And That's Why We Drink - E31 Pretty Woman Status and the Paranormal Prairie Podcast

Episode Date: September 3, 2017

In episode 31, we quickly learn that this is not a history podcast, so leave your note-taking at the door. Other notable moments include Christine’s pants falling off, the announcement of our first Facebook Live event, and the monumental discovery that Em’s grandmother published a book on menopause.As far as stories go, Em takes Christine back in time to drink a couple a’ cowboys under the table at the Driskill Hotel, and Christine takes Em back in time to their glory days as Millennial Spiritualists in Southeast Kansas, hanging with America’s first serial killers, the Bloody Benders.And that’s why we drink!

that's a beautiful sound though but every time we try to clink it it's so gross yeah i should now we just know to just hit it against the mic i'll just swing my microphone into the wine glass that seems like a really professional way to start right yeah someday if we're in an actual recording studio and i'm like okay hold on let me take your two thousand dollar microphone i need to bang it into this box of wine. I have a present for you. You have a present for me? Yeah.

Okay. You were having a really bad day yesterday or on Sunday, right? I was. I was. Okay. So I got you stuff. What? But I forgot to bring it true to form. Wait.

What? Like I got you presents because you felt bad but then um you i also forgot them so you get them now oh you oh you brought them now i thought you forgot them no i forgot them on the day where you were really sad oh but when i came here they were supposed to also be why are you so nice well i'm also forgetful so due to my negligence you get presents now oh my god okay but close your eyes. Okay, okay. Okay. Okay.

There is two. So give me both your hands. I'm so nervous. Oh my God, what is it? Oh my God, what is it? Flip it over. Flip it over. Oh my God.

Where did you get this? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Em got me this thing called cocktail recipes from the tarot of cocktails. Yeah, they're tarot cards, but each one is also a recipe for a cocktail. Mystic drinks from the tarot of cocktails yeah they're tarot cards but each one is also a recipe for a cocktail mystic drinks from the tarot okay we're turning this into a thing okay we're gonna do like a we'll we'll do guest star allison because i don't drink oh and she

makes cocktails so she can make the cocktails oh my god and what the literally in all of the world where did you find okay i actually found it at the airport when i was coming back from seattle are you kidding yeah allison dropped me off with like an hour to spare so i had like this like it looks like a real deck it has a book and everything oh my tarot of cocktails you guys we're gonna do like we're gonna do like tarot readings i'm gonna give i'm gonna give you guys here's your future this exact cock oh my god i'm gonna post photos of this this is amazing m i haven't seen what they look like actually i didn't want to ruin the box actual Here's your future. This exact cocktail. Oh my god, I'm going to post photos of this. This is amazing. M. I haven't seen what they look like, actually.

I didn't want to ruin the box. Actual goosebumps right now. Oh, they look like real tarot cards. I have actual goosebumps right now. Oh, wow. It's like something was... Let's actually do tarot cards with them and just see what happens. Yeah, like do readings.

I don't know. Maybe they're all actually just recipes. Well, whatever. Okay, and then the other thing. What is this? It's a coaster for your wine that says... I have decided to have some wine to celebrate the fact that I have some wine. There you go.

That's like the Linda glass you got me that says wine helps me drink. Yeah, it reminded me of that. I was thinking you could drink that wine out of that wine glass on that wine coaster. Emma. There you go. It's like you read my soul. Look, there's no one easier to buy presents for. Really? Oh, yeah. It has to be alcohol-based. Well, sure. But, like, tarot with, I mean,

look, that was, that was a freaking nature moment. I don't know how that happened. This, I'm scared to even, like, touch. It's, I don't want to mess it up. Em, come on. You were just, I don't want to mess it up. Em, come on. You were just, you had been sad for a while. I mean, you had a real physical attack. Physical attack. Like your whole body was denying you.

Oh yeah, my whole immune system was raging against the machine. So kind of deserves two more things to enable your alcoholism. Em, thank you. You're welcome. That really made my whole day. I had no idea. What made your day at 8.30 at night? All I had for you was a, day at 8.30 at night. All I had for you was a, and that's why we drink koozie.

Now on sale. And that's why we drink.bigcartel.com. There it is. I get one of hundreds. But also, my brother bought a bunch of chocolate so you can have some of that. Well, funny you say that because right before we recorded i went to 7-eleven and i'm i already told christine that i'm an only child and was not going to have any of their chocolate because i know myself well enough to know i would eat all of it so i bought myself chocolate of the exact same variety wait are you serious yeah there's chocolate right there i know but i don't think you really

get how much of it i would eat all right you all right. You would be like, Em's a dick. I appreciate it only because it's not mine. So then I don't have to say I ate it all. No, but like this is because I was. So her brother just came back from Lithuania and brought back all this like European chocolate. Well, yeah, I went to Germany and got like a shit ton of like all the German. Well, there's like, I don't know if we're allowed to say it. We might as well fucking say it.

Who cares? Why not? Ritter Sport is my favorite chocolate on Earth. I'm sorry, it's called Ritter Sport? Okay, Ritter Sport is my favorite chocolate, and there's literally a pile of it, and I was like, if I get one of those blocks,

I will eat it in one sitting. We got some Hanuta, some Kinder Schokolade, we got some Milka, some, oh, we got so much chocolate. My brother brought so much chocolate. How do you say this one?

Because I've been calling it Alpenmilch. Alpenmilch. Alpenmilch. What? Alpenmilch. Milch. Milch. How do you do with that? Milch.

Milch. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to call it Alpenmilch. It's funny because an inside joke with one of my friends because we would always come home with, we'd bring an extra suitcase and then come home with like a suitcase full of chocolate for everyone back in Cincinnati. And there was this one flavor of chocolate and my friend, we'd bring an extra suitcase and then come home with, like, a suitcase full of chocolate for everyone back in Cincinnati. And there was this one flavor of chocolate. And my friend, we were probably in, like, the fifth grade.

And we brought her this chocolate bar. And it was, like, a strawberry chocolate Milka bar or whatever. And she goes, oh, it's called Erdbeer Buttermilch. And we were like, what? Because it's like Erdbeer Buttermilch, but it's one word. So she's like, Erdbeer Buttermilch. And so we've always called it that

so Milch, yeah. Anyway, this is my favorite candy or my favorite chocolate and I was trying to be very nice to your brother and not eat all of it. Well, that was really

kind of you. So I just went down the street. To the 7-Eleven where they also sell it. Right, yeah. Trying not to triangulate us but way to go, Christine.

Well, I'm moving. Yuck. Excuse me. Are you okay? Weird how that's my first reaction. Yuck. Are you really? Are you good?

I'm great. Does that look dramatic? Why are you drinking? I'm drinking because Em never responds to my texts anymore. I really don't. It's giving me the most insane anxiety. Christine has been texting me every day being like, do you hate me? It's driving me bananas.

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm like, okay, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say. I'm working really hard at work right now. And then I'm like, hey, are you alive? What's going on? Hey, I just have one question. Okay, are you there? And then I send six messages and I'm like, do you like the Mupp the muppets and you're like meh that's the one you respond to

oh that's the important one that's worth responding i like how i like don't care at all about the muppets but cared enough to respond exactly and my response was still meh i just gave you presents if you're my girlfriend then this is a very good boyfriend move you're right i'm not mad anymore thank you you're welcome giving me gifts um why do you drink this week okay so since i got my hair cut yeah i'm now experiencing the life of someone with short hair and i did not know um that i i didn't realize because my hair was always up that i guess it was a sun guard for my neck and now I don't have one so I yeah I've never had to worry about my neck before

and I went to Malibu this weekend and my neck is fried to a crisp and I never realized just how much I use my neck because it hurts every time I move it which is consistently like I'm literally fried to a crisp and And it hurts so bad. And I, like, have been trying to, like, not let anyone see it. So I keep moving my shirt. But that means my shirt keeps touching it. It just is all painful. Do you have aloe?

I have aloe if you want some. It's too late. I've already white knuckled through a whole day of it. Okay. I also want to say. Fuck, I always forget to do this up front. This episode is sponsored by our girl, Lisa G. from Norway. I love Lisa G.

$25 patron. Thank you so much. We should learn how to say something in her country's language. In her country? In her country's language. I was going to say Norwegian, but is that not correct? That's correct, right? That's correct.

Of a language? Can we type in? What do you want to say in Norwegian? We love Lisa. You know, I went to Norway What do you want to say in Norwegian? We love Lisa. You know, I went to Norway once. We could say that in Norwegian. I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me in Norway, and then I threatened to jump into a river. I didn't like my trip very much.

Lisa G, here's to you. To Norway. It wasn't a good trip. We had to sleep on a boat. So no on Google Translate is what you're saying. No, so what do you want to say in Norwegian? I love Lisa. Gia loves Lisa.

No, wait, that's... I loveisa huh i love lisa okay oh god i want to do it okay good because i don't oh okay well i'm just gonna do it in the very broken english phonetic version. Jeg elsker Lisa. That doesn't sound romantic. It's wrong. I'm going to say jeg elsker Lisa. Do they pronounce the R? Hey, wait. Jeg elsker Lisa. Oh, jeg elsker Lisa.

