And That's Why We Drink - E39 A Girl Named German and La La Land 1 ½

Episode Date: October 29, 2017

Happy October 39th, where Christine doesn’t know exponents and Em doesn’t know calendars. Em tells the story of Anneliese Michel, the inspiration for the Exorcism of Emily Rose and one of the truest proofs of demonic possession in recorded history. Meanwhile, Christine talks about the Axeman of New Orleans, who chisels some panels and taps some faces. (It’s like the Purge, but with jazz music.)If there’s one thing you take away from this episode, we hope it’s the fact that we’re modern-day jesters, and Gio is the Venn diagram of our love. I promise that makes more sense in context. I think.Don’t forget to check out our incredible sponsors, Mack Weldon (promo code “Drink”) and Hello Fresh (promo code “Drink30”). You won’t regret it.

Happy Halloween Eve Eve. Happy Halloween Eve Eve. Is that right? I feel like you have to have an exponent over the Eve. Like square it. What is that? An exponent? Is that a math thing?

Yeah. Oh my God. I thought that was called. Just stop it. You're thinking of subscript. I'm definitely not. I'm definitely not.'m definitely not but yeah exponent that's a little mini number a fly just came right out of my hat am i dirty are you that

guy from uh charlie brown who's just pig pen i just was like what's buzzing around my face and i was like oh my god i'm a dumpster fire anyway happy Halloween Eve Eve listen we if I'm allowed to smell like the dead right now apparently actually I really don't smell I swear to god I don't the flies just think I do oh I smell oh well you really do smell Christine today made us like a gourmet dinner yeah right in a house that doesn't have AC. 104 degrees. 104 degrees outside today before she started cooking. I don't know why I did that. It was so good though. I actually do it because I locked myself out of

my house last night and I made, I was like Em, you're the only one with the spare key. And then Em was working on notes so Allison had to drive in like her pajamas to like. She keeps saying that she's not our intern, but like she keeps doing weird errands in the middle of the night for us. Listen, I mean, that's what she's here for. I know. For someone who resigned that she's not our intern, but like she keeps doing weird errands in the middle of the night for us. I mean, that's what she's here for.

I know. For someone who resigned, she's still doing things. So that's why I made you dinner. Allison was also really nice last night because I did tell her, I'm only coming over to borrow your computer because I have to finish my notes. And then you said, I got a text from Christine being like, I'm really sorry, and I'm a piece of garbage, but I'm going to need you to come to my house. And I was like, oh, my God, I hate you. Oh, yeah.

And especially because I was down to like 20 pages of notes out of 73 because I'm well-researched, as you can tell every week by my note-taking. Oh, sure. You would think, right? By like 73 pages of notes, I would know what the fuck I'm well-researched, as you can tell every week by my note-taking. Oh, sure. You would think, right? By like 73 pages of notes, I would know what the fuck I'm talking about. You should just submit those 73 pages as like a PhD dissertation. Or just as proof. I should just post that on Facebook every week and be like, look, I tried.

Somewhere in the podcast, you will find what is in these pages. Like little highlighted notes. Uh-huh. But so anyway, I was telling Allison, I still have 20 notes to go, and it's like 10 o'clock at night. I didn't have time to go give you the key. And so she just got in her car and went. She's a gem.

She's a gem. And then I was like, come inside. I have something for you. And then I walked into the kitchen and realized I'd already drunk all the wine I had. And I was like, just kidding. I don't. But come back tomorrow. So then today I was like, hi, I have wine.

Drink it right now. And then I, and then I showed up and she was like um I have dinner eat it and it was so good I had like I think thirds and fourths it was so good I just felt so bad but here we are here we are also I know no happiness yet because uh I also want to make sure everyone knows that as soon as I got to the house Gio welcomed me and I gave him a big fat hug. And I was like, what is that smell? And then I went over to Christine and be like, I think he rolled in garbage or poop or something.

And she was like, oh, it was a dead animal. I'm like, oh, well, I mean, one time Em and I caught him eating an entire dead bird's body. So I feel like this shouldn't be a surprise. That's true. I remember Christine was like, Gio, what do you have in your mouth? And he when he looked up, there was literally a bloody talon hanging out of his mouth a fucking talon with claws on it with like in skin like bird skin it was absolutely a bird foot and then all of a sudden we just heard crunch and we were like and then about 10 minutes later he licked me

inside my ear couldn't get away from it. Welcome to my house. Anyway, guys, happy 39th. Have we scared? 39th? Episode. Oh, I thought you meant like of October. Oh, the 39th of October.

I thought you meant like the 31st. Where Christine doesn't know exponents and I don't know calendars. The 39th. Happy 29th. Happy negative 8th of November. Listen, I don't know calendars. The 39th. Happy 29th. Happy negative 8th of November. Listen, I don't know what's happening. Drink. I have some things for you.

I'm ready. Okay. So I just, we want to say, I got back from my trip to Cincinnati where I like, you know, ate some wedding cake and did some and saw Fall Out Boy and did some cool shit. Oh yeah. This is the other side of prediction day. Now tell me how it really went.

You're right. It was fucking amazing. And I saw Fall Out Boy and my friend got me tickets that were so fucking close that we were probably 20 feet away from my husband, Patrick Stump. Right. So that was great. And then we picked a wedding cake. from my husband, Patrick stump. Right. Um, so that was great. And then we picked a wedding cake. We saw the venue. It was amazing. I saw my baby little sister who had a Harry Potter engagement party for me. Tell them about the sorting hat thing

that your 12 year old sister, the genius created on her own. She decided we had to put on a sorting hat, put on a blindfold and then get balloons thrown at her face. And then whichever color we caught was the house we were in because she was working on thrown at her face. And then whichever color we caught was the house we were in. Because she was working on like a personality quiz and then she just gave up because like she has my genes. So she was like halfway through that. And then she's like, let's just throw balloons and see what happens. You know, it would have been better if you got her to low key also be the wedding planner

and just have her blindfold people and randomly catch balloons to figure out where they're sitting at the reception gold there it is is she listening probably not but mom if you're listening probably not but if you are throw it at her i can't wait till she's at least nearing 21 and we get a picture of her sitting in a castle of boxed wine cannot wait can't wait she already she's gonna be you she already sneaks wine and i'm like even at that age i didn't drink anything badass yeah she's 13 now and she'll like oh my mom was like oh i have this like moscato in the fridge and i'm not usually like a moscato drinker but she's like it's really good you should try it and my sister goes no really sissy it's so good you should try it and i was like wait wait wait and my mom's like well i let her taste it i'm like stop bernada like let's put it this way if christine wasn't drinking then

and drinks like this now can you imagine what her sister will be like if she's already starting listen her podcast is gonna be so good oh get ready for the spinoff everyone's doing reunions right so we just gotta like a full house revisited yeah so i mean if we're gonna have a spinoff reunion in 10 years your sister will literally be perfect age. What are you drinking? Nothing. Okay, maybe you should, like, count to three. What? Okay. Are you fucking kidding me?

No. One, two, three. Hey, look at that magic! Here comes non-intern Allison with with a literal milkshake thank you it's a reason why i didn't make this what's happening thank you does it taste good yeah it tastes like a chocolate milkshake okay i'm confused what's happening we wanted to surprise you oh thank you i don't get a kiss god close your eyes christine this is one two three this is workplace harassment wait whoa i don't know what's happening here listen this is what's happening this week i got back from

cincinnati and we got a bunch of packages and blaze went and picked them up because he's also kind of our intern and uh we opened them when m and all Allison picked me up from the airport. And someone sent us, an anonymous gifter sent us a milkshake maker and an electric wine opener. Both true. Both true. And it was in one package and we were so excited. We posted the photo and someone said we looked like kids on Christmas. I really, I actually jaw dropped and didn't know what to do. Yeah.

