And That's Why We Drink - E360 A Vampiric Stage Lipstick and a Nap Episode

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Let's get one thing straight today, babe, your eardrum is perforated. Episode 360 brings some big updates on Christine's ears and our astral realm hang outs! First Em takes us on a journey into the world of Third Man Syndrome. Then Christine covers the tragic but ultimately heartwarming case of the Clouse family murders. And does the little drummer boy drum too loudly for Christine's injured ears? ...and that's why we drink!We can't wait to see y'all on tour so soon! Get your tickets for our On the Rocks live show at andthatswhywedrink.com

okay uh i was let's let's start with one let's start out with one a nice one thing i keep trying to say let's get one thing straight and i can't get the sentence out of my head so let's get one thing straight christine's looking real hot today whoa but that's not what I expected you to say thank you I took a shower for the first time in six days so that's where I'm at also your lipstick color is slamming thank you I picked up the wrong one and it's incredibly dark so um you know I'm just like vibing it's feeling vampiric yeah it's the one i wear on stage usually because it's like so intense but you know i figured why not just show up my best for you today with clean hair and makeup on well then let's get a second thing straight apparently

christine's insides are not good i don't understand i've done something that i've really here's what i'll say i've really done it this time okay this time okay i've really done it this time um i punctured my eardrum that was a bad time to take a drink wait did you put more lemons in it or something no what did you do what happened i did the biggest, gravest sin that Blaze could ever have ever begged me not to do. And I swore, like, upon marrying him, like, our vows were basically just don't put a fucking Q-tip in your ear. And I said, sure, I'll never do that. And I lied.

And so I don't know. I must have done it with a Q-tip. You didn't even feel it happen well i'm sure i just poked it one too many times i don't know but i it was feeling weird and i was like uncomfy and i've i okay here's the thing i did i am oh my god i bought something off and it's like one of those cameras that you stick in your ear. Okay, that sounds that sounds right up your alley. I was so scared to tell Blaze. But then one day I was looking in my ear and I went that looks like a hole in my eardrum. And so then I said, Blaze, I need you to look and he says, let me get my otoscope. And I said, oh, I bought one off TikTok.

And he said, okay, as long as you're not putting Q-tips in your ear, that's fine. And I went, well, I've done both of those things. And he said, okay, sit down. I have a photo. Actually, maybe he'll let me post it. I don't know. It's a photo. He said, okay, come upstairs.

Leon was in bed. So he's like, come upstairs and I'll take a look at it. I walk upstairs to his office or, I don't know, come upstairs. Like, uh, Leon was in bed. So he's like, come upstairs and I'll take a look at it. I walk upstairs to his office or like, I don't know his room. And, um, he has like his like weight bench out and he has a headlamp on and he's like, oh my God, take a seat. He has a towel. He like puts it on. He looks at my ear and he and he's like damn like there's so much earwax in there and i was like i know but i keep using a q-tip to try to get it out he goes christine that's what i've been trying to tell you q-tips like compact the earwax in you're not getting it out and i was like shit so then he looks in it and i said i don't know it looked funny like

something was wrong with this one and he goes babe your eardrums perforated and i went oh my god oh my god and so i like to think he says that to his patients too he starts with babe every time i know and he said don't worry it's perforated i used to do this all the time in the er and i went well why would you have to do this in an er and he's like christine 99 of the things i did in the er were not emergencies and i was like okay fair so he looked at it and he said, you need to go see an ENT just in case and like keep an eye on this. So he made me buy like waterproof earplugs for the shower. And basically it's supposed to heal on its own. I have to be really careful to not get infected, which, you know, me pouring lemon juice into things like that's a really

big ask and so he said go so i made an appointment with an ent they had an opening next week in a few days and basically if it doesn't heal within i think like a month they have to do surgery oh my god fuck my life um i mean i'm hoping it's just gonna heal it's definitely still very much perforated because the thing i bought on tiktok you can take pictures so i took a bunch of pictures of my eardrum being it sounds like you you diagnosed yourself it sounds like it was actually useful that's exactly what i did and i didn't need a license i just needed a um 14.99 and a tiktok account and um you know it's the sketchiest thing ever but it was the only thing I've ever bought on TikTok and I'll say it was worth it um so that's where I'm at everything

hurts my head just hurts it feels like somebody like poked a hole in my brain because I guess they kind of did um and it by as someone I mean me myself and I right yeah so wait this is so did it does it feel like it's perforated like when i guess like does it feel any different than like a normal headache like what's the it's really weird because i thought like oh if you because blade said oh you'll know like he always said you'll know if you've perforated your eardrum clearly i didn't um but apparently it hurts like right at the start like when when you first do it, it's like motherfucker, it hurts. Okay. And I'm like, Oh, I probably had those moments with a Q-tip. That must be what happened. Um, and then it just feels, I don't know. It feels just like I have an earache

sort of, but I feel like now that I'm aware of it, I'm like constantly thinking about it. Um, so I just feel like I have just kind of a low-grade headache all the time um but i kind of always do anyway so it's like well it's just everyday life but so i'm my biggest stressor right now is that i'm gonna go into the doctor and have to tell her like why i did what i did even though i know i mean you won't be the first person to say i used that is true um but so this is my warning to everybody because I've been warned so many effing times I have I've known I warn other people all the time I'm like don't put a q-tip but I thought well but I know I know how to do it the right way okay I'm like I'm really careful I'm really careful um please be fucking careful because those things like literally just pop your fucking eardrum open and then you might

have to get surgery so be careful open and then you might have to get surgery so be careful please you know you could go to the doctor get your earwax flush out it's easy it doesn't hurt and it's way more effective and i'm doing that from now on so oh i've made a big mistake how are you um i'm fine i have anxiety today and i i don't know if it's for anything in particular. By the way, we have our tour coming back. So this is my reminder at the beginning of the show that please go get tickets for our shows. A lot of shows have already sold out.

So if you want your last shot at seeing On the Rocks before we go on another tour. It's a little sad, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it's sad because i think here for the booze literally lasted us like three years that's why it feels weird to me so this feels like a blink like it feels like wait a second we're done already but we've been doing it for over a year or i guess almost yeah we still missed a whole tour season with it so uh so we should have been done with it by now so So we're still dragging shit out. I know we can't stop ourselves. So anyway, I don't know if it's because of the tour or just Christmas in general anxiety. I have a lot to do before I leave and I leave relatively soon. And so I'm just thinking about like laundry and packing and not only that,

but I'm not coming back until after our first leg of the tour. So I have to pack all of our tour stuff. And so I'm like, I just want to make sure I don't forget anything. Our script. I got to make sure I pack our fucking script. LOL. So it's just like a lot of little things that I,

and then around the house, like I want to like clean and stuff before I'm gone for a month. And it's just a lot. It's just a lot. Anyway, I feel a little anxiety. I also just took my anti-anxiety medication, so hopefully it simmers down in a little bit. What anti-anxiety? Propranolol?

No, Paxil. I don't know if it's working. Oh. But it's a theory with my passing out they are thinking that uh because i i mean i'm sure i needed anti-anxiety medication and i just wasn't taking it but um no comment the running theory now is that COVID attacked my, what was the, what's the nerve here? Your vagus nerve? My vagus nerve. And which we already kind of suspected because it set off my SVT worse than it ever had been and all this other stuff. but on top of that if it affected my vagus nerve that would explain why maybe i'm having like the theory is that i'm having adrenaline dumps that are they were once controllable but now that my

vagus nerve is all out of whack that my i have random bouts of like adrenaline shooting and then that's what causes me to pass out yeah so. So they're thinking. Isn't adrenaline supposed to make you like run from a bear? Like, why is it making you pass out? That seems like not helpful. I think it's because it's supposed to direct it to the right spots and it's not being directed to the right spots or something. Right. OK. That makes sense.

I think that's the. So this is the new working theory that my doctors are doing where they're putting me on anti-anxiety medication to keep down the adrenaline dumps. So that way maybe I won't pass out. I don't know. I mean, it sounds like a good plan. Hell, if I know, I'm only an ear specialist at this point, but I can see what TikTok says. So anyway, if you or you can go to Blaze's weight bench and take a seat. With this like cave mining headlamp yeah you need to like see the photo i'm gonna send it to you guys actually

while we're talking because i was laughing so hard i don't think he even knew i took a photo so so anyway uh if you come before we post it if you come to one of our shows and i pass out i would like all of you to sign a statement for my doctor that it's not working. And so we have to try another course. So course of action. Well, I think it's going to be great. Do I sound convincing? We'll see.

No, not at all. Okay. Well, you were going to nail it. Okay. We're going to nail it. All our health. All our health. Oh, I forgot. Also, Gia ate a bunch of chocolate and then vomited all night so i haven't slept either i just feel like the world is just it's a mess that's all well i don't just tell you christine i i feel like i my whole body

just feels like a big ball of yarn and every little string is a different like overwhelm. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course. Mercury is in retrograde right now, I think. So that would explain some of it. It's actually mercury is retrograde.

I'm just saying for before we get corrected. Mercury is retrograde. Yeah. It's not in retrograde it's just retrograde oh fun fact okay what about all the times that we've said it's in retrograde well we were incorrect unfortunately but that's okay oh is this something you just learned because you're saying it like you've known it for a decade no i known it for a while but i just figure it never came up again so i was well, now it came up.

So here it is. All right. Well, tell everyone on Etsy who has shirts, you know, that say. Oh, I know. Yeah. Okay. Including me, I think. I think I literally saw a design on there that says.