That's what Google Translate says. All right. Jeg elsker Lisa. Right. Thanks, Lisa. All right. Also, thank you, Lisa, for being a 25 patron uh lisa will get to choose a topic for a monthly video episode we're recording the first one this week yes and then posting that um soon and everybody who's a 10 and above uh patron will

have access to that on patreon and speaking of patreon we're also doing our first monthly Facebook Live event, and that's available for all patrons, anybody from $2 to $25. So our first Facebook Live event will be, write it down. Unless you're driving, don't write it down. Just think really hard. Just remember it. Use a mnemonic device. It is September 9th, Saturday, next September. Nope. Next year, 9th, Saturday. Next September. Nope.

Next. Next year, 2018. Be there. Write it down. Be there. September 9th, next week. Next Saturday. All right.

All right. 3 p.m. If one were to look at a calendar and start on the third where we are in the present and then find yourself six later count to six and make sure the year says 2017 371 oh no i just poured wine in my lap hold on elevator music. Fuck me. I'm sorry. I had to take my stuff.

Wait, wait, elevator music, come back. We're done. Your seat's not wearing pants. She spilled wine all over

herself and then just took her pants off and now she's somewhere else. She spilled wine all over herself and then just took her pants off and now she's somewhere else and left me to narrate what she needs. I need his new pants. Christine, come back. We all miss you.

All right. Count to six. September 9th, 2017. Facebook Live, 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Because we picked that time because it was best. It seemed to be, like, accessible for most other countries and time zones. 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. All right.

Be there. We're going to send you guys more information. If you're a Patreon donator, you're going to get a link to the Facebook group where we're going to do the Facebook Live. So get ready. And it's like a Q&A type thing, so we're going to be chatting with you guys. Oh, yeah. By the way, send in your questions.

No, you do it while you're recording. Oh, shit. Okay. Okay, Grandma. Come on. Think of your questions. Think real good and hard. This is my first Facebook Live ever. Yeah, Grandma. Come on. Think of your questions. Think real good and hard. This is my first Facebook Live ever.

Yeah, I've never done anything. I've never done a Facebook Live anything. I'm pretty pumped. We'll find a way to fuck it up. Basically, they'll just, like, write questions and stuff, and we'll, like, interact as they type. Oh, so don't call me Grandma. You've also not done this. No, but I know how it works.

Okay, well, that's fair. Okay. I'm sweating i know this is quite an episode already but i do have to say this um so and that's why we drink at gmail.com received an email from an email address called and period that's period y period i period don't period drink at gmail.com i'm sorry just go and i'm thinking the fuck the subject is slag comma coke at all dear christine and m your most recent podcast reminded me of the newspaper article below then there was an inserted newspaper article by something called the telepath reporters

which links to the telegraph.uk okay but it's called telepath all right and somebody uh took the time to create this fake news article and link it to an actual website wait so they made a fake article for us? Yes. One in eight... This is the article. One in eight young people have never seen a cow in real life, according to a survey. Worse, while they may have spotted one or another cow on television,

98% of 18 to 28-year-olds say they have never seen a slag pot, nor do they have a clue what it's for. And the 2% that claim to know the purpose of a slag pot are habitual liars a fifth said they have never even left their apartments they live in listening to podcasts most of the day and being afraid of ghosts the research also found a substantial lack of knowledge among young adults when it comes to other parts of life-sustaining basic industries like steel making okay more than 85 those polled did not know that Coke is neither a drink nor dope, but rather a summer fruit. Just kidding.

And 5 in 10 do not know the word fucking is best used as the middle name of Donald Trump. Are we getting trolled? Is this Mad Libs? It sounds like Mad Libs. This is my dad. What? My dad sent me this email. So did he make this article as well that's a genius man m he created a fake article that linked to telegraph that's like a petty

girlfriend like trying to like figure out a way to break up with someone that's beautiful there's more he wrote therefore i highly recommend that you watch the slag pot YouTube video attached. Read the following info about Coke and steel making for dummies and use the F word for people and circumstances that deserve it. And that's why I don't drink. Cheers. I don't drink. And I was like. What?

But then I showed it to Blaze and Blaze goes, didn't your dad have like an underground satirical newspaper in college and then i remember he had created this whole fake underground newspaper in college that went like low-key viral yeah exactly and he would like and nobody knew who wrote it and he wrote it like anonymously your father sounds like deep throat at water yeah he's kind of a badass but he's also kind of like takes things a little up there. Up there. This man knows no boundaries. How did he do this? Did he Google create fake newspaper article?

Look, for a whole generation of people who seem to not know what technology is, he really, really did you dirty. Oh, anyway, I feel like I had to share that. That's not why you drink. That should have been the first reason. Oh, that's absolutely why why i drink i just wanted to yell at you about not texting me back but uh someone literally put the definition of a slag pot in a five-star review i was like okay you know i did a whole story and i still don't know what a slag pot is so well according to um alexis is out of the box slag pot it retains the liquid steel during transport and holds the steel So it's just a really tough pot

It's like a big bucket that holds liquid steel Oh, okay See dad? We'll see I'll never win Anyway, that's all I wanted to share on that front Also, thank you guys so much for buying merch and stuff Everything was shipped this week if you were a July donator

August stuff is going out soon. Um, and, uh, pretty much everything is in except tote bags and posters. So those are going to go out, um, within the next few days. So it'll all get to you very shortly. And I'm very excited to get it to you. Uh, and also, oh, so as far as like Patreon donators go, I know we've been kind of like behind on blooper real stuff, but we are creating like a bunch of new stuff so we're gonna do the facebook live and then the like the video episodes and then maybe some um like instead of blooper reels but just like outtakes or extra extra audio clips and stuff like that so that's all coming too so don't don't worry yourselves i promise

it'll be worth it in the end yeah that's all's all I have to say. Yep. Yep. Yep. And that's the end of the show. Yeah. Bye. I was about to say. So I think that's all. All right. I guess.

And that's why we drink. And that is why we drink. Do you want to hear something I tried studying about? Yes. Is the sentence that came out of my mouth all four years of high school? I think I have to say yes. So. Yes. This is sentence that came out of my mouth all four years of high school? I think I have to say yes. So, yes. This is another hotel, but it's a good one.

It is from Austin, Texas. Hey, hey. Hey, Austin. And it is a 130-year-old hotel called the Driscoll. Driscoll? Kill? Kill's in it. Ooh, creepy. i would imagine it's driscoll i know just want kill to be emphasized just kill so the driscoll hotel uh was started in uh the late

1800s by a cattle baron whose name was jesse driscoll sure why not just kill just kill and he purchased an entire uh city block in austin for at the time it was uh 7500 which in the late 1800s was a lot more than 7500 today my story takes place in the late 1800s and i had to do um conversion money conversion yeah uh so this would be what he what he hoped for is this was going to be a site for quote the hotel of dreams which would he also wanted to be the finest hotel south of st louis okay um so it was like half a block in size and he designed it super elaborately like to be crazy fancy and shishi and had like carved limestone and sculptures of himself and his sons like on every piece of architecture so like even all the way down to like the couches like the handles like

the like the wooden structure of the furniture would have like him and his son's faces sculpted like very uh egocentric where is he getting all this money? Being a cattle baron, apparently. I went into the wrong industry. I know. Apparently, I got to just know about my cows. Damn. So, the main hotel in itself has 60 rooms with 12 corner rooms, which apparently was a big deal back then. And each of those corner rooms also had their own attached baths, which was almost unheard of at the time.

Oh. corner rooms also had their own attached baths which was almost unheard of at the time and after completion of like after building and renovations and all that stuff um it ended up being over four hundred thousand dollars like basically half a million dollars in that time's money holy crap and it had every room was between two dollars and fifty cents and five dollars a night which back then was crazy steep yeah five dollars two dollars and fifty cents a night yeah but back then in the late 1800s in austin texas where everyone is a like a cowboy like that's crazy money that's like super steep that's like a subway sandwich it's honestly if i could time travel and go in the past go like 200 years in the past and just go with a hundred bucks i would eat like a king oh we would live large yeah yeah i'd be like oh two dollars and 50 cents a night book me for the month i would like a limestone carving of my face on a couch thank you um so like i said back then um most of the people were cattle drivers and

cowboys and like not like uppity jobs yeah um well it sounds like this guy's making bank i don't know what he's doing well so i don't know i think he was just like one of the lucky ones he also was a uh habitual gambler oh i think that's a thing i think that's where his money was also coming from but so everything was basically wild country like there were some native americans on the property um also fun fact this building had a separate entrance for women so that they wouldn't get stuck with the quote rough and tumble outlaws in the front lobby yeah that's when you were like oh if i could go back to a time like that, I'm like, I don't think I'd survive. They'd be like, oh, you have $100, little lady?

Okay. Little lady. That's a good one. Go to the hairdresser. Meanwhile, you could probably, like, do shots with the big boys and be like, who's a little lady now? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I could, I was going to say I could beat them all in darts, but I'm lying.

