And That's Why We Drink - E70 Fall Out Walt and A Child Called Murder

Episode Date: June 3, 2018

It’s episode 70! Hear Em tell the story of Doris Bither’s poltergeist, which inspired the movie The Entity and reminded us of the merits of ectoplasm. Meanwhile, Christine tells the story of Belle Gunness, one of America’s earliest serial killers. Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Check out Rothys.com and use promo code DRINK for free shipping! Visit stitchfix.com/drink for 25% off when you keep all five of your items! Burrow makes the luxury couch, for real life! For $75 off your order, visit Burrow.com/DRINK Visit theblacktux.com/drink for $20 off your purchase! Visit www.tryfirstleaf.com/drink to get your introductory three-pack of wines for only $15!

Um, good morning. Good morning, starshine. The earth says hello. Hello, everybody. It is the morning time. We just had a sleepover. Can you hear it in my voice? I can hear it in your voice. You sound like me a couple weeks ago. Oh, cute. Um, we decided last minute to have a sleepover because we planned on recording a lot of episodes yesterday and then we got halfway done and then we were like let's not and just have a sleepover and now we have to frantically record everything also em and i watched some crazy shows last night well here's the thing here's the rub because i love a good trash tv and i am opening allison and christine's minds at the same time and so i was

like have you seen this but have you seen it not minds maybe spiritual journeys sure yeah and so uh neither have them have really like been involved in trash tv in their in their upbringing i am here to ruin that for them and uh last night i was like oh well you have to see this we have to see this and so we just binged a lot of really horrible tv shows let's see we went from kitchen nightmares millionaire matchmaker wasn't there another one you already brought me to um strange addiction strange addiction there was something else i forget and then we decided we were going to watch the my god. About sleep paralysis. It's a documentary about sleep paralysis but they do

reenactments which is just the scariest thing. Keep in mind we started watching this movie at three in the morning. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And then we were up until easily five in the morning. Yeah. Watching everything under the sun and I was like doing that thing where I was like falling asleep to something about sleep paralysis. And I was so damn scared. And then at one point, a demon in someone's sleep paralysis goes, let me in. And that was the part that my subconscious heard while I was dozing off. And I freaked the fuck out.

And I was like, I am awake for the rest of my life now. And so we ended up watching The Office until five in the morning. And was like, okay awake for the rest of my life now and so we ended up watching The Office until five in the morning and was like okay I'm here I'm ready to go Christine could tell that I was like about to like fall unconscious and leave her alone with this movie and then that was actually kind of your saving grace because then I all of a sudden jolted up and I was like I'm never sleeping I couldn't watch that alone well because that happened last time when Emma tried to make me watch Sinister and And I just lay there going, oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Like as I fell asleep. So I was doing that last night. There was like a person walking and I was like, oh, wow. And I was like, I know what you're doing. You're pretending you're awake. Well, I definitely heard the let me in. It was terrifying, you guys. And so and also everyone else was gone. And in Christine's giant house, we were by ourselves in the pitch black at three in the morning listening to that.

And I swear I saw things walking around your house. And then Em goes, yeah, let's switch to the office because I've seen enough things walk by that doorway. And I was like, Em, don't you dare. Don't you dare. So we watched The Office. Well, here we are the day after. We didn't have sleep paralysis last night. No.

Thank God. Knock on wood. And we're here to make a show. To make an experience for you. Make an ear experience. An experience. Earians. Earians.

That's the kind of magic that happens. You're welcome. When I'm team coffee and not team wine. Wow. Although you were team wine until about five in the morning last night. I i was like do you know it's like 4 a.m and you're like yeah crazy and then poured more wine i was like there she goes also i brought like a like a gallon jug of sweet tea thinking it would last me like until this morning and i drank that shit before like seven o'clock before dinner literally it was already gone okay do you have any announcements just two small ones um first of all everyone

