And That's Why We Drink - E322 The Halloween House and the Woolper News

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

Ring, ring! It's episode 322 and we're calling from the cave phone! This week Em takes us on a creepy journey through the history of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where an epic man named Bishop discovered some fishops. Then Christine closes out her two part series on Khalil Wheeler Weaver. And we're turning on the disco lights and expensing turkey legs for the audience if Em passes out on stage... and that's why we drink!We only have a few shows left in our spring On the Rocks tour! Join us in Miami, West Palm Beach, Boston, New York, Newark, and Las Vegas! andthatswhywedrink.com/live

oh christine uh we i basically just woke up and um already christine has done a deep dive and uh stalked somebody we know. For good reason. It wasn't just to shit on them. We were trying to get to the bottom of a social situation. Of something. And you know what?

As I said 10 minutes ago, I'll say it again. You give Christine 30 seconds and a Wi-Fi connection and anything's possible. The Wi-Fi connection is key. Otherwise, I really am just playing best fiends and like doing nothing good with my time. Anyway, that's all we've done so far. That's all we've done today. That's about it. In the time I've been conscious, that was the only successful thing that's happened so far.

It wasn't even me, it was Christine. Christine, what's going on, Homeslice? I miss you. I miss you, too. I'm loving your fuchsia lighting. It's very, I don't know, trendy. I like it. You know, I don't know if I like it, but I was like, these babies change color.

I actually really like it. I'm usually not like a hot pink kind of gal but oh look i'm i'm wearing a hot pink on my shirt today's feeling pink we're vibing she's a little pinky um i yeah i i don't know i was feeling i'm in a hermit mode i think because i know we're about to go back out on the road and yes so i'm feeling a little not wanting to feel like there's daylight anywhere near me. So I picked a moody color. I like it. And I'm sorry that you have to fly.

I have to drive, which I feel like there's pros and cons. Yeah, I'm almost happier to fly. Yeah, I feel like it depends. I mean, we have a toddler. Are you driving with a baby? Okay, yes. Yeah. Help me. Yes.

Help me. Wow. By the way, my mother has volunteered herself to ride with us from Raleigh to Charlotte. Did you know this? I know. How would I know that? But I love that you asked me. Thank you for asking.

Because honestly, with her behavior, she could just. You know what? There have been times where I learned information before you and it pertained to you and not me. So I guess that's a fair question. Yeah. Yeah. So I am doing my darndest to make sure that's a clear, firm no. Just tell.

I got it. What? Call on me. I'm going to say. She's going to hear this, by the by the way just oh yeah she listens to the show she does i know i really i don't well this will be a test maybe she's been lying this whole time okay linda here's a secret passcode no um what you need to tell her is that we're driving a like a say oh we just rented the cheapest car from budget rental we can find and then she's not gonna want to ride with us she'll be like absolutely not yeah she'll be like i'm gonna upgrade you to the suv and then actually you know she would do that to get herself

in the car she'd be like i'll pay for the luxury one that's we gotta use this to our advantage um no she i guess she's gonna be in rale, but she doesn't have a way to get to Charlotte. But like, girl, you could go. You could get to Charlotte. Like she literally works in Charlotte sometimes. So like I'm like, you know how to get there. But help. I don't know how you're like.

Yeah. For me, a businesswoman. And she was like, what do you think about me riding with you i literally by the way this is after years of me saying before a show i am basically i be i go non-verbal i'm fully catatonic i am not a tonic not only am i not fun i truly my i'm i might as well be a mannequin i don't know how to speak i don't know i barely know how to breathe like i'm not i'm not i'm not only a bad time like i'm fully like not there um and my mom still still is like well how about i just ride with you and what is we think she's gonna also be silent in the car no like i love that that means even well i mean i i well then that means the two of you have to carry it on your back and And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I told you I'm bringing my child.

I'm going on my own ride. I was like, we've already had this conversation on Slack. I am not attending with you and Eva in the car because I have a toddler. So good luck with that. Eva's probably having a panic attack somewhere. It's okay, Eva. I'm texting my mom now. I just, we'll have it figured out by the time we get there.

But she's really um man she i'm sure she was just double checking before she like made other plans like i get it but also i don't get it she's never seen me that fully like unhinged and like i don't need oh maybe now's the time yeah right the 24 hours in me being on a stage. That's right. Yes. Yeah. Why not?

Anyway, that's just. It's really you. I've had to deal with it for years. I know. And God bless you. But that's a special little personality trait only you get to see, I think. So we'll keep my mom away from that. That makes me feel special.

Anyway, let's make that why I drink this week. I love that. That's a good reason. And you? Oh, and I. I'm drinking a cold brew out of this Gleers Getta Fest mug. Love a Getta. Yeah, Gleers Getta.

75 years celebration of Getta. Drinking a cold brew. I have another ghost update. Oh, wow. Well. Okay okay I feel like what I feel like it is but maybe it's not that interesting but I it made it it did that thing to me where I felt like the the like the chill rushed through my body so I feel like it's interesting but maybe it's not tell me if it's boring and I'll stop talking about it. But I say to the person who gives us regular updates on their hair and glasses situation. So I don't know why I'm asking for your blessing, but you say to the person who like has mastered the eye

roll every half a second. Yeah. So I remember when I was talking about going through the old records and the census records and stuff and how that's my new hobby that I've already kind of abandoned. But it's fine. I was going through a deep dive one night. And remember that story I told? It was like months ago now after Halloween where I was standing in the foyer. I don't know. Technically, they're the same, but regionally people say different things. So you're not wrong either way.

Cool. I'll say both. And we were standing by the front door and my mom said, oh, doesn't this remind you of Halloween's growing up? Because we just handed out all the candy. Leona was in bed. And I said, man,

I just feel like this house is so happy at Halloween or something. I don't know. And then I felt somebody like hold my hold my arm but in like a like in a nice way like in a awe you know and so I don't know that always stuck with me and then I was looking through old newspapers and I found an article about my house and it said that this was the home of the Halloween parades and Halloween parties shut the fuck up, Christine.

I know. And I was like, wait, what? So I read this article and it was like from like 1930 something. And it was like, oh, all the kids gathered at blank, blank Avenue, whatever. And everybody, you know, was dressed up and they had a bit like all the kids had a big fun Halloween and the parents watched the little halloween parade through the house and i was like well you know what that means what you have to relaunch it to keep the house happy literally nothing would make me happier i'm just saying halloween in my house um hon send me that article when you can i know okay i gotta send it because like

obviously i can't post it because it's gonna share my personal information but i'm gonna send it to you because i had this moment of like oh my gosh and it might i mean obviously might just be a big coincidence but it was like such a bizarre fun fact even if it is just a coincidence um but yeah i'll send that to you it was it was that's amazing you know very sweet and you know they gotta be booming for it to have made the papers like i my are you sure because next to it was like henrietta visited from saint louis this morning and i was like okay well i guess it was easier to get in the paper when there was like a hundred people on the town newport kentucky when it really told you everyone's fucking news um well because my

so you know my ancestry kick but uh oh yeah my you inspired me famously if that's the one way i'll positively inspire you i'm so happy about it because check check there's um uh my my gammy her side of the family when i was was, I went through a really specific spiral on ancestry after she died. And so, um, I was trying to find out all that I could and her, so her name was Carol, but she was like one of like three or four Carols. And each one, as I always thought my gammy was like, you couldn't be a cooler, sweeter, nicer woman. Um, but with every generation, apparently they were nicer and nicer and lovelier and lovelier. And my gammy could sing.

Everyone knew her for her singing. And I guess she got that from, you know, her dad's side of the family. And I found in a bunch of newspaper articles that like her ancestors would always throw like raging block parties every week where they would just all get together by the piano and sing and like everyone knew that like they were like if you come to this person's house they had parties until like 4 a.m where everyone was like dancing in the living room because the the they were all singing together it was very wild i was like so i don't i don't know i'm just saying we've I don't know how that came out. I was trying to relate and then just kind of weirdly bragged on my grandmother.

But no, I listen. Yeah, everyone's grandma deserves a little bragging every now and then. Not everyone's, but most people. I'm just saying maybe it was easier to get into the newspaper. But based off of what I know, it seems like you had to have like a fucking great party to get mentioned. But like we have great parties. Well, I'm not in the fucking newspaper for it. Yeah, but that's because like there's significantly more people in your town these days.

I think back then it might have been like, oh, everyone knows everyone because, you know, no one really leaves, you know? Yeah. No, I love reading those old paper. I mean, my brother had an entire podcast about it where they would read old newspapers and it like old classifieds and it was so fun i really missed that show um it was called human seeking human shout out um but he would read like these and they would go down these like deep dives where they would follow one person like way back and like follow them through the newspapers like if they were like i don't know selling some miracle cure or whatever they would like follow them from town to town to see like where they had gone it's just so cool um and so now i'm just i'm i just love it i love creeping

on people it feels like you're just like peeping in their lives you know from way back when how you use the internet to find people that are currently alive. I just. And what they're up to. Me and Zandy apparently just do that in our free time for dead people. But now it's like, I'm like way on board now. I'm like, okay, you guys showed me the way. Now it's my favorite thing. Like it's so fun to just see. It's a blast. Especially if it's like, oh, this address. And then I like look out the street and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm looking at it. But I have a weird thing about history like that.