Oh, well, you could beat them all in drinking wine. Oh, easy. Yeah. Okay. That's all I need. There's a Tumblr post that says, like, why do we all act like wine is a, like a, like a girly wimpish drink? Because some girls will drink like two bottles of that and like rage hard.

And some guys will have a cup, like a glass of it and they're out for the night. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, I think the quote was like, girls will drink that shit like it's gatorade that's so true though like some people who don't regularly drink wine will have a glass and be like whoa i'm done like i need to go to bed um so some of the famous guests that were here were amelia erhart uh louis armstrong uh michael jordan paul simon sandra bullock and the dixie Chicks. Wait, are you serious? Mm-hmm. Sandra Bullock is my hero, by the way.

She's from my hometown. Are you kidding? Yeah. Oh, I love her. It was also where Lady Bird and President Lyndon B. Johnson had their first date. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. He also, Lyndon B. Johnson, made the Driscoll his election headquarters,

and that's where he awaited results for his election. Oh, shit. Fun fact. With Lady Bird? With Lady Bird. Fun fact, there were also two assassination attempts that happened at this hotel. One was for an ex-governor.

They tried to kill him because he called someone a lobbyist. I can't. In 1908, there was another assassination between two lawyers. They tried to assassinate each other. Oh, okay. Because they pissed each other off in court earlier that day and got drunk at the same bar,

saw each other, and drew their guns and both shot each other at the same time. I'm sorry, what year was this? 1908. Okay. So, okay. So, basically, because so many of the people that lived in the area were so poor

compared to like this guy who had this the greatest hotel south of st louis nobody could really afford to ever go there right and so within a year he like driscoll lost all of his money well i was wondering i was like if nobody in town can go, why is there? Yeah. Like, so he ended up having to sell the hotel. Oh, shit. And it was pretty much on the verge of shutting down. And then he lost it entirely because he gambled it away. He like bet on his hotel and lost it. I was just hoping that that didn't come back into play.

So he officially lost the hotel in a poker game. But he also, and then he died like a year later too. Like he just died penniless and put everything he could into this hotel and nothing ever came out of it. God damn it. I know. He haunts the place too. He haunts the hotel. He apparently leaves the smell of cigar smoke in guests' rooms.

And you can hear him laugh at people. Oh. Like I don't even know like if they do something stupid i would think but i think it's just like just laughing at them well that's sad um people have also seen full-bodied apparitions of him and apparently the lights will turn on and off when you're by yourself good and he will also grab people while they're in the bathroom hey excuse me i don't know what they're doing in the bathroom they just happen to be in that room and people get grabbed since when is he such a perv maybe since he died then um i'm just gonna run through a couple other ghosts because that was literally all the history fun fact sweet

just here for the uh here for the good stuff here for the goats so one story is in the first floor lobby near the elevators people have seen a guy named pj lawless who was a ticket agent in the 1920s and you can still easily notice him because of his early 20th century uniform oh creepy pj lawless pj lawless um he is also known to check his railroad watch as though he's still like tracking the trains that are nowhere near there anymore creepy and he'll look at and acknowledge people walking by like as a ghost ew like he'll interact with people and then they'll turn around and look back and he's gone ew and that makes him the only spirit there who seems to be aware of us that's so creepy everyone else will just walk by others right okay so the hotel's fourth floor is also the home uh to a woman who committed suicide oh no and the her spirit has

been seen on the fourth floor pretty much um pretty regularly I would say. Based on the stories I saw, it was like a weekly thing. Oh, my God. Where people see the same woman either they hear her whispering to them when they go up and down the stairs. Oh, God. Or when they're in their room, they will hear a woman crying loud enough that you want to go outside and make sure someone's okay and then when you open the door uh she's either you open the door and all of a sudden the crying goes away or you open the door and follow the crying and as you follow to where you think the sound is going it'll fade away from you oh god um and the hotel staff reportedly um have a woman crying on the fourth floor even though no one's there so even the staff will see it themselves or witness it themselves um in room 525 which apparently is one of the more

haunted rooms two brides committed suicide in that room two different ones at the same time no at different times okay but they committed suicide in the same room so one of the brides it was in 1991 she checked into room 525 after her fiance called off her wedding as they do this keeps happening it's such a weird i don't know why maybe all the husbands in the world were like you know what let's get them all in a hotel let's let's be bachelors again yeah but like why are they all killing themselves and in hotels i guess women didn't have many places to go they went in their separate entrance and they just so anyway uh she did have a good time beforehand though because when he called off the wedding she was like oh well fuck you and so she grabbed his credit cards oh yeah girl and after um she

ran off she ran to austin got a place at this very Zsa Zsa hotel. For sure. And then she went on a shopping spree that racked up 40 grand on credit card bills. As a fuck you to him. I'm sorry, what year was this again, too? 91. Okay, wow. So I got him in debt.

I will say I didn't realize it was 91. I thought we were still back in like the 1800s. $40,000. What do you think she bought? I'd him in debt. I will say I didn't realize it was 91. I thought we were still back in like the 1800s. $40,000. What do you think she bought? I'd hope a car. I'd hope something she got to use before she offed herself. Yeah. It's just sad that she killed herself afterwards.

Oh, it's definitely sad. Obviously. But it's like, I don't know. I would at least spend, maybe it was on absolutely anything she could get her hands on just to like get him in debt. But I would hope it was something that she got to enjoy for a minute. Like something that you always really wanted, but just were like, oh, I'll never be able to afford that.

Like, you know, those Facebook videos of people using those like water propelled jet packs? Oh, yeah. Like, why not? Definitely. Do you think she used one of those? Maybe. I don't know. In her wedding dress?

No. 1991. Okay. But I do think that she probably had to have at least bought one thing that was on her bucket list, you know? you think she used one of those maybe i don't know in her wedding dress no 1991 okay but i do think that she probably had to have at least bought one thing that was on her bucket list you know i would hope or maybe she bought a bunch of shit that he hated you know on his car and then off to herself and was like well pay it back maybe some really embarrassing things that the creditors and the bankers would be like what's this about good point So anyway, the way she did it is she calmly walked back to her room and she grabbed a pillow and she went in the bathtub.

Oh, my God. And she used the pillow to muffle her own sound while she shot herself in the stomach. So I guess that's why she needed to muffle the sound. I don't know why that. I mean, I'm not. I'm sorry. so i guess that's why she needed to muffle the sound i don't know why that i mean i'm not i'm sorry i'm not gonna nitpick how someone chooses to do something that horrible but also why would you need the pillow to muffle yourself it's like you it's like she wanted to feel the pains like

why wouldn't you just shoot yourself everyone's gonna hear the i know like the gunshot anyway yeah i don't so she muffled her mouth and then shot herself in the stomach yeah it's like oh no if the screams were the things you wanted muffled why don't you just like i thought it was going to be the pillow you know you put the gun up to the pillow to like quiet the the gun impact yeah one would think maybe maybe that is what she did it just said muffle the sound so maybe muffle the sound of the gun okay okay phew yeah this this makes more sense i'm the true crime expert honestly this is why group projects were so vital to my education growing up god every project my poor partner was like what the fuck is this what did you bring yourself okay come on luckily i i don't know how to do that so anyway guests report seeing that woman

still really sad but they see her post shopping spree so they always see her with a shitload of bags fuck yes in a fur coat probably like pretty woman status prada sunglasses so um the last time she was seen alive was one of the guests saw her bringing all the bags upstairs do you think exiting the elevator do you think she bought a gun with that credit card oh shit you know oh that's a good point i would think she probably bought it yeah day yeah all right oh yuck do you think like never mind i was gonna say do you think dick's sporting goods like put it in a bag and was like here you go and she carried it in her shopping bag what the fuck i'm just picturing like pretty woman with all the bags yeah but it'd be a bag that said dicks oh my god all right so guests reported seeing a woman overloaded with shopping bags and she was

leaving the elevator um on her floor how creepy and with shopping bags and she was leaving the elevator on her floor. How creepy. And that was the last time she was seen alive. So a few days later, the hotel maid was like, this girl has not been seen in a while. Oh, shut up. She went up to the to the room and went to the bathroom and found the bride. And she was in the tub dead. the bride um and she was in the tub dead and to add credibility to this um people probably didn't hear anything and that's why she stayed there for so long because uh just to like for fire safety

back then they uh made the walls 18 inches thick holy crap and it was solid brick so there's a good chance no one heard which is why like no one reported anything so um so she was dead obviously and then uh her ghost started being seen during a lot of renovations on that floor so two women who were guests at the hotel saw who went the a woman that ended up being this this girl who passed on uh the two women saw her overloaded with her shopping bags making her way to her room and this was during all the heavy construction so one of the women said she looked really like disheveled and like kind of manic and she like felt the urge to say something so she said doesn't all this noise bother you if you're staying here during all the construction and i guess the woman with the bags turned around and stared at her and said no it doesn't and apparently the two guests who were