freaked out that you pronounced barnstable barnstable i heard and they were really not happy about it well dr carrot can go you know into barnstable and let me know how it is it's barnstable it was like okay we can't do anything about it now also it's in massachusetts was it in massachusetts yes why am i surprised that it's not spelled it's not pronounced the way it's spelled yeah yeah so that's not my bad i don't live in mass anymore so sorry and then english isn't christine's first language no it's not my problem you know what i mean it's not my story i feel like this happens every time you do a story when he yells at you like menger hotel menger look i'm never gonna get one

story right with all i actually literally looked up the name of something in this story to make sure i said it right i feel like that's what we need to do from now on just like how i'll actually like like i do that for mine if i don't know because i hate getting yelled at so i need to like actually put effort into my stories got it got it oh noted why didn't we think of that sooner i don't know it's only been 70. Oh, happy 70s. What's this? Is it the paper year, the gold year, the diamond year? I don't know.

What is the 70? I feel like it's probably a good one. I mean, if you're celebrating 70 years, they better not give you fucking paper. Maybe it's like a peach tree or something you can plant. That's neat. What is the 70th year? Eva's not here to tell us, so I have to do it. God, so much work.

So annoying. Platinum. Ah, did I say that? I think maybe you did. Did you get me some platinum jewelry? Um, no. Also, last thing, if you guys could do us a huge favor, and we haven't really asked about this in a while, but if you guys could do us a huge favor and we haven't really asked about this in a while

but if you guys could leave us a review on itunes just like a quick quick click a quick click if you use itunes or whatever platform use because that really really helps us um in our like ratings and all that gain some traction but if you guys could leave us um a quick review that would be super helpful um i got an email saying your most recent reviews and there were some very mean ones in there and they really hurt my feelings. So why they were just mean one star mean ones. So if you guys do enjoy the show, and you could leave us a quick review. A lot of times people only rate because they don't like something. So if you guys could leave us a quick kind word, that would be awesome. Balance us out. Balance us out. All right. That's all i got well

let's crack into it this is um because it's coming out on your birthday my birthday our birthday oh happy birthday to m it's m's birthday today it's christine's birthday tomorrow yay so for your birthday an early birthday present i did a poltergeist story. You did? Just for me? All for you. Aww. So, and it's also local.

Ooh. It is in Culver City. Hey, I know where that is. And it's the story of Doris Bither. Mmm, Doris. What a name. And also I made sure it's Bither because it's spelled like bither i was gonna ask i checked and i got all my information from direct interviews from the actual investigators i'm gonna say like direct tv yep yes that looks like a i got it from comedy

central oh also lisa was wearing our shirt on comedy central lisa lampinelli was wearing our and that's where you drink shirt she has a new show that she's on called task master on comedy central so you guys should go watch it's so funny it's the u.s version of the hit uk show kind of like the office how we just steal everything we just steal shit um Um, so go watch Lisa. All right. So this is a 1974 fab. I thought so. And, uh, the main investigators are Dr. Ter. No, nope.

Carrot. Dr. Carrot is back for revenge. No, God. No, not again. Dr. Barry Taff and Carrie Gaynor. So Barry and Carrie.

Yay. And they met as researchers at the UCLA parapsychology department. Oh, fun. Also, someone who works at the UCLA parapsychology department is Barry Conrad and him and Barry Taff, who's the main character. Taff is the main character in this. Got it. Barry Taff. Barry Taff. taff who's the main character taff is the main character in this got it barry taff barry taff

but barry conrad has also worked with him in the department and they've investigated numerous paranormal encounters together including if you remember the name barry conrad the san pedro haunting with jackie hernandez remember the guy jeff who just kept getting like thrown around and almost jeff that was in the plunger fort i remember this specifically san pedro before i remember like there was a picture of like they actually have a picture of a noose trying to strangle him okay that actually scared the shit out of me so barry conrad was in charge of that investigation and barry taff was one of like the assistants on that okay also in my research i saw obviously ucla parapsychology department and that you can volunteer and i

was like why the fuck don't i do that why we should do that well here's why oh okay because at ucla it was known as this neuropsychiatric institute or npi and it's now called the semel institute and it was only around from 69 to 78. It already shut down. Oh. So that's why we don't do it. Okay. Otherwise, I would be here. I mean, yeah.