So, well, the best part is when you combine your newspapers dot com account with your ancestry, which they're merged already, by the way, expensive, by the way. But I was like, OK, year long membership. Click. Well, because if you do that, then as you're rabbit holing on one person, all it takes is one newspaper article to say like and then his brother this person and then you've got a whole new dope you're like rush to chase yeah yep it's uh it's like a never-ending black hole but it's it feels productive you know if it really and like one day

you might find out if you look hard enough that you're like related to a person you know like i always maybe i always wonder if i ever sat down and took the time to like which I have like thought about doing which this might be like my own like personal weird little project one day is I want to do ancestry for all the people I talk about in my paranormal stories and like see if any of them like have any connections or now that would be cool or build like a master timeline of when all these things were taking place and see where they fall in the timeline. Because I feel like we've talked about like almost 350 locations. Like some of them were happening at the same time. If Henrietta from St. Louis got in the newspaper, like we could probably figure out who's who, you know, who attended the Halloween party at my house. Oh, God. Okay. Anyway like and i don't know we've already we've already just tangented so many i mean i'm just like reading this thing here i have this uh i'm not uh mrs harry this is the person who lived at my house mrs harry blank of blank street is expecting her daughter and children of paris this week for the summer that's like the whole thing in the newspaper like that's

the article i almost wish i lived in a time where i you didn't even have to get off your couch it would be you could be that fucking nosy about every person in town and you'd like now i understand those old-timey like clips and you know in plays or whatever or whatever where it's like the dad pulls out the newspaper and it has to read the paper. I'm like, well, I'd be reading the paper, too, if it were telling me who's in town, who's got some drama, who's throwing a party this weekend. I feel like I would read it, too. I kind of wish that, like, I live in an apartment complex. I wish we had our own newspaper where, like, weekly i could find out what everyone was up to and if they were in town if they weren't if they if they needed a dog sitter or what the fuck's going on upstairs above me like how many roaches did you fucking see this

week and there should be like a tally and you can submit it you know did i ever tell you about the wolper news no but i'm about to really have an opinion about it when i was little selene my friend selene and i wrote a newspaper for our street called the wolper news and we because my mom got a copier and so i would we would type it out on word and then print it out and then make copies and go to all the neighbors houses and just put it unasked in their mailboxes and I remember the first uh article we wrote a critic movie review of Shrek the movie um and I hadn't actually seen it yet but I wrote a critic review of Shrek the movie and then I thought everyone on my street and the thing with my street too is like we were pretty like close to downtown Cincinnati like we were not in a neighborhood where people knew each

other it wasn't like where kids played outside like these people did not want small children on their porch um before the internet children first of all were so fucking ballsy but also we were just so creative so creative like you just had to find a way to make your day last oh my god I gotta find that copy of Shrek critic movie review and And I pretended like it was other people writing, of course. Um, sure. Yeah. But, um, um, can I, I know we were like running on time, but I found this little article. Can I just read you a line of it about how I have to decorate my house from now on to like appease the ghosts? Oh, hell yeah. I found this Halloween thing. Um, the home of Mr. And Mrs. Blah, blah, blah was in gala halloween attire friday evening oh my god these names winifred harriet lucille marguerite uh okay don't say them too loud you

might be conjuring something oh no marguerite is that you marguerite's ears just perked the fuck up after 300 years she just raised from the dead uh she's like the party's on okay the rooms were effectively decorated in autumn leaves yellow crepe paper embossed with black witches and cats pumpkin lanterns that produced a weird sight as the young people clad in fancy costumes and grotesque false faces enjoyed the games arranged by the girls that provoked much laughter after the games a merry dance followed yeah that's just really cute i was like oh my gosh they had a girl it sounds like you're gonna have to do a merry dance that was from 1915 that's wild it also blows my mind that people were so i know i know i know no no but it still blows my mind that people were

celebrating halloween and not much has changed since 1915 wild uh it makes me feel safe because sometimes i'm like faced with my own like mortality oh yeah oh i'm gonna miss so much when i'm dead and then it's like oh but not really on halloween it's gonna look exactly the same for a long time they're gonna be summoning you and marguerite from well it sounds like you and marguerite might be haunting the same house one day, so you and her might know each other real well. Anyway, that's really all I wanted to say,

but I'm in my little ancestry phase thanks to you and Zandy. It's a phase that never fully dies. You'll always have links of it, just so you know. Alright, well, Marguererite if you're listening you need a good story here sorry here comes one uh by the way you really should appease them because if you

might actually also haunt that house one day god can you imagine getting to the other side and being like what do you think of my decorations and she fucking side eyes you and they're like what where was the yellow crepe paper with the black witches like oh fuck so sorry i didn't sell it on amazon i'm sorry you know what you should do as like a little homage though is at least like instead of having to feel obligated to decorate the whole place maybe just if you can figure out which room it was or just dedicate or dedicate one room and just let that room be as accurate as you can imagine i'll be like this is my creepy 1900s room it's for the ghosts you literally live in a creepy 1900s house i know this is for marguerite okay

all right well i feel like that was by the way some excellent banter for an introduction and that was chaotic i love her but also here it's going to get a little more chaotic because this story i really tried to lean into ghosts and i ended up with like a really fucking wild fun fact story okay there are ghosts smattered about um but are they okay but i they're well they're dead so they didn't make it totally um but no the ending i i was going through the notes and i was like what and i felt like i kept going what and i can't wait the ghosts kind of got away from me because i was just fascinated by something else and I just rode the high. So you're going to have to write it too.

I'm on it. Okay. So for, oh, by the way, episode 322, happy 22, Christine. Aw, you too. We're covering a cave. The hauntings of a cave. I love a cave. It's in your neck of the woods, my friend.

Is it Mammoth Cave? It's Mammoth Cave. No, it's not. Yes, ma'am. Oh yeah. Super haunted. Have you had an experience there? Winifred? Has she visited? I have had more curse than any haunting. That's where I went with that guy I dated where he took two girls with him on that trip and he was dating the other one and I didn't really get it because I'm a little... Oh, Christine. Yeah. And then I accidentally stole him I'm a little. Oh, Christine. Yeah. And then I accidentally stole him away from her. Oh, Christine.

Yeah. But then now and now we're married to other people and we're friends again. Oh, Christine. I didn't mean to, but I still feel really guilty about it. And anyway. But OK, point is, he made us go on an eight hour cave spelunking expedition. It was called The the expert and there was a guy a former marine who had to quit halfway through and they had to escort him back out

that's how it was a nightmare like a nightmare but i was trying to impress this boy the second a boy if i met the day i met allison when i was just like i couldn't you could like nothing could stop me from being with her spel Spelunking could have. I was going to say, this was the ultimate test. And somehow we, like, I was like, yeah, I'm sporty. I can do it. And they were both really athletic. So I was like, I got it.

I'm on it. You have a lot more moxie than me. Eight hours. If Elizabeth Olsen herself came down and said, for a million dollars and one kiss, you have to go spelunking i'd be like girl you're not for me i don't know to tell you i uh spelunking i gotta be honest i can't i honestly can't imagine anything worse there was literally one point there is one thing that's worse which is where there was like a four to six foot gap and they said you have to jump like from one to the other and if you fall they were like you

better not fall because it takes about 11 hours for emergency personnel to get down here and you will have both legs broken if not dead if you know if you're not dead by the time you hit the bottom so they were like you have to run and you have to commit and you have to leap over it and if you half-ass it you'll fall and i was like this is my nightmare i honestly like there's with love christine if someone said do this or christine dies i'd be like girl i hope you and margarita i would have stepped off of the ledge into that crevice don't worry i'd be gone i know better you're not coming home girl but um anyway that's my my haunted experience at fucking mammoth caves but But it's beautiful.

And I want to go back in a more normal way where I just get to look at it. Just like if you don't see grass, don't go to that area. That sounds great. Sorry. I'm talking so much today, but I just wanted to put my input about mammoth caves. But I love it there. It's beautiful. Hey, no, I love the um the two sentence i

just i worry for you that spelunking is like somehow not on your red flags list but extremely traumatic it is now it took me i was young and dumb and naive you know and um correct me spelunking is the the like getting into little fucking holes and trying to yeah like i'm sorry i'm i'm sure it's a lovely sport and there's a science to it and all this stuff but like how do you fucking leave it for the professionals you know i'm also like the professionals also need to go home like they don't stop like give me a reason don't we have gopro's the reason we have cameras now put a camera on a bat. Yes. Put a GoPro on a bat. And extend a pole. But like, I don't understand.

I don't understand the point besides like being able to say like, I'm this skinny. Like, I don't understand. That was part of it. My butt got stuck like three times. And I was like, this. And I actually like, if I'm being honest, I think that's why the former Marine guy had to go back. Because he couldn't fit throughout the little crevices um which now i absolutely could not fit through but at the time i could barely fit through and they had like a weight and height restriction and like you had to pass like this fits it was insane i don't even know i was just i don't know m it was

not a high time of my life all right let's put it that way anyway well it's okay i thank god i wasn't there you would just see me rolling my eyes the entire time we wouldn't you would not have made it that far i would have been like fuck this that's cute i'll be at chipotle come get me when you're done the local chipotle in the woods yeah if i don't hear from you in an hour i'm gonna assume you're dead and also not come looking for you okay so here is mammoth cave it is in brownsville kentucky which i looked up with your address we won't be saying and you're three hours from there yeah um it is the world's longest known cave system hence why it's called mammoth cave it has over this is just currently it is over 400 miles it's of tunnels and underground workings and caves and

all this i can confirm that because i think i went through all of all 400 that you just like body dive into 400 miles of little cracks and just i was so bruised the next day it was horrifying i wow that's just that truly does sound terrible terrible i don't wish to be you don't recommend i don't even know if they still do it. But don't do it. I think they do. I think they do. I don't know.

But it sounds like people still come here that are either cave experts or cave diving exploring experts. Explorers like me. For me, I just want to look from the car and go that's nice and then keep driving i want to go to the gift shop that's literally all i want like i just want to go to the gift shop can you imagine like what kind of stuff do you think would be at a gift shop and for a cave okay my brother and i did caves on bc sandy and i read about a lot of reviews of gift shops at caves and they are wacko they gotta have though when you when you dig through the sand you find a little rock or a dinosaur bone a little fossil brush a little

fossil brush now that's good i bet they have stuffed bats um the one thing that they did have out a lot of these caves was like bizarre trump paraphernalia because a lot of them are in very rural locations and like run just by individual families so there were some weird shit i don't think mammoth cave is like that the little kid helmets with the lantern on that's cute oh a lantern a little lantern a little lantern or a flashlight talking a lot of things that light up i bet yeah okay so there's over 400 miles that have been explored. That's it. There are said to be another 600 miles to explore. Are you serious? So even if you got lost, there is less than a 50% chance it's in charted waters. But that's why those spelunkers do it.

They're like trying to chart the territory. Yeah, they're also trying to like get their name known for discovering a certain cave. Oh no. Well, I'm sure I deserve something. I think. You know, with the alliteration of Christine's cave, you certainly. Come on. Come on. Your cave would be so fucking crazy. It would really it would make no sense. Like no GPS in the world could get you back.

