm so glad you had your little stint away from everyone and just want everything to go back to normal yeah like you got your rocks off you got to be like uh what do you call it spontaneous and get a thrill and have your little escapades but now that things are you know now you miss your wife and you're just gonna go

back and leave me in the dust like just a terrible terrible dude just drops all of it and cornelia cordelia is just beside herself sure she's going through the stages, okay? And at a certain point, she gets to the stage that I mentioned earlier, which is anger. And she decides she needs revenge. You go, girl.

Well, in August of 1898, Mary is sitting on her porch with her sister Ida in Dover, Delaware. Her young daughter is playing on the porch with Ida's daughter, so her cousin, in the warm summer afternoon when the mail arrives. In the mail is a brown paper package. And inside, they found a handkerchief and a white box wrapped in a pink ribbon with the word Bon Bons on it in gold. Okay.

A note with the box said, with love to yourself and baby. Signed, Mrs. C. Oh. Okay. You said revenge earlier and I went, you go girl. And now I'm realizing that we are part of a true crime podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Got it. Glad you've joined us on this side of the i don't know why i thought this was just gonna be like drama like tea time but like i didn't realize there's murder coming okay you didn't even though i said this is the first murder through the u.s postal service christine look i i'm just checking i'm just checking i just didn't know i didn't i whatever keep didn't. Whatever. Keep going. Okay.

Remember when I said Candy was Mary's weakness? Oh, she loves a bonbon, I bet. She loves a bonbon. And John used to tease her about it. He thought it was cute. Clearly, he told Cordelia because he thought it was so cute. And so thinking back, he also told her that her best friend in San Francisco was Mrs. C. So maybe Mary thought these candies had come from her friend, Mrs. Corbailey, back in San Francisco. And so she and her sister Ida both ate several bonbons and gave them to the children.

Oh, no. Oh, no. They were poisoned, weren't they? Some sources said that Mary also shared them with the neighbors who were walking by. day some sources said that mary also shared them with the neighbors who are walking by and in the end anyone who ate the candies became violently ill mary and ida were the sickest and after several days of being miserably sick weak and vomiting they finally passed away oh no what the fuck was in those bonbons oh Oh, a little thing called arsenic. Does arsenic... So is it suggested then that they ate...

Like they would eat some and then feel really gross and then they would probably have been fine but then they went, anyway, now that I'm feeling better, back to eat more bonbons and then they just kept poisoning themselves? Or was it like one bonbon did them in? It was a one-time.

Yeah, it was the one-time thing. The idea is that they probably had several and were poisoned and then it took two days to really, I don't know, kill them essentially. And thankfully if the kids did eat them, they only ate like one or half of one. Same with the neighbors. So everybody who ate them got violently sick,

but fortunately at least the kids survived and the other everybody who ate them got violently sick but fortunately at least the kids survived and the other people who ate them survived but mary and her sister ida were both killed and you know what pisses me off too is on that letter it said for you and baby yeah it was like oh i i share this with your daughter like how sick do you have to be not that it would be better to only want to murder the adult but yeah you it would be though in a way like it would at least be less fucked up to be like hopefully the kid doesn't eat this i mean what the kid do to you could have put anything else on the note of like all for you like you could put like there's liquor in these don't feed them

to the baby oh wow anyway the coroner ruled that cause of death was arsenic poisoning. Apparently the candies in the mail were absolutely laced with excessive amounts of arsenic, which has no taste or smell. So there was just no way to know if you ate a few of them, you just wouldn't know. Right. So when John gets the news he rushes back to delaware and someone in the family happens to notice that the handwriting on the candy's note matched the really weirdly aggressive letters mary had been getting in the mail well at least someone was wise enough to even check oh i'm sorry uh i hear the fucking ice cream truck. It's December 12th. What's happening? He's catering to an audience. God, that is not you. Apparently. I almost wish we hadn't already used the elevator music because