I was so floored. I was like, no way. Especially because, you know, I'm sure this is the actual reason why, but I've said it in past episodes that Christine lives far away now, so I can't have my milkshakes. Yeah. So that's resolved. So literally when I came over, I had bought a bunch of ice cream and like chocolate syrup and stuff.

And then Allison came over and was like, okay, I bought a bunch of, I brought a bunch of chocolate ice cream and milk and whipped cream. And I was like, oh shit, we both brought like. So now I'm just fully stocked for a while, huh? So we have so much ice cream, milk, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream in the fridge and freezer for you. That's awesome. And going off that that we also got uh

nutribullets from our friend jack jacklyn oh jacklyn but like jack j-a-c because she's cool and hip oh damn well thank you jacklyn yeah the nutribullets are great too because those are like epic blenders just like they're like milkshake makers for other food besides ice cream yeah they're like milkshake makers plus more so those are great it's like milkshake makers for other food besides ice cream. Yeah. They're like milkshake makers plus more. So those are great. It's like milkshake makers 3.0. Exactly. And then we also got, I mean, we just got so much cool stuff and you guys are so thoughtful.

You guys are way nice to us. Also, we got Dana. Yeah. Dana sent us like a Halloween. Dana sent us a Halloween package, a box full of ghost themed treats. And for Gio. And snacks that I have personally mentioned on the show, like my Sausalitos and my Milanos. Both were in there.

And then we got a mysterious box that said alcohol on a big sticker. So obviously that was for me. Obviously, I just let Christina open that one. I opened it and it was a big bottle of Barefoot Sweet Red Wine. So I don't know who sent that. It wasn't a name, but thank you. And then Allison sent us some, um, Halloween body cream and some products. And, oh, we got those paranormal books from Leslie fear. So I'm reading, they're really good. I'm reading, I'm reading it right now. We also got a package from Alicia at, um, which is bath, which is, it's an Etsy shop. It's

Etsy.com slash, which is bath. And it's, um, in Columbus. Oh no, I'm sorry. Etsy.com slash shop slash the, which is bath. I'm 8,000 years old and I can't read. Uh, so, okay. These are what we got. So she sent us two of each so there's should i look yet should you just put it all out on the table i'll give you like the main gift afterward okay so we got a rainbow soap i love it i love it i'm gonna consider this lgbt themed that's what i thought i'm gonna assume that's why she gave us the rainbow and we each got one so it's like cool like we each get oh like ally and like i'm part of alphabet soup. I'm just like the last letter. And you're like, yeah, I'm waiting them somewhere.

Yeah. Like I'm way in the front. Yeah. Red velveteen bath bomb. And it's like a skull. Oh, neat. That's cool. I bet it.

I bet it like looks like it's bleeding when you throw it in the water. It probably is all red. You're right. I didn't even think about that. Okay. Now this is the best part okay i'm ready okay she forgot to put the note in so she emailed us the note wonderful she sounds like she's one of our people she's just love i know she's like i got too excited i was like story my life

this is a limited edition thing that she created for us she created it for us for us shut up limited edition we each get one no it's in and that's why we drink ouija bath bomb and it says shut the fuck up look at it it has like the ouija board literally a ouija is a soap it's a bath bomb and it has a label and everything of and that's why we drink like an official label oh my god this is so cool so that's why we drink. Like an official label. Oh my God. This is so cool. So that's another thing we got. Anyway, you guys have just sent us so much cool shit and I'm so thankful. I can't believe you guys want to be that nice to us.

You don't have to. We act like literal kids on Christmas every time. Every single time. So thank you. Also, I just want to say real quick i called our listener um marilyn marlin like probably like three times nice you're an asshole i called her like a fish like marlin even though her name's pronounced like marilyn like an actual name so i apologize marilyn sorry girl sorry girl i also want to say real quick that i've been kind of behind on responding to emails because we have gotten so many lately and you guys are sending in so many amazing stories that I've just been kind of caught up and I've been trying to respond to all of them.

But I start Nickelodeon on Monday, so I'm a little worried that I might not be able to respond to every single email. So if I promise you that I'm reading every single one and saving every single one, but I might not necessarily respond to every single one from now on just because I'm so swamped that. Well, also, I'm now finally getting to be involved on the behind the scenes part of the podcast, and I'm going to be taking over some of the emails. So you guys will finally be getting my responses on things, not just christine's yay so now it's a toss-up you don't know who you're talking to so uh i'm gonna be helping out i'm gonna be doing some other stuff too but um when it comes to emails just a heads up it's not always christine anymore it's a surprise a trick or treat if you will it could be could be Gio. It could be him. It might be Gio rolling around on the laptop after rolling around on a dead body. Which is very, like, crucial to the theme of our podcast, by the way.

So he might as well. He's sending you corpse remains. So since this is a Halloween episode, we might be going a little long on the intro, but it is a ghosty update, so I want to include it. I mentioned last week that I got a pendulum yeah yeah yeah yeah and a bunch of people posted like wait so did you just did christine just say oh she contacted a dead spirit and then like move on like ignored it like was that a joke here's the thing i went home to cinc. Actually, Em doesn't know this either yet. I don't know. I was told I'm not allowed to know until we were recording. It's an update. We're all finding out together.

So I went to Cincinnati and I was like, oh, I'm going to bring my pendulum. And I'm like, mom, look at this cool pendulum I got. And my mom and I have always believed that my great grandmother is at our house in Cincinnati. And to add to it, my house was built in 1890 and our, our, we live on a, um, a cemetery and it's a Jewish graveyard and it's really, really big. You were just asking for this podcast 25 years ago, 26 years ago. I never, I never saw shit, you know, that's wild. But yeah, so I brought it home and I was like, look, mom, look what I have. And so I'm like, look how it works. And of course it's like working. And I'm like, wow, I can use it and talk to people, spirits who are here, whatever. I didn't think

about it. Then I was messaging with this woman named Taylor, who's wonderful. And I, she mentioned something about a pendulum and I was like, can you help me? I don't know what I'm doing. So she's a listener and she helped me so much and sent me so many tips and advice. And she basically said, like, try not to use it to talk with the dead. That's usually not a good idea. And I was like, too late. This is exactly why I tell you not to fucking play with Ouija boards because you don't know what you're doing. But she said it's less, she said Ouija boards are safer because you don't know what you're doing but she said it's less she said Ouija boards are safer because you can close out and say goodbye whereas a pendulum is more like you just invite it there and then like leave it just saying just saying all right anyway um not that she'd probably

condone me using a Ouija board so probably not so I used it and I was like okay and then we went to bed and the next morning I set it on the living room table and the next morning we came downstairs and blaze we were watching tv and blaze kind of like picked it up and it was laying on the table and he's like kind of swinging it and I was like it looks funny and I picked it out of his hand and I was like holy shit the whole tip is broken off oh of a rock it's a rock at the tip right like a full crystal I can't just fall off it's like an amethyst it's like a full crystal yeah and so I was like oh my god the tip is gone and he goes no no like it's that's what it looked

like I was like no that's not what it fucking looked like so I'm on the ground and I'm like crawling around the carpet and I finally find the tip of it a few feet away and it's just like on the ground so I super glued it together but I was like all freaked out because I was like well I talked to who I thought was my great-grandmother blah blah blah so I messaged Taylor and I was like uh so I did the opposite of what you told me to do oh no and I contacted a spirit. Honestly, if she listened to this podcast, she should have not been surprised. She should have been like, well, yep. Yep. Uh, that's not, that's exactly what was going to happen, I guess. Yeah. So she responded

and was like, well, um, she goes, actually I have a lot of pendulums that where they break off. And I was like, really really and she basically said that whether it's good or bad energy if it's just really strong energy a lot of times they'll like hold on so tight that it'll it'll break oh good spirits are just so strong they can crush rocks right in front of your eyes that's neat so i was like well and she goes if you still feel like positive connection to the pendulum then it's a good thing and it's it means it's still like connected it's like a ghost's way of thinking we're so cute they just want to squeeze us until we break yeah like we talked about yep it's like

me with geo yeah yeah except you won't break his little nose or anything i mean i let him roll around dead animals but but yeah so she was like honestly it doesn't mean a bad thing necessarily it usually just means and she had she said she has one pendulum that just always breaks and it'll she'll just like fix it and it'll break because it's the one where she contacts like really strong spirits who have a lot of energy and she says that sometimes it just happens so i felt pretty good i was like maybe it's and i thought i was talking to my great-grandma and i've always felt like she was there so i was like maybe that's who it was oh she said whenever she contacts her godmother it her pendulum cracks because it's like

such a strong energy crazy so anyway that's my update all right anyway now tell me a story because i'm just like getting emotional here's my. I wanted to do this story for a while. But I wanted to wait until it was closer to Halloween. And since the 29th is the closest, we're going to get to the 31st. You mean the 39th. The 30, I think I said the 37th. Oh, the 39th. I did say the 39th.