Be just a circle. You'd be so confused. So fun fact in 1905, this cave inspired hp lovecraft's early work of the beast in the cave which was about a beast in the cave oh that's beautiful thank you um there's also the cave was originally used for mining gypsum which i looked up what gypsum is do you know what it is yeah it's like a crystal yes it's used apparently a lot for like plaster and chalk and blackboard oh okay yeah that sounds fun fact um but this was they would mine for this in a time when like there weren't really you know a lot of ways to get too far into the cave because it was so fucking dark so at that point only like 20 miles of the cave had been discovered the rest of it was just an abyss but

how cool and mysterious i know which is why people like you probably kept going and that's how we got 400 miles of this place and all these ghosts apparently uh so the cave has been used as far as we know based on artifacts we've found the we as if i was fucking i was gonna say and then i kept my mouth shut i was like we okay uh the cave has been used for at most 6 000 years as far as we can tell by indigenous folks and yikes during the war of 1812 enslaved people were forced to mine salt peter here for gunpowder um they also uh these enslaved people were also used for the earliest wave of mapping the cave of course because they were like we'll spelunk when it's cool we'll put our name on it but you do the hard work but like you go into the completely dark

miles of hundreds and hundreds of miles of risk your life for it yeah and never come back so let's just say probably a lot of deaths are from that alone um a lot of these enslaved people were also the first guides in the 1830s when tourists began to visit the cave which blows my i mean yes sad but blows my mind that there were tourists in the 1830s like i don't know why but i feel like the entertainment value of i can't imagine like admission for something in the 1830s but don't we talk about all those weird things like oh people were murdered here pay a nickel and you can walk through and that's true postcard to the kids that's true and i guess there wasn't like too much in the entertainment world to go off of so a cave was like pretty much yeah it was like either a freak show or like a cave

that was about it or murder house crime i guess so yeah so the because now people were coming in these enslaved people were also being used as tour guides. One of these enslaved people was Stephen Bishop, who we fucking love, by the way. Oh, hell yeah. He ended up being a famous guide of the cave, and he is probably, or was probably, the smartest person in terms of the geology of this cave. He knew so much about this area. person in terms of the geology of this cave he knew so much about this area bishop has been credited by the national parks website as one of the greatest explorers mammoth cave has ever known and science uh scientists even relied on him for his geology information and he mapped over 20 miles himself and was the first to observe a certain type of cave fish that was here oh did they name it the bishop fish

the bishop obviously not but i wish they did wow a bishop are you kidding me that would have been so fucking great um too bad i like to think that's what he called it though you know yeah yeah yeah for sure he's like i'm bishop and these are my Fishops. Like a Noshkalosh. Okay. A Noshkalosh. Just the same. Exactly the same thing. One and the same. So in 1842, there was a guy named Dr. Croghan. He was the nephew of William Clark of Lewis and Clark.

Oh. Mm-hmm. He was Clark's nephew and he owned the cave and people um great he had tuberculosis or i'm sorry consumption at the time and i don't know if this guy was like an early like q anon fella or something but he was interested in experimenting with tuberculosis since he had it so he moved 15 other people with tuberculosis who i guess volunteered into the caves with him so all 16 of them lived in the caves okay his thought behind this was because consumption required like fresh air um i think he forgot what the word freshman yeah moldy mildew here just damp surrounded by fish yeah

yeah yeah fish up excuse you um but i think he thought well the cave is apparently at the time it's always 54 degrees so it was cool air so i think he mixed up cool air and fresh air um it happens and then 15 other people all with tuberculosis that was not healing itself all moved into these caves um and he had i guess had uh the people he enslaved build 10 cabins for them in the caves or near the caves and he uh that was where they all stayed. These people lived in the caves for months. It was supposed to heal them or that's what he thought. But they didn't take into account how damp and gross the air was. Plus the fact that they were bringing oil lanterns in there and so they were fumigating themselves.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. So if your issue is like a respiratory health problem and you're just breathing in carcinogens in a musty cave for months. Can I give you a fun fact about consumption? Yeah. My brother told me recently he knows really weird like facts that are always ancillary to our stories on this show. But he we were at like some don't judge me we were at a home and garden show because my mom really wanted to go and i wanted her to watch the baby so we went to this home and garden show and they had all these

adirondack chairs and my brother was like do you know why they call them adirondack chairs and i was like i just assumed it was because they're from the adirondacks. So apparently they were the chairs that they would use for people with tuberculosis. And so at the sanitariums like Waverly Hills, they would line up all these Adirondack chairs and just have people like lounge out in the fucking snow and shit to try and recover. But they were primarily utilized in the Adirondacks. So that's why they're called Adirondack chairs. I have two fun facts to go off of your fun fact. Oh, I see.

Okay, you're going to one-up my fun fact. All right, I have one after you. So I'm going to one-up your two-up. I don't know if they're going to one-up you, but just through ADHD and selfishness, I'm going to just talk about myself. Go for it. The Adirondacks are my favorite spot in the entire world. Did you know that? What?

I thought Canada was. I'm so confused. Like, I obviously love Canada, and I've talked about that a million times. But if I ever, like, when I think about where I'm going to, like, retire one day, it will be the Adirondacks. Well, I can see you on an Adirondack chair with consumption. Well, fun fact number two, there's nothing, Christine, that gets me more jazzed

than those Adirondack chairs that are so big. Oh no, not those. Every time I've ever seen one. I have been with Allison's family in a car and I didn't know them very well yet. And that didn't matter to me I saw one from across the highway and I went stop the car like and then I made everyone take a picture

with me and then there's nothing well to be honest there's nothing I love more than things that are not their normal size yeah either too small or too big but those Adirondack chairs they really get me going well now you know why they're called that because they're for people with tuberculosis it's pretty cool you know i wish if we were all gonna die from tuberculosis why didn't they have those really large novelty ones so everyone could sit together oh my god i bet the air is nice up there too you know like a little less damp than a fucking underground cave what was your fun fact off of my fun fact off of your fun facts my brother recently went to me we're i'm circling us back to the cave um my brother recently went to mammoth caves uh i forget why but he went

recently and he said uh for the first time since we were kids and he said they still have uh chars on the on the walls and ceiling of the cave from those oil lamps that those people brought in like you can still see all the residue because back then you could just wander into like a national land you know landmark and like fucking you know what's crazy is they still do tours with the oil lantern sometimes oh that i think he did that tour i think they they do them like the oil lantern sometimes. Oh, I think he did that tour. I think they do them, like, few enough that it's not totally damaging the park. Yeah, yeah. I think he said they point it out, like, where you could see all the old residents.

Or maybe they have a certain path where they're like, this part we'll destroy, but the rest of it is sacred. This part's safe. It's okay. So, anyway, these tuberculosis patients who signed up for this like wacky project with uh william clark's nephew they're all living in these cabins either in or near the mountain um or the cave and they are just slowly killing themselves. And they actually had a cook hired on that would bring food to them every day so that they never had to leave the caves because they thought the caves were keeping them so alive. And the cook even said this about them. I used to stand on that rock and blow the horn to call them to dinner, and they looked more like a company of skeletons than anything else.

Oh, no. dinner and they looked more like a company of skeletons than anything else oh no so five of those people died in the cave oh no so that's a third of them and their bodies got moved to a spot that's now called corpse rock oh my gosh uh some were also buried in the cave's cemetery which apparently there was a fucking cemetery at this cave because so many people were dying okay no it's called old guide cemetery and their cabins still stand and there were even postcards with like pictures of these cabins and they called the cabins consumptive cabins because people had consumption there um in 1849 dr crogan himself died of tuberculosis so his project did not land and uh all of his i think i hope all of his uh the people that he enslaved were freed one of them being stephen bishop who also became a quote world-renowned naturalist

hell yeah um he also took a job as a guide at the caves because he loved it so much um so he ended up working as a guide there and then became known as like the best guide the cave had ever seen oh that's great good for him what a fucking comeuppance, you know? Yeah, I'm very happy. I also really, his only downfall is he didn't call them fish up, but that was it. Honestly, he might have, it might have just gotten lost to history, you know? I think he like just kind of wrote, he just jotted it down in a notebook somewhere. Under his breath and someone said, what'd you say? And he's like, nothing. He tried to see if it would land, nobody got it yeah yeah yeah yeah never mind don't worry you were just born in the wrong generation now we're loving it we're loving it

uh so in the 1820s since then there have reportedly been hauntings in this in these caves which would make sense that way i mean people are already dying of i guess tuberculosis and you know there are a lot of people who went missing in these caves um either because they were looking around or because they were enslaved and forced to um there's already people not making it so today there's over 150 official reported haunted uh haunting experiences oh my gosh i didn't know that many which i feel like 150 since the 1820s i feel like that's only like one haunting a year oh i thought you meant like 150 specific ghosts you're saying like just instances instances oh yeah i guess so but if you think like

in a place where people aren't usually that's true it feels like that's true for a second i was like we can do better than that but i guess step it up yeah yeah um but yeah apparently there's at least 150 reported instances of hauntings since the 1820s um people would see minors and again that's m-i-n-e-r-s in outdated clothing walking alone in the cave um so there's people that used to work in the caves that are still haunting the place. People would hear horrible coughing from the consumptive cabins. That's spooky. And see shadow figures walking in and out of them. People also claim that they can still see Stephen on the grounds carrying a lantern

and exploring. And he's in old clothes. He's even said to be seen on tours and in the cemetery where he's buried like when people are on tours i hate that you know it always freaked me out the the one place that we've covered a lot or what we haven't covered it a lot but we covered it and a lot of the stories were just what people have seen on tours is the Alamo. Oh, and there was like, there were,

I remember cowboys and soldiers and children and Abraham Lincoln and like all these random fucking, like all of these beings just show up on tours and then like talk to the kids on the tour. And then there was that story of the kid who was like playing with another kid and then was like, the kid had to go away and he was never really there. Yep.

It's just a no thanks from me. On the tours now, the guides will do a blackout portion where they want you to know how dark the caves actually look without any lights on. So they will turn off their lanterns. It is truly terrifying, by the way. I have been in a cave at pitch black and it really is i mean it's the classic you can't see your hand in front it's like you feel like you're suddenly disembodied like you don't know where any it's very unsettling well it's perfect because their tour i think it's like part of the spooky portion of the tour

and they turn out the lantern so you're already like discombobulated and and then it there's just you can't see anything you can't hear anything yeah and then then people actually like maybe it's their senses but or maybe it's them like trying to piece something together but people swear they hear things and see stuff um one guide as he was turning out the lantern one time saw a family in the back of the group and he knew they were not part of the tour. And they looked very clean and fancy and period clothing. And then they vanished. And he realized that where they were standing in the cave was near a former church that held services in the cave.

What? I think this was during the time of slavery. I think people were finding ways to hold church oh i see when they were forced to be in there okay yeah um and then there ended up being an actual methodist church in the caves too so i don't know if that was i don't know the history to that but i mean that's if that's like a a that's a church I would at least go once if my like friend dragged me because I slept and slept over, you know, I'd be like, if it's in a cave, I'm not going to complain as much. You know, it's like my mom said you can sleep over, but you have to come to church with us in the morning. But it's in a cave.