The two things, because I feel like it deserves a mention, the two things that it did, that the department covered, were they facilitated Psy training research groups, where they trained people to develop their ESP. Oh, my God. I want to go there so bad. Let's start it over again. And then the second thing is they would investigate haunted houses in Sites Hill over Southern ESP. Oh my God, I want to go there so bad. Let's start it over again. And then the second thing is they would investigate haunted houses and sites all over Southern California. Oh my God, I'm so mad it doesn't exist.

Me too. I was like, wow, I could learn ESP. Why isn't everyone lining up? This is the most 70s thing too. I know. Why not? And so their research model is that most activity comes from ESP. So their research model is that most activity comes from ESP, and we don't actually realize that we have harnessed it in some way, because since we've never practiced it, we assume we don't actually have any connection to it.

But one of the main things that they teach is that most hauntings aren't actually ghosts or poltergeists, but they're actually created by our own own psyche and we are called poltergeist agents what whoa this is really trippy and we unknowingly act as biological wave guides when we are in certain areas that already have that are like energy heavy oh it's like if some people are just in tuned with stuff and then go into an environment that has a lot of like dark energy, then unknowingly we end up like provoking that stuff to to show itself and manifest. Oh, so we like channel it almost. or connected you are with your psychic energy, whether or not you know you're connected to it. Right. If you're connected to it or open to it, it just makes the whole environment more susceptible to show signs of psychokinetic energy. And then we think it's a poltergeist, but we actually induced it.

Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Um, so three variables that actually, according to them, three variables that actually according to them three variables that actually combine to produce a haunting is one a haunted site that is located in an electromagnetically heavy environment okay to the agent who is the person the person that's kind of causing this unknowingly right they are usually prone to seizures or epilepsy and their biomagnetic field emits well over the amplitude compared to other people.

Oh, interesting. And three, that person does not know how to cope well and has poor stress management, which makes their minds vulnerable and enables their nervous systems to hyperreact to the environment. Whoa. Which means like, since they're freaking out more than others usually would, their energy is, like it's like a, I don't know what you would call it. Like a higher frequency?

No, it's like because you're, because you're stressed out about it, it's going to keep getting worse and because it gets worse, you get stressed and because you get stressed, it keeps getting worse. Oh, it's a catch-22.

Yeah, it's like because your brain is the one causing it the more scared you are yes the more energy you're actually producing to make it worse and then you build upon yourself sure okay makes sense so they actually think um they still believe that there's such a thing as like spirits and poltergeists and all that supernatural paranormal stuff okay but they only think that those exist about 10% of the time, where 90% of the time they can excuse that people are just connected to themselves in a way they don't realize. And then they bring the chaos.

And it's like reflected in some sort of manifested outwardly. Wow. That's creepy. But so they do say like that stuff does exist. We just try to debunk it as often as possible. Okay. Okay. So Barry Taff, his main assistant in this whole story is Carrie Gaynor.

So the story starts where Carrie and his friend were at a bookstore and they were talking about their research, um, at the department and two women in the aisle over, um, on the other side, heard them talking about their paranormal research and were really interested in it and one of the girls said oh my house is haunted and that girl was christine and she had too much wine at lunch yes behaving behaving inappropriately so that girl is actually doris oh i see yeah i knew i felt a connection to doris nailed it and carrie was really interested in hearing like the very like surface version of it and said oh we'll call you and take a look at the house you know for research we won't pay you because you know it's research you know we're not

like gonna take your money we just want to go to this oh i see okay and so the first time they went to her house was August 22nd in 74. And Barry and Carrie. Those are two guys. Yeah. Okay. I thought Carrie was going to be. Carrie is K-E-R-R-Y. Oh, got it.

Okay. Carrie and Barry. They went to the house on Braddock Street, which is I think it still stands there, but it's like a little shack. Like apparently when they got there, they were expecting a house and it was a shack that had already been condemned twice. Oh, and this is in Culver City? Okay. And she was not legally supposed to be living there.