talking to her got this huge sense of like get out like got this like really dark like ominous feeling of like just like the energy went totally black oh no so uh they went downstairs and reported at the front desk and they're like why would you put someone in the hotel um during those renovate why would you put someone in that room on that floor during all the renovations and uh the front desk was like nobody's staying on that side of the hall so when they said yes she literally has a whole bunch of bags with her um the front desk clerk went up with them to investigate and when they went into the room that they saw her at because she was remember she was leaving the elevator and walking to her room oh my god so they saw her going into her room they saw the exact room

and so the front desk went up with them to that room opened the door and uh there was like no furniture and everything was covered in plastic and looked like it hadn't been touched in years my god um the second this is really fucked up they call them the suicide brides oh so that is not me that is not me before we get comments they're called such a jerk i know so the second suicide bride was staying at the driscoll uh also in preparation of her wedding would you believe it and her husband wouldn't you believe it uh called everything off the night before and she hung herself oh so what year was that do we know um was it like before or after this other bride it was in 2011 oh so like recent which i should add uh so they both committed suicide in

the same room on the same night so it was an anniversary did she know that 20 years apart exactly 20 years i'm sorry what yeah so they two brides killed themselves in the same room on the same night 20 years apart first of all let's backtrack if you are staying in a hotel and you know that the room that you're staying in had a bride commit suicide because the husband called it off why would that be the room that you're staying in had a bride commit suicide because the husband called it off. Why would that be the room that you would stay in with your betrothed before your wedding day? Well, you wouldn't stay with your betrothed. Why would you do anything with your wedding involved in that room at all?

Do you think she knew? I hope not. It was 2011. She had Google. And this place has been haunted for years. She had to know something oh no i don't know i don't know if it's better or worse that she knew i know same so anyway the um hauntings that happen in that room are ghostly apparitions unexplained leaks um distant voices

and unexplained clapping clapping i don't know also there has been a lot of creaking sounds but from above like in this in the walls and in the ceilings it sounds they say it sounds a lot like if someone were swaying hanging oh no um oh no people have seen a woman in a bridal gown crying at the foot of their bed in the middle of the night listen don't stay in this room uh the room needed to be painted four different times because the walls kept peeling on their own after like fresh coats and an air conditioning vent that was lying left on the floor unplugged from everything was blowing cold air when someone walked in um yuck when it was moved the blowing stopped and only when it was unplugged

would it start working all over again okay uh one of the workers described an unusual but distinct humming coming out of his own chest every time he went into the bedroom his chest out of his own chest he would hear humming good and uh when they ended up tearing down the room after it was closed off for years um the bathtub was full of perfectly clear clean water as if someone had just filled the tub but the faucet wasn't dripping the floor was dry and the uh sink had like rusted over because no one had used it but it was still filled with perfectly clean water and it was lukewarm which Ew! Which means, like, it had for sure just happened. Ew!

Then, there is a girl there named Samantha, who was the daughter of a senator that was staying there. And she was playing with a ball, and she fell down a flight of stairs onto the marble floor. Ew. And her portrait hangs on the fifth floor of the hotel and some visitors say that that portrait's expression changes if you stare long enough and a few people have even said that if you walk by it you can feel like you're getting picked up from the ground like someone's lifting you what like you're levitating people say they feel like they're being levitated super weird people also also say

that um the eyes of the little girl will follow you as you walk by and they'll get really dizzy and um they'll also get really really nauseous if they stay there for too long and if you try to fight off the levitating feeling then you'll fall over it's like i don't know if you're actually getting levitated or it's like just the sensation of being levitated, but if you fight it at all, you'll literally fall. Even if you're not moving or like you won't trip, you'll just fall over. Oh my God. Staff members have also found out that a light near the painting will turn on and off by its own and you'll hear a little girl giggle. Ew.

um and the whole while the hotel room door next to it well is like a trick door basically now because it won't ever open or stay closed by itself so like if anyone ever stays in that room like basically they've had to say people can't stay there anymore because the door will never stay open or closed on its own even if it's locked um and fun fact she's the oldest spirit in this hotel really it was like 1887 or something and then jesse driscoll the guy who started this whole hotel died like right after and he's a spirit there too he's yeah he's the one that smells like cigar oh right right right yeah um so the last story i have is about um some mirrors mirrors some ghostly mirrors um there's a room there called the maximilian room

and it was originally the men's smoking lounge now i'm not really sure what it is but it was once a smoking lounge nice so in the 1850s there was a guy named ferdinand maximilian and he became an emperor what a name emperor ferdinand maximilian fun fact he actually wasn't he didn't even know he would be an emperor until he was on a trip to europe and he met a gypsy who told him one day he'd be an emperor and he was like no i won't and then he became an emperor how did he become an emperor i don't know oh okay that's a whole other story okay but so he became an emperor and um they said you can be an emperor in mexico but you have to get married first also i think this was the french who said you can be an emperor in mexico

sure or was the french it was either french or mexico france or mexico this is not a history podcast this is why i did not go to a better college because i didn't do the best i didn't do my best in high school. Leave your note taking at the door. We don't need you to write any of this down. It's amazing. I have a master's degree. Amazing.

Amazing. Same. So once he got to Mexico, he also married the princess of Belgium. Oh, sure. And her name was Charlotte. But when they moved to Mexico, she became Carlotta. So Carlotta was hanging out in Italy. And while she was there, she found out that her husband, Ferdinand Maximilian, was executed by the president of the Republic of Mexico.

Oh, no. So it said that she went out of her mind and began suffering from paranoid delusions. Oh, no. And it's still unknown if she knew about this or not but a belated a belated wedding gift that ferdinand had prepared for her were these it was a set of eight mirrors that were like only mirrors an emperor would buy for his princess wife because they were made of gold leaf frames um that were crowned with her with her face sculpted out of every corner and they had sterling silver and diamonds dusted on top to add a greater sheen to the surfaces i mean blaze got me that for our anniversary but like right okay yeah allison uh actually

started dating me after i got one of those and i was like this isn't enough oh my god so after the fall of mexico uh after the fall of like their palace i guess a lot of their belongings ended up getting moved around and they don't know if she ever saw the mirrors or not but they ended up getting auctioned off and brought to the driscoll well and mirrors were really expensive back yeah yeah yeah imagine like having never seen your fucking face before and then you had those weird sketchy ass like reflections but they weren't like mirrors they weren't glass they were like um i don't even know what they were made of but like you can look at them and they're like sort of have your face but it's all distorted imagine the first time someone ever oh my god no experienced a mirror and they were like what that's what i look like like imagine not knowing what you look like like you had like the river

to look in kind of the river right exactly though um so anyway the mirrors went to the driscoll and they were put in a room that they dubbed the maximilian room and uh everyone from guests to hotel employees have also that they've experienced weird things in the halls next to those mirrors so um a lot of people think that the spirit of empress carlotta actually haunts the mirrors um so they think maybe she like found the mirrors after she died or yeah yeah how did she die again the flu oh we didn't go over that right no she just died of the flu was it like shortly after that um it was a it was like in the 1800s okay it was like 18 also 1880s everyone seemed to have died in the 1880s i was involved in this except for

the suicide brides just wait till my story oh my God. Similar. So the main story that happened involving the mirrors is that a photographer in the 90s encountered a woman who he, I guess now in hindsight looked a lot like the Empress. He was doing a shoot that was based on modern brides, which is weird because that was literally the same year as the Suicide Bride. Oh, fuck. Lol. Bad taste in your mouth. That's tasteless, right? Yeah. So anyway, he was doing a shoot with a bunch of brides. And when he was unpacking his equipment, he saw someone come in and thought, oh, she's here

early. And she was wearing like a very, very like old period piece bridal gown. And his whole shoot was supposed to be about modern brides. And so he was going to be like, what's with the classical period background? Like what's going on with your dress? And when he went to look up at her, she wasn't there anymore and he was like oh that's weird maybe i imagined it and then turned and looked into one of the mirrors and she was standing behind him no thank you and they turned around again and he wasn't there or she wasn't there again so anytime you look in the mirror she was there but like but not in real life and he ended up uh i guess that became a regular thing where people just only see her in

the mirror and it's two of the mirrors are now facing each other opposite so it's become that infinity kind of mirror where if you look in one oh sure yeah if you see one through the other then it looks like there's just like an infinite tunnel of you. The weirdest thing that anyone has reported that's like a regular thing that people see. Multiple people have reported that if you look at an infinity mirror, like look at one through the other, and you'll see several, several versions of yourself. And like you'll see yourself a million times in the same room, like how you're supposed to. But only in one version of you will there be someone standing next to you what what do you mean someone standing next to you like they'll see like a bride standing next to them but someone who's not actually with

you right like you know how if if you like look i'm like explaining it shitty but you know how you'll see you'll see like an infinite amount of you. Yeah. There will be only one, like only one of those frames will be someone sitting next to you. What? But the rest of your infinite selves are all standing alone. Wait, what the fuck? So like she just like is trapped in like one of those. What is it? The woman with the.

Yeah. Like everyone describes it's a woman in a period piece bridal gown. Oh no. I just think that's weird. Oh no. Like she'll like. And also people say that they will feel like they're getting grabbed, too, if they look in the mirror for too long. Okay, what?