I'd be like, but there's bats. Oh, and a gift shop. Oh, OK. Oh, and a gift shop. Oh, okay. So in this same area where we're seeing apparitions of people who shouldn't be there, people also hear footsteps. People have gotten shoved as if someone's walking past them, but then nobody's there. But that's got to be so creepy at night when you're walking around or when you're on a tour and you turn out the lights and you know there are people near you and if someone bumps into you you can explain that

as like oh that's one of the guests who can't see but if you turn the lantern back on and you're the only person outside of the room forget it people have gotten shoved by a lot of unknown forces they've even felt someone grabbing their hands in the dark which just so no thank you because that means they can see your hand like they can see you but you can't see them which is just the worst oh and just like that unacceptable um guest staff and researchers because remember a lot of researchers still come here. They have all heard multiple kinds of sounds, including gunshots when you're alone. No fucking thanks. They've also heard a lot of voices, especially women's voices. And one of the most famous voices is said to be of a woman named Melissa.

Now, tell me what you think about Melissa. She's from the 1800s, which, again, I didn't know Melissa was a's from the 1800s which um again i didn't know melissa was a name in the 1800s but me neither she apparently really liked this guy who didn't like her back so you know what she did she took him to the caves and she took him deep into the caves and then she fucking left him there no and he never found his way out of the caves. And she's so guilt ridden about this, allegedly, that her ghost still calls out looking for him in the caves to bring him out. Oh, no. I know. Melissa did him dirty.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, listen. No means no, Melissa. Okay. Someone's not into you. It doesn't mean you get to kill them. That's a great point. okay someone's not into you doesn't mean you get to kill them that's a great point just and also i will say the melissa story is like i think a little bit of a legend at this point we don't

know if it truly happened um but people if you hear a woman's voice people just go like melissa you know give it a rest i mean she does sound a little needy and wishy-washy all at the same time she's like like, never mind. She's like, I feel so bad. I'm like, why did you do that then? So there's a woman's voice, which we think is Melissa's. We don't even know if Melissa's real or not. It's heard a lot when you're coming around corners and people can never make out what she's saying, but they do hear a woman's voice.

People also hear screams. They hear intense knocking that can't be explained away. And some people have even thought that this cave happens to have knockers, which we talked about that in the Haunted Mines episode, which was episode 298. In 1935, there were two guides whose names were Grover and Lyman,

which now I feel like we're in Sesame Street. guides whose names were grover and lyman which now i feel like we're in sesame street and i've never heard of a person actually named grover well i guess our president um but whatever our president oh you mean like grover cleveland i'm like um who do you think is our president super grover uh i wish a little blue muppet yeah um i knew a guy named grover growing up shut up what was he like he rode a motorcycle and he was um like the handyman and he lived The little blue Muppet, yeah. I knew a guy named Grover growing up. Shut up. What was he like? He rode a motorcycle and he was like the handyman and he lived on Wolper. He was one of the unwilling participants of the Wolper news.

So I feel like, are you saying Wolper? Wolper? Wolper. Yeah. W-O-O-L-P-E-R. I want you to hear it though. Like pretend that I'm pitching no no pretend i'm i'm pitching an episode of sesame street grover is a handyman on wolper street

wolper avenue wolper avenue i'm so sorry but like more uh fun ring to it none of that sounds right also and he rode a little motorcycle i mean he was great. And Celine and I harassed him all the time. We're like, Grover! And he'd be like, leave me alone. I wonder if Grover's going to make a comeback one day. You know what else? He lived in the apartment complex with the guy that we called Antimobile. He had a car and he said it was for ants.

So we started calling him Antimobile. But then the people who lived above them, their apartment caught on fire. And that's how we ended up with three chinchillas one summer. It's a really weird place to live. But so there was plenty of fodder for the Wolper News because I had a lot to write about the fire. Shrek. It's sometimes so hard to be your co-host because. Have you ever heard the tiktok sound where like

they're like tom got in an accident and then he rolled the car five times and also he had a bruise on his eye like it like was just oh it's just like more and more and more to this and no context i that's how that all came to be just now grover had a motorcycle but also an ant mobile but then something caught on fire and that's why they had chinchillas that's an episode of fucking sesame street by the way you're only convincing me more and more that you've lived on one two three sesame street it was uh it was all such a blur but that was a weird summer i I'm not going to deny it. It certainly doesn't sound normal. So I'm glad you can admit that. Let's try this again.

There were two guides in 1935 named Grover and Lyman. Or Bert and Ernie, apparently. And Antimobile. They drove the Antimobile to the caves. And they discovered a mummy. Oh, no. This is like your fucking chinchilla story yeah he's the one up lyman is like fucking sit down hold my beer grover so uh they found a famous mummy that is now named lost john oh no and apparently i will say they found this mummy who ended up being like the famous mummy of them all but apparently this cave had a few mummies um and they were found

after the war of 1812 because bodies had died in there um and because the cave has such sodium rich soil, bodies were being mummified by accident. Oh my gosh. Including their organs being fully intact. And that's what happened to Lost John. So they think that maybe he, he's from like 400s BC apparently. What? And they think maybe he was mining for gypsum and got crushed by a rock or something and died in the cave. And they found his fucking body.

Um, and then yikes, he was then put on display for tourists for decades. Oh, well that's what I'm saying with the whole freak show crime scene thing. It really does go hand in hand with all these other tourist spots from back then. Yeah.

That, that I could understand why people would charge a nickel. Like that makes more sense than like, just, I don't know, a random cave that you can't see in. Anyway, now that maybe there's lanterns and also mummies, people are obviously coming. I get it. I do. This mummy wasn't properly reburied until the 1970s. the 1970s um and he was reburied where he was found and apparently very few staff were told exactly the location of his body oh wow they don't want him dug back up disturbed and when those two

guides found him they were waiting around until someone i guess like they i mean in the 30s how do you like call the police i don't understand but um a phone tree i don't know you just like literally scream until someone hears you literally help like but you're in a cave like oh right anyway apparently they somehow alerted the authorities and while they waited around for them to get there um they were kind of like just hanging out next to his body and they were looking around in the caves grover finds a hole and he sticks his hand in it to see what else is in there and nothing comes he doesn't pull anything out but all of a sudden inside the rock where his hand is he hears three very slow knocks from below he's like that's fucking crazy and lyman goes let me try and the same thing happens

you dummies don't do that so i don't know what they set off but the two of them swear that these three knocks that were delivered to each of them um caused them to have bad luck for the rest of their lives so So they maybe lost John. The mummy cursed them, is their thought. Oh, no. So Grover only died three years after this event. Three more years later, Lyman lost his job. 30 years later, Lyman's kid had really bad health issues. And three years after that, his kid died from those health issues.

And Lyman said he regretted finding Lost John, thinking that Lost John cursed them. And he warned others to never go exploring and messing around with that stuff. In the graveyard, a lot of people hear a woman playing violin because I guess her house used to be there. That's spooky. Apparently, there are some ruins nearby where people still see items disappear and then reappear in other areas. Oh. And then this is the fucking noodles situation, Christine. In case this episode wasn't insane enough for you.

It's pretty bananas already already but i'm ready this is the story of arguably the most famous ghost or at least the most famous death at mammoth cave of floyd collins okay you know this name i don't think so this is fucking balloonatons do you know about the kentucky cave wars no did you say wars or wars i thought you said the the one that rhymes with it and i was like what i thought you said the kentucky cave horse is that also a thing i don't know i was like should i know because i feel like i want to it sounds like a crazy brothel or something. I was like, wow, what a TLC original series. No, sorry.

Kentucky Cave Wars. I think I've heard of it, but I don't really know much about it. So this happened in the 1920s when a lot of the caves were privately owned at the time. Oh, sure. But tourists were still coming to look at caves. And so now all of a sudden all these people with a privately owned cave are now like competing for the admission of tourists um and it was this boom in cave tourism which i did not even know was a thing and it was called the kentucky cave wars where i guess all these like rich people were like nope my mine's gonna be the hot spot for tourism it's insane

like think about first all the white people being like, let's own this part of Earth. Rock. Yeah. This is my rock. This is my rock. It's never been explored, so it's not like I know anything about it. Right. And it's not like I explored it, God forbid. And I never would and I never will. And I never will, but you should pay me

five cents and then you can come look at it. And it's better than everyone else's. So I do know that william clark's nephew the guy the tuberculosis man he paid ten thousand dollars for his rock for his cave um which i don't that was 1920s 1930s so whatever ten thousand dollars yeah let me find the actual year uh oh shit apparently it's 1842 oh well that probably would have made a big difference um 1842 ten thousand dollars ten thousand let's find out that would be oh my goodness three hundred and sixty four thousand dollars and eight three hundred sixty four thousand eight hundred forty one dollars

i feel like no cave is worth that like i mean maybe the cave itself it could in the world of like valuable valuables maybe it is worth that money but it's not worth to me i wouldn't see a rock and be like that's worth spending that much. I feel like I would because, I mean, I wouldn't because I don't want to own a cave. Well, I do. But anyway, I feel like if you're charging people entrance, then you can do the math and be like, okay, I'll pay this much for it. Like an investment. Yeah, but I'll profit, you know. I guess so.

But there's so many other things I would spend $300,000 on besides a cave. Maybe if it were like the Batcave, cave you know like yeah if it had some technology yeah well on a cool car but also he probably had a lot more than just that money like that was probably just one thing he decided to buy you know what i mean to have that much like i'm sure he had was able to buy lots of other things too it sounds like people as well so yeah exactly sounds like nothing uh was was was awful bad enough for his dollars yeah yeah kentucky cave wars people are like exploiting their own caves for tourism dollars um and there's this guy named floyd so floyd wanted in on this like cave industry and he even found a cave on

his property called crystal cave now one thing that i think is super ironic about all this is that everyone was like i owned i privately owned this cave i privately owned this cave and then like years later we'd find out that all those caves were fucking connected to mammoth cave which was also privately owned so technically none of them i don't think belong to them it's all one big cave right it was just all one big cave um but so he found crystal cave on his property which also by the way later we find out was connected to mammoth cave but um he was like i have a cave on my own property this is amazing i'm so glad i found this i'm gonna like be in with the cave tourism. And no one is coming to his cave. Apparently it was either too hard to find or it was, I don't totally know the reasoning, but no one was visiting his cave. So he was like,

all right, plan B, I'm going to find another fucking cave. And he ended up exploring what became known as Sand Cave, sand, like beach sand. And I think it was actually on another person's property. And he was like, if I find anything real good, we'll just split the profits. And I don't know if he was honest about that or not, but he's exploring Sand Cave and he's hoping that after he maps it, he can make it accessible to visitors and then people will really, he'll start making his money. Okay. So part of Sand Cave, the part that he was climbing through in this one event, I'm sure he was climbing forever and ever and ever and all of it went super duper well. Now we get to this one point where he's climbing and I think he's actually trying to get out of his hole, but he's like spelunking for sure. his hole but he's like spelunking for sure and he's trying to get out and apparently the space he's trying to climb out of is quote barely wider than an air conditioning duct oh no uh when a 27

