And That's Why We Drink - E353 A Weird Date Agent and a Ghost Go Bag

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

It's episode 353 and we're FINE! Like the sands of the hour glass, we're having a "menty b" about a mystery deadline and meanwhile loving our own Halloween merch. This week Em takes us on a very creepy ride through the story of the Black Monk of Pontefract. Then Christine covers the wild case of the George Brothers, aka the Oxy Kingpin Twins. And let us know if you have any guesses about Bartholomew Crispin... and that's why we drink!

welcome to this day and this episode thank you you did a great job. Christine, I'm just feeling very sing-songy, but tell me about your reasons why you drink. How's your mental health, physical health, the days amongst you? I'm fine. Like the sands of the hourglass. Okay, so. Fine. I'm fine. We have a big deadline coming up that we can't really talk about yet and it's making me want to rip my eyeballs out. I understand. I also want to jump off a bridge.

Maybe we can tag team and discuss an extension. Oh, okay. Let's do that. Okay. That was easy. I guess I could have texted you last night when I was having a mental breakdown.

I was also having a mentee bee. So a little mentee bee. Um, anyway, you just made me feel better. So thank you. Uh, I'm doing great.

Um, thank you. I just wanted to give a little shout out. Cause Eva reminded us that we do have new merch on our merch store and our wonderful merch uh folks are so good at getting like season like stuff out every couple months so uh we've been having a lot of fun helping with designs and stuff but and brainstorming but we always forget to mention it because it's so regular that they get updated now that i feel like we never think to mention it um but yeah if you want to check out our merch you should go to atwwdmerch.com i'm wearing um i was gonna wear the goose cam i'm so annoyed i didn't wear the

goose cam today but i wore it literally was wearing i was wearing it last night um i also got two that's why i didn't wear it it smells oh hmm i believe that since then i had i was wearing my cauldron shirt i was getting all funky with it i actually wore it as my theme shirt to some halloween events uh recently i know it's like mid-november right now and you hear this but oh that's right yeah okay so this is a halloween launch but we forgot to mention it till after halloween so that's pretty on brand for us i would say so if you're still feeling in the in the creepy mood um yeah before thanksgiving but i am before your card i said eva will this if if i mention it on this episode will it it won't get there in time for halloween right and then i'm like he was like um it comes out november 11th and i was like

or whatever date and i was like okay by next ha it should get to you so if you want to look at it I like how you were like will this get to them before Halloween when we recorded our Halloween episode like weeks ago like weeks ago like on what planet am I talking I have no idea but we there's a goose cam that Kirky from Workies who did our logo uh designed this goose cam poster in like two different color schemes um and it's like a crewneck baggy sweatshirt it's my favorite thing and it says like instead of like rl stein it says em christine and it's like a goose cam like kind of a it looks like a like the bird like a hitchcock poster sort of yeah it's like a like the cover of a goosebumps book yeah yes the cover of a goosebumps book that's the right way to put it and it's like in 90s retro color um it's really nice so anyway i just want to mention our merch since we

don't give it many shout outs uh but go to atwwdmerch.com uh anyway how are you i feel like you really dodged the how are you question but um i'm good at that unless you call me out on it and then suddenly everyone knows. How was your anniversary that happened recently? Oh, it was great. Thank you for all the tips. I texted Em, or I talked to Em the day before, or two days before, and I said, I'm panicking. I don't know what to do for my anniversary.

It's on Friday the 13th, and I wanted to do something scary. And so Em sent me some ideas ideas and we ended up going a lot of them were sold out because it was i was so late on everything but i was ended up doing a um booking a a haunted downtown cincinnati tour that i'd never done and we got to go into an old children's theater and use readers and like you know talk to the spirits there did you when they when they gave you the emf detector were you like i've been there i was like no i went like this oh cool it has lights and blaze was like stop pretend stopping you're making it weird um like you probably own one of these yeah he's like why are you acting i I don't know. I wanted to be like, there were only four people total on the tour

and the other two were really quiet. So I felt like I had to kind of, which nobody asked me to, but I felt like I had to overcompensate for quietness. Yeah, I don't know. But it was fun. Thank you for sending me all those tips, those links and ideas.

You're welcome. I'm glad they were not used, but I appreciate it. They were. One of the ones you sent. That's where I booked it. Yeah. I see. I see. I see. Well, I'm glad that it worked out. There's nothing I love more than planning a date. I know. I was like, why haven't I utilized your services sooner? I would love to just be someone, I don't know what the, I don't think the job exists, but if I could be someone that just plans dates for people. I think you could probably make that a thing.

That'd be a great job. I love it so much. I mean, I wouldn't pay for it because you let me do it for free, but I think other people would pay for it. I would love it, especially because I, not that I think I've got like the lowdown on like all the cool spots but i definitely have the load on all the weird spots so like if you want a weird stuff that like i feel like you know that you can find the stuff that's not just like googling things in

blank city today you know what i mean like you you can do the deeper dive and really parse through yeah yeah like a travel agent but a date agent or something but a date agent that sounds so cool too that's me i'm a date agent anyway that's you know in a in a world nearby that's probably my gig and i'm really appreciating the praise so i feel like that's a pretty on on point uh role for you to play so thank you good job um what was i gonna say to you what was i gonna say to you no i miss you though i miss you i am having some um burping issues today cool um so i don't see me running away never mind if you see me running away. Never mind. If you see me running away from the microphone, that's why. Because I discovered a cheese that I like.

Shut the fuck up. And I ate a lot of it in my body's reaction. We buried the lead on this one. What? Tell me everything. For Allison's one of her birthdays, because she's getting two this year. Long story. We've talked about

it on the show okay okay good um so for her first birthday i a lot of things happened but i i also made her like um like a halloween themed charcuterie board cute and i bought a lot of cheese man and i was like i guess i'm gonna have to help her eat this so i might as well like try try each of them yeah charcuterie and um it was a i think it was like it was it had to be like the most boring cheese for me to actually like it because i don't find any cheese boring so um oh okay tell me more i think it was a havarti yeah that's classic that was my favorite as a kid that was i always okay it's kind of like a entry-level cheese yeah it's creamy it's mild yes i cream it was very creamy i was like oh i feel like this is like coating my mouth i don't know how i feel

about this but it was um when paired with salami it was pretty damn good. So I gotta say that is a classic and I approve. Okay, good. And I because I really I think I don't know if I'll ever go further than entry level cheese. I think that's fine. Listen, I didn't think you would even get there. So I'm thrilled for you right now. By the way, if you're like, what the fuck is going on? Em's not like into cheese, which I know is shocking and jarring. I can't stand it. I should have given you a trigger

warning, but Em doesn't like cheese. He just doesn't like it. I don't know what to tell you. Between the two of us, we make a great charcuterie bar because I love the meats and you love the cheeses. Yeah, Em eats the cold cuts. I eat the cheese. Eva just is like, can you guys get on stage? Because the show's about to start and we're like, we're busy. Up until this weekend, the only cheese I'll eat is mozzarella, which is also very kind of bland compared to others. So now I've got two in the arsenal. Okay. Well, listen, that is a win in my book. So I'm very proud of you. Thank you. Well, my body's reacting because I've never had this much cheese in my entire life. Also, you're lactose intolerant. I forgot to mention that.

I ate like a whole block by myself or something. So I'm really going through it today. With that, Christine, I have a story for you that I, we don't get a lot of these these days. And when we stumble upon one, I'm very excited. And because it's so good i'm scared we've done it before but i don't i love these your anxiety like sprinkles a little more excitement into the episode um it's it's a mystery for the ages i feel like maybe someone if i have covered

it maybe someone's recently listened to the episode and you can call me out but this does this feels like new information to me so maybe it'll feel like new information to other people um this is the black monk of pontefract oh i've heard about this from astonishing legends years ago but i don't think you've covered it i don't think i've covered it either i don't know why i would know because i don't know any better than you do. Well, I know that does make me feel a little better. I don't remember it from our show, but I have heard of it on Ascension Legends. I've heard about it for a long time. People have been suggesting it for a while, but I for some reason it overwhelmed me. I don't know why. I think the name Pontifract. It's a very intense name. Yeah yeah I feel like that would that would alarm me as well also I think I just heard like the black monk of Pontifract and I

thought like oh it's just like a shadow figure of a monk and the story won't be very long and so I just I don't even remember what it is so to me I'm like is it just a shadow fit I don't remember I feel like there's again we've talked about this before but so many stories where it's just like a shadow people are saying and that's it and i'm like oh the content i don't know if it'd be that great but right right so i kind of pushed this one away for a while but man i see why everyone was telling me to do it so okay i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready all right so this is the black monk of pontefract the so pontefract um is an old oh oh wait wait wait wait we gotta do it the same time okay okay one go oh you do it go you okay on go one two three go beautiful let's crack into it baby okay so um pontifract which i i i am saying right according to youtube uh pontifract is an old town road that has time and time again unearthed a lot

of historical artifacts including a roman era chariot i want to go metal detecting which like a whole fucking chariot like what what earthquake brought that up to the surface um they've also found items from the neolithic and iron ages and they've just they've discovered that uh this area is also part of a neolithic hinge whoa um there was also what's that like stone hinge i think i don't know i have no idea what a henge is but they kept saying oh okay i'll just pretend like i know um oh here a prehistoric monument consisting of a circle of stone or wooden uprights okay so yeah stone henge is like a circle of rocks or circle of circle of rocks also in this area there used to be

Circle of rocks. Also in this area, there used to be Pontefract Castle, which is now in ruins. But it was at one point one of the most powerful forts in the country and allegedly was built on Anglo-Saxon burial grounds. So, bam, talk about powerful spiritually. Until the 16th century, there was a medieval priory here where monks lived. And then that was later destroyed but in the 1960s a house was built here and it sat where old gallows used to be oh geez um sorry jesus lord have mercy jesus christ Sorry. Blaze is running the dryer and my door just started like vibrating on its hinges and like banging back and forth. Girl, please.

Please. It scared me so bad. Okay. Honestly, that was Blaze's fault. I'm so sorry. I'm taking it out on the wrong person. No, but he knows better at this point. Like every time I record, he runs the damn dryer.

It's like some weird prank of his. How silly i really thought a ghost was here by the way have you seen any more ghosts since you've discovered all those old haunted pictures no but i i just have gotten more attached to them ever since i brought them to to you oh that is terrifying. I think it's working. I think it's working. Oh, God. Okay. So a house was built here in the 1960s. It sounds like this house might have been sectioned into apartments.

Maybe it was one whole house at the time and then was later sectioned into apartments. Yeah, yeah. That's what happened to my house. Yeah. So I don't know if it was apartments yet it sounds like it was just the one family living here right now but a house was built there in the 60s and gene and joe pritchard move in with their kids uh they have a 15 year old and a 12 year old named philip and diane cute i feel like d Diane is such a specific era name. It is.

I always think that about that name and like Sherry or there's a few names where I'm like, they are so in their decade. Like if you met someone with that name, you know when they were born. You know. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what's really tricking me is all these people with fucking babies with old names. That's really throwing me. is all these people with fucking babies with old names that's really throwing me because now i effing love it it's my favorite thing to see babies called like i don't know you can't stand it i love it i can't stand it i don't i don't like the old names for new babies trend i oh i love it i know i know but we have different tastes on everything but it's true but i feel like at one point... You don't like cheese and I feel like I automatically win this argument. Sorry.

No, that's fair. I feel like if I heard the name Beatrice up until yesterday, I knew exactly when you were born. Now, it could be any fucking day. Yeah. You're Gen Alpha. But think about it. B, what a cute little nickname. Nah. yeah you're gen alpha but but think about it b what a cute little nickname nah i love it if you named your child beatrice and you're like about to cry i'm all over it i love it i think you did a great job naming your child because if somebody were on a show and said leona i'd probably burst into tears no it's not anyone else it's fully me because i have a five-year-old's taste in everything like i like i like you want to name your child megan secretly and you're just not admitting it like that's how that's not true

but you're on the right path yeah i know i was gonna say other names and then i was like now i'm gonna insult everyone else out there so i'm keeping my mouth shut and sticking with megan if i ever had a kid the name will be like incredibly boring compared to like people at least trying to keep up with trends, you know? I guess it depends on if you're parenting with someone else because I don't know if you win that argument, you know? Allison and I seem to agree on names. At least we both like boring names. But that's also assuming we'll have children and that's still up in the air.

I was going to say, I said with someone else. Listen, I'm not making any judgment calls here. I think you should name your child Megan with six H's if you really want to. And I think we'll all support you even though we won't approve. That's fine. You know what I think is the ugliest name I've ever heard in my life? Say it. Yeah.

Yeah, I do. You know what, Em? I do. But why don't you announce it to everyone? Christine. You know what? Oh, good. Now that the joke's over.

Okay. You name your child Chauncey Bliss and you're gonna have to deal with it no i think um hmm should i say it maybe we would name him bartholomew crispin that's an inside joke that nobody's aware of yet but um you'll get aware of it eventually i promise you'll get aware and that was a good call even even like what the fuck are they talking about even even doesn't know what we're talking about bartholomew crispin um if you would like how about you all comment what you think bartholomew crispin is and you'll all be wrong. You'll never guess. Okay. It would have to be Bartholomew Crispin Jr., wouldn't it? Gross.

Vomitous. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Everyone feels like the third wheel right now, not knowing what's going on. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Eva and everyone else. Okay.

Anyway, it's better than me just yelling at all the Beatrices who are listening in right now. I'm not going to lie. It's better than that. You yelling at all the Beatrices who are listening in right now. I'm not going to lie. It's better than that. You're right. To be fair, I was not even to be fair, but fun fact, I was supposed to have an old lady name. What was your name supposed to be? My name was supposed to be Esther. Okay.

I love that. I'm sure you do. But I'm thinking like, oh, I'm really glad I wasn't named that. So my mom went with a different E name, but I was named. Okay. What would your nickname be if you, you you know if that had been your my middle name i don't know yeah well your middle name is not gonna work either for the purposes of i think it i have no idea i would have gone with a completely different terry s tur tur turry no i call you Esther... Terry. No. I call you Turd. Okay, little Turd.