Hashtag 1970s. Like apparently she lived there, like she had never really had like a great family life. Like her whole storyline is that like when she was 10, she got kicked out of the house by her alcoholic parents, and a lot of men in her family abused her in many ways. She didn't have anything to turn to, so obviously she ended up turning to alcohol, too. She has four kids from four different guys, and she just doesn't really have the greatest job, and then her parents died. Right.

Her brother ended up getting all the money inherited because they liked him and not her. It's just a shit show. So she's just like, I mean, her life was just bad news bears. Well, now I feel bad for saying she drank too much at lunch. Well, she did. I was referring to myself. Sorry. well she did i was referring to myself sorry so she so they went into the house and they were apparently looked disgusting like there were like dishes to the ceiling and just like

looked dirty and they were kind of living in squalor and doris said that like they were asking her questions about the ghost like oh what else is going on like is there anything you need to tell us and she was like oh yeah there is like one bigger thing about the ghost is that they repeatedly rape me in the house what yeah so what um the fuck to a point where near the end she even showed symptoms of pregnancy it was not sleeping with any live humans and she ended up going to the doctor and they said that she had like a hysterical pregnancy where like she was showing signs right but still like like this is yeah okay yep whoa all right so um so she didn't know these guys at all and was like oh yeah well there are these ghosts that molest me and assault me in this house oh my god she said that there were three of them three spirits two of the two smaller ones hold her down while the other one does

really horrible really really really really horrible in the actual hell yeah yeah what the fuck but so that was obviously a lot of information for them to take in and barry looked at his assistant and was like okay she's psychotic like right there's like i i don't know how else to say it i've never heard of that before and also this is the 70s where like i don't think it's that exact story with them being spirits would be taken incredibly seriously right off the bat today either but like back then in the 70s no one had heard of anything like that like there was no like stories that i'm telling that are 30 years old that they could relate to like this is a first so he was like i've never heard of anything like

that she clearly like she's crazy she's crazy and like off meds or something and she lives in squalor and like her whole background just really leads up to her looking like she could be on drugs like who knows yeah and so they said that she needed help and they said they were going to leave and gave her the number to a psychiatrist at the ucla department okay and 10 days later doris um called them again saying that friends and neighbors had witnessed things in her house and they had testified to seeing apparitions moving around in her house when no one was home. Oh, boy. And there were foggy humanoid creatures that were dragging their bodies across the windows. Oh, oh, oh, no.

This reminds me of that movie we watched last night. Yeah. Uh-uh. And so she said, can you please come back? Like, I'm not the only one. Like, my friends and neighbors are seeing things in the windows and um so they came back and as soon as they came back this time the house had an odor of rotting flesh oh no they said it was very sour but sweet and warm oh gross you could smell the heat on it okay oh my god i just got horrible

chills um they also felt a strange pressure in their ears the whole time they were there, like they were in an airplane the whole time. They also said that the bedroom was ice cold, but there wasn't air conditioning yet in this house. So it was ice cold, but the rest of the room was burning hot, and this was in the middle of August. So no room should have been ice cold, but the rest of the room was burning hot. And this was in the middle of August. So no room should have been ice cold. In the kitchen, they were talking to her about what they could do for her or what else she'd seen.

And a cupboard door opened on its own. And a frying pan flew out from the cupboard and landed in the middle of the room in between them. Oh, no. They checked for rigs and wires and there was nothing okay so at that point they were like okay like we have to believe you like this is that should have not happened yeah um doris said that there was also at one point a fuse box that had been ripped off of the wall of the house like a whole fuse box was ripped off the wall and thrown at her okay and uh candelabras around her house were thrown at her when she wasn't looking but

she was home alone like nothing should have been um so all four of doris's children they were at this time between 6 and 16 um they had all also claimed to have seen the ghosts around the house and they had nicknamed it Mr. Who's It. Ew. Why is that so creepy? And so one of them in the middle of the night would get slapped in the face while they were sleeping. Like get slapped awake in the middle of the night. Another one, one of the boys multiple times had woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and bumped into an invisible person in the hallway. Okay.