So anyway, since it's October 39th, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm so excited. So this was the inspiration for The Exorcism of Emily Rose. And it is the same demons that were involved with future victim Anna Eklund. Oh, my God. Okay. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is the only horror movie I watched as a child,

except Aside from the Ring. And The Exorcism of Emily Rose, that movie, screwed me up for life. of emily rose is the only horror movie i watched as a child except aside from the ring and the exorcism of emily rose that movie screwed me up for life so this is not sinister i mean that was like i had a bear i took so much melatonin that i got knocked out but so this is also considered by priests one of the truest proofs of demonic possession that we have so far in history which is weird because i will preface it by saying, I think Anna Eklund was more convincing, but maybe because since Anna Eklund comes later in life,

yeah. Um, maybe, or does she come later? I fuck whoever came first. I don't, I don't really remember someone else figure that out. So 73 pages of notes and m doesn't know no i remember

the years of this and i don't remember the years of anna ecklund i don't either to be honest whatever okay the same people are involved so we're gonna quiz you on that later okay uh okay so and the girl's name is german so you're gonna have to help oh it's like what a unique name her name is german i was like why. Oh, I was like, what a unique name. Her name is German. I was like, why didn't my parents name me that? Okay, what's the name? Annalisa? Oh, Annalisa.

Annalisa. So, Annalisa? Annalisa. Annalisa. Yeah. Or Annalise, I guess, is the... So, Annalise is what I'm going to call her because I'm ignorant. No, no, no. That's right. So she was born in an extremely devout Catholic family where the family was like crazy strict,

crazy conservative. So their beliefs were that like reformations of the Vatican were to be ignored. You like follow like the original, original rules. Oh, shit. There was no simple atonement for sin. No one could not... Basically, they just were really strict and very devout. It was all Latin. Shit. There was no simple atonement for sin. No one could not. Basically, they just were really strict and very devout. It was all Latin.

Probably. Yeah. Probably just shouted Latin to each other all the time. Definitely. They were just like, Cornelia. Poella. Un pictura. Un pictura es un poella.

Nomine Cornelia. That is so strict. I'm just saying. I can't imagine. It's very old school, though. So her symptoms of possession, because we're just going to dive into it. Do it. Began in 1968 at age 16.

Oh, fuck. Her first symptoms were spontaneous convulsing. So she was given, I guess that was her main first symptom. So she was given medication for epilepsy, although it never seemed to work, no matter what drug she took or what dosage she took. Her body would become rigid out of nowhere, and she would feel an enormous weight on her chest. She described mild paralysis, and she had an inability to speak every now and then. She would also go into trance-like states where she wouldn't remember anything, but she would wake up and feel someone who wasn't there sitting on her chest and then she would feel her own bladder squeeze itself making her wet the bed what so she would just like pee the bed and she like

even if she tried to hold it in she could feel her bladder like working against her oh she was then sent to a psychiatric hospital where she remained for about a year, but she started seeing demonic faces during her daily prayers. Uh-uh. And she was quoted saying, I see devil faces on the wall. They have seven crowns and seven horns. Later, evil voices began to start giving her commands, told her she was damned and that she was going to stew in hell. She also developed an aversion to all religious items typical standard standard classic kevin classic satan classic on a lease classic on a lease i mean like if i told her once i've told her a million times get it together so she told doctors what was going on

but they didn't really believe her about any of it and they just put on heavier meds but over time things got even worse but falling back on her faith she believed that these weren't medical symptoms but spiritual of something else and she said the medicine was not helping and she begged for an exorcism but she was given more meds for different various types of psychoses yikes um the meds once again did nothing and her behavior got more erratic so she would start standing in the middle of the floor and peeing and defecating and then she would lick it up no she would eat would eat coal. She would eat bugs. She would rip her clothes off in front of anybody when they started speaking about God. Oh, M. She would scream for hours while breaking crucifixes, destroying paintings of Jesus, and pulling apart rosaries.

Oh, M. Oh, M. She would fall to her knees and then rise. She was doing genuflections repeatedly hundreds of times a day until she broke her own kneecaps and laughed and what wait whoa she okay it was known that she would do up to 600 genuflections a day breaking her own kneecaps and laughing about it and then the next day she would keep doing 600 more on broken kneecaps listen knees torsos andsos, and Achilles heels, enough. I can't do it. Gross.

And spines. Spines are the worst. Oh, I didn't realize how much I hated spines until you said spines. I can't breathe. Why are you doing this? Okay, so anyway, we were talking about... God damn it, Em. Now I'm just sweating so much.

Spines really suck. Also teeth. The whole body, really. Let's talk about something not as scary like the devil. Okay, let's move on. Okay. Oh yeah, she was breaking her kneecaps. One night at the dinner table, her hands also grew twice the size and darkened until they were black.

What? Another time, she tried to stand oh no this is multiple times this is a recurring thing she would try to stand up and she would get shoved down by an unseen force in front of everyone like people would just see her getting knocked the fuck down and she would be unable to move or get back up because someone was holding her down and then if she finally did get back up you could see her like get shoved like she couldn't act it like you could see the force hitting her oh after they were shoving her down so often she started to learn how to fight back so she kept trying to be able to get up but she was never able to catch

herself so every time she got up they would just shove her before she could break her own fall and so she kept landing on her face in her head oh oh she would try to spread quilts and pillows on the floor like she would try to spread them out on her bedroom floor so that way when she knew she'd fall eventually she'd at least land on quilts and pillows that's so sad but they would pull the blankets and pillows away from her as she was falling so she would watch them get ripped away just so her head would hit the stone floor again. What the hell? While on pilgrimage with a family friend, the family friend said that she refused to drink water from a holy spring and apparently smelled, quote, hellishly bad.

So she took her to priests where they suggested she get an exorcism. Imagine smelling so fucking bad that you have to take someone to a pile of priests and be like, exercise her. Listen, I don't have to imagine. I'm pretty fucking sweaty. So it took forever for anyone to actually allow an exorcism, not just because it's already rare to get them. But this was 1975. So the year before, the exorcist came out. And so a lot of false claims were going out.

Totally. People were probably all over that. A lot of people were either faking symptoms to try and get exercise just because it was a novelty, or a lot of people were hypochondriacs and assumed that they were being possessed when they probably just had some other issue. It was like a zeitgeisty thing. Also, this was a time in the mid 70s when religion was slowly on the decline and science was finally being taken seriously and so um especially in the 70s that was when psychiatry was like finally getting its name on the ground hashtag mind hunter hashtag mind hunter and so priests were under great pressure from the scientific community to actually be able to prove if there was a possession or not, because they were starting to find medical reasons for things.