Let's keep going. No, I don't know. It's just I know you would have eaten it up if Esther could have been a name for you. Hilarious. I would love it. For me, I'm glad I got a more maybe like modern name and so I appreciate that as someone who likes modern names. You got a very R generation name for sure. Yeah, my name was the like R generation name for sure. Yeah.

My name was the like number one name for like a decade. It was actually, it was not original at all. So I don't know what I'm into about that, but whatever. Yowza, Pontefract, Castle. Now it's 1960s. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah.

We were telling the story. Okay. So in the 1960s, a house was built here gene and joe pritchard move in with philip and obviously born in the 50s diane um so uh and very quickly activity in the house began so in august 1966 the parents and d Diane go on a vacation while their son Philip stays behind with his grandma. Okay. Grandma's name is Sarah. To me, that is too modern of a name for a grandma.

Yeah, that is weird. Because Sarah is such an old name, but it continually becomes modern. I guess, you know, it was definitely a big name when we were kids, so it probably seems doesn't fit. Like if your grandma was Megan, you'd be like, huh? Yeah. You know? Yeah, there's some people that are our age now, and I'm like, one day you're going to be like Grandpa Dylan. What?

Grandpa Chad. Yeah. Okay, so Sarah is the name of the grandma grandma so she's staying at the house with philip and now at 11 30 in the morning grandma sarah is inside the house when out of nowhere a gust of wind rattles the windows and slams the door shut oh now would have been the time to turn the dryer on blaze i was thinking i was like two more minutes you would have been the time to turn the dryer on, Blaze. I was thinking, I was like, two more minutes, you would have really nailed it. When Philip comes back in from the garden, Grandma Sarah mentions the weather. Like, oh, wow, the wind is really strong right now.

But Philip says, oh, there's no wind outside. What are you talking about? So these gusts of wind are indoors. Later, Sarah is knitting and she notices a strange haze is in the house. And she notices that it's like a powder floating around her. And she and Philip look for what it could be. And they assume it must be like plaster crumbling from the ceiling or something but it's a white cloud that's weirdly staying in the middle of the room it's not

falling and it's not going above their heads it's just still ew that's a new one yeah i thought so i was like oh something original um but the white cloud so it was weirdly still and so grandma sarah walked across the road to go get her other daughter who lived in the neighborhood her name is aunt marie so grandma sarah and aunt marie are saying with philip okay she uh goes to get aunt marie marie comes over and she actually says that her mom looks like a snowman because she's covered with all this white stuff all over her asbestos and facts nothing good can come of this you know asbestos might have been something they looked into later yeah um but uh Marie ends up uh going into the house herself to see why her mom is covered in this stuff when she comes over.

Yeah. So she goes into the house and she sees the mist herself. And I guess while they, while Grandma Sarah left, in the time it took Grandma Sarah to leave and come back, the mist had actually fallen and it looked like there was a white film all over the furniture and even in their tea. Ugh, disgusting. Ew, that's so gross. Next aunt marie walks into the kitchen and slips in a random puddle of water in the middle of the kitchen she cleans it up and she she is still looking at the floor she cleans this up cleans it up and moments later the puddle reforms on its own hate that hate it uh then

more puddles form throughout the kitchen so like what like i feel like that's like a really like shitty old video game where like you have to clean the puddle and then it grows it's like it's like whack-a-mole yeah i used to play um fucking rayman something. I think it was Rayman. No, no. It was a fucking firefighter PlayStation game. And you would be putting out fires. And it sucked because you always ended up dying in this fire. It instilled so much anxiety in me as a child.

But anyway, it was basically like, oh, another fire. You got it. Oh, another fire. And it was like, man, you're just literally putting out fires. That's fires. Like that's kind of like us the first year of podcasting. Yeah. I mean, no comment, but yes. So that's what it sounds like. Another puddle to mop up. Um, so assuming that the water was coming from a burst pipe, she peeled back some of the linoleum, which I love that it's her sister's house and she's just peeling up the floor but what the fuck is wrong with your kitchen so she peels back some

of the linoleum to check the floor to see if the water's coming up through there and it's bone dry there's nothing there so the puddle is just appearing for no reason um another one of their in-laws comes in aunt enid and that's your other name i i you know i don't hate that name but i think it's because i just watched uh wednesday adams oh okay i was like that's really specific for you to have a different opinion about but okay it was i think i had a different opinion at the beginning of that series and then as i watched it i was like oh this name's grown on me oh yeah yeah so apparently their whole fucking family lives in this neighborhood by the way so yeah another another in-law aunt enid comes over uh to investigate the puddles with them but they find nothing they actually even had someone come out

to check the pipes to see if something was happening that they weren't aware of and the best that like the plumber could come up with was that this was due to condensation but like girl like girl how is i condensation science i know what condensation is the condensation yeah i don't um i'm sorry I'm sorry Don't be sorry You have nothing to apologize for Okay Yeah I feel like

We know enough about condensation To know that It would not just Only affect one little area On a floor And become a puddle You know Instantly

Yeah So they were like Okay even the plumber Doesn't know what's going on Cool Get him out of here So eventually Eventually the pools Stop stopped forming and both of the ants end up just going home. So now it's back to grandma Sarah and Phillip in the house. I guess they were like,

I don't know. The drama's over. So I guess I don't need to be here anymore. Which is exactly what I would have done. I'd be like, call me when something juicy happens. Like you guys want to order pizza?'m just like i'm out it's like the fun's over i have to go home now to my dry house sit in your weird puddle kitchen to my non-problematic house okay call me later that night grandma sarah goes back into the kitchen with philip Philip and they have a tea dispenser, which sounds like a great fucking gift. Us. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And the tea dispenser,

I guess already had like tea loaded into it, but they go into the kitchen and the button on the tea dispenser keeps pressing itself on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off. And it keeps pressing over and over until all the tea dispenses all over the counter so i figured out where your puddles are coming from yeah exactly plumber couldn't figure that one out and as all the tea once it once it had been emptied of tea it still kept pressing on

off on off which i guess you could equate in some way to like a malfunction i i don't know enough about machines i don't think that's a good enough reason but i guess if you wanted to be a skeptic you could say there's like a faulty wire that was well i wonder if it was probably not even an electric electric oh yeah it was in the 60s like you make a tea kettle and you have like a spout oh yeah okay which makes it kind of creepier because then it's like you make a tea kettle and you have like a spout. Oh, yeah. Okay. Which makes it kind of creepier because then it's like you have to manually press it. Someone's hand had to be there.

Yeah. Yikes. I'm going to get you since you requested it as a gift in 1960s tea dispenser that you have to manually load and press. Oh, no, thank you. Okay, you'd be a faulty electronic one then no no no you can get me a gift card to starbucks and they can handle all the dispensing um so yeah the button keeps going over and over and which like so inconvenient it sounds like they were about to get ready for bed and now they have to clean the entire it's not even just the counters

it's you know it's seeped under everything and never ends gets behind the on the floor but you know me i went to bed and you are like god damn it christine that's gonna leave a stain i'm like i don't care you'd be like oh let me go upstairs and find a rag and you would go upstairs and go to bed and i'm standing by a pile of rags yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly you get it i know the second you leave the room you're not coming back until it's handled. Oh, good. As long as you understand what's happening. That's great.

As soon as you say, let me jest, I'm already over it. I'll be right back. That's when you know I'll never return. You'll see me in a few days. Like you say, I'll be right back as you bring your phone charger upstairs. As I put on my sleep mask. Okay, bye. be right back as you bring your phone charger upstairs as i put on my sleep mask okay bye so it keeps pressing down and down and it just makes a mess everywhere then as they're cleaning

this up they're like oh could today get any worse boom they hear a big ass crash oh and and it's a potted plant that had been thrown up the stairs. That's too much for me, because I could have rationalized if it fell down the stairs. Totally. But even then, not really, because if it's a potted plant, that shit's heavy. But you could rationalize it better. Up the stairs is like really confusing.

It's really, it's intentional. It's like rationalize this bitch. That's what it sounds like to me. You're like, this is such a mess. And it's like, I'll show you a mess. Yeah. It's like, oh, you don't like the tea all over the counters? Well, maybe you'll like all the soil on your stairs.

Some earthworms. Okay, there's probably earthworms in it, but you never know do you have a plant yeah they're all dead i can't figure out why um anyway all the worms in there just keep putting worms in it so um they hear his big crash potted plant has been thrown upstairs the pot by the way the plant i guess fell out on on its travel but the pot itself pot, by the way, the plant, I guess, fell out on its travel. But the pot itself made it all the way up to the landing, which is actually pretty impressive.

Because I couldn't do that with my own human arms. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that something was strong enough that quickly, too, to throw a whole ass plant up the stairs. Very unsettling. plant up very unsettling they go back into the kitchen and the cupboards begin rattling so violently that the neighbors reported hearing the noise oh shit and when the activity stopped they went upstairs for bed um listen i get it at a certain point you reached like a you're like cannot compute anymore i'm tired, like, a, you're, like, cannot compute anymore. I'm tired.

I like to think that they were already, like, so delirious or something so they could justify, like, we must be seeing things. Yeah, maybe let's check on this again tomorrow and really assess what's going on. Like, everything's got a reason. We'll figure it out tomorrow. I get it. So they go upstairs to bed after there's just like dirt everywhere and tea everywhere and the neighbors are calling for noise complaints. And they're like, this all will have a reason for sure. As Grandma Sarah is tucking Philip into bed, which love that they're still not even sharing a room at least.

Yeah. They're still not even sharing a room, at least. Yeah. As she's tucking him in, his door starts swinging open and shut. Open and shut. Open and shut. Oh, no. Thank God she gets some reason to her, because then Sarah goes,

okay, let's get the fuck out of here. And they run to Aunt Marie's. Phew. Poor Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie's like, oh, my God, I already left you what what do you want what do you what do you listen i'm sorry i'm in a bad mood but you just made me clean up tea for two hours it's like i was cleaning puddles i mopped your kitchen like 20 times today what do you want now you want tea because you're out of tea got it and you want a plant because you're out of work okay okay so uh she calls her husband vick and or her husband vick is there he calls the police because he's like obviously a person has

to be in your house yeah um and uh they all go over to the house with three officers to search the house but they find nothing this is sorry i just burped again sorry the cheese excuse me we're so professional i'm sorry jack got it that out so vick suggests that they go to the neighbor another fucking neighbor do they all know each other what's going on here um but there's a guy in the neighborhood called mr o'donnell and they're like let's call him because he's really into ghosts okay i i like where vick's head is he's like let's call the police and then get someone with some real information he's like we never know we need a whole team on our side i feel like aunt marie is you and vick is blaze and i feel like aunt marie is like i don't know. We need a whole team on our side. I feel like Aunt Marie is you and Vic is Blaze.

And I feel like Aunt Marie is like, I don't know what's going on, but there's puddles and worms everywhere and the door keeps opening. And Vic is like, call the police. And you're like, oh, that didn't even occur to me. I don't want to bother them, though. It's so late at night. They might be busy. them though you know it's so late at night they might be busy so okay so this is where uh vic slash blaze says let's call mr o'donnell he'll figure it out so they go and knock on mr o'donnell's door in the middle of the night i can't even imagine what he thought was going on and they

ready to fucking go with his go bag his ghost go bag you know his ghost he's like i've been waiting for this moment my whole life he's like finally and finally some traction in this neighborhood so they knock on his door he follows them back to the house and they sit around waiting for something to happen but there's no activity so mr o'donnell gets up to leave and he says that it's very normal for activity to not be reliable when working with poltergeists. And he assumed it was a poltergeist. He said, they do funny things. They're very fond of tearing up photographs, I believe. And as he said that, a frame came crashing down off the wall and shattered.

And the picture was joe and jean's wedding portrait oh yikeroonies but i yeah he must have felt so validated in that moment he was like i fucking told you like wow i'm nailing this whole thing it's like this is like my first gig like i'm doing a really good job so so now the pictures are falling off the walls the next day little diane and her parents joe and jean they come home and like i can you imagine coming home and finding out that not only did your mother-in-law stay here to watch your son they've been gone this whole time they've been gone this whole goddamn time imagine finding out like oh how was it like did you like fucking play scrabble or something no every single in-law you have and

the neighbor and the police have all been here and also there's puddles and tea and you can't even have plants here anymore yeah the tea's broken um the don't go up the stairs you're gonna slip and fall on some worms it's a really bad situation yeah so all of a sudden they're home and they're like i i feel like they just are doing like a panoramic view of their home and it's just all a fucking mess yeah they're like what happened so they find out what happened and they're saying like there's been you know the windows are rattling the doors are slamming we've been hearing knocking and crashes so joe the the father, says, what kind of knocks? And at that moment, there were three huge bangs that rattled throughout the house.

Oh, boy. And then coming in with a weird plot twist. Nothing happens for the next two years. What? Which, like, talk about, I don't even know what the psychological term is gaslighting baby but like yeah the parents come home nothing happens they're like you guys can tell us if you broke the potted plant like it's fine like you don't understand literally didn't philip and grandma are eyeing each other like what what the fuck? What the fuck?

I would be so pissed off. I would be like, they think that we came up with a fun little story to entertain ourselves while they were gone. Literally, I'd be so pissed. I would be fuming. I'd be fuming. So they have theirs, though, because two years later, Jean is redecorating. Love that for her. And Grandma Sarah is over and she starts hearing sounds again.

Oh, boy. And at this point, I feel like Jean probably thinks like, oh, my mom is Looney Tunes. Yeah, I would be worried. It's like, oh, now you're hearing things and you were the last one to hear things so gene's like okay don't worry about it like it's not true just chill out later gene hears her own sound in the other room oh and she hears the sound she goes up to see what happened and as she's going to go upstairs she sees philip's blanket that it is usually on his bed sitting at the bottom of the stairs. Okay, that's ominous. It's certainly, I mean, you do have a toddler.