And didn't see anyone there, but would be looking straight ahead and bump into someone and instinctively go, oh, sorry. That's. And then realize no one was there. Sorry, Mr. Mucho McCullough. Mr. Who's it? So in 2009, just to, I guess, validate her rape accusations. In 2009, they did an interview, I mean, obviously 2009, years and years and years later,

and her middle son, to this day, attests that she was getting attacked. And they had all seen it, and they had all heard it, and they've even tried to stop her, or tried to help her, and they could never help her like they would try to drag her but it would feel like there were three men on top of her oh my god and what it's really horrible what the hell also in that same interview her son also said we all experienced some form of an attack there was pushing biting scratching being done to us there were about four entities in the home and they made themselves known by appearing all of the time one of the oldest kids also played black sabbath the song like the band yeah and he because

he was 16 and like in that fuck you world was cool yeah he was cool obviously so this was you in the 70s but imagine you with fallout it was really not cool at 16 but okay well all of the songs that were very heavy in like having lyrics that were like demon centric sure apparently whenever he played those songs the activity would get worse in the house jeremy turn that off imagine if like we wanted walt to really show himself so you had a blast some like panic at the disco oh well if that were the case what would be here literally all the time because that's pretty much what i do on a daily basis fall out walt god so um he likes the angsty stuff it really brings the best out of it i know you guys really relate about that that's why we're pals i know every time you're like why doesn't anyone get me you just like feel a hand on your

shoulder like i get you man i'm like uh this is why we listen to under the cork tree together walt i can't handle you so um the okay so the oldest kid played black sabbath and they recognized that activity was worse when that music would come out because it was like about demons and so the investigators actually like this is about me yeah it's like how do you know so much about me oh my god i finally feel recognized it's like us haunting people listening to our podcast one day oh fair point m oh my god you play our theme song we're gonna come up roof just show up so um be careful guys be careful don't listen to our theme song after we're gone we're gonna get you

so uh the investigators realized that too and asked him to play black sabbath in certain rooms during the investigations to like entice them to come out god i wish i could see this and i imagine like pete wentz's ghost like just walks out oh my god except black sabbath is actually like a heavy metal band and my music is very much not angsty teenage when you're 14 that is some heavy metal sure okay fair same with like hello goodbye like hello goodbye and dashboard confessional oh just all the emo ghosts you're saying everything that's not a heavy metal when you're 14 and don't know what heavy metal is that's like let's talk about billy talon again that that's the key emo um okay

so there's also a theory that because they think like, oh, maybe she was psychic or had some sort of like ability to open up that kind of energy and didn't know it. And so that's how this all happened. There are theories that if a parent is psychic, the kids are psychic as well and don't know it. So they thought maybe this all stemmed from the relationship that she had with her kids that was kind of broken and her not really able to figure out what was going on in her life. And, you know, they weren't living in the best conditions. Plus, she apparently had a drinking problem. And then her teenagers were all, or her kids were also teenagers.

And so, like, the hormones and them having their own inks, like, all of that psychokinetic energy in one house is, like, apparently, like, a perfect combination like all of that psychokinetic energy in one house right is like apparently like a perfect combination right makes sense um okay so anyway they once they saw the frying plant frying pan fly out of the cupboard and they realized that music was like enticing these things and all that stuff they decided that they were going to set up equipment and look into the house and one thing i i do want to say that uh they also made very clear in their interviews is as soon as barry and his team showed up there were never they never witnessed any any sexual assault from any spirits okay so any allegation she had about that stopped before they got there okay but the

son says that there were a few times where he witnessed it he tried to help and like pull his mom out of the situation but he himself got thrown away like like someone like shoved him or pulled him and he went flying across the room there's a movie version of this case sure called the entity and they have a the storyline where she's getting attacked and he sees and is trying to help her and gets thrown across the room and he breaks his arm okay but he didn't break his arm in real life okay that's like the only inaccuracy in that whole part of the scene apparently okay so uh one of the things that i think is really crazy is apparently they would all sit in this dark room and his team was like 28 to 30 people

like 25 to 30 people who barry carey okay they're like all the assistants that they brought in they had like cameras going off the entire time and there was a room probably like the size of a normal bedroom and they were just like they had people coming in and out non-stop but they had her they had dora sitting on the bed and they were taking pictures and they were trying to get her to like scream and yell and like piss off these things that they would show up because they were only showing up when they were provoked. Like when, when she was by herself.