Anyway. Well, what do you drink this week, Christine? I mean, I'll be honest with you. I hope it doesn't become relevant, but I did take half of a Delta 8 gummy because my head is just like pounding. So I was like, OK, I'm going to take like one of my little like daytime gummies. So I hope I don't act really cuckoo bananas. I shouldn't. I only took half of one but I'm just

drinking water with it what's your pain level right now out of 10 only like a four I don't know okay three this is where I should probably thank you publicly for letting us move our recording to now because I had a migraine the other day well we're falling apart and I think we both know that so anytime something happens we're like just just put the covers over your head just for rest i know but like the fact that i had a head thing and i was like such a wimp that i had to like you were not you had a migraine that's no fucking around with that no no well before your head thing turns into worse or your ear thing turns into two ears like perforated or something i think okay here's my other thing i think i might have accidentally perforated or something. I think. OK, here's my other thing.

I think I might have accidentally perforated the other one. Christine. I think actually Blaze might have, but I don't think he will admit to that. So can you imagine? It's like it's like when you're cutting someone's hair and then you mess up and you hear them go. Oh, like I bet. What if Blaze did that to your ear? And then he's like, that wasn't me.

It was a Q-tip. No, I don't think he did. I mean, I'll find out in the next few days. So I'll find out. But if it is, then I'm blaming him because I can. Okay. Yeah, that's a good reason. And I want to.

Well, let me tell you a fun little tale while i have your attention before it fades quickly i'm just horizontal um you could be horizontal if you'd like and oh that would be nice what if i just came to i do have this new boom mic that like swings around yeah you can't if you'd like lower it if you could get the camera to face you, it would be a terrible angle. But if you really needed to just lay down, we could do that. Maybe one day we have a nap episode where we tell our stories while lying down. That would be so cozy. It would be. Actually, we should do that.

I like that. Maybe we'll do our after chat laying down. Okay. Doesn't that sound nice? Or after hours. Sorry, I keep calling it the wrong thing. Or after something. Yes. Okay keep calling it the wrong thing. Or after something. Yes.

Okay. Let me tell you this story. It's a 101, but it's got some good examples that are more story-like. So. Cool. Have you ever heard of the third man syndrome? No. Wait, maybe?

No, I don't think so. It sounds sounds familiar but maybe i'm just inventing that interesting it's that's ironic because that's how a lot of people feel about third man syndrome i'm like am i the third man i don't know so third man syndrome is a phenomenon that a lot of people report uh for centuries and it's um it's in dire circumstances so i would like to test out the third man syndrome when i'm on stage next time since that is a dire circumstance for me every night but during traumatic experiences much more dramatic traumatic than like being on a stage um this is when some people remember an unknown person helping them through the ordeal until they got to safety. Of course, I love these kind of stories.

So once the person is removed from the situation, they discover that nobody was ever with them. So it's like, was it a hallucination? Was it a guardian angel? What glowing man with a halo? He was right there driving a truck. Jesus? No. So it all starts, or the name at least starts, in the early 1900s. Have you ever heard of a man named Ernest Shackleton? Yes, I sure have. He's an explorer.

Yes. Did you also have to read that book in middle school? I have no idea. What book? Oh, how do you know who he is? Didn't he go to Antarctica? Yeah, but how did you learn about him? I don't know. I just know it in my head. Maybe he's the third man.

I don't know. I don't know where. I actually have no idea. That's wild. Isn't it funny? Sometimes you just have a random bit of trivia and you're like, how that entered my world. I'll never know. And it feels good because usually if I am at trivia and i say i know this one my brother and

all his friends are like yeah we all know this one and i'm like well shit you all know who are congratulations um you're the sandy schieffer of this show because i definitely don't know as much trivia as you do well that's wait what was the book maybe i did read the book and that's how i know i don't remember the book i don't remember what the book was called it was boring that's, wait, what was the book? Maybe I did read the book and that's how I know. I don't remember the book. I don't remember what the book was called. It was boring. That's why I didn't read it. I probably didn't read it. It's my guess.

No, let me, let me, Ernest Shackleton book. It was, it was called. In, no, I don't know what it was called. Are you talking about Ernest Hemingway? No, no, no, no, no. It was it is Ernest Shackleton. But there was a book that I had to read. And it looks like there's a bunch of different books.

I don't know which one is the one that I had to read. But in sixth or seventh grade, I had to read a book about Ernest Shackleton, which is how I know about him. Got it. And by the way, that the irony is like, I, I don't even know what the book was fucking called. I'm pretty sure I cheated. I had to have. I mean, I'm also pretty sure about that. I wrote a paper.

Just based on your own stories. We all had to write a paper about this Ernest Shackleton book. And I like this teacher, by the way, I like to her and one other teacher in my school I'll call them Mr. Feeney because they were my teacher from like sixth grade until the day I graduated her and I did not like each other we never did at least that's my memory if she would like to weigh in but we did not like each other I hope not because that would really scare me if our teacher started weighing in I can't handle that you know as I get older I still follow her on Facebook and as I become like an adult I'm like oh, oh, I kind of dig you. But as a

kid, I did not. I know. I totally get that. And I think it's probably too late to forge those relationships now, you know? Yeah. Well, I wrote a paper. We all had to write a paper. And I was the only one who got a 100 percent on the paper. And even the teacher, she stopped the class to announce it because it was so unheard of that I would do that well on a paper. And I looked apparently shocked because she saw my face when she said, the only person to get 100% is M. Schultz. And then I apparently made a face because then she looked at me and went, I know. In front of the whole class. It was like, I didn't see it coming either so what so how did that happen i don't know i must have cheated i don't i can't imagine that i just got a hundred out of

nowhere i don't know i don't even remember writing it i don't remember reading the book i don't remember print printing it i remember printing it i remember i remember seeing a 100 on it and being like this this can't be right like it was like did your mom say anything no no i wouldn't wow i just kind of tucked it away it was anyway that's how i know about erna shackleton i'm so intrigued okay i i don't have that paper anymore to even begin to tell you how i wrote it but she does i bet she remembers at least a little bit and that's it oh ernest shackleton this was in 1907 he and for those who don't know who he is he led in uh an expedition an expedition in antarctica that earned him knighthood in england um making

him sir ernest shackleton with the name ernackleton, he was meant to have knighthood. He needed a title. Yeah. You know? Yeah. A few years later, his most famous expedition was where he and his crew

attempted a 1,700-mile transcontinental journey to completely cross Antarctica, but their ship became entrapped in ice. This is what the book was about. their ship became entrapped in ice this is what the book was about their ship became entrapped in ice and they were trapped there for nine months as the ice slowly crushed their ship okay well maybe you did read that book like maybe that was the only one you read because you were like this is actually kind of interesting maybe yeah um so they're trapped their ice ice is slowly crushing their ship. And eventually the ice fully squeezed the hull apart and they had to abandon the ship and they had limited provisions and were still surrounded by ice. So they had to set up camp on drifting sheets of ice until the ice finally broke apart for them to navigate their

smaller boats to an uninhabited island and then earnest led several crew members on a 16 day 800 mile journey in a lifeboat to a whaling station to seek help but once they got there they then had to hike for 36 straight hours to the other side of the island for help like it's like this is nightmare nightmare truly like every can you imagine being told oh it's going to be 1700 miles and then it's like just kidding we're actually trapped here for almost a year and then it's just kidding now we have to live on sheets of ice oh just kidding then we have to do another 800 miles just kidding now we have to hike for 36 hours and by the way what you're always wet and you're always cold the whole time oh can you

imagine like every second you're cold and wet how many of them must have lost toes like i mean all and then you hike 36 hours with no toes forget it oh i literally i can't even hike on a 70 degree day on a flat road like i in los angeles imagine for 15 minutes i'm exhausted i'm like can we go back yet like are we at the whaling station yet and we're at fucking what's that place called i don't even remember the name of the hike what's the hike in la the observe where the observatory of the griffith park griffith park yeah i feel like i could be sitting in my car in traffic and i'd be like i'm basically on a sheet of ice for nine months like floating away with no provisions oh man they would take one look at me and spit on me and i'd be like i understand you would be on night i don't know

what the opposite of being nighted is but that would probably be what happened but they just take my own name away from me yeah they're like you don't deserve even that yeah no identity for you um in the end after all of that every single member of the crew was rescued safely all of them survived all of them i thought for sure at least 90 of them would be dead like it was just ernest shackleton standing alone by the end he left yeah i i'm i'm honestly very surprised by that i feel like i i'm sure i'm sure like someone's gonna call me on be like there is there is but i feel like this story is wild enough that there should be more movies about it like recently like more like like they should like revive it you know okay let's do it oh okay who's gonna play the book i'll play the ice sheet can i just sit on you oh no

i'm cold i think i got the part yeah oh no you nailed it it. You're shooing. Yeah. Thank you. So Ernest later recalled during this whole trek having a strange experience where while hiking, he kept feeling as if there was an extra presence with them. He even wrote in his journal that during that long and racking march, it seemed to me often that there were four, not three, because this was at a time when he only brought three with him oh um or no he brought two two yeah two yeah okay gotcha gotcha gotcha he only brought some of them to get help for the rest of them um so yeah he thought there were four not three later the other men told earnest the exact same thing had happened to them where they could have sworn there were four of them instead of three even though earnest himself had never mentioned this phenomenon that is creepy in 1922 there was a poem by t.s elliott published about um about the earnest shackleton story and the poem was called the wasteland and in it he alluded to earnest story of there being

a fourth person um for artistic license i guess he changed it from a fourth person to a third person yeah i like that just i had a feeling that's what it made the poem flow a little better i guess yeah yeah um but in the poem he says who was the third who walks always beside you when i count there are only you and i together but when i look ahead up the white road there is always another one walking beside you uh gliding wrapped in a brown mantle hooded i do not know whether a man or a woman but who was that on the other side of you it was just this oh there's a random third person who keeps following us. And this poem is where we get the phrase third man syndrome.