I mean, I know he's 15, but I know you probably just see things in places they shouldn't be all the time. It's usually my fault. So, like, it's not surprising to me when things are out of place. But if it's, like, an like an odd like i can see how that would be like huh it's like that's off-putting yeah although maybe you you christine would have just left your blanket downstairs by accident when you're trying to run away from a situation and go to bed for the night entirely possible exactly she sees the blanket downstairs. She goes, that's weird. She grabs a blanket and goes to put it back in his room.

And as she's walking away, she hears a louder sound. Uh-oh. She goes to see what happened. And now the blanket is down. Now her blanket is downstairs. Okay. So it was Philip. Okay. Now her blanket is downstairs. And so it was Philip. So, OK, so she heard a sound. Philip's blanket was downstairs.

She was like, that's weird. Oh, I see. OK. Grabs it, puts it back on Philip's bed. Walking away, she hears another sound and looks downstairs. And now her blanket is on the floor downstairs. Why is it so loud, these blankets? Yeah, I was like, what are these?

Are these weighted blankets? What's was like what are these weighted blankets what's going on they're weighted blankets i wonder if it's like like a pop like they're like apparating like in harry potter you know yeah oh maybe i don't know what the loud noise is about well also uh they're not only are is her blanket downstairs but the the louder sound that she did here was that more potted plants had shattered oh i thought it was the blanket moving got it okay you didn't know i was just gonna let you ride that ride that out i liked it while i was there so it's okay so yeah now more potted plants are being messed with um later that night jean notices that there is a shadow swaying

in the dark ew yeah like i beg to differ no thank you i would i would about face and get the hell out of there. Bye. Bye-bye. So there's a shadow swaying in the dark. And remember, she'd been redecorating. So there's paintbrushes and everything all over the place. She then sees a paintbrush fly past her head as if someone was trying to throw it at her face. And a bucket slams against the wall behind her. Whoa! and a bucket slams against the wall behind her. Whoa. She realizes that the swaying shadow

is actually a piece of wallpaper, thank God, but it's not attached to the wall. It's just a random piece of wallpaper floating in the middle of the air by itself. Ew. It's like as if someone's holding it or something. Like holding it. As she reaches for it to see what's causing it to float it drops to the ground by itself then the broom in the corner floats into

the air and starts moving what is happening like this sounds like Fantasia, which is the scariest movie I've ever seen. You know, if they just looked at it as if it were Fantasia, they probably would have, like, not lost so much sleep. They would have been like, it's just Mickey Mouse. It's just Disney World, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Suddenly the broom floats into the air and starts moving all by itself. Jean freaks out and the rest of the family rush into the hall to see what's going on.

The noise starts happening now now in diane's room so it's almost as if it followed her and then went into one of the kids they start hearing noises in there things are being ripped off the walls the things that are being ripped off the walls are being thrown out the window oh by themselves things pissed off now pissed off and joe the father he slams the door shut and the whole family is just standing in the hallway hearing this going on in diane's room they hear banging in the room they hear just like total chaos and then they hear silence and then knocking on the other side of the door i hate that so much i knock on the other side of the door i can't think of anything more ominous like like a ghost or an actual person like that like gave me full creeps full goose cam and like then what now do you all go to bed you're like diane have a good night and in your fucking room see you by the way do you believe me now mom right exactly um so after that day activity only increased which i'm not surprised

by at all yeah um the cupboards and windows keep rattling there's a constant banging there's a constant drumming sound at one point the china the china cabinet, like, I guess, falls over. Or no, sorry, it doesn't fall over. The china cabinet stands still, but everything sitting in the china cabinet gets pulled out and dropped onto the floor. That would piss me off. And yet nothing broke. I feel like that's even eerier, though, because it's guaranteed to break if it's fine china yeah that's way creepy and it just like bounced off the floor and just sat there yuck a local paper hears about this because the neighbors are constantly complaining about

the sounds coming from that house and they publish a story on the house and they named the poltergeist mr nobody ew i can't imagine a worse name that's the worst possible name mr nobody the worst name people start coming to the door to check it out for themselves because they've read this thing in the paper now and people just want to come in and investigate they're asking for anything they can do to go in and just spend an hour in this house. And the family does turn them all away because they don't want to like make a whole thing of it. But this is interesting, though, because I feel like a lot of skeptics usually use the theory that like, oh, well, it's a popular case. And, you know, they the family clearly wanted people to come in.

They did it for attention or they did it for money or they did it for fame. But this family seemed to have no motive. They also didn't have a motive to even leave the house. Like a lot of stories, there's a lot of haunting cases. There's the theory that like, oh, well, they were having money problems and they couldn't get out of the lease or couldn't get out of the contract. But they had no reason to leave. They liked their house. And then they even were refusing when asked.

They would refuse to move just because a ghost was there. They were very adamant about staying. OK. On top of that, they were refusing investigators and reporters and visitors to come in and they wouldn't accept any payment for coverage. and reporters and visitors to come in and they wouldn't accept any payment for coverage so they were just riding it out in this house and they were getting famed by accident okay that's a point in their favor i feel like yeah i think so because if you want it out i mean you're getting the attention just go away you know yeah i move someone wants i'm kind of on their side at this mr o'donnell would want to move in for sure Yeah, he's ready to pay more than you paid for the house.

So still they had to deal with the normal bullshit that was coming from this ghost. They had drawers and cabinets in their fridge dumping out contents onto the floor every day. Imagine like back in the day wasn't milk in like a glass bottle. Can you imagine if it just like now old milk is in your kitchen? I mean, it's just a nightmare. Like I would if I were the neighbor, I'd be like, I'm never going back over there. Or like the aunt. I'd be like, I'm over it.

I'd be like, you come to me for dinner. Tea time happens at my house now. Yeah. I actually have teacups that I don't have to worry about flying across the room. Yeah, I actually have teacups that I don't have to worry about flying across the room. So they're dealing with the constant mess, the constant puddles. The lights are turning on and off every second. Eventually they tape the switches and the lights still go on and off all the time.

Oh, God. The family thought about going to a church for help, but their reverend said that exorc uh often made poltergeist cases worse and the bishop would probably not approve which like maybe he was trying to be a realist there but he really was their only line of defense and he told them not like fat chance pretty much yeah yeah and so they got kind of essentially turned away by the church helping them and that's when things get even worse because now heavy heavy furniture is lifting on its own and one time lifted off the ground and landed on diane who was coming up the stairs oh no so the furniture which also by the way if it wasn't heavy enough it was like apparently this big oak furniture it also had a really heavy

like old school sewing machine sitting on it oh shit and they both flew into diane and while she was coming up the stairs and was press was pressing her into the steps so philip and their mother tried to pull it off diane but what's really interesting is that when they were trying to pull it off of her they realized she wasn't crying she was crying because she was scared but she wasn't crying because she was in pain because the furniture wasn't crushing her it was just floating against her to hold her down and so they realized that she was totally fine and it was just fucking with them that is so sinister and creepy i mean like that furniture and she's a 12 year old girl on stairs like that would have killed her for sure yeah and launch that at a child and instead it just

wanted to hold her down and freak everyone out. Like show off that it could do it if it wanted to, which is so fucked up. Yeah, all it would take is me dropping this, you know? When they finally got it off of her, Diane obviously struggled through the night. But even more so because this girl, by by the way i don't know if it's like the parenting and we're all trying to act like everything's fine or if diane was totally chill with this i don't know what the vibe was but this girl's still going to bed in her own fucking bed like poor child it's trauma and her her room has been completely tarnished by this

thing furniture is being thrown at her like like like pinpoint at her like she's the target i feel like as a parent she shouldn't be left unattended at this point i would say probably not like i don't think as a parent i could sleep knowing she's in the other room like another dresser on her again well as she was sleeping that night she got flipped out of her own bed four times. Of course. And every time the mattress would land on her. Oh, God. So she'd get pushed out.

This is really effed up. I guess it's like someone would lift the mattress until she rolled off and then would keep pushing the mattress until it landed on her. And Mr. Nobody continued to break furniture. Mr. Nobody continued to break furniture. He would fill rooms with perfume smells and he began to make items of vanish and rematerialize. Okay. It started a parent, you know,

I like that. Well, I don't know about this because the thing he really liked to make disappear and then reappear were eggs from closed cartons. He like, okay, that happened to me one time. eggs from closed cartons. Okay, that happened to me one time. Pray tell. No, okay.

I promise I'm not trying to make this up. What are you talking about? Home from Trader Joe's and I bought a carton of eggs and I put all the groceries in the back seat. Excuse me. And at one point I got home and I pulled the groceries out. And I realized one of the eggs was missing.

And I thought, oh, that means it probably rolled somewhere in my car. So I'm like digging through my car. I tear the thing apart. Can't find it. And then I go, well, any day now it's going to start smelling. And it never did and i never found it i sold the car and um i everyone's like well you probably just bought it that way but like i do that thing every time i buy eggs i check the dozen yeah that they're not cracked so i was like

i don't know where it went could have fallen out in the bag it well i wasn't in there you brought all sex in oh i don't know anyway i don't know it was it's a stupid story which is why i never told it but the egg just vanished and i thought oh that egg's gonna reappear and like make my car smell terrible yeah it would at least smell bad i like got inside open the eggs 11 11 eggs speaking of things that shockingly don't smell that bad i've i might have told this story before, but my best friend in college, she had an old thing of milk. Did I tell you about milk?

I don't think so. We named him Milk. Oh, you named the guy Milk? No, no, no. It was Milk, and we just referred to it now as Milk. Oh, I'm sorry. You've given Milk a persona.

Yeah, we were lazy with the naming obviously but we bought a carton of milk and then it just expired and then we we just kept being too lazy to throw it away um and we were like let's see how bad it can get oh and so no wonder you don't like cheese I mean this is already a formative experience. It sounds like. So every now and then we would check milk and we'd be like, how's milk doing? And we would just see we would look through the carton to see if it was getting crazy, but we wouldn't open it because we wanted it to be as potent as possible. And we decided on his. We decided on milk's birthday, a.k.a. the anniversary of his expiration date.

We were like on milk's birthday. we'll open him and smell him you sound like me right now what are you doing so uh i think we made it past milk's birthday and we still didn't because we were like now we really have to see how long we have to go but my um my best friend she sick she got really um drunk one night and she got really hung over the next day and she couldn't get herself to throw up. And I was like, I think it's time we like hang out with milk. Em, you're so sick. And so we opened up milk to see if it would make her throw up. And get this, after a year of being completely closed smelled like nothing nothing nothing isn't that the craziest thing in the whole world smelled like nothing i wonder if it's like

because it didn't get oxygen into it i don't know but it also i mean it was completely separated so maybe like oh maybe it was solidified or something well it like totally i don't i like it was totally i mean it didn't look like milk after a year i'll tell you that gnarly um but we just kept passing it to each other being like it smells like air it smells like nothing and it was it was actually really anticlimactic because we'd waited a whole year but anyway milk away milk yeah after a decade now milk is somewhere and it's not in our fridge so milk has developed like an entire ecosystem and is like running the mayor of the town now i just think it should be studied because like you really would think after a year that thing would smell like like tons of whatever i'm impressed i am surprised'm surprised. Anyway, shout out to Milk.

Wherever you are. Wherever you are, whatever dumpster fire you've created for yourself. Mr. Nobody would make things appear out of nowhere and disappear out of nowhere, including eggs from the fridge. Apparently, without even opening the fridge door or opening the carton, eggs would disappear from the carton in the fridge apparently without even opening the fridge door or opening the carton eggs would disappear from the carton in the fridge and they would be found later dropping out of thin air onto the floor so now cracking and now there's like egg in your carpet and shit okay that would piss me off and like that those like you know how we always talk about, oh, I wonder. Like how these things materialize and disappear like that adds to the. Equation, because it's like, OK, it's just materializing in thin air, like it's not.

Yeah. Like this thing is getting picked up and moved somewhere. And then. No, it really it goes into the theory that there's another realm that it's being transferred to. Or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that there's another realm that it's being transferred to. Like a dimension or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I love that that's kind of like a modernized twist on like the demonic presence where it's like, oh, I can't, I'm not gonna just like biblically accurately smell like sulfur, but I will break eggs in your carpet. So over time, it smells like sulfur. So then your vacuum it smells like sulfur. So then your vacuum cleaner stinks like sulfur forever.

So Jean eventually runs into a friend who has some psychic tendencies named Renee. And she comes over to the house to help them out a little bit and all the only note we have about renee is that when she was over there uh somehow either she brought one with her or it was made for her when she got there so renee has a sandwich um and of course while she's there the lights go out and when they come back on a bite mark is mysteriously in renee's. And then Grandma's like, I don't know. That's the only thing that happens here. Sorry.

And then Renee takes the sandwich and goes home. She's like, not for you. With a potential demonic bite mark in it or just Grandma's teeth. Whatever it is, she still plans on finishing the sandwich when she gets home perfectly good sandwich yeah you just cut around the demon spit that's all um so anyway that's the only note we have about renee is that she appeared she a bite of her sandwich is missing

and then she left i love this so then joe, his sister comes over, another in-law in the neighborhood. She's a, her name's Maude and she's a skeptic. A lot of the family seem to be skeptics, but Maude is serious about this. She's like, I'm going to come over and debunk this once and for all. I'm so fucking tired of hearing about this thing. Like, let's just, let's just figure this out. Okay, Maude, what's your take at? you got well mod has a bit of a roller coaster because she uh she gets over there the lights start flickering by themselves and when they come back on

everything in the fridge has been thrown across the room later that night her fur gloves oh my god now we know what type of person maude is um her name is maude she can't help it um i know uh her fur gloves go missing and she blames the kids that's her skeptical thought she's like oh seems like really rude she doesn't sound like the fun aunt you know um she sounds like the one who, like, buys you, like, socks for Christmas. Fur gloves. Luggage. Fur gloves.