And so to like prove that they were around, they were like, can you like say something like it's on here? I know everyone leaves and then all of a sudden they're like, we're back. I know. Thank God. So there have been several several several instances where people have seen orbs and

pictures and all that like those little white circles that everyone says might be dust specks and um but so balls of light started showing up in the room but they were lime green like jello and they weren't just like made of like energy like we're used to saying they weren't white they were bright green like plasma ew like ectoplasm ew and um and so they were like a greenish yellow they were just picturing like when they're like oh what are your wedding colors i'm like it's kind of like a rustic like burgundy but it's like it's it's a green but it's more like an ectoplasm green oh my god i was just trying to picture what that color is if that were i would love to say that my wedding was like ectoplasma like oh my god so cool it's a tie-dye ectoplasm it's like an electric blue mixed with like an

ectoplasma it's gonna get real good there's some camo some neon camo in there no that's only on your rothy's shoes yep they should oh rothy's are you listening hello hello fresh uh ectoplasma would be a great color thank you write that down so uh so they saw these balls of bright green light that were flying all around the room and people were like everyone who thought they were going crazy seeing this because this wasn't just through pictures people were seeing this oh okay okay and then if they had any thought about maybe they were going crazy everyone in the room was like ducking and dodging because they all saw these things and were trying to avoid oh god so they were flying around the room eventually they uh thought

like okay well maybe their reflections from like they were flying around the room. Eventually, they thought like, okay, well, maybe their reflections from, like, they were trying to think of anything. Sure. Maybe their reflections from outside. So they ended up, like, sealing off the entire house from any external light. And so. They got rid of all the ectoplasma colored dresses. They got all, like, street lights and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. And so they, and they were still showing up in the room and they were the size of fists. Oh. And 25 to 30 people would be in the room and they were the size of fists. Oh. And 25 to 30 people would be in the house in all seat at the same time. And they knew that it was not a, I don't remember what the, basically they, it was so bright that when you would look at another person in the room, it would be illuminating off of their face. Oh no. Or like off their equipment. Like it was so bright that it was

shining lighting up the room yeah geez they also had poster boards all over her room that were like duct taped to the wall because like they were trying to like keep notes and sure quick stuff like that um and so they were trying to piece everything together and i guess you could see like the light glowing off the white poster boards. And it was just like very obvious that there were things within the room that were not reflecting because people could see it from 360 degrees. Oh, God. Anyone from any part of the room could see it. One picture, which is very famous, shows Doris on a bed and in the dark. And there is an orb that has like the like the arc frames her perfectly it's like there's a perfect

rainbow over her but it's it's white but it's like a perfect like arch right right right and um the thing that proves that it's something that is not man-made is that the arc of light is in front of a 90 degree angle wall and so usually that would mean if it was a projection or reflecting off of something there would be a bend like right there'd be like you could see like the light kind of bending with the wall light refraction but it was a perfect arc in the middle of the room over her bed so it was like floating in free space on its own wait do you have the photo yeah i want to see it oh spooky so oh i see the right there the corner yeah oh like my god this should be since there's a corner here it should be like bending up it doesn't make sense but it's like exactly over her and you can tell that she's not

by the side of the wall so it's not bent it's not next to the wall it's like in free space so what is this what did you google just so people know i typed in doris by their orb okay wow that is spooky um it's not like they had photoshop to draw that in there right and then there was this other picture where there were two different like oh weird two different orbs that were going two different ways right it's like they both have tails one's going up and one's going down which means that if it was the same light they'd be refracting in different ways yeah also neither of them are bending in this room um so they're their own track motions and because this was a 70s camera it just didn't have a quick enough shutter speed so it's actually like um what would you call it? Like not a time lapse, like an exposure shot.

Like it's like a time exposure of seeing its entire movement track. I see. So this is not, it's not that long. It's like a light that had moved. Right, right, right. Oh my God. That is so spooky. That's the same Google search.