Wow. So, now, several people have come forward in books, interviews, and online to share their own third man stories. And when I say several, I mean, like, by the thousands. Like, so many people have had a handful just like a just like a bit a few so there's a lot of these extra men extra person people yeah first of all if thousands of people are having this experience is this one third man just like continuously on the clock or are there a bunch of these people and like it's got to be a fun a guild

yeah it's got to be a guild for sure for sure yeah no doubt sometimes the third man is just a feeling or just like a presence of being watched or feeling followed and it's never threatening you just feel like someone's there sometimes it feels like there's someone missing where five people can be out camping and they feel like a sixth person is supposed to be there and they keep expecting another person even though they count that everyone's there some people have actually taken that um so far that let's say they have like five people coming over and they'll make intentionally a sixth plate assuming that someone else is coming and then they'll realize that it wasn't necessary to make that extra plate like they i mean i've done that but it's because i

don't know how to count very well but i can see why that would be very alarming if you were like wait a minute i got this wrong i'd be like is the third man actually my second dinner is that yeah i was gonna say i could sit in both if you have extra, you know, it's not a problem. I'm my own third man today. That's exactly right. I'm my own third woman today. You know what I mean? Capital W. Some people experiencing this have actually had visions and they have felt like someone was actually with them. They have felt like someone was actually with them. In 1933, there was a guy named Frank Smith who was attempting to summit Mount Everest.

Well, I mean, that's your first mistake, but OK. I was going to say I was like, just if anyone ever asked me. Everyone wants a fucking book about them and their big expeditions like Jesus. Look, all I'm going to say is when I look at what my future holds i could have a day left i could have i don't know 80 years left no 70 but oh but when i tell you with confidence i will die not having climbed mount everest and i'm okay and i'm okay with that. That's powerful. Like there's just some things I know I won't do on this earth and I've already made peace with it. I'm like, and I've not, I've done more than made peace. I've happily embraced it. Happily embrace it. I like, I'm, there's, I can't, there's so many things I'll never do and I don't even wish it for myself.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like leave that to the people who want boring books written about them. I don't think I'll climb any mountain. Like, even if it's an easy one, I don't even have to use my hands. Like, I just don't want to do it. Unless we're stranded on an ice cap and you need to find a whaling community, then maybe. But otherwise, I don't see why you would ever have to do that. I'm also pretty positive that in life I will never be on a sheet of ice. Like, I wouldn't put myself in a situation where I could be on a sheet of ice like i i wouldn't put myself in

a situation where i could be on a sheet of ice you know the only that that that part gets me nervous though because i'm thinking you know global warming i don't know are these polar bears getting trapped like where california breaks off you know becomes a god i don't know it's all possible i guess that's possible but if it's survive or climb like don't know. It's all possible. I guess that's possible. But if it's survive or climb, like don't survive or climb Mount Everest, just when I'm not doing. I'll see you on the other side. Get your region board out. Other side of this life, not the mountain. Exactly.

Get your ovulus. I'll say hi over there. Your husk is waiting. Okay. So in 1933, Frank Smith decides he's gonna climb mount everest and he's attempting the summit he only falls short by a thousand feet at this point honestly like i would be so pissed i'd be like not only did i not climb it i was a thousand feet i was a thousand feet away get just give it to him come on honestly there has to at least be like a like a red ribbon that they get

instead of a blue ribbon. Although, I mean, I feel like getting a runner up on that kind of thing would be like much more hurtful to them. You know, like that would suck. You at least need like, I don't know, a trophy, a pat on the back, like something. Participation award. Let someone cut a ribbon at the opening of a festival. Oh, with the big scissors. Yeah, that's good good i think that's good

like maybe not a key to the city but like a key to a neighborhood in the city a key to a suburb uh let's see that's not that bad let's do it uh he fells he falls short by a thousand feet after the climb goes totally wrong also falls short you're saying he falls short of the goal not like he falls a thousand feet right like i know that that's not what you're saying i'm just triple confirming yes you're yes i understand no i see where the confusion could be no he really just he just fell short it's just like i get like a little spike every time you say he falls and i'm like oh okay he falls short got it i gotta check my vagus nerve. Am I also spiking? Your adrenaline. No, he really just doesn't make it by a thousand feet.

He was separated from his party, and he even remembers while being stuck and not knowing where to go, he got out a piece of food, and he broke it in half to hand it to somebody, knowing that he was alone, but he just felt like somebody else near him needed to eat too whoa so the third man's hungry right well like what now i'm glad that

someone did leave extra plates of food out for him that's exactly right it makes sense in his diary frank wrote all the time that i was climbing alone i had a strong feeling that i was accompanied by a second person the feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. So the whole point so far of the third man is like he just makes you feel safe when like there's really very limited reason to feel safe. If you're a thousand feet from the top of Mount Everest and you're alone, I wouldn't feel safe. Certainly not. It just reminds me of Jesus walk, you know, the footsteps and he's walking. Why doesn't he pick you up at that point?

Yeah. It's just a thousand more feet. Yeah. Couldn't a miracle happen up there? No one would notice. It's literally Everest. Sometimes I carried you up Mount Everest. Yeah.

Yeah. Come on. Step it up. everest i carried you up mount everest yeah yeah come on step it up uh he even felt like he was tethered to this companion by a rope and felt safe as if someone would catch him if he slipped he truly believed that the rope would secure him because someone was watching out for him whoa frank knew this wasn't true but he couldn't overcome the feeling and it comforted him through the event and when he finally was within sight of a camp and safety he said that that feeling of a companionship totally snapped away from him and he suddenly felt alone for the first

time what the hell that is creepy the experience aligns with the way third man syndrome often uh is referred to as a supportive presence that helps a person through and like in frank's story uh once real help arrived the person realizes that the third man is nowhere to be seen and they've been alone the whole time in 1916 a guy named harry stoker who was the cousin of the dracula author bram stoker he escaped as a prisoner of war with two companions and the three of them navigated hundreds of miles through the mountains without supplies they only traveled at night and hid during the day to make sure they were never seen and one night in treacherous conditions a fourth man appeared and started

walking with them as if he'd been there the whole time. It didn't even occur to them that he could be a bad guy or he would be chasing after them. They were never afraid of the sudden extra man. When they would stop at night, this man would stand just far away enough, but you could see him in the dark just out of sight. And when they started moving, he would get back in line and follow behind them just to watch them what and when morning came the people that they're all seeing you know they're all feeling it like if it were one person i'd be like oh it's seeing it i mean this guy this time they're seeing it seeing it yeah what the hell when morning came the extra man was gone and his presence had only given comfort for them to

make it through the night and it was a particularly rough night on their journey um yeah all of them said that they could see him in the distance he never got too close but they never felt threatened that is so weird and uh so that's just a sign that the third man can also be an an active participant um right it's not just actually hanging around the most famous case of the third man syndrome was on 9-11 and there was a guy named ron d francesco and he was leaving work from the South Tower's 84th floor just when the plane hit. And it hit right below him, and the wing of the plane cut through his floor.

Jesus. The floors below him were on fire. He tried going down the stairs, but it was impossible because of the smoke and the flames. So he tried to run up the stairs, thinking he might find a different exit. But that was also impossible. He could not see anything.

He could barely breathe. He truly just gave up. He just laid down in the stairwell and just accepted defeat. And then he he heard of someone say to him, you have to get up. You have to get up and felt someone grab him lift him up and actually guide him through the open flames whoa and he got down 70 flights of stairs through the smoke and he couldn't see a single thing he just followed this guy that was helping him um oh my god got down 70 flights of stairs and he was the last person to escape the tower before it collapsed no he was one of only four people in the south tower above the 81st floor to escape and he found

out after the fact that nobody had helped him out oh my gosh oh my god so now it's not just like oh you can see him but there are instances where this third man is straight up saving you. Fully saving you. They save your life. There are other people. Goose cam. There are other people all over the internet who share their experiences. Reddit is a great place if you'd like to read some third man syndrome stories.

One user named Bobbinin for bears uh said that their father once fell off a cliff in a remote area and broke his back um and he was just stuck on this cliff and it was the small small town in alaska and he broke his back while he was just laying there thinking he was never going to get help oh my god a young girl climbs down the cliff finds him and sits with him for hours and she keeps petting his head keeping him warm telling him stories to distract him and even takes her own coat off and puts it on him so he remembers her coat on him eventually someone spots him from the water and gets help and when help came he asked about the little girl who mysteriously went away and they say there was never anybody here there was no girl here this is a really small town we know everybody in this community there is no girl like that

and and the coat i assume was gone coat was gone what the fuck dude i love that she had to climb down the mountain though she's like i can't just appear i gotta make this look realistic let me climb down this mountain cliff real quick she can't just like i dream of genie just blink yeah exactly dozens of people have shared nearly identical stories about car accidents where they were unable to move or get out and they would hear a car pull over. They'd even hear voices telling them that help was coming. And a lot of experiences that I even read on Reddit, people say that there's someone who reaches into the car to rub their shoulders or hold their hands while they wait for help. This is one I just found right before we recorded.