I really want to just put that on. Don't get it. We've got two jingles like we got sent to. OK. So anyway, he goes to Delaware. Somebody in the family is like, wait a second. The writing on this box looks exactly like the writing from those creepy letters Mary kept getting in the mail. And John pretty immediately has a sinking feeling that his former lover back west might be involved. So he tells police and they arrest Cordelia in Stockton while she was getting ready to change clothes. And like that sounds maybe silly, but like remember talking about petticoats and all that? They had so many layers that throughout the day they would have to change multiple times because it was so hot and the clothes were so heavy. And so you would, you know, if you were of higher status, you would be changing

outfits and that kind of thing. So yeah, at some point, she's changing and the police show up and Cordelia says to the police, the chagrin is past. The horror is over. I have suffered all the humiliation. I am ready. Oh, okay. What was you? Then they let her pack up a gigantic trunk full of clothing to take with her to jail okay and they take her away with her trunk jeez this story's so stupid people with way too much privilege like oh you stole like a hundred grand from us i guess you can work here again uh okay luckily for mary's family cordelia was the world's worst murderer okay first of all the handwriting was a perfect match so there was no question there um you can see like when i was looking at those letters you can see that she kind of tried to make her writing more like weird and loopy it actually reminds me of how my mom used to write. Okay, if you have children who are

under the age of 10, and like the magic of Christmas speed past this. But she would write our Santa letters with like this weird curly font that like now I'm like, that's the exact same handwriting. But you know, she was trying to make it look like someone else's and that that is exactly what her handwriting reminded me of. But the handwriting matched the letters to Mary, the letters she wrote to her friends and family, and the note in the candy box. So alone, that probably wasn't enough to put Mary behind bars. But she was so much more careless than that because employees at the hotel found wrappers from the candies on the floor in her room where she was staying and police found the candy seal and the string from the box uh in the same room where she'd been

staying the people she really just didn't try just like did not try the people at the candy shop recognized her and confirmed oh yeah she bought bonbons from us and even though cordelia removed the candy store seal from the box to try and cover her tracks she forgot to remove the tag from the handkerchief so damn it they went to the store and the clerk who sold her the handkerchief was like oh yeah i talked to that woman because she reminded me so much of my late mother her face looked so much like my mother that we that i remember her clearly like oh boy okay wow so a man at the post office remembered mailing the package and finally the druggist who sold the arsenic to cordelia was like oh i sold it to that woman cordelia and thank you

finally thank you we couldn't figure it out without you check check but so they asked like what did she tell you and he said oh she told me she was using all this arsenic to bleach a straw hat. Okay. Yeah. Bleach a straw hat. Is that, I'm not even going to ask if that's how they used to do it. I'm just going to take her word for it. I mean, maybe, maybe not.

Sure. So the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on the murders. It's really wild. You can still see the prints, like the newspaper articles. And of course, back then everything was so dramatic. And so they drew like cartoons of what, not cartoons, but like they drew hand drawings of what happened. Yeah.

It was so creepy. So the public, you know, having read all this, turned on Cordelia before the trial even started. And so Cordelia's lawyers fought to get the trial to move to San Francisco instead of Delaware because Cordelia had never been to Delaware. And God forbid that the people of Delaware get to decide her fate. So the courts agreed. The trial started in California on September 6, 1898. And it was essentially Cordelia versus all of these witnesses and all of the evidence so it's just like a bad time for her okay like what did she think was

going to i mean honestly i she immediately i mean was like a very unhinged person to be like oh your ex left you and now i have to be mad about that so badly that i'm gonna kill her and also try to kill your baby so that way we can be together right and from there i should have been able to see the like homegirl was not thinking clearly logic wasn't necessarily at the forefront of her mind not even a little bit i don't think yeah yeah i mean this is like a one of those episodes Snapped on Discovery where it's like, wow. You took it so far. Something else had, she had snapped way before she even met that man.

She was like already, she walked in deranged. Yeah, she was having a really rough go of it early on. And this asshole just took advantage of that. And then things went sour for other people who had absolutely zero responsibility for any of it, which is just fucking horrible. Like those kids both lost their moms. It's just like horrible, horrible. So anyway, things did not look good for Cordelia. But believe it or not, Cordelia was making the most of it.

OK, she apparently was very close with her jail guards, with several of them. And what does that mean? They well, jail guards, with several of them. What does that mean? Well, they gave her a lot of privileges. So apparently they even took her out, this is alleged, took her out shopping in town during the trial. Wow. Went shopping. That does not sound like it's warranted at all. Keep that trunk full, you know, that clothing trunk she brought.