pound rock falls and traps his foot oh shit uh by the way i've never watched 27 days later with james franco the rock don't watch it i can't imagine but also like i can't imagine that and also the claustrophobia of being in something the size of an air conditioning duct right right right yeah it's not none of it's good it's actually bad. So he was found a whole day later, which at least he was found. He was alive. I'm surprised he was found, to be honest. Experts, like, there were like, I don't know what type of experts are involved in this, but cave experts, they were all trying to help him. First responders were there. So many people came out, firemen, firemen police anyone everyone was coming to help this man and eventually he got christine he got so many people there trying to help him and the

word spread so much keep in mind our story about local newspapers like 24 hours later imagine what was in the paper this man's fucking stuck in iraq find it we probably could well so many people i guess read the news or heard the news like radio announcers came like news reporters came um so everyone knew about this and so many onlookers came to watch him get rescued that like food stands and souvenir carts and game stands were all set up nearby and this became a fucking carnival like he could have like the trauma of like i'd be like if i get out of here i'm never eating a fucking turkey leg again like i can't like this is smell of just like kettle corn would just be so triggering after that like so many people like it also by the

way i do have a picture for you of him just so you know what the situation is so this is what he looked like in there i'm putting it in geo's trio this is him stuck and it's he's further down than it looks oh my god oh my god that is ghostly i'm scared of this picture that's the face of someone who can smell kettle corn and no one's offered it it's like they're like you can't gain any weight we're trying to pull you out of this fucking hole honestly though like i like i can't even imagine the fear and the panic i mean i would also be like so grateful that people came at least and are trying to help me. But I like, wow, I like I don't know how I would feel. But it does remind me of the times you and I have said to each other, like if I go out or like you've said, if I pass out on stage, like it better be funny and entertaining and you better milk the shit out of it.

You know, I feel like it reminds me of that attitude of like we might as well turn this into like he wanted to be successful by you know finding it making a touristy cave well look here you go i hope he had my opinion about that or my attitude of like if i'm going down and it's gonna suck we might as well make it as fun as we can might as well let other people you know look on with some popcorn if we if i ever do pass on stage, which is still a minute-by-minute fear of mine, if there's a food truck outside, please make that man come inside and give everybody free tacos or something while I get it together. It'll be on me. I'll be like, tacos on me.

Yeah, we'll expense it. We'll expense it for the whole audience. Don't worry about it. We'll expense Em's ambulance bill and all the turkey legs. Tell the theater tech to turn on the disco lights bump up the bass uh and i mean it by the way it's like okay okay oh i know you mean it i'm glad we're clarifying for the listeners out there yes just in case okay um but anyway so people are coming out in droves to see this all unfold um so reporters were coming announcers were coming literally congressmen were leaving the house floor for updates like the entire

world was just obsessed with this story viral you know for the day he went that was if that was their version of viral he absolutely went viral. He was on the front page of newspapers for weeks. Jesus. By the way, because he was in there for weeks. No. They couldn't get him out. This is like the Chilean cave miners or baby Jessica or something. You know, this keeps happening.

Well, like he's literally I think it was like 18 days or something and they couldn't get him out so like i think people were like volunteering to go down there and like try to like give him food while they were figuring it out there was one reporter named william skeets miller um a reporter named skeets okay um and it was apparently because he was as small as a mosquito, which like, wow. Okay. I'm not going to question it.

It's better than the other version of skeets. So I suppose. So he apparently as a reporter and he was like, if I'm here, I'm going to get the best fucking story I can. He would literally crawl down the hole to like where I guess someone was holding him by his feet to interview Floyd himself. They don't call him Skeets for nothing. You know? He's just so itty bitty.

He could just slide right down. Can you imagine if he slid too hard and like ran into him? Oh my God. do you think if he slid too hard and like ran into him like oh my god but so i guess like someone was hold i'm assuming someone was holding him by his ankles while he interviewed floyd himself to get like you know on the ground reporting in the ground in the ground reporting but also like props to skeets because anytime he would interview him he went down there multiple times and every time he would try to like dig him out while he was there or like pull on him or do whatever he could to try to also help him. Well, that's nice.

And this is a quote that I saw. I think this was from the Daily Beast. But apparently Floyd Collins became such a big name. This was in the 30s, I think. 30s. And I mean, it truly was viral at the time. This is a quote. It was national radio's first major story,

and it was the first time that the entire country would stay abreast of a tragedy as it unfolded. Colin's story is considered one of the three biggest news stories in the U.S. between the wars, along with Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic and the kidnapping of his baby. Oh, my God. Of the Lindbergh baby. He's like in a Lindbergh sandwich. He's in a war sandwich and then a Lindbergh sandwich.

It's like PEMDAS. I don't know. PEMDAS. It's the world's worst version of PEMDAS. I don't know. PEMDAS. It's the world's worst version of PEMDAS. So he's, I mean, other, like, in between World War I and World War II, you're one of the top three stories. That's insane. So 18 days go by. And during this, I think it was either one or two, other cave-ins happen from people trying to get to him.

Of course. And cave-ins are making it worse and worse. So eventually, one of the cave-ins are making it worse and worse so eventually one of the cave-ins happens and locks him away from people people are now like the only option is to dig a whole new fucking route which takes five days to get him and when they get him he's died he died he died oh shit i really thought with the carnival and everything that he was gonna be okay i know but i mean he was down there by himself for five days no food that's so sad um his death was the most famous death to come out of caving and incidentally his death brought

a lot more tourism to mammoth cave which is ironic since he wanted to do all this for to help to get into tourism. And that was like his competing cave, right? Yeah. So like a real kick in the crotch to Floyd Collins. I'm sad about that. That's so traumatic to die like that. I would haunt the shit out of this cave if i were him well he haunted for a few reasons and you'll see in a second so this this tourism that went to

the mammoth cave because people were just want to go see hit the site where he died the tory the tourism got so popular and this cave got so big that it ended up becoming a national parks like being ranked on the register of national parks jesus so like he really shot himself in the foot there of like uh like oh i don't i this is my competitor and now it's also a literal national park thanks to me thanks to me so this is at the end of his fucking banana gram story because his brother and and friends ended up burying him near the cave. And a year later, I guess a new property owner was involved and found where he was buried, dug him up and put him in a glass casket for tourists to view. Ew! Here is a picture.

No! You can't see in it. There's a picture of his coffin. Oh my God! And then also here is a picture of the rock that was trapping him down there. Oh my God. So now he's in a...

He's now in a glass casket for tourists this is horrifying two years go by so he's in a glass casket on display for everybody that entire time then one day the property manager shows up and floyd has been stolen he's then found in a field missing his leg what i'm assuming the leg that the rock crushed i don't know and then he's brought back to the cave and then is still like public access until 1961 just without a leg just without a leg what the fuck and then he's and then in 1961 that area of the cave officially became like restricted access and then he still wasn't buried for like another 18 years oh my god but this entire time people obviously reported spooky experiences near where his body was so um once while alone an employee

was next to floyd's casket and saw a bottle slide by itself off the shelf and then heard phantom fingers tapping on the glass as if like it was yeah it's one thing to like see it fall and you can convince yourself oh it was just like a shift in the wind i don't know but then the clinking book uh two researchers one time were in one of the caves and heard a phone ringing um they like one of the cave phones and they follow you know the classic cave phone i didn't know there were phones down there that's i think it's i like how I like to think of the different caves as different departments of like, hello. Nope. Oh, wrong cave.

Oh, let me transfer you. So they were down there and heard the phone ringing and they followed the sound to like which phone was ringing. And it was the one next to Floyd's coffin. And they picked it up to see who was on the other line. Nobody was on the line. But as they were holding the phone, the some the sound of someone coming on the phone showed up. And then that person heard that person gasped and then the line went dead. So it's like they picked up the phone before anything happened. And they heard someone pick up the other line gasp and hang up i don't know but then they ended up leaving the cave to go home that day and when they were coming up the hill they saw that the phone wires to that phone they had got the ring on the the wires were cut years ago uh uh another time there was a woman named candace who took a caving class and lost her footing and fell right near where floyd had fallen and she felt a hand grab her and save her but

nobody else was near her what happened which she was probably like girl i've done this don't do it. Don't do it. There's also there was a man collecting data near the cave and he heard, help me, help me, Johnny. I'm trapped, Johnny. And his co-workers next to him didn't hear that, but he kept hearing, Johnny, I'm trapped. And he didn't know the story about Floyd Collins, but he later looked him up and found out that his best friend's name was Johnny, and Johnny was one of the last people to speak to him. Oh, Ann, that's sad. Floyd Collins inspired several pieces of work after this because he was so infamous at the time, and his story is apparently still a legend there um he even inspired a 90s broadway musical which i did listen to the soundtrack last night and it's banana grams no

i've heard of it uh he there apparently he's also inspired books films and songs which by the way probably they probably loved that shit it was like like kentucky blue old-timey old-timey music so in 1926 the song the death of floyd collins came out right after he died and it sold three million copies no in 1926 which was like that uh it was a obviously a band i'd never heard of but if you type in the death Death of Floyd Collins, you can still hear it on YouTube. And these are the final lyrics of that song. Oh, my God. Young people, oh, take warning from Floyd Collins' fate.

And get right with your maker before it is too late. It may not be a sand cave in which we find our tomb. But at the bar of judgment judgment we too must meet our doom jesus christ and that is the story of the mammoth cave um that was good what a doozy that one wow we really delivered on the banter last time i really sucked the air out of the place with like that really dark dark story so i'm glad i brought it back a little livelier even though like floyd collins really i mean i can't what a sad story i'm so sad i know it's even eerier i didn't want

to tell you at until after i showed you the picture of him yeah it's so creepy now to see the photo it's like people could see him feet away almost and oh god that's tragic and in a moment of panic if I were him and like now the cave and just happened and I'm by myself I don't know what I would have done but I would have absolutely lost my mind being like like I was so close and now i'm that that fear like you can't be serious like i was like this close to getting out and also like all of a sudden like the the fun times of people like having a carnival next to me i'd be so livid being like they're having so much fun and like making a joke of this like yeah people are making money people are taking photos and oh my god i'd be like are they even do they even know were they having too much fun like at their People are making money. People are taking photos. And oh, my God.

I'd be like, are they even do they even know? Were they having too much fun? Like at their carnival? They didn't even notice that this just happened to me. Am I trapped here for good now? Also, imagine being there that day. Like as a kid, like I'm on the Ferris wheel and then it's like, well, we've recovered his body. He's dead.

Carnival's over everybody yeah yeah like you just go home oh my god but i want to find like a postcard or something from that event i'm sure there's gotta be something i don't know like why you couldn't remember who sang the death of floyd collins in 1925 because obviously it was fiddlin john carson and vernon dalhart okay see yeah i did i obviously that just slipped my mind what's wrong with you um there are still a lot of postcards for purchase from a lot or just of his grave. Oh dear.