This is from someone named RocketKT69. And their story says, I was in a really terrible car accident a few years ago and I was stuck in the car. They had to cut me out. During it, I came to and there was a woman who had climbed into the rear seat behind me and was holding my shoulders,

telling me I was going to be okay and that help was coming. I thought she stayed with me until I blacked out, and I woke up to a fireman cutting the door off and pulling me out. The fireman, paramedics, and my mother, who had gotten there, all quickly said there was no woman at all, that traffic had gone around and no one had stopped because the fire department was only a few blocks down the road. I can still hear her voice, and I know she was touching me, but no one had stopped because the fire department was only a few blocks down the road i can still hear her voice and i know she was touching me but no one saw her what the fuck do they have any

theories like was it a loved one they think or they just said they have no yeah we'll talk about that for sure okay um but there are so there are several stories like that on on Reddit where it's specifically like a lot of times it's a woman, but someone will just show up and just get in the car with you will hold your hand will tell you, hey, you know, you're going to be okay. Just, you know, people are coming. Help is on the way. Just hang on. There's also a lot of people who say that there's a third man voice that they hear predicting things so they'll say like i've heard that like slow down don't you know slow down slow down and don't go at like a green light like don't drive yeah and then they find out that had they gone they would have been like t-boned so

semi drive-through right right i've heard that definitely so that might be the third man that might be a completely other different thing um but yeah so there's a lot of stories especially about this one woman during car accidents where she will be there the entire time until you black out and when you come to no one has ever seen her and they think a lot of the stories are her i don't know if it's the same woman but a a lot of people say that either she just appears in your car or they even like have the whole real life experience of like hearing a car pulling over, hearing her get out of the car, the car door slamming her walking over and her in the car are just totally

phantom. Wow. In other experiences. Yeah. People have seen someone reach in and rub their shoulders or hold their hand in one incident uh or many according to reddit a woman told the crash survivor that the car was on fire and they needed to get out and the survivor was too injured and too weak but the woman helped pull them out of the crash and move them to safety and when they woke up the woman was never there he has no idea how he left the car how he got out of it physically how that could have happened i've heard the stories like that about like ghosts actually on jim harold's campfire

i feel like i've heard a bunch of those um where people say you know there was this truck this huge white truck and it pulled over like a semi like an 18 wheeler and this guy like helped pull me out and then i was unconscious and later they you know emergency services said like there was no semi like we would have seen a semi like i feel like that's another phenomenon like the ghost trucker coming to help you yeah so that might be and under the umbrella of third man um but a lot of people have that very similar experience of like they have no idea how they got pulled out of wreckage that they shouldn't have survived you know yeah wow people have also seen

a third person when being rescued from drowning they say that they've seen and felt hands reach into the water and drag them out and bring them to shore in one story there was a hiker who was lost and had gone hypothermic and they were about to lie down to go to sleep in the snow, which would have actually killed them. And in that moment, another hiker showed up and led them back to the trail where the rest of their group was. It gives me goosebump that they're like dressed like they're supposed to be there, you know, like they're they're another hiker. They're just a little girl on the path with a coat. You know, it's like, they're, like, materializing as though

they were, like, a real person just walking along, which is so creepy. I like to think they have, like, a costume room, like a wardrobe room. And they're like, oh, today I gotta go be a paramedic. I'll bring my parka. Well, there are also stories I saw on Redditdit of people them dressed

as firemen and so then they're like oh who's the one that helped me and then that guy's never been there you know so yeah it is weird that they really fulfill the role yeah it's like they're like committing to the bit it's also like i mean how many times have we said that like maybe aliens show up as a form that's less scary for us so maybe something we can understand yeah it's something yeah that makes us feel safer in the moment comforting sure when that one hiker got lost and another hiker brought them back to their group that lost hiker then told the group hey this guy rescued me and that guy vanished and there were no tracks in the snow indicating there was ever a second person oh god this is creeping me out one person said that when they were a kid they were choking and they felt a hand grab them and drag them into another room where an adult could save them

which i love that there are some ghosts who are like i can't even save you but get your ass in here like i never learned a Heimlich. That wasn't part of my training. It's like I can, like, I don't know, make a cabinet door open by itself, but I can't push that food out of your throat. I can, like, use the jaws of life to get you out of an upside down car, but I don't know how to do the Heimlich. I like to think that that kid just kind of got yeeted into, like, a kitchen or something. Yeah. It's like, get in there. Chuck, come on.

It's clear that the third man syndrome is a very real phenomenon since thousands of people have had this experience. But nobody knows who or what the third man is. Many people think that the third man can manifest as nothing more than a feeling. Like I've already said, people have seen him as a distant shadow or he just straight up, he or she or they straight up help you physically. Some people think it's a divine experience, like a guardian angel. Some people literally think it's Jesus coming in like a certain form that makes you feel safer. certain form that makes you feel safer people have believed that it's a deceased loved one uh who's looking out for them and has the ability to intervene in incredibly specific situations but what's interesting about that is that the third man is almost never described as someone that people recognize it's always a stranger right which freaks me out even more because i've always

heard that rumor that like your brain can't actually create a face out of thin air. Like it has to come from a pulled memory. I was literally thinking about that this morning because I was thinking about dreams as I do. And I was like, man, it's so fascinating. I don't know how real that is, but I always learned that as well, that like your subconscious can't create a new face or a new identity that you haven't like already seen yeah by the way let me hold on ask me let me finish this first because i don't have much left but i i want to jump back onto that because i have a creepy thing um okay so they say it could be a loved one but it's never someone you recognize so maybe it's someone from a past life that still watches out for you.

Oh, that's interesting. Or like if this is where this is not an actual theory other than my own, but in the world of like time is a construct. Like maybe this is a future person that you don't actually know, but somehow you spiritually are already linked to. You're like connected. Yeah. Nobody seems to know in the moment who the third man is only that they are always comforting and some say it's just a helpful spirit who was in the right place at the right time and decided to lend a hand um it could also be completely internal because as we know from the gift of fear from gavin de becker uh we often know way more than we think we do yes right true

in a dire situation and we've totally given up our thoughts may give way to our subconscious which takes over and gets us to safety so it could just be survival instinct like exactly keep walking yeah yeah yeah also in extreme cases our will to live might be overpowered by adrenaline and manifest as hallucinations that compel us to keep moving. If that is our brains, our brains are pretty fucking genius in that case. You know, like it's like if you think you can't do it, pull you out of this car. you out of this car i mean it really does feel like um what's the right word personifying uh some sort of hope for yourself like if you don't think you can do it this person does you know so like yeah creating a person side of yourself yeah creating someone to believe in you wow i mean it also if you're in a dire situation or in a traumatic event, I think that's cause for like a psychological snap of reality.

Like, sure, sure. Just in a way that you're hallucinating. Yeah. Like seeing something that isn't there because you're having a fucking nervous breakdown. I would. And you're freezing to death. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that would make some sense.

And this doesn't come from any concrete research by the way this is all just people's theories because they can't really research something unless they put people in like dear death experiences just like here fall short off this cliff a thousand feet i could imagine a researcher just like chuck norris kicking someone off of mount everest and just lighting them on fire or something and being like anybody there do you see anybody remember to write it in your journal wait what if you just found out now that like Ernest Shackleton's sheets of ice was just a long con from the government it was just like testing the extreme bandwidth of ice and they were like let's see what this guy does we should give him a we should knight him afterward yeah 1700 miles and they were like, let's see what this guy does. We should knight him afterward.

Yeah, 1,700 miles of hiking was not enough. Let's do another 800. Fuck. Others suggest that this is some sort of deep genetic ancestral knowledge that we can only tap into when our minds are completely empty, a.k.a. when we've given up. Whoa. Which I thought was super cool, though. Like, oh, maybe these are actually ancestors you have no idea of that are looking out for you. One psychologist named Dr. Lisa Johnson encourages patients in trauma recovery to cultivate inner characters or voices of comfort to help them out.

Which, even outside of therapy, people daydream about themselves in situations they usually wouldn't be in, talking to people they usually wouldn't talk to. So for some reason, humans like to find comfort in imagining outside encouragement than trying to encourage themselves. Interesting. I think that's probably why it's so effective when a therapist use that technique of like your inner child, like talk to yourself as a child because you would talk to them differently than you talk to yourself. Yeah. So, I mean, and they think that that that could lead to us just having an extreme coping mechanism in really bad circumstances where our minds go beyond imagining and truly believing someone is there to support us. So. Right, right right right um anyway that is the third man syndrome wow that was crazy that is wow that was a good story what

what were you gonna tell me that was creepy oh i had a dream a while ago that i thought was super eerie and i know usually you can't um you're not supposed to be like we just said you're not supposed to be able to create faces that you haven't seen and all that i think i'm like at the very beginning of being able to lucid dream at the very very yes at the very very very like scratch scratch at the surface um it's happening everyone i'm not even trying i think i'm just and i are gonna hang out in the astral realm we're gonna talk shit about all of you no finally no finally daytime is not enough we have to transcend into literal sleep to hang out now maybe that's why i've been so exhausted recently because when i go to bed you just still don't shut up um slumber party oh my god i'm so tired um i

so i when i say i'm like kind of starting to control them is uh i'm at least becoming aware of when things don't seem right and i have i can't i can't fully click like oh i'm in a dream i'm just like oh that doesn't make too much sense oh my god that's it that's so close like i had a dream where i was like back at the prop house and i was answering a phone and everything seemed totally normal but the only difference was that phones would be hung upside down like it was like it was like a black eyed kid wrote the script and it was like and then they hung the phone upside down. So like it's like the cord was sticking up instead of hanging down. Right.

And I remember thinking like that's fucking weird. And I remember thinking like, oh, but it's a prop house. Like maybe this is like a weird prop. And then like I didn't. I love that your brain's like, no, no, I got this. It's fine. I wonder, though, if like whoever controls dream world was like oh they're on to us and like like had to shift gears real quick but um phone back turn i had a right

i had a dream recently though where everyone there looked really creepy like everyone's face looked like it was kind of melting off of them and like, like wax people or something. And they all were staring at me. I didn't have eyeballs. And I remember, again, I didn't. Part of me must have known somewhere that it was a dream, but I didn't know at face value. You didn't get fully conscious in it. Yeah, but I remember seeing it and I remember looking at them and going, this is freaking me out.

You have to shift into a more human form if you want me to interact with you. And then I like in my dream, I blinked and all of a sudden there were people standing in the exact same clothes, standing in the exact same position, all looking at me in the exact same way. Like they had completely morphed to be more palatable. They're like, is this any better yeah but i said to them i remember saying like i knew enough that in my head i said you have to shift into a more human form if you want me to interact with you and then i blink and they had shifted into people did you interact with them after that i think so wow but it was it was weird that i at least was able to...

First of all, that should have been my first clue because I can't fucking confront any conflict in real life. But when I'm looking at them... No, you were just like, I have something to say. I was like, y'all have to fucking change your ugly ass faces. You look fucking creepy. But no, I remember thinking like, I must be aware enough to know that they can shift and that. But then it made me freak out even in the dream because I was like, what does this mean about them? Like, what do they look like in real life?