And especially in psychiatry, they were really finding behavioral reasons for things besides just falling back on religion. So it was even harder than usual to get an exorcism approved. get an exorcism approved. But in 1975, the bishop finally allowed it, saying that they would be using the Ritual Romanum of 1614. Oh, yeah, that one. Well, that was original. Back then, that was still a valid canon law. So remember, I told you that in 1999, the rules changed for exorcisms. so it changed from the ritual romanum of 1614 to um a new updated version which is now what people use that's insane that's so that's hundreds and hundreds of years yes like so through the 70s through the 1970s people were still using the exorcism rites of the 1600s which is like early 1600s like literally 15 years like closer than the

1500s which is like when witch trials and shit happened so it was before it was 1614 weren't the holy shit weren't the witch trials 1690s they were like late 1600s yeah so this is like 70 years before the witch trials so um but so that they were using the original rights for an exorcism and they wanted to give these types of cases some scientific context so people at the time would actually pay attention to them so they made sure to record everything when uh so the pastor and the priest who took on this uh case his name was father renz r-e-n-z okay and when he agreed to meet her she was speaking in a very masculine gutturalural voice, which, by the way, rude if she's just a little more masculine than normal. Like, that doesn't mean she's a fucking demon.

Whatever. Oh, she just sounds a little burly. So she was speaking in a masculine, guttural voice, but it was definitely not her own, according to her parents. to her parents um he gave a test to kind of see whether or not this was legitimate and in his head gave a mental command to her that uh basically his thought was withdraw from her say who you are and from across the room she looked at him and in that deep voice said no and then ran towards him and ripped off his rosary. So, and he, she hadn't been speaking to him before this. That was the first time she talked to him.

So Ed Warren of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demonologists, he has been known. I just got this quote just to give some reference that if a negative spirit is strong enough to touch something as religiously powerful as a rosary. That means they're crazy, extremely powerful. Because they're supposed to not be able to touch relics. Or they're not supposed to be able to go near relics.

Right, they're supposed to be repelled. Yeah, and so the fact that this one was able to go up and grab it off of a priest. That's really fucked up. Ed Warren said only the most menacing and blasphemous of entities would dare to touch them. If it can do that, it's extremely powerful. Oh, no. So Father Renz agreed to do the exorcism with Pastor Alt assisting him. Okay.

So the two of them worked weekly and they would chain her down and perform the rite of exorcism and documented each session by recording. Like, like audio. Yeah, like tape cassettes. On the tapes, you can hear different voices coming from her, various growls from various ranges of various timbers. Annalise claimed to see demons jumping around her and dancing on the floor in front of her and poking the priests and her eyes would literally become black and fiery and filled with hatred oh my she was strong enough to fight off all of them and had the strength of several men and during these sessions uh they discovered that many demons were trying to possess her body including

beelzebub lucifer lucifer yeah and judas judas uh cain who killed his brother nero a random uh fallen priest not nero like who who fiddled while Rome burnt. Like, a different Nero. Oh, I don't know. Hashtag Latin class. A fallen priest from the 16th century. What the? And Hitler.

Shut the fuck up. Hitler was possessing her with all of them. Listen, I don't want Hitler to have, like, like the status of being a fucking demon. Well, fun fact, Judas explained out, like through her body, explained to the priests that nobody in hell actually likes Hitler because all he does is brag. I'm sorry, what? So even the demons don't like him. Okay, that's a little better. But wait, so he's, so Judas said this through her body.

The fuck? Yeah, it was just just like we don't like hitler like we're all willing to possess this body together except hitler like he can't sit with us he can't hitler can't sit with us hitler doesn't even go here on wednesdays he doesn't even wear pink no probably fucking not god, that's fucked up, dude. So then... Oh, there's more. Of course, naturally, Annalise also spoke several different languages during these rituals and would telekinetically move furniture around the room during sessions to distract them from finishing the rite of exorcism. That's nice. She would have total opposite behaviors where sometimes she would be so violent that she would throw her own head through a window.

But other times she would look out the window and hum religious music. So there was no way to predict her behavior. She would perform up to 600 daily genuflections, like I said. I can't. And was so weak from not eating that her parents would help her. Like help, like stand her back up um they weren't like stop kneeling on your broken knee well also they're so devout that they think that by her doing genuflection she's trying at all to keep the demons away oh no and i said

she wasn't eating because she had refused entirely to eat although although she said originally she was not eating because she said that the demons wouldn't allow it. But by this point, through the exorcisms, she's now not eating by her own choice. She said that she just didn't want to eat anymore. And it led to pneumonia. Oh, fuck. So she also has pneumonia during this. Great. she also has pneumonia during this great one night another priest father roth came to visit and opened one bottle of tap water and one bottle of holy water behind his back to see if either of

them did anything to her on elise came from across the room and she got shoved out of her own chair first by like by an invisible force got shoved out of her chair fucking rude and even though she's so weak that she can't stand at this point because she hasn't been eating for weeks literally weeks she has had no food so she can't even stand up yeah and she was able to leap over her chair run at him grab the open bottle of holy water and threw it at him but the bottle stopped in midair and floated directly down to his feet and three different priests were there to verify this yeah wait so what is the like she could sense that there was holy water behind his back and since he had opened the bottle she jumped over her own chair that she got knocked out of by lucifer i guess sprinted towards him

grabbed the open bottle of holy water only not the bottle of tap water and then tried to throw it at him but it stopped midair and then floated down to her feet the fact that it was holy water it was like no the fact that she's a demon and she can stop something in midair oh so she did it on purpose yeah like she's throwing something and it should continue its flight but what she wanted to hit him yeah but it's even scarier when something you threw at so many miles and hours now stopped dead in its tracks and now just goes straight down. I mean, fair. Okay.

So she did it on purpose. I guess so. And the fact that she can do it to holy water is probably even scarier because she shouldn't be able to control holy relics. It's like a religious thing, like don't touch the priest with the holy water. Oh. You know? No. Okay.

More like a demon is throwing something at you and even scarier than it landing on you she he's able to control it fabulous um another time she punted a cup of water at him like punted it like it was oh my god and all the water stayed in the cup even when the cup landed on its side the fuck um over the course of her sessions she had 67 exorcisms performed on her in 10 months oh my god one night she had a vision this was the beginning of the end oh um one night she had a vision that she saw mary like the mother of god and they walked around together even though at this point she was so weak she couldn't stand on her own. But she was able to just waltz around with the Mother of God.

Listen, she's a Mother of God. She's a Mother of God. So Mary told her, there are so many souls that are on their way to hell, and someone must pay penance for them, and asked Mary if she would be willing to suffer so that others didn't have to go to hell. And she would be given three days of peace to make her decision. But after that, she needed to make a decision. And whatever she chose, Mary promised her, I will come and expel the demons.

And by July, something will happen. What the fuck? Apparently, that's what happened. Oh, my God. So Mary thought for three days. And of course, during these three days of peace that Mary promised her. Wait, her name's also Mary? No, Mary promised her this. Mary the mother of God. So Mary thought for three days. And of course, during these three days of peace that Mary promised her. Wait, her name's also Mary? No, Mary promised her this.

Mary the mother of God. Okay, you said Mary thought for three days. That's what I was going to say. Oh shit, my bad. Anna Louise decided, sorry, after three days, like in those three days where she got to like make a choice for not being able to walk around or anything. She was the most active, happy, like it was like nothing had ever been there. She was waltzing around, jumping around, being super active, being happy, like entertaining her family.

Yeah. And like nothing had ever been there. So by the third day, she decides that she's going to suffer for others. And Father Renz and Pastor Alt use this information to help cast out the demons. So on June 30th, the last day of June, it's also the last exorcism. And they told the demons, you have to leave now. The mother of God is ordering you to do so. The demons appeared weaker than they ever have before, as if paralyzed from doing anything or being able to do anything.