Yeah. Okay. And so that light was like a time exposure, they think, of the balls of light moving. Oh my God. Because in that picture, the one that I just showed you, there's another one that if you type in Dora's By Their Orb, you'll see a picture without Dora's on the bed. And it's like two different orbs in the picture. And it's not just like orbs, like specks of dust orbs. They're like streams of light showing a track motion.

It looks like shooting stars. Yeah. And another picture, or that picture picture itself like the one with the two with outdoors in it they show arcs in two very different perpendicular angles and since they look like they're kind of crossing over each other it's proof that they're floating in free space too because there's they're not hitting any walls oh my god okay so they've had both of those photos analyzed and it was confirmed by professionals at the time that the lens in an SLR camera, which they were using, shouldn't have allowed those images to appear. Oh, great.

So the balls of light that you can see in the picture, they are white on camera. But the thing is, every single person remembers them being plasma green. And they were floating around nonstop. Like I said, people were dodging them. And here's the most wild part. Oh, no. At one point, like two weeks into this investigation, they were so used to these plasma balls at this point

that they were just like hanging out in a room, watching them float around. But eventually, at this specific night, all of the balls actually came together in the center of the room oh my combined themselves and ended up like uh i don't know what the word like they spread from instead of being one giant green plasma ball it ended up like kind of dissipating and like morphing itself into the apparition of an upper torso of a man. M. So it was like a bright green apparition of a man that was created by all of these little balls

that came together. That just gave me the biggest creeps of all time. I don't enjoy it. It looked like it was made of plasma. It was that bright green color. It was absolutely an upper torso. You could see the musculature of a chest and an upper torso.

No legs. You could see the beginning of his face, like up to his chin. And then the face was gone. You could see like the musculature of like a chest and an upper torso no legs you could see the beginning of his face like up to his chin and then the face was gone you could see the shoulders oh my god and it was animated oh my god oh my god and it was moving and like turning to look at everyone and then vanished ew um so and they swear 25 to 30 people were all in the room at that time and they all saw it and this was a room of several researchers like there were cameras going off non-stop but no camera picked it up i was about to ask please tell me someone got a photo so in the apparently every picture that they actually got on camera through all this investigation everything they got on camera none of them saw in real life and everything that they saw they couldn't photograph so like they saw

these green plasma balls but there's no pictures of them but they also never saw these orbs of light but have so many pictures of them and so it made them wonder is this thing powerful enough to be collectively imprinting an image on our brain to make us think we're seeing something yeah in a room that none of it's happening oh shit like maybe our cameras are taking pictures of what's happening in real time but we're all hallucinating together oh god so it was like that was a question up for debate like is it fucking with all of our heads making us think this is in a room when it's not in the room right but every single person before they discussed it all wrote down what they saw and they all said the plasma balls came together and made the torso of a man and it turned around and

looked at everyone and vanished horrible like you can't lie about that that's a very specific thing to know oh my god that is just so fucking creepy also there were several times where doris would say like oh i you know i can see it i can see it how can you not see it and they'd be like what are you talking about we don't see it poor thing but she would be able to see something that they couldn't so he was like making that's just mean a different world that they were hallucinating in while in real time these three orbs were flying around and she said that there were three spirits so these three things that were caught on and she said that there were three spirits. So these three things that were caught on camera were the only things that were actually happening in the room.

And they were somehow controlling everyone's heads differently. That's fucked up, dude. But she would say, they're right here, they're right here. And then they would take a picture of wherever she... I have like chills. Me too. I'm freezing all of a sudden.