Exactly. Like, what's their real form? Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up earlier and I totally forgot until we talked about dreams. So, OK, well, if you do want to lose a dream, if you write down your dreams, like, handwrite them, it starts happening really often. Hmm. Okay. Because you're, like, just aware that your dream. So if you write down your dreams, like, that should jumpstart all of it. Okay. Oh, my God. That's crazy. You have to come over to my house if you lucid dream. I went to your apartment once, remember?

Oh, right, right, right right right yes i'll have to fly over there okay my arms will be so tired that's all i want to hear wow okay well that was a great story um i have a story for you today it's kind of a mix of it's well it's a mix of there's like a silver lining i guess at the end okay which we don't often get with true crime stories i like knowing that there's going to be not it's not gonna have the worst ending i mean after btk i'm glad that we're having a whatever you can consider a palate cleanser i know and it's not a palate cleanser for sure because it still is unfortunately a tragic murder but um it's definitely like i said it at least has

like a hopeful somewhat hopeful ending you know yeah okay which is rare so we can at least know that going into this. But this is the Klaus family murder and it's spelled C-L-O-U-S-E. So let's backtrack to 1978. A young woman named Tina Lynn. She's 15 years old and she lives in a town called Smyrna Beach in Florida. I'm sorry, New Smyrna beach in florida not the old one of course of course not and unfortunately she had lost her father at a young age so she was growing up with the rest of her family down in new smyrna beach and it was there that she met howard dean plowse jr who often went by dean or jr and dean was four years older than Tina. So a couple years earlier, Dean had unfortunately

caught the tail end of a sort of cultish group called the Jesus People Movement. Okay. Yeah, trust me, the names are just going to get weirder from here on out. Okay. The Jesus People Movement, which was an evangelical Christian revival that was like catered to young people. I mean, I think we all know like the 70s were very much a heyday for cults because, you know, hippie movement. People were finding themselves and breaking away from the mainstream. definitely one of those guys who was easily, I wouldn't say easily, but who was open to being part of these kind of groups. Sure. You know what I mean? So the Jesus People movement had major momentum in the 60s. And then mid to late 70s, it started to slow down. It was a very new age movement. And you know that basically the crowd of people that it attracted were what you would call probably hippies back in the day.

They baptized their new believers at beaches and then they traveled with like minded friends to spread the word. They played rock music and threw parties. So this is very much like a new twist on religion that like young people could kind of sure attached to it's feeling a little um i know it's not in this venue but it feels a little mega churchy like one bajillion percent i feel like i could have slipped into this real quick if especially like at a time where it hadn't existed before so i couldn't have like seen the pattern i would have been like oh wow rock and roll cool yeah this is a religion i can vibe with you know yes exactly and i feel like i can vibe with yeah exactly and that that was their whole thing was like a cool vibe like we're not like

every other cult and religion um and so some of them were pro psychedelics and others were staunchly sober so they didn't really like fall in line on that front um but just generally they were like the cool place to be the cool group to travel with and um you know they they took a new take on uh the tenets of christianity and of course this movement uh led to several fringe groups who are more extreme. So, you know, the base, like the core of it, as we see, I feel like with so many of these kind of groups is like at the base, at the core of it, it's like hunky dory. You know, like they're playing rock music. They're loving each other. They're taking care of each other. They're playing rock music.

They're loving each other. They're taking care of each other. And then like it devolves into fringe groups that take things to dangerous extremes and give everybody else a bad name. So that's kind of what was going on here. One of these fringe groups was nomadic and they would travel from town to town. And when Dean was 16, he encountered this group for the first time so his mom got a call uh while she was at work one day and uh the call was from dean's sister cheryl and she's like uh mom dean brought over a group of people and i'm not comfortable with them being here

oh like brought them to the house and how many people do you know yes so dean's mom rushes home and there are four strangers in the house yeah it was a man a woman and two children oh my god all four were barefoot and were dressed in white robes it sounds like fourth man or third man, but like it's his whole family he brought with him. Yeah. They're like, today we were wearing our robes. It's bring your family to work day. And the third man is on high alert. So these people are in her house. She rushes home. She's like, Dean, to her son, Dean, why did you bring these people over um and

he says oh they're just staying over for one night and she's like oh no they're not there's a hotel down the road they can go literally i'm the still the boss of this house so the members who called each other brother and sister sort of like nuns or monks or like you know people in a religious order uh they had recently arrived in the area and they were part of the part of a fringe sect of the jpm movement which many considered a cult and so they had recently arrived in the area and dean's family had actually noticed them around town because they carried their bedrolls they wore white robes they didn't wear shoes i mean it's very yeah they're not hiding they're not discreet yeah blend in okay and apparently the reason they didn't wear shoes is that they didn't eat meat or use leather i mean maybe there was just leather shoes in the 70s i don't know but

it seems a little bit i feel like you could have worn a slipper you know right like uh i feel like there's a flip-flop if you can wear your robes surely you can find a shoe you could wear socks you could wear socks that's a great point you could wear you could figure it out you know you could figure it out, but they didn't. And that became part of their sort of uniform. And people were nervous about this incoming crowd. Some called them Jesus freaks. And, you know, they do sound like they look like Jesus a little bit with their robes and bare feet. Exactly. I think it's like an easy association to be like.

And especially because their group is called Jesus People Movement. Right.'re like yeah they're they're the jesus people i guess um and i you know to be clear again this is this fringe group that has kind of entered town and will potentially cause some problems uh not the original core group so dean's mom said no no no no dean kick them out please uh they gotta go they can go wherever they want but they can't stay here they gotta take those bare feet and trot on down the road to the motel so she says you got to get them out of here but she does she does give them provisions she gives them food she says like you know you guys take care i just don't feel comfortable i have multiple children under this roof and like i don't want four strangers staying over yeah four mouths to feed who i was not prepared for yeah and she she did even feed

them but she said like you can't sleep here i don't feel like i trust you enough to be around my children which i think is totally fair um especially because she had six children under the roof so like it was just not gonna happen um she gave them some food for the road and dean was pretty disappointed um he was so drawn to this movement um i guess the way they described him was he wasn't a rebellious kid like he wasn't like fighting back against tradition or anything like that but he was very free-spirited and so when he found tradition or anything like that, but he was very free spirited. And so when he found something that he like gravitated toward, he just wanted to go, you know.

And so his mom explained it as he seemed like he was always looking for something in the world, in life. Like to belong or something? Yeah, maybe to belong. or something yeah maybe to belong um yeah like just looking yeah for maybe a group or for somebody you know for some kind of acceptance something but she couldn't put her finger on what exactly it was and she's she thought actually maybe he didn't really know what it was either but it felt like he was always like seeking you know i mean i think we know people who like who are like that who are kind of always exploring, always trying new things, meeting new people. And that's just kind of how his, I don't know how his lifestyle went.

So he followed after he, he, he kicks them out. He says, my mom's not letting you stay. He follows after them outside to talk to them a little more. And after this day, he begins spending more time with them outside the house a few weeks later the group being nomadic left town and so did dean um unfortunately he left in the middle of the night without a word to his family uh it was unlike him to just run away from home um but still they were like man we knew he was into that group like they weren't surprised i guess they were just okay disappointed that he had you know snuck out and run away so dean was a you know polite responsible kid but and even though he was 16 he well i guess like

probably most 16 year olds he wanted independence he wanted to feel like a grown-up he wanted to make his own choices he was mad that his mom didn't let him like, you know, bring these people over to the house. So he left in the middle of the night. Eventually he called home to reassure his family that he was okay. He actually started calling pretty regularly to touch base. And then one day, a few months after he left dean just showed up on the front doorstep uh back at home he was barefoot in white robes and he simply just started back up his old life like nothing had ever happened okay he basically said not a single word about his experience with that group he just didn't talk about shady yeah right like that can't be a good sign i feel

like tell me about your time and he and if he went it was fine i'd go what happened what happened i'd be like okay hold on let me make some tea i think we need to have a long night of discussion but yeah you know i wonder i feel like in the 70s too or just you know decades ago it wasn't as like I feel like now if your child disappeared for like weeks at 16 and came home and like had clearly been traumatized or had something happen like there are so many more ways nowadays like therapy or uh just new tactic tiktok like literally parenting tiktok probably there's a tiktok somewhere like how to talk to your child after they've vanished with a cult for a few weeks you know i don't fucking know but i feel like back then it was just like okay well if he's not going

to talk about it he's not going to talk about it so there was um uh i went through a phase when i was a teenager where i just did not speak to my mother I went like fucking cold shouldered her it was like did not speak to her it was it was a uh I to this day can't explain it but I'm sure there was um some sort of like trauma I was going through with there always is sure sure something going on and my mom got this book called uh talk so your kids will listen and listen so your kids will talk and i remember being like that just sent me over the edge i'm certainly not talking to you now okay i was gonna say if i ever laid eyes on that i'd be like well i'm literally never speaking to you again i think i would just like cement it in my mind i was like you know what today i thought about talking about you and talking to you and then i saw that book on the table and i went right back upstairs that book I I'm with you I would have been like you have got to be

fucking kidding me how to talk so your kids will listen and listen so your kids will talk and she got she got it for like I think for both of us to read together and I was like now you want us to read together a journal that you have to fill out together oh I was like this is this is the this is the opposite of how to fix this i gotta say if i ever tried to cold shoulder my mom i probably would have gotten it let's just say it wouldn't have lasted i would not have it would not have lasted it didn't uh my my mom at one point uh snapped and it woke me out of whatever was going on she just chucked the book at your head and was like wow no she said some pretty pretty horrible things to me oh cool is that what the book said just fucking insult the shit out of

them maybe when you said like i'm certainly not talking to you now she's like great now i gotta do the opposite of what the book says is she whatever whatever the book did say it didn't say to react the way my mom did oh no but it worked it was i think i'd like her anger like snapped me out of it or something. I don't know. I don't know what it was. And I don't know. Did you keep a journal or a diary back then? OK, because I I recently thought about this probably conversation for another day off. It's not it's for right now. Oh, OK. But it's just you and me. but it's just you and me um i my mom reminded me of this period of time when i was like 15 where i also didn't speak to her and i had just gone through something quite traumatic that i didn't

even remember until i went because my mom was explaining this to me and i was like that's weird why wouldn't i speak to you whatever i found an old journal and i was i found that time period and i was reading it and I was like oh shit like no wonder I wasn't fucking talking to anyone or to her um so I like was able to match the the you know I was able to go back through my journal and be like oh I see what was going on here during this time now I can kind of connect the dots yeah I don't know what mine what mine was to this day I feel so bad in hindsight for my mom because it had to have been really i mean i i don't even know what it would have felt like but it was a long period of time

like it was almost a year of me not talking oh my god it was really bad i in there i there must have been something about you know my parents were getting divorced maybe my dad was getting me to side with him and you know that may there must have been something or i was gonna say i feel like the that that dynamic is already rife for you know yeah she deserves an explanation i just don't have one i have no idea i must have just shut down maybe i would i just went like kind of catatonic i just fully dissociated i have no idea what like psychological term there is to use. Did you feel like you were angry at her or did you just feel like I don't want to speak to you? I don't know.