Stop looking in the mirror. Okay. Everybody. But that's the other. That's the last story. Ugh. Never end them well. I never end them well.

What do you mean? There needs to be, like, a... Well, mine never end well, either, because you're always just like, well, now what do I say? Oh, it's true. So let's do it again. Let's do it again right now. Maybe I'll pull that on you. Now do I say M?

Well, yeah. Talking about suicidal brides. You want me to make this funny? No. All right. I guess it's my turn. Take it away. This is a suggestion that I got in in an email from morgan m okay it is the

bender family okay aka the bloody benders oh do you know about them not enough okay but i know i've seen enough of them i've seen enough of it that I'm excited. Oh, good. It's a really fun story. It's a doozy. I knew I fucked everybody up last week with the Sylvia Lakin story. And I do truly apologize. And people were happy I told it, but also vomiting on their drives home.

So I wanted to kind of lighten the mood. But it's really hard to do that when you're talking about murder so i kind of did like a really old-timey one that's like quirky and it's like it's definitely fucked up but it's like quirky fucked up like us right it's just like us m no it's it's definitely fucked up and it's like upsetting but it's not as timely and personally traumatizing i don't know it's i guess you guys can and can tell me if i'm right or wrong about that but it'll be a team effort let's just see what happens here i tried real hard i even googled quirky murders and it was like jesus i know even google was like seriously google was like christine take a walk

come back come back have a cup of coffee okay so thank you morgan for suggesting this it was a great um great topic to do uh she actually linked me to the mental floss article which is where i first read about it i love mental floss can they. Mental Floss. Can they sponsor us? I just want to. I fucking love Mental Floss. I honestly think I'm just going to get all my stories from Mental Floss from now on because they have the best articles. They do. They do.

It was either Blaze or my brother used to get the magazine and I was like. I love Mental Floss magazine. I think my brother got it for like his birthday for a year, but it's been a while. Who wants to give me a subscription to that? We should do that. Let's get that. You can find our patreon oh man if only we weren't in the red then we could actually have money to use on mental floss

okay um so just to say before i get started i used the mental floss article that morgan sent me um murderpedia.org, aka my most visited website. The thing that will freak out your parents when you pass away and they have to look through your history. Absolutely. The thing that I need you to clear from my browser history when I die. Done.

And Murder by Gaslight. It's a blog that I found. It's real fun. Very well researched. And I found this book. I don't know if it's a book or an article. It's called Malice, Madness, and Mayhem, an Eclectic Collection of American Infamy by Beverly Roth. And I found this through Murderpedia.org.

And I was like, oh, I wonder if it was a PDF. And I was like, I wonder if this is a book. So I Googled Beverly Roth. And it said author on Amazon. And I'm like oh nice i was like okay i'll go look and see what books she's written um so i clicked on her amazon link and it said beverly roth has written one book called the complete idiot's guide to quicken five for windows and i was like oh not relevant uh so i don't know what's happening with that but it's either an

article did you know that my grandma wrote a book about menopause in the 90s she was like it was actually a really big book no yeah i'm not kidding it's like 30 cents now on amazon what's her name beverly her name was carol schultz oh my gammy shut up my gammy wrote a book about menopause the one i chatted to on speakerphone no that was my grandma oh i have a grandma on a gammy gammy wrote wrote the uh i don't know which is weird because i mean you've met my grandma now she definitely would be one to write a book about menopause i kind of put two and two together i thought that's actually fun fact she has asked if i would write a sexual memoir with her man she is just like living her life right now no she's actually i think it would

be a really good idea that it sounds like i'm not pitching it well right now but i'll talk to you about it has she watched grace and frankie i think actually if she if she watched that show i think it'd become her favorite show because my grandma's real hip and with the times i watched all three seasons in two days when i was on painkillers and making my vision board and it spoke to me at a level where i was like yes i understand that's me i'll give you an elevator pitch later but i actually think it might be a good idea i'm if anyone else wants to hear uh me write a book about my grandma's sexual endeavors in the 30s and 40s. Then open your wine bottles. Then open your wine bottles and leave a message.

So, anyway, those are the sources that I used. Now I'm going to get into the story. All right. Let's do that. Em? Yeah. Buckle up. I know.

I'm buckled i'm gonna take you back in time to 1872 the story begins in southeast kansas that's my favorite place in the world i thought canada was your favorite i know i know i was just trying to okay play along yeah okay your favorite place in the world southeast kansas right yeah oh Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Uh-huh. Incidentally, the same area where Laura Ingalls Wilder had just moved out of, and the house that she had lived in there ended up being the basis for the little house on the prairie. So, fun fact. That's fun. Fun fact.

That's fun. Same area. So, anyway, that year, a group of new families moved into the area, and they were called spiritualists, which I don't know if you know anything about the spiritualists of the 19th century i didn't i don't uh it was a movement that believed departed souls can interact with the living and make contact and we can make contact with the dead oh so we're spiritualists so it's us right it's us in kansas yeah it's us as like prairie people okay like i think the prairie podcast yeah the prairie parent the paranormal

prairie podcast yeah so we're basically we're basically this story so far we're basically millennial spiritualists right yeah sure right uh so i mean california is the new kansas well definitely i would say so i would say los angeles and kansas are compared only southeast kansas though don't forget no you're right you're right yeah the prairie in the desert who's to who's the judge specifically yeah good point good point uh take notes take notes uh okay so the spiritualist thing was like a whole movement back then. It was like a whole trend. Um,

people were like, still a trend. I mean, it's becoming a trend again. I feel like, right. It's sweeping the nation once more. Yeah.

Fads like recycle. Like we're going to like nineties again. Right. We're also going to 1872 again and like pulling it all again. Orange is the new black, you know, 2017 is the new 1872 i think so 2017 just saying we're pulling it all the way back it's like we've done the 80s we've done the 90s like we've we've recycled it so much and we've done the 70s we might as well go an extra

century you gotta just go as far back as you can reach yeah we gotta we gotta scrape the barrel at this point scrape the barrel and get those get those uh spiritualist get that shit together i guess get that prairie okay paranormal prairie podcast paranormal prairie podcast uh christine can you delete everything um from three minutes to your future christine i don't know who started it but i don't want it to be me dear christine it was probably me so please delete the last three minutes thank you dear future christine can you tell past christine that she's got fucking wine all over her mouth yesterday's christine helping tomorrows remember when i said i was almost out of blooper reel content well clearly we've made up for that okay anyway so spiritualists were like

a popular trend back then um they would hold like seances and you'd see all these mediums like advertising. Remember when there was that whole like snake oil movement where people were like, oh, I can sell you this powder and fix all your ailments. So it was that kind of thing where like Pirelli's miracle elixir. Yeah, exactly. So people would say like, oh, I'm, you know, a psychic healer. I can fix all of your physical issues or whatever. So it was very popular back then. But when these people moved into rural Kansas,

it obviously, they kind of were out of their element and didn't totally fit in. And the people who, and a lot of the people who had moved in, the spiritualist families, like ended up leaving because they were like, we don't feel comfortable here. And a few people a few families uh stayed and most of them kept to themselves except for one family and they were called the benders um so after the civil war the government had pushed the native osage indian tribe out of the area, of course. Why wouldn't you? It's America.

Why not? Into a new territory that would later become Oklahoma. And then they decided to use the native land and make it vacant for settlers to come in. So in 1870, John Bender Sr. and his family settled in that exact area. It was near the Great Osage Trail, which would later become the Santa Fe Trail, which was a path that many travelers passed through on their way to the West. So, you know, a lot of people were migrating West to make a new life.

And that's the trail a lot of people took. So John Bender Sr., who was also called Pa, was around 60 years old. He hardly spoke any English. His German accent was so strong that any english he did try to speak was unintelligible so sounds like you my family it's me hi and pa ma bender who allegedly spoke very little english was 42 years old and was so unfriendly that her neighbors took to calling her a she-devil oh also you i can't tell who you are god damn it i was gonna call that you but you beat me to it i'm not

42 i'm ma and pa oh i'm 42 and a she-devil okay i was gonna go i was cool with the she-devil thing but um i got i got time till i'm in my 40s okay i'm there i'm just i'm i'm i'm a younger version i'm also pa who's 60 so it's like i give up at this point but you fucking look at no i like how that you're like oh i'm sorry and i'm like you just called me middle-aged three times i just called you she devil but god forbid i call you 60 that's me uh john bender jr so the son was about 25 years old okay pardon me i'm 25 oh yeah you're john benner jr uh johnny jr remember that time you were 25 grandma i don't actually my dementia has kicked in since then but thanks for thanks for thinking of me uh John Bender Jr. was around 25 years old. He spoke English fluently with a German accent.

He was prone to laughing aimlessly, so many people in town referred to him as a half-wit. Me. This is literally all me so far. Apparently he was really handsome, so. Not wrong. You're like, okay. Still me. That's all I need.