Right. She literally brought her entire closet. What does she need to go into town for from jail? full you know that that clothing trunk she brought right she literally brought her entire closet what does she need to go into town for from jail m she's having a hard time she needs a new petticoat and to get get her bangs cut this woman i can't even imagine like i just feel like everything with her has to be an agenda i can't so yeah but not really because this one she just went shopping and went back to jail oh she's just having Oh, she's just having a vacation. She's just having a good time. Okay.

Yeah. So ultimately, the jury found Cordelia guilty on December 30th, 1908, and they sentenced her to life in prison. She continued to be friendly with her guards and tried to make the most out of her life behind bars. Again, with all these privileges they had been giving her. But John, on the other hand did not bounce back and honestly this just makes me really sad for his daughter with mary because like mary had already i can see what you're doing in the reflection of your glasses by the way what it's very distracting sorry sorry i just see like little images like scrolling up your eyeballs

no i'm doing the thing where I'm trying to find it. Sorry. Keep going. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. I'll explain it. Hang on.

I'll explain it in a second. Okay. No, you're good. You're good. You're good. I just want to tell you that. I'm not trying to be sneaky. Before the YouTube comments come in.

Oh, no, no, no. People are doing the zoom on your glasses to see what you're. There's a method to my madness i promise okay great well so anyway john did not bounce back which makes me really sad for his daughter because like she already lost her mom and now her dad is just giving up on life and like i don't know it's just sad like. Like, what's she going to do now? She's a little girl. It just makes me sad. And her aunt who lived next door is also dead. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just sad. That's all I got. It's just sad. He sounded so optimistic. Well, no. I was going to try to like, well, I was like, well, there's no spin on that. So what am I even trying to do?

Well, it's terrible. He fell deeper into his alcoholism he eventually died in philadelphia in 1908 buried in debt when cordelia found out back in jail she fell into a deep depression which the prison diagnosed as melancholy so she was still like pining for this guy in prison after murdering his wife and attempting to murder his child well i mean christine this again not a hinged woman i don't know what to tell you no hinges to speak of so in march 1910 cordelia succumbed to her depression and by that i mean she died and the prison ruled her cause of death quote softening of the brain due to melancholia. Huh?

Due to melancholia. Softening of the brain. Softening of the brain due to melancholia? What does that mean? I don't know. Hang on. Softening of the brain. Cerebral softening.

Encephalomelasia. Holy shit. But like, is that? I believe it's classified as a traumatic brain injury. Yeah, I don't think this is the same. I don't think that's the same at all. Yeah, I think this is just what they called it when she, I mean, they called it melancholia. You know, it's like, that's, it's just, she's just not well.

She's just not well. Okay. So whatever happened, she ended up dying in 1910 and was buried in Oak Mound Cemetery. According to findagrave.com, there is no longer a grave marker where she was buried and a newspaper reporting on her death said that cordelia's crime was the first big poisoned candy murder case in many years so not the first i was gonna say that's what you should cover next time i know so it apparently candy fun fact candy poisoning was sort of an issue back in the day so famously in 1858 a candy maker in england accidentally poisoned 230 plus people and killed 21 when his assistant

picked up arsenic from the drugstore instead of plaster of paris or powdered gypsum which was what they used to put in peppermints to save money on sugar oh wow okay and he had to pick up plaster of paris to put in the candy already like what that's like and then wash it down with cocaine i just love that at the drugstore they're like oh i thought you said arsenic i'll put this jar back and you can have the plaster of paris for your candy it's like oopsies yeah it makes me wonder what we're not gonna have in 100 a hundred years where people are going to go. You did what? You probably,

we literally just talked about kid cuisine like two days ago. You're right. Every ingredient. Hungry man, Salisbury steak. In high sea, in sun kissed, anything that makes colors.

Yeah. Um, anyway, so eating candy was kind of, uh, a risky move no matter what, uh, back in the 1800s. So that is the story, Em, of Cordelia Botkin. Jeez.

Okay, well. Terrible, terrible people in this story, except, of course, the victims. Well, what I was looking at in my reflection. Sorry, there's a bunch of ads on. I'll tell you what you were looking at. I could see it through my eyeballs. What? No, I'm just saying. Oh, I'll be the one to make that call. Can you see it in my eyeballs right now? Let me angle it right. No, it's too blurry right now. So no, I was trying to find because you said that the letters you could see the letters online.