I still don't know. I mean, I would be angry that she was trying when I just didn't want anyone to talk to me. Maybe in hindsight, it was like I was just like really sensory overloaded and like I just like shut down and like shut down i i don't i have no idea what caused it but it it happened sorry mom yeah but we got there we figured it out i mean hey this lizard she calls you at least 72 times a day so it couldn't have lasted you know maybe that nowadays i'm like oh my god stop maybe i need to maybe i should try that all you should wait wouldn't be funny if you mailed her that book i I just feel like that would be really funny. It tells you, call me once a fucking week and that's it.

Stop calling. Her favorite thing to do is call me and complain about her. I think I've said it before on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like she complains that her mom. So not self-aware. Yeah. Yeah.

I love you, mom. I know you're listening, but she'll hear this. Like she complains that her mom. So not self-aware. Yeah. Yeah. I love you, mom. I know you're listening, but she'll hear this. I know how I love you. She'll hear this. It'll go right over her head. Nothing will change. She'll come. She'll call me to complain about how her mom will only call her during work hours.

And then my mom will go, what are you doing? And I'll go, I'm working. And she'll go, great. Well, anyway, here's an hour long conversation. I'm like, go away. What are you talking about? Anyway. Look look you know what she wanted i i guess i owe it to her because i didn't talk to her for a whole you know this is

like the interest has piled up you know it's interest is exactly where it's all interest you're paying off now yeah um anyway so yeah basically dean pulled an m and came home and said in a white robe and said, I'm not talking about this. So they said, I mean, OK, there's literally nothing we can do because there I don't think the book about listening and talking to your kids had been published yet. So they just had to kind of move on and they pretended like it never happened. Unfortunately, a year passed and he left again to join the same group for another little stint. Like a retreat. It sounds like he's going on retreats.

It sounds like he's going on retreats. But he's not. But he's. Well, I guess it depends on how you define retreat. But they're just kind of roaming around with no shoes on, I guess. For all the things they're carrying, they couldn't find a way to carry some shoes. It's just wild to me. But anyway, so he left about a year later with the same group. And a few months after leaving, he called his mom from Columbus, Ohio

and said, I want to come home. So she wired him money for a bus ticket and when he got there he when he got home he once again said i don't want to talk about it and just left it at that one day dean's younger sister donna k brought home a friend from school this friend was 12 year old tina lynn so tina was actually hard of hearing as a young child. And so she struggled to keep up in school. And the way her sister described her is that she was basically had to become a fighter because she had to fight to keep up in school before she was ever diagnosed with or her hard of hearing, you know, was treated. So an organization actually covered the cost for her surgery to assist in her hearing. And she was able to attend a school for students with disabilities. And after several years,

she was able to return to public schooling. And that's where she met Dina's, I'm sorry, Dean's younger sister, Donna Kay. So the girls became super tight BFFs and Tina's parents were somewhat absent from her home. So she sort of like blended into her her best friend's family. You know how that happens. So Tina and her brother, Les, actually ended up spending like holidays with the family. They sort of got like adopted under the same roof. Sure. Sure.

same route sure sure and over the years like some kind of a sitcom uh tina and dean began dating they fell in love lovely she was 15 and he was 19 i don't know the rules back then i don't know the rules in florida now i have no clue but that's that's what happened okay so less and tina uh so tina and her brother less they became like family like i said um and then tina started dating dean and of course uh now they're even more like family right because she's literally dating one of them and pretty soon they got married at a courthouse and tina's mom signed consent and uh she moved in to dean's home with dean her new husband which must be so weird as a sister yeah shit you were my best friend now you're literally having sex with my brother over there um that happened in my own childhood friend group where uh one of a friend of ours ended up marrying deirdre's

brother oh that's right yeah of course yeah and so that always trips me out when i think about like when you guys tell stories back then i'm like what a weird yeah it's like us as friends or when i'm telling you about us as kids it's like oh we were all just friends and like there was no way of knowing that in the friend group one of them was going to be an in-law one day and oh that's so weird yeah yeah i mean not in a bad way but like just so trippy to think like how life throws plot twists into the mix it's trippy because i feel like i remember uh one of our friends like always talking about like oh what will my kids be like one day? What will my kids be like one day?

Or like, what's their dad going to be like? And the dad was like upstairs the whole time. He's like literally playing mash. Like, hurry up. And like fill up the rest of this. Yeah. Oh, God, how weird. I love stories like that.

So they move into Dean's home and they're married now and dean's mom is absolutely thrilled uh she as you know dean likes to run away in the middle of the night to join you know these fringe groups right so she's like thank god tina's here she can keep him grounded like they're so happy together maybe he'll stay home and be safe right so she helped tina get a job and dean was working as a carpenter she helped them buy a car like she really wanted them to start a life that didn't have that like ominous uh fringe cult group in in their background at all so when they announced that 16 year old tina was pregnant the family could not be happier, which is wonderful. Because, again, I feel like we don't usually have stories like this where someone gets pregnant as a teenager and it's perfectly wonderful and happy and everyone's excited.

So the family is so supportive. And their baby, Holly, which is one of my favorite names actually was born on january 24th 1980 so dean and tina and their little baby holly moved to this is where it gets a little complex not really complicated but my brain just kind of wanders so the couple moves with their baby to maryland because tina's sister Sherry lives up there but Dean was as we've mentioned like a free spirit he was like I don't want to stay here that long he convinced her to move to Texas from Maryland okay and nobody can really remember exactly why Dean's mom is like I'm pretty sure he got a job offer in Texas. But Tina's sister's like, I don't think

that's why they went to Texas. There's not really a clear reason. But Tina didn't really want to go like she liked living with her sister up in Baltimore. And so she was hesitant to leave her family behind. But she had an allegiance to Dean and her baby so the three of them headed to texas in august of 1980 and they lived with dean's uncle in lewisville for a while okay and at first everything was hunky-dory uh they stayed in frequent contact with dean's mom who was you know obviously a little worried that they're kind of bopping around and uh she was comforted that they were calling and saying everything was fine and safe. Dean and Tina actually got their own place and were doing really well. And Tina said she was happy.

But then in November of that year, it had been roughly a month since anyone had heard from Dean or Tina and Dean's mom was getting more and more worried by the day. Some people even that dean and tina actually never told their families they got their own place and their families found out like through other people oh okay which kind of adds a layer of mystery like why wouldn't they tell yeah they're keeping in close contact with his mom it would be weird to like for some reason leave out the fact they got a place together that's a big that's a big announcement yeah you'd think so yeah so that's just some of the sources say that i'm not 100 confident in that but it is a little odd um then dean's cousin mentioned to dean's mom who's already on edge right dean's cousin says oh well you know there was this weird religious group in town oh she goes ding ding ding fuck and he described them as uh these nomadic people in white robes

and no shoes on and donna dean's mom is like god damn it okay it's happening again it's like oh i know them florida well yeah and you know she's just like they're just bopping around i've heard all too well they tried to sleep in my house. And so she just, all she could do really was just wait and pray that Dean and Tina wouldn't get involved with them, especially now that they had the little baby. Yeah. So she is just waiting, becoming more and more concerned with no word from Dean or Tina and the other, all the other strange details coming in from other family members uh she knew something was wrong so tina's sister sherry up in maryland sent a letter to her sister tina and said i had just gotten one recently and within a couple days i sent one back and it was returned with

moved left no forwarding address. Oh shit. Envelope. So Sherry and Donna are now like both sides. Tina's family and Dean's family are both like something is very wrong. Yeah. Yeah. So Donna called her family in Texas who said, Oh yeah, Dean,

Tina and Holly left to join those guys in robes. And she's thinking it's my worst nightmare is true they've gone off with this group and now i don't know how to get in touch with them weirdly this part creeps me out a few weeks later donna gets a call from a detective in california who says oh we have located a car in your name and it was the car that she had bought for dean and tina and they said uh the car was found abandoned we'd like to return it to you and she said okay please yeah if you could return it to me and they said meet us in the park at midnight and what bring bring a thousand dollars okay no thank you yeah what the fuck so's like, let me call the police real quick.