I know. It's all that matters. Kate Bender was a daughter she was around 23 uh she was described as cultivated attractive and extremely outgoing for a woman at the time she was a self-proclaimed for a woman isn't that the greatest expression you've ever heard for a woman oh believe me just wait till i you haven't heard that out in los angeles yet have you in the film industry for a woman you're doing pretty well don't even don't don't even get me started for a woman PA you're uh you know carrying those boxes pretty

well it's mostly oh you want to write comedy oh are you actually are you funny like for a woman you're pretty funny for a woman you're pretty funny. For a woman, you're pretty funny. That one I've gotten before. It's really rough. I think that should be the title of your book one day. For a woman, I'm pretty funny. Oh, that's fun. Yeah.

Or I'm pretty funny. For a woman. Yeah. Trademark, don't steal it. We have it on audio record. Yeah, audio record. Said pa. Said 60-year-old pa pa who doesn't speak english um okay so you're the halfwit right right okay so true and through right kate bender so she was

outgoing for a woman at the time i mean again it's like the 1800s so it's like outgoing for a woman in the 1800s like you know how to like, you know, shake hands. But to be fair, she was actually extremely outgoing. She called herself Professor Miss Katie Bender. Ooh, she was a gender bender is what she sounds like. A little bit. She was a self-proclaimed healer and psychic and would distribute flyers advertising her supernatural powers that could cure all sorts of illnesses. Distribute flyers advertising her supernatural powers that could cure all sorts of illnesses.

And I actually found it was in the Mental Floss article. It's actually an ad from the, I'll show it to you, from the original newspaper in 1872. All right. Professor Miss Katie Bender can heal all sorts of diseases, can cure blindness, fits, deafness, and all such diseases, also deaf and dumbness. Which,ness which like deaf and deafness aren't those the same thing but whatever residents 14 miles east of independence on the road from independence to osage mission one and one half southeast one and one half mile southeast of norah head station june 18th 1872 so that was an ad for like her services wow she sounds pretty she was an entrepreneur i mean for a woman i mean for a woman right she's funny for a woman um so she also conducted seances and gave lectures on spiritualism she advocated for free love and

she got some notoriety for that but people were like really just like intrigued by her and a lot of people were coming to their home to get treated and to contact their deceased family members or loved ones and it was around this time that people who had left to migrate west from the midwest or from the east coast started going missing and at first it wasn't that notable because, you know, people were gone for months and you had to hope you heard from them again. And so it was very, you know, people tended to lose touch. So at first it wasn't really notable. And plus the trip was really dangerous

and people would meet trouble on their journeys with like, you know, Native American tribes and things like that. Like there was just a lot out there that wasn't settled yet um but in may of 1871 um in the town a body was found in nearby drum creek they found the body of a man named jones whose skull had been crushed and his throat had been slit there weren weren't any leads, so they didn't really know where to go from there. And in February of the following year, two bodies of men with the same injuries were found nearby in the same town.

So now the disappearances of people heading west through this area became so common that it became a known thing. And a lot of travelers started to avoid the trail altogether. And it was already an area known for like horse thieves villains vigilantes so it was already a dangerous can you imagine a town these days where they're like another villain has a like nowadays like oh the murder rate in detroit it's like no villains it's like a superman movie all these villains and vigilantes and horse thieves but yeah so it was already known

for that kind of thing so um the fact that it was avoided even more because people just happened to be vanishing was like striking so in the winter of 1872 a man named george launcher uh his wife had just died and he had an infant daughter. Aw. I know. So he decided to move from their town of Independence, Kansas and resettle in Iowa. So they started on their trip and then they were never heard from or seen again. Uh-oh.

They vanished. The following spring, one of their neighbors, a guy named Dr. William York, decided to go looking for them. He went on this journey and he followed the path that they had taken and he started questioning everybody along the trail, the Osage Trail. And he was trying to get any information he could to see what had happened to his neighbor and his infant daughter. What a good neighbor. My neighbor would be like, no. My neighbor's like, who are you talking about? I don't know that person. The one with the dog that barks really fucking loud i have one of those too

they'd be like please let them die on the trail i don't want them to come back good please please keep them find out how it happened and then we'll bring you anyone else we don't like we will pay you for that um okay so he questioned people all the way to fort scott but uh on his way back when he was going to make his return trip to independence he vanished as well oh my so here's because he was going sniffing around sniffing around uh and here's where things kind of turned so dr york who had been going on this, like, investigative Scooby-Doo type journey, had two brothers, and they were super powerful.

Their names were Colonel Ed York and Kansas Senator Alexander York. So they were, like, you know, up there. And they were determined to find out what had happened to their brother. So Colonel York decided to lead an investigation in the area. So on March 28, 1873, he arrived at the Bender Inn and explained to the Benders that his brother had gone missing

and asked if they had seen him. They admitted that he had stayed with them and suggested that perhaps he had run into trouble with Native Americans after leaving. Blame the victim. Blame the fucking victim, right? Blame the whole nation's victims. The oldest ones. The victims, yeah.

And then Colonel York agreed that this was possible and stayed for dinner. Ah, fuck. I guess innocent until proven guilty is not a thing huh and that's why we drink anyway also did I not tell you

I'd finish a square a square of chocolate I did that once in sixth grade and my teacher made me tell the class that I shouldn't have

eaten a whole square of chocolate and I cried in the bathroom. I literally just did that because it's fucking Tuesday. Okay, so he agreed that it was possible and remained for dinner. On April 3rd, the colonel returned to the Bender's house after hearing that a woman in town had once been threatened by Ma Bender at Knife Point point ma said she couldn't understand english and the rest of the family

denied the claim and said we don't know what you're talking about but then he accused her again and she became enraged and started yelling in english that the woman was a witch who had cursed her coffee. Okay. I mean. I mean. You gotta give it to Ma. Yeah. Someone curses. I was gonna say, she's not the only one who's felt that way before.

I mean, you called me Ma. Go to a Starbucks a little too early. Oh, yeah. They've all done it. You called me Ma. You weren't wrong. Someone curses my coffee. I will threaten you with a knife.

Or just doesn't give you the coffee at all. Or just like a mean tweet, but like probably in the 1870s a knife. I don't know. Anyway. So before he left, Kate, the daughter, asked him to return alone the following Friday night so she could use her clairvoyant abilities to help find his brother okay so she's like if you come back later this week like i can use my i don't trust her go sleep for a minute to uh learn them and find where your brother is hook line sinker exactly so later on that night um he was sitting alone in the front room um

and he happened to notice something glittering underneath one of the beds oh no he pulled the object out and saw that it was a locket on a gold chain he opened it and was startled to see the faces of his brother's wife and daughter inside the locket so he recognized it as a trinket that his brother had worn on his watch chain uh realized that like this inn had something to do with where his brother may have been or may have been last seen alive um and peace the fuck out good good boy so apparently the men with york were convinced the benders and a neighboring family called the roaches were guilty and wanted to hang them all quote unquote but york insisted that more evidence must be found before we just hang everybody although i would also like to add that

there's a paranormal aspect to this already because i feel like that's like a sign from beyond being like get the fuck out you know what i mean which part i'm finding a locket oh yeah i feel like if i were looking for the people who killed you and then i saw obviously a locket of geo not the fucking blaze also the locket thing is one of those it's i read like probably nine articles about this and only one of them had this storyline so really yeah you would think it'd be a real so it might be a part of the lore and legend so i don't know if that's we're gonna go with it though i liked it i've decided i included it but i wanted to add that it was kind of one of those things that was maybe part of the story that was added later yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a fun part um okay so they question the

bender family um oh i said that already okay so obviously there's like a lot of drama this is a small town um and the town decided to have a meeting uh at the harmony grove schoolhouse always the schoolhouse when it comes to murder always that's where you go um and they decided that they would search every home in the area for any evidence of the murders that's what they like gleaned out of this meeting and the colonel york said the brother and uh two of the male or the two male benders were all at the meeting. Okay. By the time the searches began, they noticed that the Bender family inn appeared abandoned and the farm animals were starving.

Oh, no. When the search party arrived at the inn, they found the house intact, but it was also missing some clothes and food and they smelled a foul odor. Oh, my. I guess foul is a dead body, you say like what what do you reckon well i reckon it's nothing good okay they something ungodly something ungodly for sure they noticed a trap door near the dining room table oh my it happened to be nailed shut oh my they managed to pry open the trap door and not only did it have the most foul stench coming out of it but it was also covered in congealed blood like i'm done the walls and the entrance it was all covered in clotted blood uh they inspected the room that

it led to it was like a cellar if you have to pry a trap door open you shouldn't have to even be in that room you're like oh there's a rotten smell coming if i were like christine there's a trap door help me pry it open it's nailed shut and smells bad why are you like all right like what i'm not i'm like there's a christine shaped hole in my wall i'm like i'm going to dave and busters to play some arcade games and have a drink bye see you never you can snapchat me whatever the fuck you find in that hole geotag it while you're at it geotag where you are we'll chat tomorrow no thank you so they found this hole this cellar it was six feet deep okay so it was seven square feet at the top and then three square feet wide at the bottom it's like a like a cone bucket yeah it's like a funnel

cellar thing yeah um so they went down there blood was everywhere uh there were no bodies but they determined that the smell was coming from the blood that had soaked into the soil foul uh they began to investigate the rest of the property to see what was up um they found fresh mounds of dirt out back like literal soil had been overturned recently um and there were nine piles the first body they found was dr york oh my so they found his body he was buried face downward with his feet barely below the surface um they searched that night and the next morning and they managed to uncover nine bodies in eight graves oh my plus a large number of body parts everyone but one person had been bashed had had their skull bashed in with a hammer and their throat slit the one

body that didn't have a crushed skull and slit throat was the infant child's body they found, which was determined to be buried alive underneath her dead father. Oh, no. Oh, no. They also found the remains of an eight-year-old girl. Oh, no. Badly mutilated.