Okay. And then there's another one that's titled crowd gathers at Floyd Collins entrapment at sand cave. So, you know, if you'd like to purchase that and then there there's oh my god there's a peep apparently there the the rock literally used to have a photo op and it was it's now a postcard or it was a postcard then and it's titled the rock that trapped floyd collins and it's a man just holding the rock

smiling ew it's a little too much oh my god there's a postcard of the picture i sent you of him looking up at you oh okay it's getting a little dark it's a little too dark i just meant of the carnival guys not of the fucking yeah i think that your best bet is going to be this picture here of the the crowd showing up hang on so that's god i'm telling you, humans never change. Never ever. If this happened today, it would be the exact same nonsense. Crowd of spectators. Oh, you can see the hamburger cart for a nickel. I told you it was a nickel.

Wow. Look at that. Oh, it's crazy. And then on the back of that postcard, it says, When news of Floyd Collins' entrapment spread, crowds came to Sand Cave. Vendors set up to cater to them, selling hamburgers, balloons, illegal moonshine, and more. Automobiles were lined up and parked for over four miles in each direction on all roads in the vicinity leading to Sand Cave. Holy shit.

I guess word travels even back then. Holy shit. I guess word travels even back then. I mean, in such a small town with the coolest thing going on is a cave. I feel like when someone gets locked in the cave and one person is selling hamburgers nearby, people are going to hear about it. Anyway. And you're like, I got extra bathtub gin. Should I go and make a little profit yeah exactly so i've got i've got my my moonshine bathtub moonshine yeah wow and what a story what a story

i gotta say you knocked it out of the park i didn't even mean to it just just happened even better because you did you nailed it well um i'm unfortunately not excited to hear from you because last i recall ring ring it's the cave phone it's me and you don't have a choice um if we recall the last time that we spoke was when you were telling me this awful story that you're now finishing from your part two series does it help if i tell you that tiffany who was ignored by the authorities has her this is like her redemption arc oh yes because last we left off people were like slut shaming her oh yeah i mean beyond like beyond like she was literally like probably covered in blood and scream crying and traumatized and they were like well you well

you asked for it and had strangulation marks and was pregnant yeah i i i i left fuming christine oh i was so heated for the rest of the day i was like why am i i was like why do i feel so irritable and i was like your microphone literally did that noise cancellation where when oh you get too loud it like just mutes you which is when i know that you are having a big feeling in case you missed everyone i went ah but much louder and angrier they can hear it it just like zoom just decides i get to be cut off from the sound, which I'm not not thankful for. Well, it was just so infuriating. And so, yeah, you know, I felt weird for several days after that. I mean, it's only a couple of days after that.

So I still feel weird. But I did. I felt weird. I was like, I feel like I put everyone in a bad place and I'm sorry about it. Yeah. But, you know, that's just what you do best. So it really is, which I'm trying to come to terms and come to grips with that. But, you know, it'll take me another couple of years, maybe.

OK, well, I got a little recap here, OK? So it's going to get worse before it gets better. And I'm sorry. I'm going to trust the process, Kristen, because, wow, what a doozy. Last week, I really fucked us all up. So let's let's trust the process. Even though I know I'm, I know it's hard to trust me right now, but. Always actually. You just always, especially now. So quick recap, if you didn't listen to the last

episode, folks, please do. If not, and you just want to live. You're going to be so lost. Yeah. Which is like fine. You know, you do you, it's none of my business. I'm just happy you're gonna be so lost yeah which is like fine you know you do you it's none of my business i'm just happy you're listening but um you know it probably makes more sense the other way around but here we go quick recap khalil wheeler weaver who was also known as the tagged killer which i have not um given you context for so we'll go over that today was a notorious new jersey serial killer and spree killer who was active for just several months in late 2016 he was only 20 years old and he took several lives in that brief spree of murders on august 31st he murdered robin daphne michelle west and in the following months he murdered joanne brown and attempted to murder tiffany tay who thankfully got away. But of course, as we've kind of touched on, was dismissed by authorities and not taken seriously.

And they didn't even take her handcuffs off for an hour because they were like, well, you are a streetwalker, quote unquote. So why should we believe you? They, through Joanne's friend along with tiffany's statement as a survivor police now have khalil's name phone number home address facebook account and license plate number they know that he was the last person to be seen with joanne before she went missing and they have a statement from tiffany the survivor that he raped her and attempted to murder her but nothing has been done so that's where we off. And that is why Em was in a tizzy, so to speak. We left in a great spot. Yep. Everyone, everyone satiated from

that story. Yeah, I remember it well. So until now, Khalil has been targeting women who tragically, not only investigators, but the media society society, has just dismissed pretty summarily. Like even the headlines said, you know, hooker, prostitute, instead of, you know, talking about them as people, just kind of lumped them together and dismissed them. All three of his victims so far have been sex workers and all three were black women, which of course increased their vulnerability to violent crime. And of course, increased their, I don't know what the right word is, dehumanization by the rest of the world. It's a good word.

There, it just popped right out of me, you know? So Khalil at this point, as you can imagine, is feeling invincible because he's just not doing jack all to cover his tracks. And yet. I mean, OK, just yeah, again, quick recap. People know what he looks like, his address, his Facebook, his license plate number, the car that he's currently in or was just in, right, the Lincoln sedan, he like he is. There's nothing left to know about him. You could call him on the. She literally has his phone number. Phone number.

You could call him and be like, you're arrested and nobody cares. Like first, middle, last name, whole shebang. Nothing to do about it. So other than the original fire, which had destroyed a lot of evidence, he had really done nothing to cover about it. So other than the original fire, which had destroyed a lot of evidence, he had really done nothing to cover his tracks. He didn't even use a burner phone or cover his license plate, as you just touched on. Tiffany was alive to tell her whole story, and yet nobody had come knocking. So he felt invincible. Which this is like when we talk about like narcissists and murder and like how they have

like this like cockiness and this air to them this arrogance of like haha look what i can get away with catch me there's nothing left for him to test like he is just getting away with it like he must be shocked he must have been waiting for somebody to show up some sirens out the window yeah like he could go up to a cop right now smack smack him on the face and be like, I'm guilty. And they'd go, have a nice day, sir. Like it's so beyond. And while they're telling all the victims that they asked for this, I can't even think about it. Yeah, it's infuriating.

So he is just like living large on the lam, not even on the lam because nobody's looking for him. Just just gently strolling by holding the cop's hand. Gently strolling by. Wine and dining him. So he is feeling invincible, but the good news for us here is that Khalil is about to do himself in once and for all. Thank God. But of course that will come at a cost. So in November, he chose a new target named Sarah Butler. Now Sarah grew up in Montclair, which was a 12-minute drive from Orange, New Jersey. Part of Montclair was wealthy with high income and expensive houses, and then nearby there were people, of course, living in abject poverty. So you had this duality there. For Sarah's family, money could be tight, but they generally lived in comfort. They lived

a pretty standard middle-class life. Her mother was an immigrant from Jamaica who worked as a nanny for wealthier families, and her father watched the kids during the day and then worked evenings as a bartender at a country club. Sarah herself was a vibrant, happy girl. When she was five, she enrolled in her first dance class and discovered an inherent talent and passion for dance. She did ballet, jazz, African dance, and more. And she didn't just love to dance. She actually worked extremely hard at it and was very, very talented. As a teenager, her dance team actually took third place at the Apollo Theater's Famous Amateur Night. Damn. Yeah, like really kicked ass at it. And as a teenager, she and her sisters all enjoyed working as YMCA lifeguards. She worked actually several jobs to try and save up for a new car because she was starting college in Jersey City, which was 15 miles away from home.

So this was a really big deal. And she worked really hard to save up money for a car so she could commute. And her sophomore year us did just like you know adjustment period yeah like adjusting growing pains like trying to find your group and feeling lonely that kind of thing and she was homesick but she was really determined because she had worked so hard to get to this point so she joined an app called tagged have you heard of this oh no i haven't but now i understand why he's called the tagged killer yeah i hadn't heard of it oh no i haven't but now i understand why he's called the tagged killer yeah i hadn't heard of it either and i feel old because apparently this is what people were using in college in like uh god what year was it at this point it was like after we were in college so i think we were too old too old to know what it was um i think it was like the 2016-ish. So is there a, there's a Craigslist killer.

There's a tagged killer. Is there anything else? Like a Tinder killer? I believe there's a MySpace killer. There's a Grindr for sure. Yeah, I think there's, I think every app unfortunately has a namesake. Gross. Murderer, which is really unpleasant to think about so she joins this app

called tagged where people would go to find friends find dates find hookups just the usual and it's there where she connected with someone using the screen name lil Yacht Rock. Oh, green flag. Yeah, indeed. Does he like to go spelunking? And is his name Lil Yacht Rock? Then I think you've got a winner. Yeah. Sadly, I think just on the name alone,

I think you would have gone on a date with him. Honestly, that's sad, but true. Yes. I do think as an adult, though, you would just like try to find him on social media and creep him. Wait. Yeah. You would somehow be the creepy one in this dynamic. I would turn it around really fast and be like, sorry, this was your thing and I've made it weird. Yes. So Lil Yacht Rock was his username. Really dumb, but whatever. Whatever it was going to be, I was going to call it dumb.

Of course, this was Khalil Wheeler Weaver. So pretty much right off the bat, he asked Sarah if she'd have sex with him for money. And yeah, like really just hitting it hard from the first conversation. And this was out of character for her. She, you know, was working multiple jobs. She had other character for her. She, you know, was working multiple jobs. She didn't like really, she had other options for money. So she wasn't, you know,

as maybe strapped for cash as some of the other victims had been. And she'd never done this before, but it was sort of a time. I mean, you think about college, it's like people do risky things. People are experimenting. No judgment,

but also interesting on his part that he had to request for money. He could have just taken on a fucking date and like tried to sleep with her. So he this is what he did. He would tell people he would tell women he would pay them. And I don't know. Part of me wonders if. Well, there's multiple theories I have in my dumb little brain but one of them is maybe he needed them to be paying

getting paid for sex to be dismissed by him as like as like uh deserving of this crime you know what I mean like he only killed sex workers so like maybe he needed that to kind of warrant in his own mind like well she's getting paid for sex. I can kill her. It doesn't matter. Like the guilt isn't there. Or maybe like if she just thought you were charming and wanted to sleep with you, he can't find you that repulsive. That's what I mean.