She's like, here, you can have your own fur gloves. I know how much you love mine. It's like, um, thanks? It's like, girl, we didn't want these. Mm-mm. So she thinks that the kids are throwing food out of the fridge. She thinks that they stole her fur gloves. But later, they appear, she finds them again in the middle of the night, thinks that they stole her fur gloves but later they appear she finds them again

in the middle of the night in a doorway and it thank you but it's gonna get worse because when she found them in the doorway they weren't just lying on the top of the door frame. No. By itself. And the other one was gripping the bottom of the door. As if something with a six foot wingspan was wearing them and holding the door. Like kind of sideways, like. Yeah. Peering out.

Or. I'm going to throw up. Or on both sides or like this like could be holding both sides and peeking over because i feel like that's a big shadow shadow person thing that people see them like peek around doorways yeah that's one glove was at the top of the frame the door frame and the other was at the bottom so like it had to come where like somebody says oh xyz is missing and they're like oh i haven't seen it and then they show up like wearing it and you're like that's my fucking coat like the guy's like i haven't seen your gloves i'm sorry it's like i can see them on your hands i will say this is the first demon i've ever heard of that really loved a fur glove so yeah i was like in my mind i'm like you're a demon don't you already just naturally have

furry gloves on like furry hands that'd be part of the deal yeah but hey this one loves fashion so accessorizing it's a work it girl yeah um so remember maude is a skeptic how could i forget but then maude sees this happen and she turns into m schultz because she starts singing a christian song our god um which i don't blame her girl i would be lord's prayer you i know everything i would like whatever it takes to get those creepy little gloves away from me all of a sudden i'd never want the gloves again yeah yeah forget it forget it forget it so she starts singing a christian song and one of the gloves comes off of the door frame floats in midair and starts moving as if it's

conducting her singing then light bulbs in the room i guess come off of their fixtures and begin floating in midair while the glove is moving it's like a candlelit uh sonata happening here this is quite a portrait we're painting then the bulbs and the gloves all vanish out of nowhere so she's missing her fucking gloves so all done yeah bye-bye around this time uh gene the wife she names the poltergeist fred which i love that she said mr nobody is not enough so it's not happening i'm sorry the children are scared his name's fred now also a quick question sorry to interrupt but was that happening at maude's house so like she she she no she stayed the night um oh so it's still in their house yeah she stayed the night to try to debunk whatever was

going on great okay i like that this thing was like have you figured it out yet yeah uh it's not the kids it like wanted the credit but it was like but you still can't have your gloves back it's like i'm taking those and the light bulbs bitch like nice try mod so uh gene nicknames the poltergeist fred even though he already had a nickname but whatever um and they can often now feel like nobody mr it's Fred Nobody. Maybe that's his first name. Mr. Frederick Nobody. Mr. Frederick Nobody. That makes sense. Just saying. He starts just giving off bad vibes without doing anything.

So like even without activity around, they can sense him. And they say before he does something, they all feel an icy chill in the air. Yet Marie from across the street and her husband vick they consult another priest for the family um and this priest says that an exorcism would be ineffective at this point but they suggest which like ineffective at this point does that mean any other exorcism story we've heard was a lighter case exactly and also like you were the ones who said oh sorry we can't help you and then later you're like oh sorry it's too late now it's like well you're the one who rejected us the first time i feel like this priest just didn't want to have to deal with

it i feel like he was like right off that sounds like a lot of work so no so i'm really busy he i am really busy i have to go wash my hair that day um that to be fair that's a problem he um suggested like oh an exorcism wouldn't work but if you wanted to try something i guess you could try holy water and praying i'd be like um excuse me mr priest but how about i suggest you try holy water and praying during an exorcism how come on over uh so vick uncle vick comes over and he does this he's fucking doing the priest's job so he starts sprinkling holy water everywhere saying prayers and once he used the holy water they hear banging and what they see water trickling down the walls as if the house is rejecting the blessing yeah then so they hear banging water is coming

out of the house and then a crucifix falls off the wall and throws itself at diane this poor little girl she cannot get enough this child it's so sad crucifix gets thrown at diane and i don't know what hollywood movie trick this is but the crucifix that got thrown at her sticks to her back and won't come off of her okay it took a child it took a while for the family to completely get it off of her like they had to rip it off of her. Like they had to rip it off of her and it left a big red mark on Diane for days. That is so sad. Soon pictures of Jesus himself start falling off the walls. And when they woke up the next morning,

upside down crosses were painted on all the doors. Ew! Sorry, that was really loud. In those moments, I'm sure that was very terrifying, but I also want to know like what shade did he pick you know yeah yeah yeah it was probably the shade she was like fucking painting the wall like the oh like using paint that was nearby that's that's smart i was thinking like

did he just like go through the pantone like just like an ombre cross um lights continue to flash on and off on their own and items continue to weirdly disappear and reappear one example is a coat that they found uh that had gone missing they found it coat i don't know about fur but it would it would add to the ensemble wouldn't imagine that showing up in the doorway you're like wow the transformation's complete all we need now are some flashy boots and we'll get walking um so one of the families one of the family members coats went missing and they found it in a shed under a pile of coal ew and when they pulled it out i don't know how this works but

when they pulled it out it was completely clean as if there was no coal or dust or anything on it. What does it even mean? Yeah, I'm like, does that mean it looked clean under the pile of coal or did it look fucked up and somewhere between you grabbing it and pulling it on its own it did a transformation? I don't know. That is so bizarre. Another example is that when Jean was cleaning out the chimney one day, 19 keys fell out of the chimney of the fireplace. And she put together all 19 keys and realized that 18 of them were her own keys that they'd lost throughout the house. And a 19th was a strange old key she'd never seen.

This is so effing creepy. she'd never seen this is so effing creepy shortly after fred starts physically appearing before the family honestly finally because finally show yourself first he shows up in a doorway and he looks like a monk in a black hooded robe hence the black monk of pontefract makes sense when it appeared uh oh sorry then it appeared at a neighbor's house which i you know that neighbor was the one that was complaining the most about noise oh he's like i'm finally here to address like complaints yeah exactly look me in the eyes and tell me i'm too loud. Again, he was described as a monk in a black habit. Then Renee, sandwich girl. She comes over to Jean's house and she sees it after the lights turn out by themselves.

The lights are out and she now sees this thing. She says it was floating in a black robe. Gross. OK, so it's presenting the same to these multiple people. Yes. Then the kids see it while watching TV and it appeared on the other side of the kitchen door. And when they went to go look, it sank into the floor and vanished. Gross.

Soon after this, it grabs Diane by her throat. My God. And drags her up the stairs. by her throat my god and drags her up the stairs which like i wonder if it's i wonder what that means because when it was i'm assuming weeks ago at this point when it was throwing huge furniture and almost letting it land on her just to freak everyone out yeah it clearly had the potential to hurt her then and didn't so like why is it now grabbing her by the throat and dragging her maybe it had to excuse me this is like just me talking at my ass but maybe it had to like develop enough power to actually harm someone

or physically harm i don't know i don't know or it's just like. I feel like it's such a ghost thing that like have an object whiz past you and like hit the wall or like. And so my my thought has always been, is there like some law of nature, like some invisible law we don't know where like they can't actually hurt us? I don't know. But obviously now it is. So I have no idea. Or maybe maybe it just likes the long con and was like, I just want you to, I just want to mentally torture you first. That's true. Like that's still, I mean, it sounds like an abuse tactic. Like, oh, I could hurt you if I wanted to.

And then like months, years later, be like, okay, now's the time. Yeah. It's like gradually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so now it's grabbing her by the throat, dragging her up the stairs. Later, she had red finger marks on her from that, but she's dragging her up the stairs later she had red finger marks on her from that

but she's getting dragged up the stairs and philip and their mom grab her and when philip tried to grab the at the ghost or grab it whatever was holding her the entity let go of diane and it made all of them fall down the stairs oh gosh it was kind of like uh when you're playing tug of war and one person lets go so the other person goes backwards. That's that evil trick that I always do and nobody likes it. Yeah. I'm sure Zandy loved it growing up. Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure he's not traumatized at all. One morning they wake up and the hall carpet is soaked through with water and also covered in hoof prints. No. covered in hoof prints. Ah! No! Then whatever is in this house starts mimicking animals and they start hearing cow and chicken noises throughout the house and more eggs start dropping out of thin air. But now

instead of smelling like eggs, it smells like perfume. Oh god. Oh weird! When a visitor mentioned the family's clock it shattered immediately i like i mean don't comment on anything it's just don't don't talk about the kids um but uh and yet the family just kept living life amongst this poltergeist. I mean, like, I don't know why after all this stuff they haven't moved. This thing is grabbing your kids. Like, yeah, that's what I worry about. This poor child.

Well, one day Joe's friend who had just come back from Scotland said that, oh, you know, I heard over there in Scotland, one of the things that they do is they hang garlic over doors and windows and that protects them from spirits. So not to make this super abrupt, but the family tries that and it works. And there's no more activity in the home after that. It was all they had to do that entire fucking time was hang garlic up. They must be so pissed off. Like, really?

Couldn't you have told us this three years ago? Like we had garlic on the counter and in the fridge this entire time. He was throwing it around. We could just hung it up. Yeah. But this poor child is like probably never going to eat garlic again. She's like, I can't eat garlic. It's a long story.

Yeah. it's a long story yeah i so a lot of people do actually think that um the garlic being hung isn't actually what ended the spirit they think like it just aligned perfectly like it's coincidental that like the poltergeist just kind of ends activity at the same time they hung it up um or they think like hey maybe the poltergeist like finally got it in some way they're like we're rejecting you. Go away. They don't really know. It's just like it could be a total coincidence, but it's just so odd.

In the 1980s, an author named Colin Wilson interviewed the family, and he was surprised at how normal the entity had become in their lives, because when he was asking them questions, they didn't even seem traumatized. They talked about it like a cousin who was living there like they were just like oh like an old roommate oh yeah um diane the little girl even later said that yeah it terrorized her but she never sensed any true harm and part of me is like huh like it was it threw furniture on you it flipped you out of bed it grabbed you by the throat it was flinging you around i think it's harm like i sense you're allowed to sense harm it's okay i wonder if it's like just a coping mechanism at this point poor thing um one guy named tom cunniff uh he heard about the poltergeist and looked into the priory that used to be there thinking that that might have some history to it but they no one found anything reporters didn't find anything this at

this point they think that the spirit could be from any time period because remember that town is literally ancient and full of burial sites it could be from any time um and maybe because of that another theory is that the land itself is so powerful it allowed the spirit to start out that strong um they think maybe the location alone because of its history gave the spirit some sort of power to draw from and then the classic theory is that the spirit was drawing power from the kids which is why it was going after diane so much. And anyway, so this house is called a lot of times the Amityville of the UK, which is somewhat,

it's somewhat ironic because a lot of people think that the story has a lot more authenticity than Amityville does. So, but there's a director named Bill Bungay who made a movie about the house. And when he found out that the house was for sale so I guess they finally left he found out the house was for sale he bought it and used it for the movie's premiere so no way like how wild is that that you could watch a movie about a house in the house I would be delighted and terrified for sure I'd go for sure. I'd go for sure. I'd be fucking wearing necklaces of garlic, but I'd go. I would be eating just cloves of garlic, but yeah. After buying the house,

visitors were talking about the poltergeist a lot, especially in the house. The movie was playing. And I guess because the poltergeist was getting some sort of attention, activity started happening again in the house. Oh boy. And I don't know more details on that, but the director ended up writing the poltergeist was getting some sort of attention activity started happening again oh boy um and i don't know more details on that but the director ended up writing his own experience about the house um into his book called the black monk of pontefract and the house is now open to visitors and investigators if you are interested in going so jeez anyway that is the black monk of pontifery that is creepy that's one of the creepiest haunting stories i've heard in a long time i that one i was floored that i hadn't covered it i would love to go there oh no well i would go with you but you know where like spongebob his breath was really bad

that would be me with garlic i'd have to yeah me too don't worry i i'd just be seeping bad fumes if i ever went into that house because i'd be so scared where i don't have a nose because it won't phase me in the slightest you know i'll just stand there and be like what's everyone so concerned about oh lord i would go i would go okay good to know i will follow you in and i will be the first one out so i just love that em's just gonna follow me in there because i was like well why i wonder if at this point i wonder if any of so like in nearby like within 15 minutes of me is marty mcfly's house from back to the future oh yeah and the original family doesn't live there anymore but the original neighbors still live there and if you go over there and take pictures of the house the neighbors sometimes will come out and

tell you stories about when they were filming there i wonder if like all the fucking in-laws someone still has to live in that neighborhood mod mod's gotta be there or like uncle vick or mr o'donnell someone grandma sarah oh no she might not be with us anymore but um but uh someone from that neighborhood still could be there i would like to go talk to them be like how fucking loud was it from your house like all the gossip do you have an old copy of that newspaper where it got its name mr nobody like i want to know the dirt from someone who was there you know hell yes i mean i'm looking right now at uh this page and i would really like to go what page sorry the page for the house it's uh 30 east drive.com 30 east drive.com it's got its own website that's so badass oh hell yeah and the visitors comments here's a

handwritten one it was a terrifying experience this place is one if not one of if not the most haunted house in the world all my love uh all my love all my love Yvette kiss kiss I have a feeling Yvette's never coming back um never see you again but um I I definitely um you know if all the poltergeist wanted was some attention, I guess he's getting it now. Right. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds like he's finally like thriving. So congratulations to everybody. Thank you. You're welcome.

I don't know. I want to go. It sounds like something I would I would like to do. So Eva, escort Christine to the Black Monk of Pontefract. I'll be here. Don't worry about it. I'm not attending. I'll check out the emails.

I'll cover the emails for you guys. Have fun. All right. Bizu bizu. Yeah, bizu bizu. All right. And I'll sign your name in the guest book, Em, just in case. Okay.

I am going to tell you a story today. This is the story of the George brothers. And it's a doozy. So we're going to hop right into it. I love when we have a double doozy episode. Okay, it's a double doozy. And these are two twins. So it's a double, double doozy.