Oh, no. The town got so furious after this discovery that a crowd of people hunted down a friend of the Bender's named Brockman and interrogated to him as to what he knew of the murders. And he claimed he knew nothing. So they hanged him from a beam in the Bender Inn until he was unconscious, then revived him and interrogated him again. He said he still didn't know anything. So they hanged him again. They did this three times.

What? And then he apparently staggered home, quote, as one who is drunken or deranged. And I'm like, or as someone who was just hanged three times. Right. Until they're unconscious. Yeah. Like a justified. Like you killed all their brain cells?

Yeah. Maybe. Like someone who is not coherent. Right maybe from oxygen loss right or maybe they almost died three times but you know um investigators then decided to figure out like how and why these murders were happening this is where it gets interesting so the bender family this is what they would do tell me so they'd have guests come to their inn and guests uh were urged to sit in a place of honor oh christ which is at the head of the table and in their house there's actually like um diagrams of how their house was laid out but they had a a curtain partition uh laid out like uh hung against the wall as sort

of a or hung against hung from the ceiling as sort of a wall partition um you keep saying partition and i just keep thinking that Beyonce song. Oh, no. Okay. So the curtain sort of like cordoned off the front dining area and the back of the house, basically. Sure. So it's like a fake wall. So while dining, one of the male benders would go would be back behind the curtain. would go would be back behind the curtain and if the person uh was sitting in the quote seat of honor uh their the back of their head would indent into the curtain and one of the male

benders would take a hammer oh like he could see where he needed to hit yep the indent of their the back of their head and they would swing the hammer into their head with one big hit uh and then when they fell one of the women would then slit his or her throat to ensure that they were dead and then they would drop the person down the trap door and then when they went down to the trap door they would strip the person strip the body and then bury it somewhere on the property. They found more than a dozen bullet holes in the cellar, indicating that some of the victims may have fought back. Oh, shit. After they'd been hit in the head.

So are you going to tell me the purpose of killing them? Or is this just like they're deranged and just kill? Let's take a moment and wait. Right. Okay. Yeah. We need to tell the story. I'm sorry. tell the story i'm sorry i'm being speedy i'm being speedy that was too inconsiderate m let's take it slow

all right um okay so actually so okay so basically they found bullet holes in the basement that indicated that some of the victims may have fought back after being hit with the hammer, which is fucked up. Then this theory was kind of verified by a guy named Mr. Wetzel. Wetzel's Pretzels? Yeah, he invented Wetzel's Pretzels. Wow, he's done a lot for himself i googled mr wetzel earlier and it was like it was like cheesy hot dog nacho pretzels that's not what i'm looking for like close maybe later but not right now bookmarked but we'll get back yeah

i know i i really book night i have wanted a pretzel ever since that uh but yeah so he mr wetzel had read kate's advertisement you know her her special skills um who could forget right and traveled to uh their home with his friend seeking a cure for his neuralgia do you know what that is neuralgia no it just sounds like the nalgene bottles that everyone uses what's a neuralgia do you know what that is neuralgia no it just sounds like the nalgene bottles that everyone uses what's a neuralgia it's uh when one of your nerves uh is either damaged or like irritated and it causes like extreme pain in your body it's like if your nerve it's just like um damage to your nerve and it's just very painful apparently wonderful um but yeah so he had that and he went to kate and kate examined him and expressed confidence in her ability to affect a permanent cure oh my right because she's kate so she goes well why don't you just have dinner with us first

so for some reason uh the two men so he brought his friend, and the two men decided they wanted to eat their dinners at the counter instead of, like, the head of the table. Right. Smart boys. Yeah, and I guess Kate became, like, pissed off and abusive was the word they used toward them. Like, lost her mind and was like, no, you have to sit there. And they were like, what the fuck is going on? lost her mind was like no you have to sit there and they were like what the fuck is going on and then they saw the two bender men emerge like from right behind the curtain and uh wetzel and gordon the two friends were like we gotta get out of here so they just like peace the fuck out and

walked out the front door and so they're the only ones who were like yeah we noticed something they didn't even try to chase them down or anything no wow that's i think the only known case i've ever heard of where someone literally just walked out the front door and didn't get chased yeah i guess they were like sit there sit there and they were like no we don't want to sit there yeah i don't know you're right like it's weird but i guess they're two grown men so it's like hard to imagine being able to like i don't know but so that's kind of like that was one of the stories that sort of validated that theory because he's like yeah they wanted me to sit next to that curtain you know so to answer your question it turns out the benders had been

murdering people for their money oh that's it age-old story it's it but it's super lame timeless timeless because the amounts they stole range from get this 40 cents shut up to 2600 max um as well as like some livestock and what was the currency difference right so all in all after killing 21 people by the way murdering slaughtering hammering them in the head 21 people, by the way. Woo! Murdering, slaughtering, hammering them in the head. 21 people. They managed to steal $4,600, which today is $81,000. That's it? Not even six figures?

That's it. And by the way, their neighbors were involved too. So it's like, there were probably 11 people involved in this. So you divvy that up. $80,000? Yeah. Not even worth it. Not even worth it.

So, like, 11 people in total who would have wanted a cut of that. It's nuts. So, wait, let's just pretend $80,000 divided by 11 is what? It's, like, $7,300 in today's money. I think 11 is too many. I think I counted wrong. Oh. Okay. How many would you say like

um one two three four five six say like six people for now i mean well that's almost double so that'd be like 13 be just over like 13 000 each i would not kill someone for 13 000 i would not kill 21 people for $13,000. Oh, that's even fair. Hang on. So $80,000 divided by 21 people. Each one was around $3,800. Right.

Per person. Right. And then you had to divide that by like six people. Each person got maybe $650 a person. Yeah. On average. Is that... Would you kill one person for 650 dollars never no dude 650 dollars maybe 650 billion dollars i could go on the internet and say who wants a

video of my toes like in whipped cream and probably get more than that you know for stupid shit on the internet where i don't have to murder somebody oh yeah like i can put my morals on the line in far better ways than murdering 21 people right right right right and make that kind of money right but yeah so basically even the mental floss article was like they literally only made 4600 out of all these people that they murdered. So it wasn't even like they were becoming wealthy or anything. Yeah. Even in the day and age. So after this all happened,

and some of the people they stole from, they got 40 cents from them. Like, don't kill a guy who has 40 cents. You know, one time I was driving with an Uber guy, and he was telling me that he used to work Domino's. And I was like, oh, did you ever? I was asking him, like, oh, is it ever dangerous? Like, the typical shit you ask an Uber driver when you're making small talk.

Right. And I was like, oh, is it ever dangerous? And he's like, no more dangerous than when I worked as a Domino's delivery driver. And I was like, oh, is that really bad, too? And I guess Domino's has a rule where you can't have more than 15 or 20 dollars in your pocket oh um to break change for um tips and stuff like that but you can't have like they don't have any more than that much money right but he's gone to houses before where i guess they intentionally ordered like they didn't want a pizza like they literally were just trying to

rob someone so they ordered a pizza from domino's just so someone would come to the doorstep and basically like just walk into getting robbed what the fuck and people like that's actually happened to people before apparently and so this guy was like yeah they like didn't even want the pizza they like grabbed it out of my hands and threw it like out the door and then just like pulled me in their house and i was like what the fuck and they like held him at like knife point or something was like give us all your money and but so the uber driver i'm talking to it this happened to he was like they really wanted to fucking kill me over like 15 bucks like i was telling them i had no more money than 15 i threw them the money and like turned my pockets and set out and they knew i had only 15 and they realized that i wasn't worth it and let

me go but at the same time it's like for 15 bucks, they were willing to do that. So I guess 15 bucks today is basically 40 cents then. I mean, you know what I mean? Absolutely. I mean, Domino's is like a corporate company. You can't expect them to not have shit like lined up. I know. Like order from your local.