So she calls the police. The real police. She's like, let me put you on hold. She calls the real police because, spoiler alert, that's not a real detective as far as we know. Right. And she explains the situation and they're like, yeah, that's not really a thing but you know you can go ahead and meet with them be careful they're not gonna they didn't bring anyone out to help her they just kind of said you know you can do what you want i would have been like i need someone to escort me like or

like what if this is like what if we're about to bust a gang or something like i think what so they actually do end up looking into it um she i think she just maybe you know what i think might have happened is they told her it's probably not a good idea and she went against their advice does that makes i feel like that makes more sense i guess the police were probably like this is very suspicious maybe don't do this and she was like no but i want to find my son so i'm gonna do it anyway right right i think there was no choice no chance like she was gonna do it no matter what um so they did arrive with the car and um they very clearly were not police they were teenagers in white robes with bare feet and so they could pretend over the phone to be detectives

but they won't commit to like wearing shoes to pretend to be a detective like also like their like their line was not very good like you know all of them sat together trying to craft the best thing to say over the phone and they were like just bring a thousand dollars and don't think about it also at midnight yeah that's a killer that's a killer line also i feel like um that feels like the beginning of a horror movie driving up to a dark park and people in white robes are waiting for you there's like a swing set in the background swinging slowly and people in white robes and no shoes absolutely it's a horror movie this story creeps me the creep out i don't know i i don't i don't

like it i don't like it but she meets with them and they do give her the car so you know at least she got that out of them um then the police showed up okay okay so they did they did uh i didn't want to spoil the surprise okay thank god i was like this like i don't know a better time for a cop with like an axe to grind like to show up and want to like solve something like this is your moment jesus freaks are back i better get on over to the park at midnight yeah so they did they did show up and they did uh actually send donna home and said um we'll take it from here so at the very least you know they really uh they did step in okay so they questioned the teens and in the end police learn ultimately that dean and tina

had joined a group called christ family and this was like this extremist fringe group or at least a fringe group i don't know how extremist but they were a fringe group and they followed a leader named lightning amen so many jokes okay it's but there's so many jokes you can't even like you know it's like impossible to land on one it's like overwhelming it's just wild like this guy and have you heard of him because i'd actually heard of him no i'd heard of him because i mean only once or twice just because his name is so wackadoo um but yeah he's basically like a surfer who then became a cult leader like i mean you know you can see it i don't need to probably give you any more detail than that it's you can imagine you can imagine i i can he looks like thor but he like but like dorky thor dorky thor here let me send you a picture i because

i don't know what thor looks like and i don't know what chris hemsworth oh he does not look like chris hemsworth i hear lightning i think thor i don't know okay that's fair um no i'll send you a picture of jesus amen jesus um no it's lightning on men oh i'm sorry lightning on men christ family part of the jesus people movement it's like sorry folks it's like those people who have a bunch of like the initials at the end of their name like they could be like esquire oh god yes you know jesus follower yeah yeah did you get my photo of him he's the one in the oh my god no he does not look like chris hemsworth certainly not he looks like he looks you know what now that i've seen his face he looks exactly like lightning amen exactly okay i'm glad you understand now yeah he looks like a cult leader

from like i mean these are newer photos but like he basically looked like that in black and white in a robe okay okay um so as you can imagine this guy is a hell of a hell of a guy um they according to the teenagers they told police police, oh, don't worry. Dean and Tina joined the group of their own free will, which like having to insist that is a little shady to me. That makes me think immediately a gun was involved. They loved it the whole time. Right guys?

Like they really wanted to be here. Tell them you had the best time tell them tell them about lightning amen and how he how much he looks like chris hemsworth okay yeah well if he heard me call him chris hemsworth i think all of a sudden they'd try to summon me into the cult or whatever so i think you'd be in trouble um so they said as part of joining the cult they willingly joined and they willingly gave up their worldly possessions and relationships but they said they wanted to make sure donna got the car back since it was in her name um but they knew they couldn't quite contact her themselves so they created this falsified detective plan and uh ultimately they said we can't tell you where

dean tina or holly are because you know our members are nomadic and they travel in small groups you know one minute we're in new smyrna next minute we're in old smyrna who knows uh but yes so they basically said we don't know where they are we can't help you and in the end police were like well there's really no evidence of a crime like they brought you your car you know so she was like well i guess so basically they just let him go back to california and at this point donna is like okay it's very very clear now that my son and his new wife and baby are in a cult. So best she could, she just imagined she kind of created like a world in her mind where they were living happily in a commune somewhere. And, you know, she tried to just at least believe that story to

keep her sanity, help her sleep at night. But she said she really, really struggled with that. Sherry, Tina's sister, later said, we pictured Tina living on some sort of group commune, having a very good quiet life, them with Holly and maybe more children. Even that's at least what I had hoped for. Unfortunately, nobody would ever hear from Dean or Tina again. Yeah. So on January, yeah, unfortunately onuary 6 1981 uh a guy was out with his dog you can imagine where this is going a guy was out with his dog when the dog finds something exciting

in the woods and brings it to his owner and it is a decomposing arm oh so yeah surprise i mean i sensed the body i did not know it would be just one part of just just an arm it's at least not a disembodied foot i know how you feel about those so it's just the arm um of course he calls the harris county sheriff's office and searchers find the remains of two people in a wooded area north of houston the woman had been strangled to death and the man had died of a skull fracture it was theorized that the man may have been killed defending the woman when she was attacked and was was hit over the head the forensics experts on the case referred to them as romeo and jul Juliet because it looked like they died trying to save

one another and you know obviously tragic young couple dying matches Romeo and Juliet so they had no way of knowing their real names um there was really no headway made on the case I mean if you think about it like Dean and Tina are in a cult somewhere. They're not being reported as missing. And so they're not in a database as missing. So the people in Texas just don't know who these people are. And the case goes cold. And the couple was buried together without names, nameless, in a county cemetery. And they stayed that way for decades. Ooh.

and they stayed that way for decades. Ooh. It wasn't until 2011 the National Institutes of Justice awarded Harris County in particular a grant to exhume unidentified remains to collect DNA samples and pursue new investigations on cold cases. Oh, fun.

Yeah, so in 20... Fun. I mean, i mean you know that's overriding i'm talking about it's coming on up in 2018 census of medical examiners and coroners accounted for 11 000 sets of unidentified human remains in my god u.s medical examiner and coroner's offices and that does not include people who have been interred who have been buried so wow that's just the people that are unfortunately their bodies are just in limbo almost in an office somewhere in storage yeah and nobody knows you know they're nameless it's it's scary so you know places are trying to use the new technology dna familial matching to solve who some of these people might be which we saw with the lady of the dunes remember that nobody will ever figure this out so of course matching identities of

missing people to their remains is already you you know, what do you call it? A monumental task. Sure. But since Dean and Tina were never even marked missing, it's not like they were in a list or a database that you could point to. We may never have known who the Lady of the Dunes was, who Dean and Tina were, except for the advent of genetic genealogy, our favorite, favorite tool, which, of course, we've covered in several other cases. Golden State killers probably like the most groundbreaking one. Most happening. Yeah.

And set off the most, you know, kind of offshoots of of the same kind of procedure being done um and so what happens is dna samples of victims and murderers such as golden state killer are entered into public genealogy databases like ancestry.com and then they are used to find matching relatives so in 2022 as in last year as we record this two women named misty gillis and allison peacock best name ever love it love it used a grant to pursue the 1981 romeo and juliet cold case as it was called awesome and interestingly enough that was made possible due to podcasts because ashley flowers company audio chuck ashley flowers who was crime junkie audio chuck actually gave them the grant wow to to pursue this it's just so kick-ass so these two women get this grant from audio chuck and they are able to pursue basically the way that I think it was Misty who described it.

She said she was just scrolling through. They had made like composites of what the remains would maybe look like in life, you know, like reconstruct their faces. their faces and so she's scrolling through a bunch of them like john and jane does and she said she sees the photo of the male victim of this romeo juliet case and she's like something just clicked and i knew i had to find out who this man was like i had to find out his story okay oh it gives me the goose cam so they start moving in a matter of weeks the two of them were able to track down family members and they gave dean's sister debbie brooks a call which must have been quite a call after decades so awkward too like how do you just so awkward you know like if one of them had phone anxiety

i was gonna say i would have sent her a little whatsapp said hey emoji emoji hey girl hey girl weird weather we're having right yeah lol i know it's just like i don't know how people i'm sweating just thinking about it i know i don't know how people do it really um but they called her up and said hey do you happen to have a missing relative because we kind of got this dna match that that hit you and your family of a john doe and she said yeah my brother disappeared like decades ago and we never heard from him again and misty said okay well we believe we found him and we believe we found his partner whoever he was with and debbie said that would be tina you found dean and tina and then there was a brief pause and debbie asked but where's the baby oh and allison said that was the biggest shock i had ever had in my life

we were focused on finding them it didn't occur to us that they would have had a child like the whole time they're just thinking oh this young couple was killed we're gonna find their identities and then this bombshell of like well where's their baby because no unidentified child remains had been found right that area. Was she like, were they originally taken in by this group because they had a baby and then they killed them for the baby? You know, like. No.

Oh. Which feels like that could very much be the plot. But no, it's actually not, not quite that way. And we still don't totally know what happened. And again, that's where the hope comes in. I hope that we can figure this one out at this point. Not only were there not remains found with Dean and Tina, but there were no remains in any registers that DNA matched with them.

So this baby wasn't even listed unidentified. And so they thought maybe she's still alive. Right. And if she were alive, she would be 41 years old. Okay. And they were killed when she was several months old. Right. So like if the group took the baby in,

they probably like maybe changed her name she wouldn't even know her name was holly so eventually a cold case unit took on the search for holly in january 2022 and meanwhile donna and her family of course had donna who's still alive that's his dean's mom had to reckon with dean and tina's deaths and you know put some closure there at the very least it has to at least be because you hope that this entire time they were out with their group but to know that they they died so early you know i mean just months yeah this whole time you thought that at least they were around for like maybe 10 or 20 years and i know but even in that whole time you were imagining at least they were around for like maybe 10 or 20 years.