It's a quadruplet doozy. Oh my goodness. Uh-oh, quadruple doozy. Uh-oh, twin brothers, doozy. Uh-oh. Twin brothers, Chris and Jeff, were born in 1980. Two parents, Denise and John Paul George. The two boys grew up in Wellington, Florida. Have you heard of this town?

No. Should I have? Well, I don't know. Because apparently it's like really up like this fancy ass town. Very upscale. It's where Yvette lives. For sure. No doubt.

I love that you thought that I might know about it. Well, I know. I said that because, well, I said that because I think you're very fancy, obviously. But I also said that because it's known for people like former Prince Harry, who spent time there and played, competed in polo there. So I didn't know if this was something people knew about. And I was just, you know, the odd one out. But I'm, I'm, I'm with you. I don't know. You're with me. Okay, great. So it's an upscale community. It's known for its horses and polo,

and it attracts billionaires like Bill Gates, celebrities, even royalty, like I mentioned. And the dad, John Paul George, was enjoying massive success as a home builder in Florida. And he wanted like these just, I mean, he built like these massive McMansions, you know. And so he wanted his family to have a luxurious life, and that was his goal. So Chris and Jeff, the twin boys, they grew up with everything they could have ever wanted. Toys, ATVs, like anything that struck their fancy, their parents would buy for them. They were athletes and scholars who grew up competing in everything from tennis and hockey to mathematics competitions.

And they had this kind of relationship with each other that their stepdad would later call a love-hate relationship. It was like they were always competing, but then they had each other's backs if something went wrong if that makes sense like it was like a like a charming rivalry um except not so charming but but yeah yeah a rivalry a rivalry that frenemies it was so yeah frenemy if frenemies

that's probably the best way to put it it was like okay they hated being apart but then when they were together they were just bitching at each other the whole time or like trying to one-up each other it's like you and xandy oh it's so annoying to be in a room with the two of you i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding it's not like that it's not like that because i think um i would not participate anymore if that were the case you know what i mean like if i were dealing with this i'd be like okay you win the fucking competition i don't care about polo okay yeah yeah um yeah so they were very competitive um and their parents divorced when they were about eight years old and denise remarried a man named michael hagerty a firefighter and uh he met the twins when they were nine in 1989 and got the impression that the boys were a little difficult and later commented about their kind of love-hate, front-of-meet relationship with one another.

They hated being apart. But then, you know, it's like very toxic. Like they hated being apart. But then when they spent time together, it was just like butting heads the whole time. Like they kind of loved the conflict. Yeah. It's like they kind of love the conflict it sounds like they kind of it's like they thrived i wonder i wonder what what month they were born in because i feel like that might give us a little insight um yeah look it up yeah it's giving fire energy i'll tell you that it is

giving fire energy i was gonna say gemini energy but i think you're more right with the fire uh uh date of birth. What? Are they Geminis? They're Scorpios. Okay. Well, good to know. 11-11 they were born. No comment. What are the odds that they're twins born on 11-11?

That feels weird. Feels weird. Yeah, it feels like it could have gone in such a different direction um not that you know where we're going but it's not good as you can probably guess sure so okay scorpios i'm a little surprised by that but also not okay Okay. Anyway, so they... I got no comment. I've said enough about Scorpios in my life. Yeah, Em has stepped out of the conversation. When they were young, they started a brush fire that became a forest fire and took firefighters two days to control. And they ended up having to do community service as punishment. And it didn't really hit me until right now that their stepdad was a firefighter imagine how pissed off he must have been oh my god like their kids their teenagers they started a fucking forest fire oh god yeah

i'd be pissed that's got to be a high tension household awkward dinner awkward awkward awkward indeed they started fights in hockey so often that their mom, Denise, stopped going to games because charges like theft, vandalism, obstruction of justice. And according to their stepdad, Michael, their father, John Paul, always called his attorney and was always able to pull them out of whatever trouble they'd gotten themselves into. And we know how that goes when you have no consequences for any of your actions as a teenager. It goes bad. So they usually only had to do like minor amounts of community service and never really faced any consequences for their actions. And allegedly, their father told them they could do whatever they wanted because they were smarter than the police and everyone else. Oh, damn. Wow. We are just building ourselves a pair of narcissists, huh?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You know what? It's not even framed that way in my notes, we are just building ourselves a pair of narcissists, huh? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You know what? It's not even framed that way in my notes, but you just hit the nail on the head. Yes. Well, if you're telling them you can have anything you want except a single consequence and also you're smarter and better than everyone. You're better than the police and everyone else. You are superior in all ways and have all the power to do whatever you want.

But also I'm going to kind of rile both of you up and pit you against each other. Also, you're Scorpios, so good fucking luck. Good luck. Good luck. Jeff and Chris, as you basically just said, were really never told no about anything. Jeff considered himself an entrepreneur. Okay, sorry. Sorry, that was fucked up to laugh at okay i'm so

was it i guess so i know what i i just know on a first date he would be the worst i mean it's like i'm an entrepreneur and then like couldn't give you a single piece of information on anything except like bitcoin it's like oh i work all right exactly like i work in finance and it's like no you like bought bitcoin last week and you're really proud of it okay yeah calm down calm down but his parents his dad i'm sorry when he was by the way his dad john paul was interviewed and was like these boys and once you know like how far this has gone later on you know it was like jarring to see the dad be like oh these silly kids and i'm like um okay okay i can't wait to get angry give a shit but uh the dad called his son's entrepreneurs uh which is quite a choice of a word but anyway uh in an interview jeff

described himself as more of the ideas person, and he considered himself more creative and spontaneous than his brother, Chris, who was more kind of the straight-laced, like, more cerebral of the two. So Jeff opened a business called Shutter King. Wow, he is an entrepreneur. wow he is an entrepreneur where he would install storm shutters uh to protect homes during hurricanes um fun fact his shutters didn't work and when hurricane francis when hurricane francis hit all of them broke and properties were damaged and uh his business rapidly went under uh in a number of legal settlement settlements but jeff kind of didn't give a shit so he just kind of moved on um because he had a new interest which was treasure ocean treasure hunting um which is an interest i didn't

know i had until this very moment um i mean it on one side I can see it because I also love geocaching I get it I get it I get it but like I feel like he really did just decide like oh I am a scuba diver and I know exactly what I'm doing and I'm going to get my own boat just for the fun of it and then I'll also

have someone throw a treasure chest down and then I'll go digging for it and also yeah you know what that's it it reminds me of like when royal families way back when would have like people like hold their gun for them yes hunting and I'm like is that hunting are you really good at hunting or are you just like making people do it for you like if you went on an excursion with other people and like you were amongst the people it'd be one thing but you know he made his dad buy him a yacht so he could jump off of it to go diving for oh do you mean his treasure boat that his dad bought him his dad bought his dad bought him a treasure boat was it called ocean Gate or something?

Yeah, maybe. I mean, the predecessor. What was the... Okay, so I was totally on point then. So he got his own treasure boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He got his own treasure boat from his dad. And then within four or five days, he said he didn't want to do it anymore. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, like, you get it. to do it anymore. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, like, you get it. You get it. We all know people like this. Or we don't necessarily know them, because I don't know anyone who's ever gotten a treasure boat from their dad on a whim, but I've known of people with similar tendencies. So he lost interest in less than a week. And he was this very live large sort of guy.

He just wanted to be in everyone's face. He wanted to annoy people because he got a kick out of it. For example, he once found out that his extremely loud monster truck, which, by the way, he would like park in the front yard of his house. He found out that people were annoyed his neighbors were complaining about how loud his monster truck was so he he cut off the muffler so that it would be even louder and he actually wound up in the news for it and like labeled as a nuisance and in the photo he's like proudly posing with his monster truck uh disgusting you know he by the way i think lives in my neighborhood because there's someone who uh it seems as the

days go on the car gets louder i don't know what he's doing it's the worst so i absolutely side with the neighbors i can't stand when you hear someone start the revving and you're like oh we're in for a solid 30 seconds of this nonsense. You know, we have to wait. In our neighborhood. I mean, it's not our neighborhood is very close to like the main street and all that. So like cars are always driving by. But it's wild when we're walking on like the main street and we hear the same sound from like we know what the car looks like just because outside of our home we have seen the car driving and we're like see so you can pinpoint it i'm like oh that's the car

that pisses us off every night oh it's the guy with the giant penis yeah i know i think you meant giant treasure boat but yes the same thing oh sorry that's the name of the boat um the giant penis i have a giant penis is what it's called just in case anyone was wondering um imagine the fan art of the treasure boat also i played a lot of uh ocean barbie ocean discovery as a child and i discovered a lot of treasures and it was a lot of hard work so i can i can see why after a few days he was zero dollars by the way and also i made zero dollars believe it or not you also spent zero dollars like you you did his whole thing and you didn't have to bother anybody financially that's right my mom just paid 1999 at uh for your entertainment to buy me the cd-rom bingo that's

all you had to do honestly Honestly, easy enough. He should get a tip from an entrepreneur like me. Just the tip on his boat called I Have a Big Penis? Just the tip. Somewhere in there, there's a semen joke of him being a semen. Oh, God. Well, there it is. He is just a dast. He's a douchebag. And, um, even though Chris is the more like level-headed cerebral guy by all accounts, um, as we can tell the bar is low. So he's not really that impressive of a guy. That's because they started using steroids, both of them, um, because they were bodybuilders, uh, amateur bodybuilders, of course.

Of course, for five days. For five days. And they wanted to one-up each other, right? They're like always competing. And so they both start taking steroids to bulk up and be the bigger one. You know, they're always trying to one-up each other. So they have this new hobby. And Chris decides he's going to buy steroids from an online dealer in Eastern Europe. So the steroids arrive.

This is like in the 90s, by the way. So the steroids arrive and they are hidden in an unassuming VHS tape. Ooh, so sneaky. So Chris used some of this and then sold the rest to friends. This became a pattern. They were, he was selling them to his friends and he got caught and he got charged with his first felony in 2003. He was sentenced to eight months in prison and he was allowed to serve in a work release program so he could continue working for his father's construction business. And his dad

kept kind of giving them second chances and 18th chances and 11,000th chances, letting them work for the company thinking like, okay, they figured out they've learned their lesson and they're back to hard work. So that's not what happened. They did what they wanted. They got away with pretty much everything and And they barely ever had to apologize. Maybe pick up some trash on the side of the road. Ew.

Ew. I want to be treasure hunting. Daddy. Yeah. It must have been a tough life. Eventually, Jeff and Chris said, you know, we're two entrepreneurs. Why don't we start a business together? So they start a business.

It's called South Beach Rejuvenation. Okay. Okay. This is a hormone replacement clinic where they provided testosterone and HGH, human growth hormone, to athletes. And the way that this would operate is that, quote unquote, patients would attend a telemedicine appointment by phone and were immediately prescribed steroids, which were delivered straight to their homes. Like, it's not really, nobody got a no, you know what I mean? Like, there's really no barrier to accessing this stuff uh through these guys they did blood work quote unquote but it was just for show um because everyone was immediately

approved so it was you know a racket and so the two brothers wanted to buy out similar competing clinics and so they met up with this guy named 38 year his name's not 30 they met up with this 38 year old guy named dr overstreet now dr overstreet was locally named known as the candy man oh yikes not big yikes uh he's called the candy man because he tells them the real money is in pain management clinics and painkillers opiates so the two brothers are like shit we're in uh they pay easy they hear easy money and they're like fuck yeah uh so they pay 36 dollars at the local tax collector's office for a license to sell pain medication without any further inquiry despite having a felony he's a convict despite having a felony on his record they don't even look into it

because back then in florida there was basically no oversight on opiates and so they just got this license to sell drugs uh they're not medically experienced they have prison records wow but i guess they can give out so did they end up the if they were trying to buy out the candy man it sounds like they ended up just joint like being in cahoots with him yeah so they met up with him and basically he said hey why don't you buy into this business we'll start you off i'll show you the ropes and then you can kind of start building your own like empire sort of and he would get a cut uh okay yeah so he kind of taught them the ropes and they paid this 36 bucks they got the license and in no time chris and jeff were each running their own pain clinic uh there was south coast pain clinic and

east coast pain clinic and dr overstreet owned 50 of the business and the brothers co-owned 50 but only weeks into the operation dr overstreet died in a car crash and the brothers realized oh fuck yeah now we don't have to share it with him so they're now highly quickly hiring their own doctors they are uh apparently hiring these doctors via Craigslist. They put they put up posts on Craigslist saying we will pay you per patient like thousands of dollars. basically for anybody the vibe was if you have lost or if you have um been fired from a practice for doing something unsavory or we'll give you a second chance yeah welcome to our club yeah we'll let you in and we'll pay you big bucks and so there were there's like a former proctologist a plastic surgeon like just these random doctors signed up to participate.

And they were paying these doctors per patient rather than as shareholders. And so the idea behind the pain clinics was shockingly simple. The doctors would just dangerously overprescribe oxycodone and Xanax, among other drugs, to virtually every single patient that visited the clinic. Oh my god. Yeah. And because they were paid per patient, they had an incentive to see as many and prescribe as many pills as possible. And I don't know enough about the pharmaceutical world, but the people who have to send you xanax when you run out did they not notice that those clinics were running out of xanax a lot faster than any other pharmacy um no because they were able to prescribe the drugs in-house and give them in-house fulfill the prescriptions in-house okay so they had like a one-stop shop

where you go in it's not only the prescription but also the pharmacy so they would you'd walk out and they'd say all right here's your pills bye uh and you'd leave so it's a easy in and out wild and because they were paid per patient these doctors they had this incentive to see as many patients as possible and eventually patients were in there for only 45 seconds to three minutes oh my god per patient and uh allegedly at one point at least from the i say allegedly because i wasn't sure if this was factual, but it was mentioned by a reporter in a documentary I watched, reportedly one of these clinics could rake in $50,000 in a single week. Oh my God. Like they were making bank. Oh my God.