So Father Renz said, you must leave. I order you to. And they said back, we won't leave. He would begin to cast them out anyway. He was going to at least try. And to be sure he was successful, every time one of them got cast out, he would tell them to say, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord of with thee. So the Lord of what the lord is with

thee i probably spelled it wrong oh i'm jewish i was just trying to talk to you no you're more catholic than me it up so uh anyway so he said you have to say this as i cast you out so i know that you're actually gone and on a lease at this after this command Annalise's body wailed out an inhuman scream that was, quote, inordinately disturbing with distressing babble surrounded by echoes, screams, whispers, sneers, groans, and laughs all at once. Oh, my God. Renz demanded that they meet Mary, Mother of God, when she arrived and that the priests began to sing the hymn magnificent to welcome her into the room. The demons began to scream in pain and terror that he has never heard before. And they were screaming out of Annalisa's body.

She is coming. She is coming. So I guess they could sense that Mary was on her way. Yeah. The priests say that they've never heard screams that in pain before out of all demons they've ever encountered and the priest dropped to their knees and began welcoming mary to show herself father wrens began casting out each demon the last one being lucifer and at the end of this we will say a link or we'll post it somewhere but all of the recordings of

this session no they're not. You're kidding me. They can be found. Annalise can be heard after all of this, after Lucifer is finally cast out with the rest of them. Annalise can be heard saying, I'm completely free now. Ten minutes later, they're still praying, and all of a sudden the demon starts showing up again in pained screams and giggling at the same time. Oh, for fuck's sake and they say we want to leave but we're not allowed on tape you can hear on elise tell renz to beg for absolution

and looks at her mom and says mother i'm afraid that night she fell asleep and died wait what and it happened happened on July 1st, the day that Mary predicted, because something would happen by July. Wait, she died? She died at 68 pounds. The fuck? And she was 23 years old.

What the fuck? Mm-hmm. Did they have IVs back then? They should have fucking put her on an IV. So, Pastor Alpa leaves that despite the demons actually wanting to leave because of the exorcism, Annalise accepting her fate for suffering for others may have bound them to her. The family doctor came the next morning and saw her body, and due to her sunk in eyes,

bruises and sores on her face from falling, broken kneecaps, and chipped teeth from hitting the wall and stone floor every time she fell. He told police that he did that Annalise did not die of natural causes, but dehydration and malnutrition. So Annalise's parents and the priests were charged and convicted of negligent manslaughter, saying her condition was not possession, but a combination of mental illness and fanatical encouragement of her religious beliefs. Oof. So they ended up going to court for this. So it was basically a doctor's versus priest courtroom. Right.

Science versus religion, which is always fun. Yeah, that's standard. And it's the only time that a legitimate defense was demonic possession. That's the only time ever? As far as I know. Wow. That was actually taken seriously. Wow.

And the priests used the recordings and the tapes as proof to be like, look, you can clearly hear that's not her. The priests, they basically said, like, regardless of her condition, like, they brought in doctors and said, had she been fed at all a week earlier, she would have been able to survive. So the priests were sentenced to negligent manslaughter for six months in jail with three years probation, but the jail time was dropped. After the trial, the Roman Catholic church confiscated the tape recordings from the public. So they're very hard to come by, but on YouTube, like if you add up all the minutes on all the videos of recording that you can find, there's about 100 minutes of audio.

Oh, shit. That have somehow leaked out over time. Yeah. Later, in 1978, a nun told her parents that she had a vision that revealed that Annalisa's body was still totally intact under her underground underground which would suggest supernatural character of her body and prove that the priests and family weren't guilty does that make sense so like it hadn't decayed at all yeah and if it hadn't decayed then that was definitely supernatural very catholic thing and um so the parents requested that her body be exhumed in 1978 although they used different reasons they were like oh we want to like give

her a different coffin um i don't know so medical experts after they exhumed her say that the body had been consistently decomposing with a normal rate of decay and however um however photos were never released and neither the parents or the priests were allowed to see the body so some think that because they were able to move the body by her arms and legs and they didn't fall off, her body hadn't decayed as much as it should have, which means that the nun might have been right. And they didn't want to release photos because they didn't want to be proven. They didn't want to, like, prove that they were wrong. Doctors now say that the body still showed normal signs of decay. And now that psychiatry is better, she was not possessed, but displayed signs of dissociative disorders such as DID or more commonly multiple personality disorder.

Sure. Or schizophrenia. Because if you look back, her symptoms were dystonia, which is like having rigid positions um hearing threatening voices seeing things that aren't there using the first person plurally um dilated pupils amnesia knowledge of distinct personalities in your mind that don't actually exist um persistent symptoms despite medication depersonalization which is like basically feeling like your body is being controlled by something else. So in 1999, they changed the ritual Romanum of 1614. Um, it was abolished officially by the church,

which is 20 years after she died. So it's like, it didn't really help at all. But, um, her case was a big case that like convinced religious people that like, you can't keep saying people are possessed and might be mental illness. So Vatican City, the Vatican City introduced the new and updated version called the exorcism for the upcoming millennial or she is.

Let me see that millennial me. Rose gold and English. It's the exorcism for the upcoming millennium so it's basically updates that go the next fucking for the next 300 years who knows but basically suggests like you have to be aware of mental illness and so now if someone wants an exorcism they have to go through all these psychiatrists and all these doctors to prove that only supernatural things are happening that's interesting because but people say that the new version, because they also took out different parts about the devil and everything,

the new version apparently isn't as powerful as the original was when it comes to exercising a person. Oh. So a lot of people in that industry, I don't know, in that field, they don't like that they have to use that version now. That's really interesting. Because I mean, you do think about like, if they were using something from the 1600s, like how backwards things were, and how, you know, you could be a woman who had a job and people were like, you're a witch because you have too much power, you know,

so it's interesting to like, it's weird that even though it's so backwards it's somehow still more effective yeah that is that is that is that's really interesting what the fuck dude so there's that i'll tell you that movie fucked me up when i was young. Yay. All right. Happy Halloween. Ready? Yes. This is the story of the Axeman of New Orleans. Cool. I don't know what that is. Oh, seriously? No, I don't. But I know that New Orleans has some pretty cool stories coming out of it. Listen, I'm an Axeman sounds dangerous. Getting my box of wine. Neat. I've been saving this one have you just like i've been saving mine it's like we knew yeah oh because i thought halloween is a special time it is it's also hot as fuck in here can we talk about how it was 104 degrees today it feels like 104 degrees right

fucking now is that god telling us to put the ac on? That's my mommy. It's Renata? Okay. This is the story of the Axeman of New Orleans. Dun, dun, dun. Okay. So I just want to warn you guys that this one's a little bit gory and fucked up. I mean, not that... Yeah.

Listen. Just be ready. It's episode 39. You know what you're getting yourself into. Buckle up. Buckle up. Let's crack into it. Blood from Christine poorly informed me. Just bad notes on my end. I don't know which team you're on.

Team Blood and Gory or Team Unprofessional M? But you came for one of the two things. I'm pretty sure everyone's on team geo so oh right yeah let's stop kidding we're just the puppets oh yeah okay this story begins on may 22nd 1918 in new orleans louisiana all right an italian grocer named joseph maggio and his wife katherine were asleep in their beds when a man chiseled out a panel in their back door, broke into their home, and cut their throats with a straight razor.

He then proceeded to take an axe and bash their heads in. Shut the fuck up. Catherine died of her throat wound, which was so deep that her head was nearly severed from her shoulders. Holy shit. Joseph, her husband, despite his head being bashed with an axe, somehow survived the attack, but died minutes after his two brothers discovered them two hours later.

Aww. When police arrived, they found a pile of bloody clothes that belonged to the murderer, who had obviously changed into a clean outfit after he had attacked the couple. Police ruled out robbery because nothing had been taken by the killer. The only clue they discovered was a message that had been written in chalk near the grocery store that the man of the house had owned.