Yeah. Like he needed that to warrant the reaction. He needs to feel. This is not how I feel about sex work, by the way, but are we saying that maybe he needed to feel dirty about being used for money to hate them? Yeah, or maybe almost like he needed to see them like how the media did, like as less than a human,

like not just a nice woman you're taking on a date, but somebody who's like lower than low in his mind or like less deserving of the earth, less deserving of fair treatment. It's almost like he needed that justification. That's the word I was trying to come up with. Like he needed to justify it by that's one of my, again, this is a theory, but my other theory is, you know, I feel like if you're meeting up with someone and you're getting paid to have sex with them, you're less likely, at least in my mind, to like tell all your friends and family about this. You know, good point. It's like a more like illicit situation and like less likely to.

But I mean, at the same time, he's not really covering his tracks anyway. But, you know, I'm not I'm not sure what the motive was there but those are some possibilities i guess um no that's a good point i think that has to be part of it the like they'll i'm i won't be told on yeah if they feel bad about it but also people are literally telling on him left and right and he's i know exactly it's almost like whatever what's point? But yeah, that's kind of what my guess is. But whatever the reason, you know, she was intrigued and she you know, people, students, especially starting college, feeling alone, isolated, trying to figure themselves out, make an identity for themselves. You do dumb shit. OK, we've said it a million times. The dumb shit i should i have done in my life like we've all been there we're just two of the lucky ones who didn't yeah exactly i just feel really fortunate that something worse didn't happen you know we survived it but others don't yeah yeah so it's really um really unfortunate uh but so she agreed to it for the price of five hundred dollars and she this part i already have goose cam um she made a joke that a lot of us probably would

have made uh she texted him you're not a serial killer right lmao yep and it's like oh it's so chilling like if only she knew just even the half of it you know i mean well because all of us when we've all of us have texted that at least once and like right at least everyone i know has but like it's because you would still you still think even though you're like protecting yourself there's no way i'm the one it's ridiculous to think like oh i'm talking to a serial killer the concept is beyond i mean even to me as a true crime podcaster, I'd be like, you're being crazy. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's just it would be out of out of left field. But she had some inkling that this was, you know, a little iffy.

And she texted, you're not a serial killer, right? LMAO. And of course, it was such a distant possibility that it never occurred to her. He actually was a serial killer at this point. So her first meeting with him she actually bailed and she apologized through the app saying she felt like an ass but she was too nervous he told her i'm a really cool guy once you get to know me wow fucker well say it with me green flag green flag seriously That's a great point. I hadn't even thought of that. But yeah, it's also very unsettling.

It's wild that her gut feeling was right. I know. I know. And for the amount of times we've said on the show, like, you know, trust your gut. And like so many of us, every one of us has ignored our gut and then look back and gone, oops, you know. Yeah. It's just we're lucky that it didn't turn out this badly. So on November 22nd, only a week after the whole Tiffany thing went down where she survived is literally a week later, he's at it again. Sarah agrees to meet up. And this time she's feeling more certain, more independent, more courageous. And it was the first day of Thanksgiving

break. So her mom had driven to the city to pick her up and bring her home that evening sarah asked to borrow the minivan and run an errand so this is where i'm kind of saying like she's clearly not saying like maybe if he had invited her on a date she'd say oh i'm going on a date with this guy this is his name but since this is like you know paid sex she tells her mom oh i'm just running an errand and doesn't say where she's going and keeps it kind of secret so she picked khalil up get this at the same vacant house on highland avenue where joanne's body was still inside laying undiscovered oh my god so her body had not even been found yet. Her friends are, in the meantime, looking for her.

And her body's in there. And he says, pick me up at this location. Like, he's just loving this fucking game, this whole thing. Oh, my God. Oh, God. It's so sick. It's sick. So they first went to a 7-Eleven so Khalil could buy condoms.

Romantic. So they first went to a 7-Eleven so Khalil could buy condoms. Romantic. And then to Eagle Rock Reservation, which was a county park with a view of the New York City skyline. And there he strangled Sarah to death with a pair of sweatpants and left her body under some sticks and leaves. Then took her mom's minivan and fled the scene and left her there with her pants still around her own neck. Oh, my God. It's horrific.

When Sarah didn't return home from her errand by 8 p.m. as she had planned, her oldest sister, Bassania Daly, started texting Sarah's friends, and none of them had seen her or knew where she was. And in the morning, their mom called her and got voicemail and pretty immediately they were like something is wrong because if sarah is even running late from the bank or the grocery store she will text us or she will answer her phone like she doesn't just go away and not come home so they knew pretty immediately something was wrong it was three days later that one of fasania's friends found her mom's minivan dumped behind an old factory. And also, it's just occurring to me, November 25th.

So this was, like we said, Thanksgiving break. So, I mean, just think like the whole Thanksgiving break, her family is just wondering where she is. Oh, fuck. It didn't even occur to me that they had to spend thanksgiving this way like just looking for her so they found uh the minivan behind an old factory it was four miles from where sarah lived but only six blocks from khalil's house of course wasn't it also six blocks last time it's like he's got a perfect radius he has it's like when you watch those crime shows and they do like a geocircle a little tagging where it could be yeah yeah some sort of mapping like

mapping himself exactly and you're gonna i'm gonna bring this up later too but he like perfectly checks the boxes for like all the shit that's well i'll tell you but like he brought his phone for example to every crime scene so like they're like ding, ding, ding, ding. Like there's no hiding anything. So police arrive at the scene and the women in Sarah's life, her sister and best friend and mom, of course, at this point know something terrible must have happened. They find on the floor of the minivan Sarah's red weave that she was wearing the night of her disappearance. And when Bassania and Lamia Brown, who's one of Sarah's friends, saw this, they knew it was foul play. They were like, somebody has hurt her. They couldn't sit around and wait for an investigation. So they, the friends and sister, leapt into action themselves. So this is where we turn into like kick-ass territory.

Good for them. I know. I know. They're like, we'll fucking handle it. We'll handle it. So Bassania, Lamia and Sarah's friend, Samantha Rivera, all gathered at the Butler family home. And one of them thankfully knew the login to Sarah's laptop.

So they got on her laptop and they looked around for clues and they found sarah's tagged account and her messages with khalil and they were shocked uh when they saw that she was getting into sex work but they also weren't like judging her they just said okay well looks like lil yacht rock is the one we need to find like clearly he's involved somehow i love how it took like just curious like driven minds on this five minutes seriously like minutes they just hop on the computer and they're like well we know who it is so samantha get this this is this has you and me written all over it made a fake account and reached out to little

yacht rock to be like hey what's up and they messaged back and forth with him for several days while the police are in the background looking for sarah so the women were actually at the police station giving statements one night when khalil messaged samantha on tagged and asked her to meet up so she's literally turns the phone to the police and is like oh my god he wants to meet with me is she about to go undercover yeah basically this is nuts like I mean it really sounds like a episode of criminal minds so even with tag to me I know I know I'm probably just not cool but to me tagged

sounds like a fake account like a fake social media that television writers made up you know yeah oh it sounds like wolf.com yes yes it does oh i hope there's not a wolf.com serial killer that would really bum me out his name is bj novak or something yeah well he went to jail i guess yeah not him his character yeah before i get like some i don't know writers guild lawyers coming after me i don't know how that works okay so she's like um this guy wants to meet up with me and they're like okay all right we're we're mobilizing people So the way he had reached out to her and asked for sex and offered money, it was almost an identical message to the one he had sent last to Sarah, which was like really chilling. It was basically like a copy paste. He offered cash.

He said he was in a hurry to meet up and he put the pressure on her. She agreed to pick him up at a nearby Panera Bread. pressure on her she agreed to pick him up at a nearby panera bread she told him she was at home with the baby and doing her makeup so she would have to wait a little bit for somebody to come watch the baby before she could come out so the women went inside and are telling the police this story and the detectives are like okay keep him interested like keep him talking and two detectives meanwhile went to meet khalil while the women remained at the station oh okay so the report journal said quote he believed he was hunting his next victim in reality the women were hunting him and that's the tagline for our next blockbuster hit

so when detectives arrived khalil was so cool calm collected fucking cucumber this guy he is polite he's cooperative he's like hey what's going on to the cops like just playing these fucking mind games he told them yes he had gone a date with a woman named Sarah the other night but when he dropped her off at home she was alive and well and then he went to a friend's house so he has no idea what happened and he's so chill and he pulls up a friend's number and the police call the friend and the friend's like yeah he was with me so they find they have this alibi for him they don't have Sarah's body yet they just they can't hold him for anything so they're're like, well, shit, we got to let him go. And since they already missed the boat, when Tiffany told them what happened, it was too late for that. So now they're like kind of shit out of luck. Like,

they're like, well, I hope this, these women can draw him in and lure him in so that we can get him because they don't really have anything on him. So although the women in Sarah's life knew something was terribly wrong, it still seemed like the police were not going to say it was foul play until they found her body and figured out what had actually happened. So they really had no choice but to let Khalil go. Not long afterward, the investigators were able to triangulate the last known location of Sarah's cell phone, and they finally were able to locate her body. So now they're like, all right, we officially have a murder on our hands. There's no question about it. Khalil is our prime suspect. And they once again went to the friend, the alibi, who had said, oh, he was with me. alibi who had said oh he was with me and apparently the friend basically said look he told me to cover for him if the police came knocking but i had no idea this was about murder i was absolutely not with him that day i just thought this was like a minor thing yeah yeah murder like i'm not

participating in this cover-up yeah i as as taylor swift said i wish to be excluded from the narrative. Precisely. He's like, this is not part of what I plan for. Yeah. I would say, you know, if it were like a drug thing, maybe. But murder, no. So he's like, I, that alibi is a lie. He was not with me. So finally, December 13th, 2016, police arrested Khalil

under suspicion of murder. Finally. In the meantime, contractors repairing the empty home on Highland Avenue had discovered Joanne Brown's body and they were starting to piece this whole story together. Then Tiffany happened to see a headline of khalil's arrest in the paper and she was like well the police ignored me last time so i'm gonna go to the essex county prosecutor instead damn i fucking love this i know so she goes straight to the prosecutor who said her persistence was unbelievably courageous so police spent three years putting together a case against Khalil, connecting Joanne's and Robin's murders and Tiffany's attack to Sarah. Tiffany, of course,

ended up the star witness of the case. Her day-long testimony was crucial for tying together Khalil's MO, the way he targeted sex workers, the way he strangled people, the way he used duct tape. She had all the answers for that because she she had survived it Khalil had also been incredibly careless as we kind of already alluded to because he could be he carried his phone with him at all times to every murder didn't have a burner his phone location data put him at the scene of every single crime and showed that after he lit the fire at the first house he came back and watched it burning with a crowd of people. Ew. So he came back to the crime scene.