What a scandal. What a scam, scam and scandal. Scam, scandal, yeah. It's a scandal. So Jeff and Chris also paid the doctors a thousand dollars extra a week to use their DEA registration. So they needed their medical license and DEA registration, which Blaze had to have when he was doing the opiate withdrawal for people and helping. Oh, my God, Christine, it's been so long. I'm sorry. He's going to kill me. Whatever. But when he was prescribing that, he needed that license.

And so, you know, if you had that license and you wanted to make some big bucks really fast, you could join this place. They would give you $1,000 a week if you went online and ordered the maximum amount of pills that your DEA registration would allow you to purchase. And it would get shipped straight to their in-house pharmacy so they could just peddle it out to people as they came in. So they were running a racket, profiting off sales of pain medication, and they were not the only ones. Once drug dealers heard about how easy it was to get prescription drugs at these clinics, they also wanted to get in on it. And for example, one dealer visited as a patient to check out the clinic. The doctor told him to stretch down and touch his toes. He said he couldn't, and so the doctor prescribed him

180 oxycodone tablets for his pain. I also can't touch my toes, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hand them over. Yeah, I guess so. And you would have been able to. And so he was prescribed a total of 240 pills at his next appointment oh my god starting at 180 going to 240 you can see how this is becoming a big problem very fast yeah the guy said it was

just so simple and like i have an experience in a different uh realm of this but when i lived in la we when we first moved there uh marijuana was still uh medicinal only uh it became recreational soon afterward but at the time i was like oh i'm gonna get a medical marijuana card did i ever use it no but i went and got it just in case yeah and uh i went in and i was all nervous like oh my gosh like I want to make sure I ace this test the guy basically said like oh do you have any trouble sleeping I'm like yeah um I do and he's like okay here's your prescription and I was like oh that what oh I thought that was just like one of many questions nope that's how that's uh in a way. When I went to go get diagnosed for ADHD, I thought I was gonna have to like pass it. Yeah, I pass a test or like I need to say the right things, which like I, I was just scared that I was going to overthink it and then they wouldn't take me seriously. But before they even start asking me any questions, within like two sentences, they're like, you have ADHD adhd right and i guess i could just tell by the way i talk so and i will say those companies are also getting so much scrutiny about

like the lack of oversight on um adhd medication too so i think that's like the next thing they're gonna the government's gonna like buckle down on because I've witnessed that a lot where it's like you just hop on. They're like, it's just an app. You go on five minutes and they prescribe you Ritalin. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, I mean, I would say it's probably a more legit operation by far than what's happening here. But it does have similar overtones. Vibes. Yeah. Vibes. by far than what's happening here but it does have similar overtones vibes yeah vibes another dealer started sending random people he called his patients as in like his clients

to the clinic and he told them if they got prescribed pain medication he would buy them back from them for five hundred dollars these patients would make a quick $500 for just going in there and not touching their toes, I guess. And then this dealer would be able to sell the pills at an enormous profit on the street. So he sent 10 to 15 people to the clinics every day, and he was making in cash daily $5,000 to $6, thousand dollars just doing nothing, just basically selling what he was getting from these people. Wow. My current fair state has struggled with a lot of drug problems when it comes to stuff, when it comes to opiates. You know, it's a it's a rough time here and Appalachia especially. And so people began to hear word that there was this clinic in Florida, in South Florida, where you could drive, walk on in and leave with a bunch of painkillers.

And so people from Kentucky started traveling to South Florida several times a week to pick up drugs and then they would drive back and sell them in Kentucky for a profit. And then they would drive back and sell them in Kentucky for a profit. Some of the medications were unknown in the region. And the dealers, what they would do is give them away to get people hooked. But then, as we now know, opiates are an extremely addictive substance. And so people would pretty much get hooked immediately. And then the demand would skyrocket yeah uh out of the police made an interesting point that like they in appalachia they were like we knew that we knew the street

price for oxy and it was 30 a pill he's like and then one day we one of our informants said, by the way, Oxy prices have dropped to ten dollars a pill. And they're like, that's suspicious. Yeah. So basically they started looking into it, realizing people were getting these just like heaps of pills from Florida, bringing them back. And so, you know, now they were able to meet the demand. The price dropped. And so that's kind of how they started to catch on to what was going on. Ah, OK. OK, OK.

So out-of-state dealers also started renting buses to carry, quote unquote, patients to Florida for pain medication. And they claimed to be sponsoring sick people who needed access to medical care. They were mostly people with addiction who wanted a refill on their pain meds. One group drove in a bus that said Tree of Life Baptist Church on the side. And they all wore matching T-shirts to try and pass as a church group on a mission to provide health care to those in need. That was their backstory. Wow. I mean, it's just wild that it was everyone's in on it.

Yes. We're not even pretending like, oh, no, everyone's here for individual reasons. It's like, no, no, we're all playing this together. There's no subtlety at all and i'm sure there you know there were people i'm sure there were people who went in genuinely for sincere but a lot of these addictions start that way like you have genuine pain like you have back pain you have uh xyz chronic pain conditions and so it's hard because it's like yeah people are addicted but it doesn't mean like they weren't using it originally for the intended purpose. And a lot of times people are prescribed opiates totally above board and then become addicted and have to find the drug elsewhere.

Yeah. So it's not necessarily like, oh, they're just like doing drugs. not it's not necessarily like oh they're just like doing drugs it's like you know now they feel they need it to stop the pain or you know what have you um so i'm sure some of them going in there genuinely had real chronic pain conditions um but overall it was just quite a racket jeff himself would simply sell drugs to a directly to a local dealer who would then sell them on the streets and so jeff at this point it's like we're not even pretending like i'm selling straight to drug dealers at this point as business boomed the brothers needed more staff they hired their male friends to work in their offices and they hired female staff off of

Craigslist ads that required women to submit photos of themselves to be considered. Cool. Great. Okay. They also eventually hired their mother, Denise. Do you think she had to send in a photo?

And Chris put his girlfriend in charge, who became his wife, in charge of an entire third clinic that saw nearly 200 patients a day. Wow. I know. It's crazy. At first, the clinic offices were like frat houses. According to one of Chris's employees, they did shots. They drank beer. They shot each other with tasers and anything else they could think of.

Just like fucking around. Yeah. They're just like totally fucking around. But Chris decided the business needed to look more legitimate. Every day there were lines of patients out the door, down and across the street. And of course, neighbors were getting A, suspicious and B, pissed off. Because there's people like just camped out in front of this building, sometimes like 45 people in the rain. And, you know, like how does it not how

did people not catch on earlier? How did like the neighbors, like the police not show up and be like, we've never seen a pharmacy with a line out the door like. So, you know, it's hard to say. I think it's a lot of things. I think part of it is that there just was no legal regulation, really, of this kind of thing. So it was like, well, it seems relatively above board, like they have a license, you know. And so at first it seemed like it's shady, but not much we can do. But honestly, really quickly, people were like, what the fuck is going on here? We're sure. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So it didn't last that long. Um, so it's looking shady, especially because people would leave the clinics with their prescriptions and immediately start to misuse them like shoot up in the parking lot and i guess uh the pills they were prescribing were water soluble which was something that um people who suffered from addiction preferred because you could crush it up

and inject it oh okay or snort it and it would hit your bloodstream instantly and so people would just hop in their cars in the parking lot or even just like on the sidewalk next to the building and like shoot up and so people were sleeping on the sidewalks people were you know i mean it's it's i mean even like it had to had to bring in like a whole like demographic of people that are now just like in neighborhoods that were never there before and now they're just all like camped out on streets and yeah yeah yeah it really pissed off the neighbors and like the neighbors were saying you know i had a shop across the street i looked out and there's like fights breaking out in the parking lot because people are,

you know, high or mad about. Or passing out in the street or like. Passing on the street. Like police are getting called because, you know, brawls are starting. Like they are definitely not being inconspicuous at all. And one thing, you know, you think about the people who would drive there from really far away. People would camp out out front because they were like, I want my fix. And they'd wake up in withdrawals and would want to be the first in line when they opened.

I mean, if I had an addiction and I knew this place, I would just never leave that street corner. I would just. Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense. Like, where are you going to? I would get high, pass out, wake up, go back inside. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is what it was becoming.

And of course, Chris kind of realized this is not a good look. And he wanted to make it look a little more legitimate. And he said, OK, neighbors are getting mad and suspicious. Authorities are going to start looking into this. And he was like kind of waiting for an investigation to start. He knew it was going to happen, but so far there was nothing. And that means it gave him time to hire retired DEA investigator, Lewis Fisher, as their consultant. And so Lewis's job was to inspect the clinics and submit a report to the major drug manufacturers who supplied the opiates. So he basically is saying, don't worry, Chris,

as long as you keep organized records of your patients and inventories, everything would be fine. Yeah, good luck with that. So sometimes drug distributors would visit to do inspections before they would sign off on sending more deliveries for obvious reasons like why are they buying 10 000 oxys you know it like i'm sure there were people who like we got to do a little quality control and like pop on in and see see where this stuff is all going and so when an interviewer asked whether those inspectors found anything suspicious uh lewis said suspicious is not really defined in the law it's a judgment call i'm like that seems like you're just trying to evade telling us what was so suspicious i was gonna say it sounds like you're friends with these guys and not really

trying to uphold anything yeah it seems like you're not telling us the whole truth and nothing about the truth it was hugely profitable this is where it gets dicey because you have to remember that these giant pharmaceutical companies that are technically above board are also raking in the billions because they're they're they're profiting off of all these drugs being bought and made and so they were pretty easily able to ignore the red flags in fact it was profitable for everyone because a single delivery to the clinic could be worth one million dollars on the streets so it was almost like they were funneling money into the area this way, in the worst way, in the worst possible way. Opiates were all but totally unregulated in Florida. So the drugs just kept coming and there was not really anything to stop it. You know,

they were out on the streets just as fast as they arrived at the clinics, they were just being, what do you call it? Just being, I don't know, shoved out the door and just being thrown out like candy into the crowd. I don't know why that was my imagery. You know at a parade when they throw candy. Yeah, I got it. I got it. Okay, good, good, good, good, good. I got it. I got it.

Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. So to further legitimize his prescribing doctors, Chris hired a man who owned a mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile MRI unit.

Oh, okay. That'll do it. I bet that was also a Craigslist ad. Just a guess. I feel like he's going to show up in like this MRI will just be like some weird garage contraption. it's like stick your head in here it's like an off-brand tablet that he's like just uh stand against that wall and as it's like zapping it's like it makes some sound effects it's just an app he downloaded

yeah i feel like that's kind of what was happening, especially when you consider that they installed the mobile MRI unit behind the neighboring strip club. And that is where they would conduct these alleged MRIs. Anyone who wanted pain medication could go to the mobile MRI machine and their MRI results were sent to one of the Georgia's pain clinics within the hour. And then the doctor would prescribe pain medication to treat whatever injuries or not injuries, I guess, that the MRI detected. So while this is all going on, like, I hope they knew. I feel like Chris knew. Jeff might not have known. But they were heading toward. Cat catastrophe and that's exactly the word catastrophe trouble was a

bruin okay uh by the time local investigators were really beginning to get to the bottom of this most of the george's patients were not even from the state of florida they were traveling thousands of miles from other states to get to the clinics. And Jeff George said in an interview, while laughing, we created a new form of tourism. So he finds this hilarious. Meanwhile, competitors started opening pain clinics throughout Florida, which became known as pill mills. Oh, my God. Chris led basically a pain clinic mafia. He and his friends terrorized their competitors with threatening phone calls. He would even show up and harass them in the parking lot before they

went into work that day. He was trying to reign supreme as the florida pain clinic he did not want these competitors messing with his business they once even used ball bearings and slingshots to shoot out and destroy an office's windows and computers just to uh just to give them an advantage i guess i feel like and i guess it's just the growing up with no consequences and like somehow still getting away with this after all this time but like i feel like their thought is probably we'll we'll just call our lawyer and just you know you can do whatever you want we can slingshot windows and cause threat like those are real issues like that's assault and also property damage and it's wild that they just it doesn't even occur to them to like oh this isn't something our lawyer like

can't handle yeah like we'll get out of it some way or another yeah it's just so there's always a way out that's the thought process and oh god it's just, it just gets so much worse. Okay. So still, despite drug distributors simply advised Chris to change their business name to shake off the scrutiny. To what? To what? American Pain. Okay. Boring. okay boring but the fact that the drug companies were the ones that said change the name make it sound more legitimate like they're totally in on it yeah it's sick there had to be someone higher

up that was in on it did they get busted like or were they just this clueless like no i mean i think like the drug companies are just such big stalwart like there's just nothing no recourse you know wild so they're saying okay why don't you change the name then people won't be as suspicious uh so they did they became american pain meanwhile opiate deaths were through the fucking roof. Hospitals and first responders were seeing overdoses, DUI accidents beyond anything they'd ever experienced. It was shocking. It was upsetting to everyone but the George brothers. So a retired FBI agent who worked on the case said the George brothers did not start the opioid crisis, but they sure as hell poured gasoline on the fire. They became the largest street level distribution group operating in the entire United States. Nobody put nobody put more pills on the streets than they did. Nobody.

That's incredible. And it's incredible. All right. than they did nobody that's incredible and like it's it's incredible all right so i mean they were they did i don't know if they were fully responsible but they definitely were partially responsible then for at least a few overdose deaths right yes yes and we will definitely get into that okay okay you're exactly right okay of the 20 physicians who prescribed the most oxycodone in the entire country five so 25 of them worked at just one of chris's clinics oh my god oh my god that's how bad this place was but of course competitive as ever chris is like hell yeah that's a win for us you know not seeing like the giant red flags of like,

um, you're going to get busted. Okay. Like how he's trying to high five people on this. Right. He's like so impressed. He's like, I guess I'm out of another treasure boat, you know, like, okay, fuck you. He did not think this would be a red flag.