And the message in chalk read, Mrs. Joseph Maggio will sit up tonight just write mrs tony so it was a mysterious message they found in chalk especially because mrs joe maggio had her head knocked off right oh yeah she's not sitting up no she was a goner okay so the razor used to cut cut the couple's throats was later found in a neighbor's lawn and was determined to belong to Andrew Maggio, who is Joseph's brother. Oh, boy. He owned a barber shop nearby. One of his employees told police that Andrew had taken the razor from the shop two days prior to the murder, allegedly to have a nick honed from the blade.

So he said he had to take it home which kind of reminds me of like the grinch stole christmas where he's like i have to take this back to santa's workshop be right back to take it yeah it's kind of fucked up um okay so in addition to this like the blade being from his barber shophop. The police found Andrew suspicious because he claimed to have discovered the bodies after hearing strange groaning noises coming through the wall because he slept in the bedroom next door. But he said he didn't hear the break in itself or the axe hacking or any of that because he was too drunk. Okay. Because he had just joined the Navy, and I guess he was out celebrating.

He became the prime suspect, but investigators couldn't find any ties to his brother's death, and they weren't able to, like, actually, you know, keep him for any reason, so they let him go. Okay. Okay. On June 27th, 1918, Louis Bessemer, the owner of a grocery store in New Orleans, and his mistress, Harriet Lowe, were asleep in his home, which was located in the back room of the grocery store, when a man came in and attacked them with a hatchet. Bessemer was hit above his right temple, and Lowe was hacked over her left ear. Around 7am that morning, John Zanka, who was a driver of a bakery wagon, discovered their

bodies. He found them unconscious in a puddle of their own blood and when police investigated, they found the axe that had been used in the bathroom. They also discovered that the axe belonged to Bessemer himself. So someone had come and taken his own ax and attacked him and his mistress with it. They immediately arrested Louis Obacon,

a 41 year old African American man who had actually worked for Bessemer at the grocery store. And he had given conflicting accounts of where he was during the attack. So they arrested him. But police determined that the only plausible explanation for the attacks was robbery and since nothing was taken from the home or the grocery store they weren't able to prove that obacon had done anything so he was released okay um and that's when media turned its attention to bessemer the grocery store owner himself they found a series of letters written in German, Russian, and Yiddish in a trunk in his home. So obviously police decided he's a German

spy. Oh, right. Yeah, sure. So Harriet Lowe, his mistress was still alive and she was going in and out of consciousness. And so she started doing this thing where she started giving just like these accounts to police that didn't make sense. Yeah. And she would like change her mind all the time. So she originally said, oh, it was a, I mean, I'm just going to say, she said it was a dark skinned man. Gotcha. And then she immediately was like, no, actually it was uh lewis himself oh so she was like not you couldn't like follow her own story yeah she just would like keep changing her her narrative of what happened right so she basically said no it was lewis and then um she goes yeah he's definitely a german spy so police that part we can be sure yeah so police were like okay we believe you so they

arrested him and then two days later uh they released him and two investigators actually because of this whole debacle were demoted due to unacceptable police work all right months later harriet was dying from a failed surgery to like fix because her face had been paralyzed by the attack oh so she had gotten a surgery to try and fix her face shit i know and so the surgery was botched and she was dying and she told police that bessemer had once attacked her with his hatchet so he was the one who had done it. But then police were like, wait, so how did he attack himself with a hat? Right. Right.

And then move the hatchet outside of. Right. It just didn't make any sense. So basically he was kind of basically a jury deliberated for 10 minutes and was like, this is not his fault. So. Right.

10 minutes already seems too long to me. 10 minutes. They should just to me 10 minutes they should just all shook their heads together and be like no everyone's like can we go home now please yeah so on august 5th 1918 28 year old okay listen this is what i have to say tell me Her name is, in all of these stories, Mrs. Schneider. Okay. She has no first name. Okay. Okay. We're all on board.

Just got to tell you. All right. On August 5th, 1918, 28-year-old Mrs. Schneider woke up to find a dark figure standing over her bed. Okay. If this were my story, it'd be a ghost. I was going to say, everyone's fucking nightmare and you hope it's sleep paralysis. You pray to God. Listen, I need a drink. Hold on.

It always sounds like I'm peeing. It certainly does. It will later, too. I will not bring the microphone in for that. Okay. Okay. Mrs. Schneider is the opposite of a spinster in her early 20s mrs schneider she is waking up to a dark figure standing over her bed the figure bashes her face repeatedly with an axe fuck how do we know that she woke up to him? Are we, like, just using, like, artistic license there?

Like, maybe she just was sleeping and someone killed her. And then the cops were like, oh, well, she woke up to him. Let me tell you. Oh, wow. Before fleeing the scene, Mrs. Schneider was eight months pregnant. No. Her husband came home late from work that night to discover his wife.

Her scalp had been cut open and her face was covered in blood. Shit. But she survived. And she remembered waking up to a man hovering over her bed with an axe. Oh, no. She gave birth to her daughter two days later,

and the baby was healthy and survived. Okay, one, brava. Two, can you imagine, like, literally a splitting headache, and you have to give birth to a human child? Listen, people are like, oh, like, oh, like, labor couldn't be that bad. Oh, well, how about half your head is off of your face? People are like, childbirth is, like, oh, like labor couldn't be that bad. Oh, how about half your head is off of your face? People are like, childbirth is the worst pain you'll ever feel. And I'm like, yeah, I agree.

But also you've never been hit in the face with an ax. Yeah. It's like, there's a lot of times where something really shitty will happen to me. And I'm like, you know what? At least this didn't happen. And this happened. It's the worst combination of things. You have to get hit in the face with an

axe get your skull split open in your brain and then deliver a child through your vagina and two days later like that's like you have not started healing it like you don't your face for like is it even there no begin healing well and her scalp was totally split open fuck well and they say like trauma sometimes like instigates birth so i'm sure that had something to do with it well that was a lot of fucking trauma i'm surprised she didn't just go into labor she didn't have like 10 babies at once that's not how it works your head falls off and you just like just clone 10 of them inside of you i'm sorry that doesn't make any fucking sense there's a fucking xerox machine all

of a sudden but i pop out of litter but i agree i'm surprised she didn't like immediately go into labor but i guess two days is like pretty standard you would think with the adrenaline coming out of you but i guess if you go unconscious and then wake back up you know fair she deserves to go unconscious for a little bit after what she went through i'm not challenging her labor schedule no honestly no woman's allowed to complain anymore never it's like okay especially maybe do it with have your face gone oh my god 24 hours ago it's the worst fucking thing okay five days later on august 10th 1918 pauline and mary bruno awoke to loud noises coming from their uncle joseph Romano's room.

And they were his nieces and they lived with him and he was an elderly man. So they entered the room to find their uncle with a severe blow to his head and the attacker fleeing the scene. They described him as a dark-skinned, heavy-set man in a dark suit and slouched hat. Romano somehow was able to walk outside to the ambulance, but he died two days later due to severe head trauma. Jesus Christ. This guy keeps almost killing people and then they just die from the, the injuries later.

He's like leaving them like half alive. Basically. Is that on purpose or is he really like, it's like, he's that kid on like the baseball team who just really wants to get a home run, but like barely hits it every time. It's like, oh, let me just crack you in the head. But you never die. Every single time you don't die.

I mean, some of them die. Later. The only person who died was the first one, right? Was that it? This guy just seems to not have the right swing. Not that I should be saying, oh, try harder. And also, if two girls catch you in the act, why are you running out the window? Why don't you chase them with your axe?