No, don't give anyone ideas on how to rob your pizza pepperoni tony's i don't know but like pepperoni tony but like domino's is not the place where you're gonna get hundreds of dollars i know right right like in cash in 2017 exactly in cash yeah fucking stupid like of any company that delivers pizzas they're gonna have their shit together yeah exactly god damn people are dumb and okay uh so this story became sensational uh rewards were put out to find the missing killers it turns out that no one in the family in the bender family was actually related except ma and her daughter oh no and nobody's real name was bender oh no pa me right was born john flickinger right in 1810 in either germany or or the netherlands ma also me uh was born almira mike and her first husband was named griffith and she bore 12 children with him holy crap yeah that's your future that's me

she was married several times before marrying pop but each of her husband died of mysterious uh-huh head wounds oh her daughter kate was born eliza griffiths so her name was not kate so she had adopted that fake name she was her fifth daughter i believe uh or for the other 11 were like no mom i don't want to help you murder people they were dead oh did they all die from mom i mean can you imagine being a mom and killing 11 of your 12 kids like we know who the golden child is we definitely i'm definitely rewinding and saying she did not kill 11 of her children and And I'm going to explain that in five seconds. Right. Okay.

We'll get there. So anyway, her daughter Kate was born Eliza Griffith. John Bender Jr.'s real name was John Gebhardt. He was not related to his to John or Ma or none of them. And many who knew them in Kansas said that actually he and Kate were husband and wife, not brother and sister oh no uh it also turns out mob wasn't even from germany and spoke fluent english uh they became so the bender family became the nation's first recorded mass murderers oh the nations the entire united

states they were the first serial killers wow yeah in the united states you know how do you how does one find a group of other people who are also interested in killing someone and going so far as to create an entire family and live together in the same house and have a whole system rigged um i was wondering the same thing because i was like none of these people were late like most of them weren't related bump into each other on the fucking trail yeah you're like oh on a train like hey and then like you like just have to make enough awkward jokes until you're like no but seriously you want to like if only i could kill everyone here ha ha ha exactly wait no but how would you do it ha ha ha oh but wait oh but wait okay but how would you do like how do you how do you like just kidding but right but no seriously it's like i'm not i'm not i'm not

serious but if i were serious this is how serious i'd be and that was my biggest question the whole time because i'm thinking there are these five people one two three four i can't count math okay there were these four people but then they also had the neighbors who were involved and it's like how on how and gods are there in southeast kansas in the 1800s like there were maybe what like two people there right like before they showed up totally there's like a handful of people in the entire state and they're like oh we have seven people who are willing to murder infant children and bury them alive that's so wild so we can make 600 bucks a person jesus you know what i mean like what the fuck but you're right like how do you find but so nobody knows

like you know how else they could have made that money work for a week like it's a paycheck i mean and like what were you getting out of it yeah and she was doing her whole psychic tours and all that it's like you were probably making enough money doing all that shit. Yeah, like, what's up? Like, you couldn't just... Can't you do what we do and just be like, hey, let's talk about ghosts? That's literally what she was doing. Donate to our Patreon.

Yeah, but then she started murdering people. Well, she didn't need people to donate, if you know what I mean. She was just making the money from... If you know what I mean. Their bodies. Um... What? I don't know. I don't know what was going on there with her bodies

with all the dead bodies oh the dead body not like a sex thing because some people did uh say she might have been a sex worker but then maybe a sex thing a bunch of people said she was also a witch and i'm like okay i don't trust any of these i mean she could be a sex worker witch clairvoyant you know yeah you're right i mean there's someone out there who is listen she was also a uh clairvoyant psychic healer spiritualist spiritualist so like who the fuck knows what she did i don't know anyway serial killer also oh that yeah there's that and sleeping with her like not brother uh-huh i don't know you know what if you just watch the most recent game of thrones incest isn't like the

biggest issue in the world anymore it's sort of like okay part of pop culture now you know right yeah but don't sleep with your siblings did you hear that kids i just just a good psa good a good fresh reminder in case anyone forgot the only child of the room m has a psa for you where am i didn't hear only child like i i was raised with no siblings i heard like the only child here and i was like i'm not the only child there's the one with no siblings yes no i gathered that late in the game uh but okay they became the first recorded serial killers in the united states when the 10 bodies were recovered at the end that was the first time in the entire united states that they had like been able to pin.

Wow. Multiple murders. On just one group of people. Right. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Without DNA or anything.

Totally. Exactly. Just off a hunch. Just like buried in the petunia. So many believe that the benders killed at least 21 people. So like most people believe they killed more than 21 people but that's kind of like the um several vigilantes so remember the bodies i mentioned earlier who were found like in the river and then there were two more bodies found nearby those were also linked to them too later so it's like gotcha then i embody the nine bodies in the garden, then three bodies they found, and then they believe it's up to at least 21 people in total that they murdered.

Okay. So as far as what happened to them, several vigilante groups claimed to have found the benders and murdered them, but none brought back proof and were able to claim the reward. Right. murdered them but none brought back proof and were able to like claim the reward right um the official investigation notes that testimony from railroad employees placed the benders boarding a train for humboldt and traced the younger benders to trains going to texas or new mexico uh the older benders were allegedly seen on their way to st louis by way of kansas city but no one ultimately knows what became of them the house in which the murders took place so people would come it was like so sensationalized that people would come and just take pieces of the

house and it kicked up it got to the point where the entire house including the like cellar they took bricks out like people would come and just take pieces of it jesus to take home or whatever so the entire um nothing remains of the entire house so people wow people would literally just took literally piece by piece took the house apart tore it apart and piece by piece but also that's like such bad juju that's what i was gonna say that's crazy bad don't you think having a brick from that cellar covered in blood is bad juju oh that's for sure bad like why do you want that well i mean i know why i want it but i also know why my good conscious would be like no no put that away yeah

yeah so people would literally travel there like take oh i know i understand off and stuff and like take it and part of me is very jealous of the people who have a piece of that house but another part of me is like oh can you imagine the energy that you just like put in your house just even knowing that like oh well there's that conversation again of like would you wear the shirt of someone who was a murderer yep it's like it's just a shirt but you have the association so deeply ingrained in you but you think of like a brick from that cellar and it's like there's probably congealed blood on this from people who right so maybe there's more of like a like an actual physical they bashed in like it's so fucked they they murdered an infant baby in this cellar you know what i mean like it's so fucked also it really like paints a bad

picture for you of like imagine you like are really like if i mean we're fucked up so like if i somehow brought a piece of this back you'd be one of the first people i showed and be like wow i can't believe i actually am holding this and we would at least be fascinated before we got disgusted five minutes later but like imagine if you're like dating someone and like they see this brick in your house and they're like where's this from then they realize they are like dating a serial killer fanatic it's crazy like they're like oh what do you think about it like we have pieces of the berlin wall and it's crazy like they're like oh well you think about it like we have pieces of the berlin wall and it's like even that is like so powerful and it's like fascinating

and you have like pieces of graffiti like if you go to like um sedona like the vortex like you take the rocks and say that the energy is like pretty wild and so it's like you have like a piece of history or whatever but to have a piece of history that's like drenched in congealed blood of innocent victims i don't know i don't know if i want that but you know whatever but the whole place has been torn apart apparently um and so the house actually is like um completely disassembled uh and carried away nothing remains at this point to even indicate like where the house was because people shit like all the way through the foundation totally picked it apart um and even though the house itself is gone like off the like there's no like specific right there's no

linings or anything right like where the house was um the property is said to be haunted by the victims right well why wouldn't it? Yeah, totally. So people say, like, if you go at night, you'll see, like, lights and weird glowing apparitions and things like that. And they say it's not only the victims, but also Kate is still there, they think. Oh, shit. Well, yeah, she was so connected spiritually in theory. Right. Yeah, she was so connected spiritually in theory.

Right. So people believe that the victims and Kate are still associated with the land. Yowza. Pretty fucked up. Yowza. So that's my attempt at rectifying the Sylvia Likens case. We definitely distracted us. Good distraction, I thought.

Good distraction, good distraction. You know. Good luck editing this, by the way. Yeah yeah it's fine okay not our worst not our best not our best not our worst all right that'll be our uh our combined autobiography we're pretty average mediocre and we're proud we'll just be like you know um i say you know how how the equal sign is like the straight ones, but they've got the squiggly equal sign too, which basically means almost. Approximately. Yeah.

I feel like the title of our book should just be that symbol. Just like the eh, almost, kinda. I mean, sort of. It's like, you know. If you round up, I guess. Or down. It's around there. It's's like just pretend we're there right yeah oh yeah so true yeah what is that symbol called i it's called the equal squiggle

sign it's called the christine and m making it kind of maybe oh yeah. I did learn about that in trigonometry. Okay. Hey. Are you there, anybody? Oh, no, they're not. It's just us now. Hey, God. It's me.

Oh. Margaret. Hey, Satan. It's me. Just trying to keep everyone around. That's our book two. Are you there, Satan? It's us again. Hey, Satan, are you there?an it's us again hey satan are you there knock knock

we're back please pay attention to us uh if anyone's still here thank you if anyone's still here i'm sorry and that's why we drink find us on uh email and that's why we drink at gmail.com or on the corner probably drunk and passed out somewhere and trying to drag me back to my house also on twitter at atwwd podcast uh-huh and that's it okay and on instagram at www atwwd podcast and on facebook you can join our secret group which is a lot of fun you can find our website and that's why we drink.com and our store and that's why we drink.bigcartel.com and that's why we drink bam took long enough help to clung off. Help.