He basically said, I wanted my doctors to be the top prescribing doctors in the country. To me, that was an accomplishment and to that i say it's not an accomplishment if you just say everyone can get pills here you go yeah i was gonna say pat on the back for you then high five yeah good job bud chris eventually sold nearly half a billion with a b pills and half a billion pills just under chris's operation i would be living under like unbridled fear like just terror just total terror that today's the day i'm going to

get busted today's the day i'm going to get busted for sure at least like half a billion you have to at least look at the numbers of other places and kind of pretend to match them. Pretend to like be legit a little bit. But no, they've just lost all grasp of reality here. I'd be just so terrified. And it's almost a good thing in the end because it's what got them caught. But still, it's like how fucked up that they had to. The amount of those pills that ended up killing people,

causing addiction, creating addiction. I mean, it's it's really sickening. Chris, Jeff and all of their employer employees knew very well that people were dying. This was in the papers every day. These opioid deaths in Florida, as you can imagine, incredibly high numbers daily of people dying of overdoses. They just did not give a shit. They didn't give a single shit. I'll give you an example. When Chris found out three patients had driven away from his clinic after misusing the medication they received from him and got hit by a train, which killed two of the passengers he laughed on the phone and said

you gotta be an idiot to get hit by a train oh that was like my god literal reaction oh my god i don't know if it was happening yet but authorities were definitely tapping their phones so that would be a very chilling thing to overhear you know yeah uh it's really uh oh speaking of chilling investigators later said they found the brothers absolute lack of care for human life quote chilling uh the fbi dea irs and local authorities were closing in on the clinics, but they needed more hardcore, hard hitting evidence of the crimes before they like really swooped in. OK. When other clinics started to get raided, John Paul George, the dad, got nervous for his sons and thought, oh, because he's not he knows he knows what the fuck they're up to. Like he's suddenly buying his own treasure boats okay so his dad his dad's like wait a second he's not asking

me for money he must be doing some sort of some sort of racket is going on yeah something suspicious is happening and he called chris and he said the arrests are widening, so I don't know, be careful or something. Great advice. Thank you, Dad. Or something. Chris insisted he was doing nothing wrong and therefore couldn't get in trouble. And John Paul, his dad, said, don't think they're not building a case, Chris. And so he suggested Chris put his assets offshore in Belize to hide them. Classic. Classic.

Classic. Instead, the brothers hid $4 million in safes in their mom's attic in case investigators did search their houses. They did. Spoiler alert. And the clinics. Chris believed Jeff was being too careless with his dealings and would soon be arrested but chris thinking he was like the more savvy business-minded one and like less the kind of uh creative whatever one he thought okay jeff is being an idiot he's gonna get arrested but i am being super careful so i'm fine famous last words yep in reality both brothers were living outrageous

lifestyles spending millions on cars boats houses trips and anything they wanted like just the classic trope of like you illegally obtain all this money and suddenly you have like three bentley's in the garage and it like doesn't surprise me at all but they're like their impulsiveness to do anything of course it would fall into them spending yes exactly and they would spend it like that and on other people on women on strip, on cigars. And, you know, just the cliche of like what a 30 year old douchebag would spend his illegally earned millions of dollars on the backs of people who are overdosing. So you get it. The FBI just had to prove there was a crime being committed. They could not mess this up.

It was difficult to get anyone undercover as a patient. Derek Nolan was Chris's longtime friend and the muscle of the operation. Yeah, like any reputable medical office, they have a bouncer. Yeah. Like, okay. medical office there's a bouncer yeah like okay uh but i can see why they would need security you know if if people are either high or they're uh trying to get their fix or what have you someone's even like attacking them or want more or they're upset with the tensions could really escalate very fast so i do understand it um but so derrick nolan he was the muscle so to speak and what he would do is stand in the office and keep people under

control and uh if he didn't people basically treated the the clinic like they described it as like mardi gras every oh my god places would just park in the parking lot. Campers hang out all day outside partying. It was like Woodstock. They were just getting fucked up. Taking pills. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Taking pills, bringing their campers from other states and just parking out in the parking lot. It was just chaotic.

And so patients could also bribe secretaries to get earlier MRI appointments or faster prescriptions. So even what they're doing was not enough for some people. Like they were asking for more. I mean, this is addiction. You know, they're asking for earlier prescriptions for more pills. And the secretaries pocketed so much cash daily from these bribes that Chris started started taxing them hundreds of dollars a day and they still profited oh my god i was gonna say did was chris were chris and jeff even aware that now like there were other wheelings and dealings inside of this wheeling and dealing you know great question

they apparently were and their solution was fine but i get a cut okay yikes one clinic alone was bringing in tens of millions of dollars at one clinic oh my god it's crazy there was so much cash passing through their hands to fit in a register they simply kept large garbage cans behind the counter and they would just toss money into garbage bags like the big lawn bags and and big metal trash bags they would just store it in those they were like there's not room in the safe there's not room in what a problem to have big big problems to have that's where i keep all my wads of cash too by the way just in the trash yeah sad there was too much cash oh sorry still derrick tried to make the okay oh okay sorry so still derrick the muscle tried to make

the clinic look professional from the outside and he prided himself on recognizing undercover officers and informants. Oh, lucky you. You can sniff them out. What a skill. Yeah. He's basically eyeing these people and saying, like, I don't trust this one. He looks like a cop, you know. So what would he do in that event?

I'm sure they would probably say something like, oh, sorry, no appointments today. Yeah, right. But, like, that alone wouldn't petrify them into like getting their shit together because i'd be like if there's a cop in this place and everyone else is like clearly like an addict or going through something and desperate for like how how do they think that guy isn't taking inventory of what's happening in the room around him? I mean, my thought is Chris and Jeff's dad told them they're smarter than the police. Right. OK, don't worry about it.

So my thought is they probably were like, oh, yeah, they're trying to see if anything shady is going on, but it's not. They probably convinced themselves they're doing this technically above board and no consequences so as long as we kick them out before they can you know actually get anything on us i can't imagine having that kind of confidence i can't imagine that pressure for like yeah i would crumble immediately under that kind of pressure but oh yeah i guess not so one undercover investigator flew right under derrick's little nose and he did not catch on well i love that because i love when a narcissist says he's good at something and then he's not so it's like i'm really good at figuring out the cops this is the security guy derrick right right right so i mean who's to say he's not also a narcissist i don't know that but

he is the let me let me rephrase let me rephrase i love when men say that they're good at something and then they're not i love when a man named derrick tries to tell me he knows everything about other people and then just fucking gets duped you know gotcha derrick yeah gotcha derrick uh so one undercover investigator flew under the radar and let me tell you why because he looked just like george and jeff like the roided out rose shut up oh. Oh, my God. Which is hilarious. This undercover cop was like, oh, I can get in there. Watch. He was this really bulky dude.

He wore an Affliction brand T-shirt to work one day. So this guy, he, so Saoirse wrote a note here that like literally says, I'm not even joking. Picture a buffer. Zach Baggins said that's the vibe down to the shirt brand. But this is what this guy wore every day. And so one day he went to work and his other investigators, his boss said, hey, would you want to join this case undercover? And he's like, OK. He shows up to the clinic and they let him right on in.

He looks like one of them. You know, of course, of course. He told the prescribing doctor that he drinks several beers a day and he thought this would help him blend in. But the doctor said he felt uncomfortable prescribing medication to someone who drinks frequently. So he brought Chris in to consult as an expert. Expert. So Chris comes in and he's like, oh, yes, I have medical background. Like, obviously, this undercover officer knows that's not true.

And he told him, you know what, why don't you go to a different clinic? Chris said, I'll I'll call ahead. I'll make sure you get in right away and just make sure you leave out any details about the drinking because they might not prescribe it if you say that. But just lie about that and you can go over to this other clinic. So the investigator is like, well, man, I'd hate for you to lose out on business. Like he's clearly trying to get this guy to be like, you're right. Here's a bunch of pills. But Chris replied. Dude, all the clinics are exactly the same.

Don't even worry about it. And that was enough evidence. That was enough evidence because they needed proof of medical fraud, prescription fraud and even tax fraud and they felt like you know what we've got we've got enough so on march 3rd 2010 the george's empire came crashing down when the fbi the dia irs and county sheriff's office used warrants to raid the clinics as well as chris's house jeff's and even their mother, Denise, where, remember, they hid $4 million in the attic. Jeff, Chris, Denise, and 29 others, including 13 doctors, were charged under the federal RICO Act, which targets organized crime.

So now they're considered like an organized crime pocket. Well, they had the muscle. I guess they had a muscle. You're automatically in at that point denise was charged with 30 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud because she had lied on paperwork to misrepresent how many patients were coming from out of state basically they'd been cooking the books and the whole family was in on it gotcha chris pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, but only served 11 and was released in 2021.

Jeff also pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge and was sentenced to 15 and a half years. He was also found guilty of second degree felony murder due to a patient's fatal overdose linked to his clinic, which came with a second 20-year sentence. Oh, shit. And he is still in prison. Investigators painstakingly processed the files for 28,000 patients that had gone through. And by the way, that's 28,000 individual patients. that had gone through. And by the way, that's 28,000 individual patients. And most of these people were coming again and again, weekly, monthly, some daily. Oh my God. I can't imagine the paperwork. 28,000, but times however many visits per patient, you know? Oh my God. Oh my

God. 28,000. And from those files, they pulled 300 random files because they're like, we're not going through all 28,000. Pick 300 random ones. And they found that a shocking of those 300 patients, 10% of them had died due to overdose or DUI incidents. Oh, my God. 10%. Oh, my God. 10% of the random sample had died due to overdose and DUI incidents. That's crazy. That's crazy. Wow. That meant an estimated 3,000 deaths could be directly linked to these two brothers and their patients which doesn't even include the deaths due to

the pills that were just brought to other states and sold on the street you know like these pills went farther than just these patients like drug dealers were coming in and getting pills and selling them so that's we don't even know how many people it reached yeah yeah so it must have i mean you know it we can just guess at least 3 000 people died we can imagine like 3 000 is is the actual number they believe were linked to the brothers like that's a pretty good pretty solid guess we just don't know beyond the scope of their patients like how many people in appalachia or wherever died as a result of these pills crossing state borders oh my god and uh despite largely being considered the kingpin

of the country's worst and biggest opiate operation of all time Chris feels like he did nothing wrong of course well he's better than everybody so and he's an entrepreneur he's daddy said so he said in an interview it's their responsibility they're responsible for themselves i'm not i don't think we created more addicts they were already here oh shut up especially like fuck up like you know he's one of those people who's like well i didn't make them take the drugs it's like what are you talking about they're addicts like what are you talking about like they you you encouraged it you encouraged this people were dying because you were giving them easy access it's sick and also like not nothing, but these think about the people who had never touched the drug.

Yeah. Maybe just to try it or had pain, went there and all of a sudden they had like full blown access and they've fallen deep into this addiction because they opened the door for them. You know, exactly. for them you know exactly yeah i think one of the like they they actually in one of the documentaries they um interviewed uh victims of these guys and for example there were two moms whose kids died of overdoses one girl was 18 um and one son was i think 30 30 something and they talked about like they these people killed my daughter like they made it possible for her to have easy access they didn't know checks nothing just like sign a paper was part of was part of their um charges like third degree murder or manslaughter or something? No.

So the only charge was the one that Jeff got. Let me see. Which was the second degree felony murder due to a patient's fatal overdose linked to the clinic. That was the only one that really stuck or went anywhere. And he did get 20 years for that. But yeah, everyone else just kind of. I mean, they'd be in jail for life if that was. Oh, yeah. For life and another life and another life. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that would have to be just multiplied exponentially. I feel like that would have to be just multiplied exponentially.

Okay, let's see. However, despite denying that he did anything wrong, Chris also said they didn't want to go after big pharma. They didn't want to go after big distributors. They just wanted us. We're nobodies. The money we made is peanuts compared to what big pharma made over the years. But we're victims. Yeah, we're victims now okay i mean it is true that major pharmaceutical companies continue to come under well-deserved

fire for their alleged mishandling of opiates this is like obviously a big thing in the news right now even drug stores like walgreens walmart and cS have agreed to lawsuit settlements in the billions for their roles in the opiate crisis. But communities throughout the country continue to struggle with substance abuse disorders, SUD. And according to experts, criminalizing and regulating drugs is only a small piece of the puzzle, although it is where most of the funding goes. I think that's how our country usually sets up these kind of attacks on war on drugs. In fact, experts have found that SUDs don't fit the biological and genetic mold that we've been presented with for so long. So this is really interesting. Many people believe some people are just more likely to have substance use disorders based on genetics or some other fact that there's simply nothing to be done if you are genetically predisposed.

But apparently the reality is far more complicated. Oh, okay. Many people misuse medication and use illicit drugs to avoid, say, the crushing reality of poverty, to escape the day-to-day abuse they face at the hands of a partner, a parent and. PTSD, trauma, just things that. You know, we can't even begin to imagine. And so people cope in that way. And so it's not just like, oh, well, you started a drug. So you it's your fucking fault. You're an addict. You know, it's like, first of oh, well, you started a drug. So you it's your fucking fault.

You're an addict. You know, it's like, first of all, this is all legally like these pharmaceutical companies are making billions off of this. And then you turn to the person who's taking the drugs and you're like, oh, you're just scum, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's all very. I don't know know classist backwards there's a lot of a lot of isms a lot of isms and a lot of uh complexity to this and of course in a country where we don't really get medical care yep exactly um people are seeking real pain relief from injuries, chronic illnesses, mental illness.

I mean, people are looking for help. They're looking for something to help with their smothering, debilitating anxiety. So they're like, oh, OK, they'll give me Xanax. I can't afford to go to a primary care doctor. People are just desperate for help. Yeah. For help? And we don't have a lot of access to help.

And the FDA approved opiates as a safe drug. So why are you blaming the people taking it? I mean, they're taking something that the government said, A-OK, go ahead. It's safe. It's legal. It's prescribed. Walgreens will give it to you.