Hey. And don't they say that a lot about arsonists that like part of the thrill, and I'm not saying he's an arsonist. I mean, he clearly is an arsonist to an extent. I just don't know how much of that is like pathological versus he was just, but they say like people who commit arson often come back to watch their work so to speak yeah wow i and also i mean we already talked about this a little bit but like just the like the full cockiness of getting away with it but it is it's almost like beyond cockiness and

just like how did i mean oh i because of the previous stories where he actually was getting away with it it takes away from me saying this, but when he was doing all this and not, you know, turning off his phone, you know, he was just so like brazenly killing. It's like,

how did you think you weren't going to get caught? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, he shouldn't have thought it, but then he didn't like you're saying. So it's a weird paradox. It's like, it's like, well, he didn't get caught, but he didn't like you're saying so it's a weird paradox it's like it's like well he didn't get caught so but he didn't right but he yeah so it's like how do you

go into that thinking like i don't need a plan like it's so i wonder if that's why it was like spree killing because he was like well i just it's gonna end eventually you know what i mean like oh yeah just get it out of my system so to and like, just go on a rampage because I'm going to get caught. I don't know. I don't know. It's, it's disturbing. I mean, thankfully, at least the fact that he was so brazen helped put him in prison during the trial. I mean, I didn't unfortunately stop him from killing multiple other people um but at least it helped them

gather evidence but yeah it's just really sad so he was at the county park where sarah's body was found at the same time sarah's phone was pinging its location he was at the highland avenue house where they found joanne he was on the side of the road where tiffany was attacked basically every single spot was neatly recorded in his phone which is kind of what i was trying to say when i said like oh he was basically doing the geo triangulation that you see on tv like yeah the killer lives within this radius like he's literally just building out this exact map yep and uh it was just creepy how like neatly everything lined up so prosecutors had the text he sent to sarah on tagged the calls to joanne's friend's phone where he was just breathing on the

other end of the line oh yeah yeah all of his conversations with tiffany and they found out also had extra phones at home and he used these phones because apparently he thought i can take my phone with me to the crime scenes but i don't want to google anything incriminating on this phone i'll google the incriminating things on my other phones that are still at home so i don't know how that really saves you any but he googled shit like which chemical can be used to kill a human and how to access date rape drugs oh for fuck's sake great so despite all of this khalil maintained his innocence what yeah he said he was being framed by the county what lunatic what like it's sheer lunacy how did he how did he get like what the cops just went that's a good enough reason like how did he just walked away he was like oh no no no sorry i meant

he maintained his innocence like he oh like he he kept saying he was innocent nobody thought he was innocent nobody oh my god okay sorry god no i know this't do this. Don't do this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He just he just said, I don't know. I'm being framed. And everyone was like, you're a fucking idiot. OK. You're not being framed. But he maintained that he had done nothing wrong.

He was eerily cool, like eerily chill. But like how on earth would anybody be able to discount the evidence and witness statements, especially Tiffany's firsthand account and saying, I see the man who tried to kill me and who raped me and he's right there. Like, how could you dismiss that? No need for a lineup. I will tell you exactly who he is. Exactly. She was really understandably disturbed by Khalil's not guilty plea and his lack of emotion. And she said to the prosecutor and judge, I hope you don't show him any remorse because he's not showing any

remorse. In her testimony, Tiffany highlighted the tragedy of her treatment by the Elizabeth Police Department, saying, if the police had believed me, Sarah Butler would still be alive. So I'm really glad she got the chance to publicly say that. Yeah. When the police who responded to Tiffany's call took the stand, they were asked if they believed Tiffany at the time. One of them said, I mean, no, not really. Well, Kel Suprees. Yeah, we all figured that out. Yeah. Ultimately, Tiffany said it was anger that got her on the stand despite her fear. And she said she testified because she wanted Khalil to see her and know she was part of his undoing, which I love that like redemption arc. Tiffany said later, people keep telling me I'm a hero. I was just mad. I wanted something to happen to him for what he did to me. Yeah.

to him for what he did to me yeah understandable during the trial sarah butler's friends and family spoke as well and county prosecutors said targeting sarah was khalil's fatal mistake sarah's mother said he messed with the wrong girl sarah was well loved she was such a good girl i know my daughter and the love and care she grew up with she loved to dance she loved to swim she loved kids. It's so sad that people didn't get to know her. It just makes me really sad. On December 19th, 2019, Khalil Wheeler Weaver was sentenced to multiple life sentences

for the murders of Robin West, Joanne Brown, and Sarah Butler, the attempted murder of Tiffany Taylor, desecration of human remains, and aggravated arson. Wow. At his sentencing, completely calm and collected.

Khalil said, Oh, this makes me ill. He said, my heart goes out to the families. However, I was not the person who committed these crimes. It's like,

give it up, bud. Give it a fucking rest. It's just gross. Cause it's just the, the last, I don't, I,

yeah, it's just, it's just like the last, I don't. Yeah, it's just it's just like the last. I don't want your sympathy, you asshole. I just want you to own it once. Yeah, just for closure. Just for the closure. So Tiffany and his other victims families were left behind to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Sarah's younger sister danced a tribute to her sister to the Hall and Oates song Sarah Smile. Makes me sad. Sarah's mom says she always feels Sarah with her. Tiffany Taylor, who's now raising two daughters of her own, often feels afraid. She finds herself panicking in stairwells and other secluded public places. She said she sometimes feels like Khalil still won because of the effect he's had on her. And Khalil's story was not over. So there's more. How? I know. In April of 2019, when Khalil had already been in prison awaiting trial for several years, employees at an orange funeral home found human remains in the empty

carriage house they used for storage. Six months later in november 2019 when khalil was on trial for three other murders authorities identified the remains as 15 year old mawa doombia who went missing october 7 2016 in the midst of khalil's killing spree so she wasn't even noticed she wasn't even i guess linked to any of this that's so sad investigators once again were able to follow khalil's phone data on the night of mawa's disappearance to her house and to the location where they recovered her remains and then he used google maps to look at her home and then find a nearby property where he could take her body wow like he really is on the fly doing this shit like he's just winging it that answers my question then to like how did you not plan this and he just really didn't fucking go he's just fucking around and it worked

which also makes it like extra gross so like this was just like an impulsive thing he did like like it was like a hobby like i'm gonna go skateboarding i'm just gonna try this yeah i'm just gonna murder somebody just see kind of where the day and then do it over and over again just because it worked the first time in october of 2022 so several months ago now like almost six months ago already serving three life sentences another murder charge was officially brought against khalil for ma was killing and at that time police said they were looking into yet another case that might be linked to Khalil but we don't have that information yet so that's how new this is this new uh so he could have been doing this for a lot longer than we thought well no they think it's that same time span there's just more people yeah so he was he was still doing it like much more frequently

than we thought yes that's what they think and to think that after tiffany you know you think you'd be afraid after tiffany survives right and sees you and then within a week he has murdered his next victim like that's how close together they are well there it is again with the cockiness i mean like like why wouldn't you stop if you're just like oh someone literally pointed at me red-handed and i got away with it and then there were several other murders after that where like i just got away with it so if you already quit while you're fucking ahead nope if you already have that like heightened ego and like every single time you are just not even trying to cover it up and you are just like you're just so guilty and like not even

i can i can see why he would have like the cocky gene of like well obviously no one's gonna get me because no one's ever gotten me and i wasn't even trying and i wasn't even trying yeah you know it feels like easy i bet you just go home at night and go to bed and nobody knocks on the door at which point like fucking like find a new hobby like how is this fun anymore if like you're not even like i don't know i imagine there's got to be some fun element to like being like trying to evade the police but they're not even looking for you to just getting away with it over and over that's true yeah it's just so gross it's disgusting so yeah like we said there basically we think there are other victims that just haven't even been released yet

so over the next few years we might see several more murders attributed to him in the end the county prosecutor and media outlets believe the true heroes of the story were the women of course who refused to back down tiffany taylor who was cast aside by police after living pretty much an unspeakable horror but then didn't give up and continued to testify despite her fear and help bring him down sar Sarah's friends and family who jumped into action and risked their own lives concerning Khalil. Joanne Brown's and Robin's friends who took down details like Khalil's phone number, his license plate,

and who spoke up when nothing happened. These women basically from the start were fighting for their friends, their sisters. They were looking for them when nobody else was and uh when when the case closed assistant prosecutor adam wells said sarah's friends and family are the heroes of this case and that is the story of khalil wheeler weaver part two well i'm glad he at least got put away i feel like there's really no other good part to it i know i do appreciate that all those women were like you know what fuck the authorities i'll handle it

and then did just handled it yeah just handled it wow well i appreciate the redemption arc christine because you really had me like in a twist last time we but yeah wow i can't believe it's so recent yeah and i feel like there's it kind of feels a little i don't know if it is the right word but there's something about the the media like praising these women and i'm like yeah this is say media who called them like hookers and said like whatever you know what i mean excellent point part of me is just like okay well it's grody yeah it's grody it feels icky i'm like and it's it feels fickle in some way yeah like fair weather fucking like when it's a feel-good story all of a sudden you want to be part of it again that's a great point of like how dare you champion woman when it's convenient yeah when it makes a

good headline yeah yeah so i don't know That part just kind of makes me feel weird. But that's the story. Amethy, my friend. Thank you. Amethy appreciates it. Man, we had quite a day today. Our banter was a lot. But I'm really interested.

I revealed a lot about my past, I think, with some of this. I mean, we said a lot of things. i think with some of this i mean we said a lot of things maybe we one two three stress sesame street maybe we regret saying some things but maybe we don't too late because i will immediately have forgotten that i said it and then someone on instagram will be like oh like antimobile and i'll be like how do you know that yeah one day we're gonna someone's gonna send us like grover muppets i'm gonna be like what is this about i'm gonna be like i'm really into it but why i don't know i'm scared but i'm okay all right man well um i'm sure you're gonna find yourself in a downward spiral now on postcards on ebay oh yeah um after floyd collins oh yeah um yeah well i don't know what else to say man we got

our after chat we're gonna do we've got i'll see you in a couple days which like makes my stomach want to churn but whatever um anything anything else any fun factoids to end on um you know just go find yourself in a giant adirondack chair take a rest man if anyone wants to let me know where i can find the nearest there's probably one near you there has to be by a beach somewhere i would i really my one of my like secret goals is to get a picture in every single one that exists um because okay i'm not kidding every time i know you're not i trust me i'm aware i would like to own one really so if anyone knows the the way to get about that also i would um etsy they're 1500 bucks so you better just get

a bigger property so that you can fit this thing nah i'll just the troll hole will just be where i leave with the chair i don't think it's gonna fit i'll disassemble it then reassemble it in here you'll see i'll make it fit they'll all see they'll all see and that's why we drink