Listen, nobody knows. I feel like I'd be a better murderer. Oh, yeah? I mean, not happily. I'm just saying if we're going on accuracy i would strategically be better i mean like if i had to be okay let's see so he died two days later due to severe head trauma police found a bloody axe in the backyard as well as a panel on the back door that had been chiseled away

so at this point new orleans extreme hysteria took over for obvious reasons so what people would do it family members would take turns sleeping so they could keep watch in case someone was trying to break in but also where do you like pay attention like your non-chiseled panels and hope that they stay the same way just like if you have an axe why aren't you chopping down the door listen this guy's not doing all right i mean he's doing something i mean he's doing like enough he's chiseling some panels and no one's noticing. And tapping on some faces, I guess. Tapping them real light. So neighborhood watch parties swept the city in search of the Axeman, but to no avail.

A retired Italian detective named John D'Antonio made a public statement asserting that the killer was an individual of dual personalities. Oh, my. dual personalities oh my who killed without motive and would sometimes uh be seen like a normal or who would sometimes seem like a normal law-abiding citizen but would kind of snap and go into an altered state where he would need to be violent uh he called him a real life dr jekyll and mr hyde oh wow uh some people started to speculate i mean again it's the early 20th century that the killer wasn't human at all but an actual demon or a ghoul i would be probably the first person to uh signal that approach um you and i would be we would be the worst journalists in the early we would first of all we would change lives that we would start a revolution we'd be like it's a ghost and back then there wasn't google so people be be like, it's a ghost. And back then there wasn't Google. So people would be like, oh, well, it's a ghost.

Oh, for sure. We would definitely be the whistleblowers. Oh, we would have like a newspaper devoted to just... We'd have like the first version of The Onion. Oh, yeah. But we would also believe everything we're writing. But we'd think it was real. Yeah.

We would basically just be the jesters of the town, wouldn't we? That's so sad. We really believe in ourselves. That's all that matters. We think everyone believes in us, but really we just believe in ourselves. You know, we're just doing a more modern version of that with this podcast. Oh, don't tell me that. Full circle. Don't shatter all my hopes and dreams. So we're modern day jesters is what you're saying.

We're just fools. We're just fools. In love. Wait, what? Oh, what? With other people. Nope. With Gio. With with geo with geo geo's the venn diagram of our love we love geo and he loves dead animals that he can roll around on and

therefore the venn diagram of our love is it just splits hairs more and more there's just dead animals involved okay okay so people thought it might be an actual demon. AKA we thought that in our past lives. AKA I still do. When we were like journalists, quote unquote. Right. Except in the 1900s, then we already confirmed that we were somewhere else. Where were we?

In a past episode, we were. We were, we were, you were an alligator and I was a clown. And I left you in a hotel. Remember? Why don't you remember? That was the best life we ever had. It was so funny. Everyone was like, isn't a bull alligator just a grown-up alligator?

And I was like, I'm sorry, I don't know what an alligator is. Listen, we don't know math. We don't know geography. We don't know animals. All we know is boxed wine, milkshakes, and geo. And that's why we started this podcast. We're not claiming to know what type of alligator is. We're not claiming to know anything except what is on the paper in front of us again do not expect more from us than that i know i use this excuse a lot but there is a

plunger less than two feet away from our faces i thought you were gonna use your other common excuse of english isn't even my first language i have multiple excuses and i can pull them out at any time i don't i was just lazy growing up and this is the consequences I have to live with. This is what happens when you don't care about school. You just kind of end up at a podcast and that's the height of your career. Anyway. Alright. They thought it was a demon.

The end. Here we go. Listen. This is where M's and my story ends in the 1910s and where the real story begins things get quiet for a while the city eases into a sense of security but on march 10th 1919 neighbors heard screams coming from the cortemilla residence in a suburb of new orleans called gretna louisiana a grocer who lived across the street ran over to investigate and found charles cortemilla his wife rosie and their two-year-old daughter mary all attacked by an unknown intruder rosie was standing in the doorway with a gaping head wound

holding her two-year-old daughter who had already died of her injuries from an axe charles was laying on the floor bleeding from his wounds and they were rushed to the hospital it was determined that both had suffered severe skull fractures nothing was stolen from the house but a panel on the back door had been chiseled away they found a bloody axe on the back porch as well when rosie uh gained full consciousness she claimed that yorlando giordano who was the guy across the street the neighbor who had come to like discover their bodies basically was the one who would attack them but police determined that your londo was 69 years old was like not healthy was too elderly to have committed the crimes and frank was more than six feet tall and was over like

almost was almost 300 pounds right it just wouldn't have made sense yeah and they were like he can't fit through that stupid chiseled panel. There's no way. Right. So her husband, Charles, vehement. So they both survived the attack, by the way. But the baby didn't. The two year old didn't. She died from a axe, an axe wound to the neck.

So Charles, her husband, vehemently denied his wife's claims. But police arrested the two and charged them with the murder. Frank was sentenced to hang for the murder, and his father was sentenced to life in prison. Shit. So Charles divorced his wife over this after the trial. I wouldn't blame him. And almost a year later, Rosie announced that she had falsely accused the two out of jealousy and spite so the dad died for nothing he had been this kind of threw me off because i was confused he had been sentenced to

hang but he hadn't been hanged yet oh thank god so the two men were still in prison and they were released in 1920 fuck yeah but the one with the dad was in his seventies. So three days after the attack on the court, Amelia family, the editor of the new Orleans times received a letter, an interesting letter. Oh my, you want me to read it to you? Absolutely.

I do. So this letter is dated March 13th, 1919. And it is from hell. Oh, from my home. I wrote this. No, you didn't. Oh, I didn't.

Esteemed mortal of New Orleans, they have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me for i am invisible even as the ether that surrounds your earth i am not a human being but a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell oh no i am what you orlinians and your foolish police call the axe man when i see fit i shall come and claim other victims i I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company. There are a couple of paragraphs in between there that I'm going to skip because they're just like... Too much? They're just...

No. They're not even. They're just kind of like, okay, we get it. You're really... You're like... You got it. You're a top dog. You're like Satan's hellhound, whatever.

Okay. So this is where it gets interesting. Now to be exact at 1215 parentheses earthly time. Christ alive. Sure. You know, not, not hell time. Sure. Right.

Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that there was a time zone in hell that we're not listening to. Oh yeah, for sure and my bad on next tuesday night i'm going to pass over new orleans in my infinite mercy i'm going to make a little proposition to you people do you have any idea what it is you really don't know the story i really don't know the story is it something incredibly stupid it's really great. Is it gross?

Is it horrible? No, it's not gross. What? Here it is. I am very fond of jazz music. Jesus Christ. And I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned.

So it's like The Purge, but instead of having like a I support The Purge flag, it's like a, oh, let's listen to jazz music. Like a jazz band. Yeah. Jesus. You could, okay. I got a lot of things to say. Let's just move on. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then so much the better for you people. If everyone has a jazz band going well, then so much the better for you people. One thing is certain, and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night, if there be any, will get the ax. He's just like, okay, you know how in La La Land, Ryan Gosling was just so desperate for people to care about jazz music? This is just fucking 10 years later.

This is just, he's desperate. So this is like Ryan Gosling. This is just he's desperate so this is like ryan this is the sequel to la la land no the prequel no the sequel because oh maybe the prequel i mean the spinoff the spinoff to la la land the la la land you know how like the lion king they had one and then two and then one and a half oh yeah right la la land one and a half it's like ryan gosling's uh. It's like Ryan Gosling's former life. Yeah. Where he didn't know how to... Before he changed his name to Ryan Gosling of La La Land. And he didn't know how to control his emotion.