I know. But even in that whole time you were imagining that maybe one day they'd call, they weren't even alive. That's exactly. I mean, that's exactly. You could have taken the words right out of her mouth because Donna, Dean's mom, said, I was on the freeway once and this young man passed me and it looked so much like my son. I used to tell myself he's still out there somewhere and he'll ring the doorbell and say, hey, mom. And now that hope had been quashed. But, you know, at the very least, they had a glimmer of hope in that maybe they could find Holly, which would be Donna's granddaughter. So unbelievably, the investigation pretty quickly led them to Holly Marie, who was alive and well and still named Holly Marie.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Wow. I did not see that coming. Right? That's why I just didn't even respond to you. I was like, I don't want to give anything away. I'm just going to let you let that one rest. Let it fester. Thank you. or gross so holly marie explained that she had been adopted decades ago and it would have been just before her parents murders oh is how the timing worked so maybe when they had to give up all their relationships and included their kid yeah wow ding ding ding oh wow that saved her life it did thankfully thank god so they found her she said i was adopted and her story was on november 8th 1980 her adoptive father philip mcgoldrick he was a pastor in yuma arizona and he was at church he was at seventh day adventist church in yuma and he was getting ready for i

don't know he's in his office getting ready for a sermon or something it's around 2 p.m. and he hears a knock at the door of the church so he goes and opens a door and sees two women wearing white robes and no shoes on and he said they kind of looked like nuns but he said they looked like nuns who had slept in a field that's like the best dad insult i've ever heard so he said they were just really unkempt and they looked it and so philip was familiar with this group already because you know he worked at a church and he had seen them around and he had helped with feeding them and giving them provisions and that kind of thing before. So he's like, what would you like? What can I help you with?

Do you need food? You know, do you need shelter? They say we need someone to take a baby from us. And according to them, their explanation was that women and men traveled separately in this sect. Oh. And there was no room for a baby in their lifestyle. So someone's got to take the baby. Mm-hmm.

And they said one of our sisters decided to give hers up. So Philip is immediately skeptical. He's like, I don't know. I want to talk to the mother and make sure that she's good with this. So he asked if they were 100% sure about this. They said, well, one time we left a baby alone in a laundromat with a note attached to it. And we thought this was a better alternative. Would love to know where that baby is now.

Jeez. Yeah. What the fuck? And so he goes, well, shit. Like, obviously, now i have to take this baby because what if i give it back they're gonna go put it in a laundromat somewhere you know what i mean he's like it's safer for me to take the baby so you know thankfully he takes the baby in he's scared they're gonna abandon it somewhere and the sisters drove with philip to his house

to speak to his wife because he's like let me let's bring my wife into this one before i make any like decisions so interestingly when he got in the car the sisters quote-unquote introduced him to the mother of holly marie the baby wow okay although she was very quiet didn't talk much and the the leader quote-unquote of the trio did most of like the logistics and the talking so they get to philip's house now with tina who is the mother of holly and they have the baby too and philip and his wife connie speak directly to tina and they say you know are you sure this is what you want? She insisted that, yes, it is what she wanted. She gave them Holly's original birth certificate and a document signed by Dean, the father, relinquishing all parental rights to Holly.

And Connie, the pastor's wife, just couldn't understand this decision and kept asking, you know, Tina, are you sure? Is this really what you want? And Tina said it was what she had to do oof yeah they asked her repeatedly but she was so adamant that eventually they just accepted it and because it was a saturday there were no lawyers offices open and so philip and connie went with these three women to a notary and tina signed a document giving up holly and then the sisters left within two hours of showing up with a baby at his doorstep. They were gone. And he was, you know, he and his wife raised Holly Marie alongside their other daughter as sisters.

Wow. Isn't that wild? Wow. So Connie and Philip met with a lawyer, you know you know because they were like we still want to make sure this is all above board and they did actually publish a notice of an abandoned child almost as like to give one more chance to tina if she wanted to change her mind um and the legal guardians had six months to claim holly and take her back but they never did we know now that tina had been murdered in that time period so after six months the mcgoldricks began an official adoption of holly marie um they'd already you know fallen in love with her

after having her for six months and now their oldest daughter or their only daughter had a sister so they had two daughters which is kind of special. So Holly grew up knowing this story about these women appearing at her father's church. But neither she nor her parents could imagine that, you know, shortly thereafter, both her parents were brutally murdered and had been sitting unidentified for 40 years. That definitely was not on the radar. unidentified for 40 years like that definitely was not on the radar so on june 7 2022 detectives approached holly who is now 42 and a mother of five wow spoke i know like a full-ass adult life and spoke to her about her past and they confirmed she was indeed holly marie daughter of tina and

dean she they had the original birth certificate and everything wow and that day they said do you want to hop on a zoom call and your family and she said what's a zoom call but she did uh remember this was 2022 so like you know right we were all used to it zoom was popping off okay so they get on a zoom call and she is like just totally overwhelmed she's meeting several family members like she's just over the moon and she later said i had this family that had prayed and been searching for me and wanted to know me wanted to find me and incidentally she was located on the birthday of dean her late father yeah and so she called it a birthday gift from heaven he's like it only took 42 birthdays but i know yeah so holly met her grandmother who had been searching for her all this time and hoping for to find her someday and they reunited

and you can go watch the video i think it it's on like Good Morning America or something. You know. Of them reuniting for the first time. And she just says like thank you for praying. Holly said. It's just really sweet. And when they were reunited. Tina's sister Sherry actually had a dream.

That Tina was playing with her daughter Holly. Like she used to do. When she lived in Maryland with them. And she said I think that was a sign. That Tina is finally resting in peace knowing that holly has been reunited with her family so sweet i know and so of course now the next step remains to discover what the hell happened to dean and tina um they believe the case can be solved and there actually is one person of interest and it is a woman who was there the day of holly's adoption the woman who approached philip and said you know take this baby and her name's rosemary garcia and apparently she had orchestrated this whole

adoption and was like a main member of this religious fringe group so they're looking at her for answers so i i do feel like there could be an actual solution to this um and it's weirdly enough rosemary had three daughters of her own i guess that she didn't have to give up so that's convenient isn't it and i mean i'm glad for their sake but but also what the fuck um and their names are jill joy and jan and people called them rosemary and the three j's rosemary and the duggars yeah it does sound it does yeah oh they copied it they copied rosemary so anyway um investigators think she probably has some sort of information that could lead them to answers and the texas attorney general told people as long as there are people still alive that know we've got a chance of solving it just like finding baby holly it took decades but eventually we ended

up with the right information to get that part of it figured out and um you know of course the easy assumption is that the cult was had orchestrated the murder right but like we can't be positive um because they were also living kind of a dangerous lifestyle of uh sleeping outside and and traveling in small groups and you know it made them vulnerable to violent crime. So perhaps they had been killed hitchhiking, sleeping outside somewhere, um, staying with a stranger overnight. But, uh, you know, a lot of people believe the cult did have something to do with it for obvious reasons. So Donna actually passed away, um, last month or sorry, two months ago in October, but Holly and her family are still hoping for closure

and holly has since written a book about this whole experience it's called finding baby holly colon lost to a cult surviving my parents murders and saved by prayer wow no big deal right yeah talk about like an icebreaker at a party i know it's like two truths alive but they're all true yeah yeah um and so in this book she kind of writes about the perspectives of her family members so she can put together her own understanding of her parents and who her parents were and and kind of rebuild like the i don't know the family that she was separated from all that time ago so together with both of her families holly and one of the researchers allison peacock you remember they launched the dean and tina lynn klaus memorial fund which helps other people search

for lost loved ones using genetic genealogy which i think is just so badass and um holly says she wants to bring what she calls miracles to other families because she feels like she was given a miracle oh yeah so you know this one had some some positivity at the end that was a great one christine oh well thank you so much i mean that was probably the only time I feel like somewhat relieved in the least twisted way possible. I actually can say I enjoyed the story without feeling like a total piece of garbage. Without just like just cringing the whole time. Like there was actually some positivity going on.

Yeah. Yeah. It's I still want to know why they were killed and why they were killed next to each other if they're supposed to be separate from each other. I wonder. I mean, one of the theories, I think one of the family members believes that they tried to leave the cult oh i see and that makes sense together perhaps especially when that i mean if you think about it this is all speculation on my part but if you think about it if her adoptive parents put a uh a notice of an abandoned child and said you have six months to retrieve your child

who knows if they tried to go back for her and right we're caught leaving the who knows i mean again this is just me speculating but oh yeah no those make sense um hopefully they figure it out man good story christine oh my gosh let me send you a picture because it every time they showed this picture i was just so sad because it's such a cute little family and just to know like or like how i'm saying i'm finally feeling relieved and you're like great let me bum you out real quick oh let me show you the murder victim but oh they're cuties aren't they cute and they're so young i mean it's just terrible yeah and they were so excited about their baby. And it's just really sad. At least she finally got to see a picture of her with them.

So she, yeah, they gave her that photo. And it was, of course, like life changing. Yeah. To have. And she has, I think somebody made, I'm trying to see, a painting of them together. Like the three of them together for for her it's just you know very sweet i'm just glad she at least got some closure out of all of it but yeah well thank you everyone for listening to another reason and episode of and that's why we drink uh and what

when does when does this come out this comes out out right around now, right before Christmas. Are you getting excited for Christmas, Christine? I am. I am. Maybe you'll get a new ear by January or something. Maybe the membrane of my eardrum will heal over. Wouldn't that be a Christmas miracle? Little drummer boy, Christine.

Ear drummer boy. Ear drummer boy, Christine. Just fixing up that membrane that she punctured uh reminder that we are about to go back on tour every day my uh vegas nerves freaks out a little more um but please come buy tickets because the only thing that would make it worse is if nobody showed up don't say that. That's not funny. I just, I hope everyone's having a good time. So if you want to listen to more of our ramblings,

you can go over to Patreon, where we will be doing an after hours, and we'll see you there. And that's why we drink.