So I ended up just starting scrolling and the amount of graphics i'm sure you already knew this but the amount of graphics that were in the newspapers the of her like you said they did like drawings did you see the one where she it's like almost like i feel like they tried to make her look like it was a pinup or something hang on oh yes yes oh you did see it shit i was like man this one's gonna be good i don't know why they did that. Hang on. Let me. I guess because she was like a temptress or something.

I was, man, I thought I was like, I had found more because I was like, that's not a letter, though. So anyway, I found like a whole website. Okay. Wait, let me see. Yeah. Did you read it? Okay. No, I was going to wait till after.

The photographs from which the likeness is given herewith were given out yesterday by the police. They are from negatives taken by a local gallery some time ago. But since they were made, Mrs. Botkin has not changed materially in face or figure. The photographs indicate plainly the woman's excessive vanity and her fondness for posing. It is the hope of the police that publication of such likenesses will lead to the discovery of new evidence in the case. I mean, Jesus. I love how they just like backhand insulted everybody in, well, any woman in a, about what they looked like. Like just like beyond and also her posing is like, it's literally her with her arms up.

That's it. And it's also like a photograph that you went and took from the photographer. Like it's not. Yeah. Of course she's posing. Like back then everyone posed for a kid you had to like there was god but i mean like just i don't know i i really i thought i was doing something really different by like finding all these pictures but i the like you weren't kidding earlier i didn't know what pictures you had seen so anyway i i saw all these and i'm just like there's so many if you guys just like we'll put some of them on instagram

but if you just search i just sent a bunch to you oh i mean like for them to have this many drawings for a story in the paper like what was the average amount of drawings yeah that i think it happened a lot in these like dramatic stories where it's like because they needed photos but you can't like put a photo in a newspaper so they would like draw it instead so many drawings I mean like it's just so many like I feel like back in the day like newspapers just wouldn't have drawings or wouldn't have pictures and people were fine with that because I would just think wow the amount of time it would take to draw that is just not worth it I think it must just be the big ones you know i guess so you know what was weird though when um the lizzie borden house though her newspaper there it was completely

dry text and one tiny little drawing of her oh really but then again i guess they didn't know yet who had murdered the family it was true it was the paper saying like we're looking for someone and it was just a picture of her being like this is the new heir to the family or something yeah yeah that's true damn i really thought you maybe hadn't seen those pictures i thought i was really gonna blow your mind oh well no um look so sorry with love to yourself and baby mrs c they have like the exact letter in her handwriting. That's so gross. It's so gross.

Just terrible, terrible. Oof, man. Well, that's her fucking story. Man. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's those pictures of her posing. They put them on another newspaper article. and it's the picture of her with

her arms behind her and just says fighting for her life. Okay. Okay. All right. Jeez. This is, I've never seen a newspaper quite like that. Cordelia.

What'd you say? Your last name? Botkin. Jesus. Okay. I'm sending you one more. Purveyor of poison talk about cartoons of what of everything holy shit it's like the border it's all cartoons someone literally had to got paid for like 40 images that day oh my gosh

look at how tiny the text was yeah i could barely even read that yeah again that happened with the lizzie borden newspaper i was sitting there and like my Look at how tiny the text was. Yeah. I could barely read that. How do you even read that? Yeah. Again, that happened with the Lizzie Borden newspaper. I was sitting there and like my face was like this close to the paper because I like took everything in me to read all the letters. Man, imagine like finding a copy of this at an antique store or something. Just like fold it up. I wonder if it would even be worth anything. Like I just would want to have it for history's sake, you know?

I know, but I'd be scared to even have that thing in my house. It would freak me out. Anyway, we talked about hula hoops today. We talked about spud melon. We talked about butterfly kisses. We talked about this atrocity that is the comics of an old newspaper. Murder comics. Murder comics, yeah.

Yikes. Yikes. Not tasteful. We've covered just about everything today, I think. We sure have. I feel like we've run the gamut. I guess that's it. I guess that's it.

We got nothing else. Nothing else. Let's go do an after chat and just talk about nothing else, you know? Okay, sounds good. Maybe we do another one of those games i have like the um like the uh friend games where you like get to know each other and stuff oh yeah i don't know enough about you so let's know you don't let's do that for sure okay and that's why we drink