Okay. I get it. You see where I'm going. La La Land one and a half. Okay. Now I'm just picturing this guy as Ryan Gosling. It's really fucking me up okay um

well as i am cold and crave the warmth of my native tartarus and it is about time i leave your earthly home i will cease my discourse hoping that thou wilt publish this that it may go well with thee i have been am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fancy the axe man well we've had like a hundred more years of horrible people so wrong so still bad i mean pretty fucking bad anyway how many people listened to jazz that night the whole city of new orleans was is that why new orleans listens to jazz i mean i think it was already a jazz capital oh that would be a horrible history to why people love jazz just to stay alive i think it was already a cultural thing

but basically the whole city was booming with jazz that night. Every house was blasting it. Every restaurant, people were out like in every bar blaring it. And there was a guy who actually wrote a song, like wrote an actual jazz piece that got really popular about the ax man based on that night. Um, people have called it the loudest night in new Orleans history because the

whole city was just blasting jazz music and no one was murdered that night well that's nice so everyone was like oh my god we did it we got rid of this demonic guy wrong wrong always wrong always wrong listen m everyone's always wrong everyone everyone but us, here we are. On August 10th, 1919, an Italian grocer named Steve Bocca woke up in the middle of the night to see an axe-wielding figure above his bed. He lost consciousness. When he woke up, he ran into the street to investigate the intrusion and realized all of a sudden that his head had been cracked open. Shit.

He ran to his neighbor's house and collapsed. They called the police. Nothing was taken from the home, and a panel on the back door had been chiseled away. Wow, as if this MO is not already obvious. Nope. He survived but couldn't remember anything from the attack. Less than a month later, a young woman named Sarah Lowman was attacked in her bed. She had a head injury so severe it had knocked out several of her teeth. It looked like the person,

the attacker, had entered the apartment through an open window. She also survived, but could not remember any details. On October 27th, 1919, a man named peppetoni was attacked in his bedroom his wife heard a commotion they had six kids so they were next door in the room next door she heard a commotion came running only to see the room covered in blood his blood and there was blood all over a painting of the virgin mary on the wall oh that's not good no uh so she called the police and mike peppetoni did not survive and he passed away no and after this the ax man's attacks ended just as suddenly as they had begun and he was never seen or heard from again oh shit so here are some theories as to this suspect a crime writer named colin wilson believes the axe man was

a man named joseph momfrey who was shot to death in los angeles in december of 1920 by the widow of that pepetoni guy i just mentioned oh wow with the six kids hell hath no fury but another true crime writer named michael newton searched all public police and court records newspaper archives, etc. and could not find any evidence of this guy being killed or assaulted, could not even find evidence of the woman being in California where they say he she had shot him. So it's really debated because people are like there's zero record of any of this happening. A woman named Miriam C. Davis, who was interviewed by Vice,

wrote a historically accurate book called The Axeman of New Orleans, The True Story. And she said she her belief is that the ax man was a native born white laborer who had a grudge against Italians who had been leaving day labor behind to become small businessmen due to like NPR anxiety. So because a lot of the people attacked were grocers. I see. That makes sense. Yeah. Or he could have had some sort of like negative connection. He might've been sent to jail by a gross,

an Italian gross. Who knows? So this guy was actually featured as a character in American Horror Story Coven. Okay. I don't know. He was? I didn't know that. Well, I also didn't watch the show.

Oh, okay. I don't know what season. Coven is the witch one. I'm too scared of that. I think it's season three. Okay. I don't know anything. So this is why police are still confused.

People who described the attacker would describe a large, hulking man, like in a hat and a suit and whatever. But the openings that had been chiseled in the panels were so small that police couldn't understand how a full-sized man could fit through. Let alone like a big hulking person. Right, right, right. And the doors, like the back doors doors were always locked from the inside so the person whoever went in and out of that little hole that freaking hole and nobody knows how he got in and out aside from that stupid little hole there were even theories that the killer might actually be like a really small woman or even a little person oh but um nobody could figure out you know how to like reconcile people's visual

memory of what happened everyone was seeing how big and hulking they were yeah exactly um so again the public basically this is again in the early early 20th century the public was like oh it, it's a demon, you know? Fair. So that was obviously reinforced by the letter that the perpetrator wrote that was like, oh, I'm coming from hell. Hello. It's me. I'm in hell, dreaming about who we used to be. Hello.

That's our second reference to Adele, huh? What was our first? The episode that Allison was in. Oh, I thought you meant our second today. No, no, no. In history. Oh, I'm sure it's probably like our hundredth of all time for sure. Okay.

Some people even thought that it might be Jack the Ripper, like the same person. Because the letter that was sent into the newspaper had a lot of striking similarities to the letter Jack the Ripper sent. Ooh, shit. So that was an interesting thing that some people still believe to this day, that it was the same person. Could have been. So this is what is known, is that the killer preferred to chisel away door panels, yet the panels were too small to account for the physical descriptions people gave to police and the chiseling away at a door seemed to be very

strange tedious slow and inefficient for breaking into a home and then leaving a home right especially if the person hadn't even died you know what i mean right what you said they left people he left people alive so the other thing was that he would always leave the chisel behind which meant he had to buy a new chisel every time he broke into a home and he always took the axe from the home of the person that he was killing or attacking i think he ever went to a house and then saw they didn't have an axe and then was like well well, and then left. And then like unchiseled his panel. Yeah, I was like, never mind.

I guess this one can stay. I know. It's crazy. So nobody understands like how he knew. And I read one article that was like, well, to be fair, like axes were much more common then than like guns are now and things. But still, it's just such a weird thing. but still it's it's just such a weird thing um it is unclear why he had chosen an axe rather than like a knife or another like a hammer or something else that was around because it's just as bloody you know um and he left he never left a fingerprint ever they always check for fingerprints he had

never left one fingerprint wow um Never left any sort of evidence. And as to motive, they couldn't think of anything but the fact that there was this connection with Italian grocers. Right. And at the time, it was like a culturally sensitive thing, could connect was the Italian immigrant grocers, but most, uh, experts believe it was not like a mafia thing because it was not organized crime. And it also, there were also several victims who weren't associated with, yeah. And also the mob had strict rules about hurting children and women. So it just didn't seem to fit.

children and women so right it just didn't seem to fit um so yeah basically nobody knows who the fuck this guy is and then he just vanished and no one could ever figure it out shit i know well luckily he's probably dead most likely he's very dead he's got to be right i mean my math isn't that great obviously so i mean i'm scared to I would think once you've hit 99, before we even, like, include your age, you're probably dead. Once you hit 99, what? Like, because the story was from 1918, right? Oh, oh. 99 years before we even put in the fact that you're older than zero. Yeah.

So, I'd like to think he's dead. He's definitely dead, but now i'm gonna have nightmares neat so that's that happy halloween eve eve guys listen happy hollow fucking ween yes we are releasing a patreon special for patreon donator i keep saying donators and people keep making fun of me. Donors. Thank you. We're releasing an episode. For donors.

And then also on Halloween, something special will be happening. I still can't talk about it because on this day that it comes out is the day that Christine finds out what the surprise is. I still don't understand what's happening. As you're listening to this, Christine is learning what's going to happen. But it will all be taken care of by Halloween. I'm so excited. So you have two days to be excited. I'm excited.

And then next week you will hear us on Baby G's B-Day. Oh my God, I can't believe it. We're going to have a big fat party for him. I'm so excited. So there's that. Thanks guys for listening you can find us on our facebook twitter instagram at w at wwd podcast um you can find our website and that's why we drink.com you can find our merch store at and that's why we drink.bigcartel.com you can find our patreon

at wwd podcast you can find our email and that's why we drink at gmail.com where you can write in your listeners stories we do listeners episodes at the first of every month is there anything else you're so talented it's literally my the only thing i know how to do after 40 fucking episodes that's all i have that's all i have that's all i have all right cheers cheers and that's why we drink we're gonna try and clink yeah i bet it's cheers and that's why we drink we're gonna try and clink yeah I bet it's not gonna work and that's why we clink oh how did we never

come up with that okay now that's why because it sounds fucking stupid hang on hang on who used this oh yeah

but do it from the tip remember okay okay one two three that's stupid I'm not good at this and that's why we drink that's better

that was good bye bye