And, you know, a lot of these people really like I started painkillers in college for my Crohn's disease. And it was the only thing that let me sleep at night. Like I could not sleep if I hadn't taken a Percocet because I was in so much constant debilitating, like the kind of pain where you, well, the kind of pain where you have like six ulcers just bleeding out in your tummy, like just debilitating pain. Not equivalent pain-wise, but when I was up until I got my surgery for my heart, my heart i was there was a really dark time where i was uh really riddled with anxiety i developed agoraphobia and like to an extreme level i couldn't like open the door to grab like doordash like and the only way i could survive was taking xanax and it was and I remember thinking, oh, I could see how this could become a problem for people because it's so it just makes you be able to breathe. Or even if you're having anxiety, at least you're having incredibly less anxiety.

And like it like helps you function. And like this is a world where we have to function if we want to get the rent in on time or you know pick our kids up from school or or do our job i mean whatever it is like it's such we don't live in a society where it's easy to address most health concerns in a in an inexpensive and uh easily accessible way that is safe and i mean there's just countless reasons why somebody might need xanax why somebody might need an opiate a painkiller oxy like i mean i mean there's people every day like there's also people every day that are on them just because they're just getting out of surgery and like then there's a complication with the surgery. And now all of a sudden you're on it for longer. And then you just...

You develop this reliance on it. And it can happen to anyone. And it does happen to anyone. I have a family member who has an incredibly bad back, has had like 12 surgeries on her back, and is always on and off opiates, on and off painkillers. And luckily it hasn't become a situation for her, But how easy it could be a situation for anyone. at the time. It was like 2009. It was probably in the height of all this opiate stuff, becoming more recognizable as a problem. But at the time, like, you know, still

prescribed pretty regularly. And I got that as a prescription because I was in so much pain. And I was like, oh, thank God, finally, something that like helped, like lets me go to class because I couldn't go to class unless I had taken something for the pain and I went in and I said like a few weeks later and I said okay I'd love another prescription it's really the only way that I can function during the day and she was like um no we are not prescribing you anymore and I remember walking out of the clinic and I had what which now I know is a panic attack but like I thought I was having a heart attack and I went to the roof of the clinic and I had what which now I know is a panic attack but like I thought I was having a heart attack and I went to the roof of the hospital and I called my mom and I said I'm driving home and she was like okay uh drive home and I walked back to my dorm and I wrote a note

to Allison and I said I'm driving home to Ohio uh Uh, bye. And I got in my car and I, that night, I just drove all the way home and I couldn't take a painkiller because I was driving. And so I was just screaming the entire drive, like just as a way of like distracting myself. I just screaming, screaming. Um, but it's, it's like, I needed a needed a like i needed a painkiller to function and so i you know i didn't get to that point because they cut me off obviously and i didn't have anyone to like buy from on the streets i don't know how to do that so it could have gone in a very different direction like i didn't even understand that it was addictive at the time i just thought well this is the only way i can get out of bed like it you know and so for like i so deeply understand that and as someone who also

takes clonopin i'm like i have to be really careful because you know you get to taking it you're like i'll take an extra one today because i'm extra stressed and it it can become such a vicious cycle and it's so it's so um under the radar when it first when it can first start i think most people who are in like situations where they have drug problems they did not it did not start overnight it started with good intentions and things just going wrong exactly a lot of times you start legally like how it would have gone with me like i got it from my doctor they refused to prescribe more maybe i went to a pain clinic and said i need this for my crohn's disease and you know it gets out of hand and it's an easy slippery slope and it's really not fair to say oh well these people, they're in control of themselves, not me. Like, yeah. Okay, guy.

It's really, really sad and scary. And so anyway, I just have quite a lot of empathy for people going through that. And if you are going through that, we're here for you. There are a lot of resources that I'll tell you at the end that you can check out because there is a way out, even though it seems impossible. So the National Harm Reduction Coalition believes that drug use can never be fully eliminated from the world, which I tend to agree with. But the risks of drug-related injuries and death can be reduced by allowing people access to education, other resources, other mental health resources, other physical health resources. And they have eight foundational principles central to harm reduction. So I'm just going to read a couple of them real quick.

Number three is establishes quality of individual and community life and well-being not necessarily cessation of all drug use as the criteria for successful interventions and policies so it's almost like improve your quality of life and commute your connection to community you don't necessarily have to go cold turkey on drugs but we can at least structure things better for people to have i don't know a more stable a more supportive community around them number seven says recognizes that the realities of poverty class class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination, and other social inequalities affect both people's vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm. So it's not a one-size-fits-all. Yep. in marginalized groups, for example, are much more likely to struggle getting out of this kind

of a cycle, especially if they don't have the kind of community support and that kind of thing that we mentioned earlier. The idea is that socioeconomic issues must be tackled to make a real change in drug-related harm. So basically, it's a much broader issue than just police going out and saying, oh, I'm arresting you for having drugs. Right, right. Like, that's not going to do it. It's going to keep happening. Someone else is going to step in and sell drugs or take drugs. I mean, it's, that's just a very small-minded way to address the problem. Great point. Yeah. And so the idea is that we got to start with the socioeconomic issues and focus on those if we're going to make a real change in drug-related harm within communities, especially poverty-stricken communities. And although drug use will always exist, the goal is to make sure communities and individuals within them are able to stay safe and healthy despite, you know, drugs probably being around forever,

in whatever form, vapor drugs, what are they called? Holographic drugs in the future. I don't know. I was going to say like the drugs that don't even exist yet. Yeah, that we've never even heard of with crazy names. You know, I'm sure it'll always happen. That's just kind of human societal nature. But they're at least hoping to reduce harm, which is, I think, a really, really cool goal to have. Yeah. And so that is called the National Harm Reduction Coalition. And you can find them at harmreductionorg and they have really great, uh,

resource center. And again, this is where I want to do my little shout out, um, about naloxone. If you, you know, are able to, it's an awesome thing to have on hand. It basically reverses, uh, you know, the effects of an overdose. I mean mean that's probably in very simplified terms um let me just like read the actual definition so i don't what's it called again so there's naloxone and narcan narcan i've heard of yeah um i just want to find like a definition. Yeah. So essentially what it does, I mean, it's basically what I said, but like probably said in a better way. Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. It's an opioid antagonist. And this is from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This means, well, it's the science-y stuff.

You guys can go read on your own. But it can quickly restore breathing to a person if their breathing has slowed or stopped because of an opioid overdose. And it has no effect on somebody who has not taken, who has no opioids in their system. And it's also not a treatment for, you know, opioid use disorder, but it can help save a life. And so, you know, this is something we always had on us in LA.

And now, as we know, it's just a widespread nationwide epidemic, really like it's it's uh it's very very scary so if you can uh you know grab yourself some narcan uh just in case keep it in your car case uh you know i'd see people sometimes like pull over park the car and like help somebody on a street corner who was unconscious and it's like oh wow that kind of thing um so yeah you know it's uh it can't hurt to have on you it's it can save a life um restore someone's breathing if they're going through that and uh it's worth looking into so that is the story of the george brothers two motherfucking douche bags wow and for their as you said in the beginning for their dad to go ah boys will be boys or i mean i mean yeah that's the crazy thing is like when he was interviewed he's like

you know they were always going a little too far with their shenanigans and i'm like aha okay is that what we're calling it just calling them rabble rousers look at them just just a couple little hooligans yeah oh god here here's a picture of him with his truck by the way like you're gonna lose your effing mind okay here is jeff with his truck okay oh my god gross god he's standing next to it like if it were a fish he would hold it like yes yes like you know that's on his like hinge profile or something oh he's so gross doesn't he look like uh he looks like zach bagan's friend yeah he looks like the guy i want to look up derrick whatever he looks like nick lachey. Yeah. He looks like the guy. I want to look up Derek.

He looks like Nick Lachey kind of. Yes. Yes. But like on steroids, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I want to know what Derek looked like because Saoirse described it. And I'm like, I need to see this for myself.

Derek. Nolan. This monster truck. I can't even stand. The monster truck is ridiculous. The eyes. This monster truck. I can't even stand. The monster truck is ridiculous. The eyes, the whole situation. Like he's like trying to give a smolder, but he's just giving douchebag face. Oh, Lord.

Ugh. Boys will be boys. It's honestly beyond. And the fact that it was so recent, know always is just jarring yeah with the with the amount it really does terrify me about how people can get away with something that's so obvious for so long because in my mind that story had to have happened like decades and decades and decades before the internet or something before the internet or before regulations or before regulations i mean it sort of was it was sort of before regulations it was like they got in this loophole where it was like oh you can definitely sell painkillers it's just

for no reason whatsoever you know um and i will say too like i know this is kind of off track a little bit but my brother and i just did an episode uh on florida we read reviews of florida man and it was like basically anything kind of florida man related and uh we ended up reading quite a few really interesting articles um about this the florida man trope and how it has some problematic connotations, which like neither of us had really thought of before, just because, you know, like they're funny, you know, like, Florida man drives, uh, whatever through Walmart front door, you know, with alligator in tow or whatever these like Florida man articles are. Uh, But a couple of people wrote in and said,

and, you know, we had seen these articles as well. And so we gave a caveat at the beginning of the show, which of course pissed some people off. But it was just to say, like, there's a reason why a lot of Florida man stories happen in Florida. You know, lack of mental health resources. A lot of it is, you know, lack of mental health resources. A lot of it is, you know, mental health problems that are not being treated.

Poverty, disparity between classes, you know, it's there's so much to it that like it almost has a darker connotation when you like dig a little like scratch past the surface of like, ha ha, this weirdo drove his thing into a Walmart. And, you know, it's like a lot of that is probably drugs, mental health, you know, things that are not being properly regulated because of some certain people who run that state. So, yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about, especially when I read this. I was like, aha, i see how sure florida could become a place where this would happen because like this stuff isn't getting regulated yeah floridaman only exists because florida's maybe needs to update some things not taking care of its people you know and so anyway that's all That's my soapbox. I'll hop right off and let you talk for a second.

Oh, well, here I am. And that's why we drink, because Florida is really hurting in a lot of ways. Yeah. And people are hurting in a lot of ways. And I talked about a demon, so I don't really know how much that's affecting other people but it is how it's it's probably hurting someone out there who's also got a demon if you got a demon just let us know because we want to know about it i don't know how to regulate that one for you um but i have heard you can hang garlic and then that'll be it that's all you need to do

that anyway for my own mental health i feel like that would be a nice smell for me to have. I would like to hang some roasted garlic over my dinner and then eat it with the rest of my dinner. I love some roasted garlic. Oh, what? Maybe you should hang some garlic over your creepy little pictures, Christine. I'm still thinking about that one girl who was posing with her hat. I just think she's so funny. I think she is a champion and an icon. We did find out the like, no, we didn't find anything out, but we thought, oh, maybe she's doing that because like her husband was off at war or something.

But no, I don't think it was that. I think it was more that I don't know. more that i i don't know again this might be just totally off base but i think the way it was phrased was sometimes people would put like this the uh the item of a lost loved one so like and since that was like quite a woman's hat from back then i wonder if it was like her mother or like someone she'd lost you know yeah which makes us look like assholes but you know we didn't know we should look like a fashionista you know if maybe it was maud it was a vet maybe it was that fucking mr nobody wearing that hat and we just can't see him i do like to think that even if i'm taking a picture and it's got like some sort of sad history to it if in a hundred years it's making people giggle because i look really cool in some way or like a fashionista i think i could be okay

with that if if she showed up today or if we went to her and we were like girl what is the story behind this picture and then she said something really morbid i'd feel so bad but i'd be i'd be like okay but this is what it looked like to us and like you were killing it you know yeah we rebranded it for you i hope it's okay yeah exactly oh well uh apparently tomorrow i will be checking the mail and seeing if um anyone sent me anything like that and if you would like to send us stuff by the way because we do do gift videos on Patreon. You can send it to 1920 Hillhurst Ave, Box 265, Los Angeles, California, 90027. That's right. And when we say we do gift videos, I do not because I get my mail here in Kentucky.

But I do open it all and it brings me so much joy and I keep everything. It'd be cool if you did. It'd be cool if you did. I'd be cool if you did. I know. I did a couple. I did do a couple. So maybe I'll, it's just hard because some of them are beach too sandy. So they get kind of, it gets all mixed up. But I can definitely try to start doing that again.

But if you have sent something, don't worry. Your gifts are deeply appreciated. I've opened all of them and I love them all. And for Em. You can watch me and Eva open gifts in Los Angeles. That's right. And we have a great time with that. We make a whole day of it. We get Cheesecake Factory delivered.

It's a good time. I just cry in my corner and wait for the day. You can move back to LA, my friend. Have all the cheesecake you'd ever want. I'll put it on my card for you. Totally free. One cheesecake. What on my card?

Oh, a cheesecake. I mean, I could go eat some cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory near my house. I just discovered the tiramisu cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory and it's a game changer. Is that good? Game changer. I'm not like a huge tiramisu person. I'm a big tiramisu person. You know, it's always the people who don't drink that like tiramisu.

Mm-hmm. Isn't that weird? It's like soaked in rum. Coffee, I thought. Oh. Which one am I thinking of? Espresso or something? Oh, it's coffee. You're right. I'm sorry. But it's coffee it's coffee you're right I'm sorry

but you also don't drink coffee interesting I know well I it's there's something about it it feels like really I don't know what it is I it I had to um there's a actually now that we're talking about it I might get tiramisu on over here um delicious there's a tiramisu that I'm obsessed with that gets delivered to my apartment. And I really got into it there. So then I think from there I was able to like try the more intense tiramisus. Anyway, next time you come over, I'll show it to you. I want to be part of it.

I will join you next time. Yeah. And then that's my favorite thing is introducing people to foods that I like. Because there's no way you can go wrong because either I've impressed you by giving you something you love or you hate it and now I get double and like you have yes yes you have I hate when I hate when I show someone a food that I like and they're afraid to tell me if they don't like it because I'm like well if you eat it to be nice and you hate it now we're both having a miserable time now it's a lose lose i could have eaten it and had a great time literally like why not just gift you with the rest

yeah so i'll buy you a tiramisu next time you're here and then if you don't like it wink wink i hope you don't like it then i i'll have twice the fun so perfect okay and also buy me one that i also like so that i can have something to enjoy we'll see and okay that's why we drink