Yeah, I'm freezing too. I'm completely freezing. And I was too hot earlier, i turned the look at my i literally just have like the biggest goosebumps me too i was about to say that look shit so um this is not okay i'm glad we're this i'm glad it's not nighttime this is freaking me out and so uh uh what was i saying they would take a picture where she's oh yeah so she would say like it, like, it's right here, it's right here, point the camera over here. And so they would take a picture and the picture would come out completely

white, like, as if someone's face, like, as if the orb was right in front of the lens, and so the only thing they got a picture of was the white orb and nothing else. Like, so... It would just, like, cover the... It would cover the entire frame. Oh my god. And so there are so many pictures of her saying, it's it's over here it's over here and they would take a picture and the whole thing would be whited out and so they would think oh maybe it's like a malfunction with the camera

but then she would say it's gone it's gone and they would take a control picture there and the picture would turn out fine or they would say it's touching my face i can feel it touching my face and then they'd take a picture of her and the only thing that they would catch is her sitting on a bed but there'd be a giant white ball in front of her face and like i mean they got photos of she was saying i can see this how can you not see it and then there was picture proof of it later what oh my god i can't that's freaking me out so much um anyway a couple days later because, cause they left, they were like, no. Poor Doris. And then a couple of days later, Doris called them again and sounded panicked.

And she said that when they came over, they saw like, there was a bunch of like holes of like plaster and paint missing out of the walls. And she said that she watched something that was invisible, uh, rip every single one of the poster boards and duct tape off the wall one by one the ones that they had put up yeah oh god with all the notes so it was like trying to like take down all the information so they couldn't do any more research and but she says every single one of them was ripping off one by one so intensely that the paint and plaster it was duct tape that was duct taped oh my god was getting ripped out of the walls and they were

saying that she might have done it like even the investigator himself was like she could have definitely called us wanted us to come back and ripped it all off and to be like look what happened yeah there's no proof of whether or not that was the case but apparently her reaction suggested trauma and so he was like based on how she was reacting i'm gonna just go ahead and say that it wasn't her like put yeah so then they brought in high speed film equipment oh boy and they of course didn't catch anything on film but there were definitely cold spots but they also wouldn't register on the equipment so all of this equipment is malfunctioning or acting like nothing's there but there's 30 people all corroborating that like this is happening so the technology is just not it's like catching the same thing which makes you wonder like oh if you're not getting like people who investigate

today it's like oh you may not be getting a read but that doesn't mean nothing's there you're not experiencing so it just means like it doesn't want you to have proof that it's there oh my god which then brings up an interesting conversation of like if you do catch something is it because it wants you to know about it this is a really good point and when people say oh there's if there's such a thing as ghosts or whatever how come there's literally no proof or no photos so he doesn't want you to know or maybe it just doesn't register with our equipment yeah so this time their boss came out like the head of the department came who by the way was a woman in the 70s and she was telling all these men what to do love her and she was the one that was in charge because she was the least scared of this

so she's like fine let me see what's going on here so the boss came out and of course nothing happened and so she rolled her eyes and was like so as soon as i get here nothing's going on like all the paranormal stuff starts dying down um also they noticed that when doris wouldn't drink nothing would happen oh shit and so there was the theory that while her inhibitions were down her psychokinetic energy would take over that's my kind of nightmare every time i drink stuff walt walt shows up and um there was a book that was written about um this whole story which ended up getting optioned and turned into the entity movie sure and barry and carrie were hired on to the movie as tech advisors so they actually did give a lot of like oh realistic parts to the story although they do

say that um in the movie they had all this high tech equipment and they didn't actually have that in real life because the department couldn't fund it okay so all of the actual equipment in the story is made up for them to like look like they have more evidence got it got it so 10 weeks uh into the investigation they decided that there was nothing they could really do and doris ended up moving to another town where apparently it followed her because within weeks uh how not only was her house showing cases of paranormal phenomena but the houses on either side of her began also experiencing phenomena oh so like it was almost like it was radiating from her house and spreading out like a virus her poor neighbors so now i wonder like if my house is haunted all of a sudden is it because

the people next to me brought something question yeah it is a good question we'll have to talk to walt walt hello fresh and goodbye i just gave christine eyes like don't you fucking put that on me whoopsie daisy so uh she moved to a new town her house was haunted the other houses were apparently now haunted and never had been and they all reported cupboard doors opening and closing on their own finding garbage dumped on the middle of their floor inside their house oh my god like the garbage can upturned in another room oh my god no no no machines shutting on and off hearing screams and creaks and people walking through the house so barry went to this home because she heard he heard about this um he decided to investigate again one last time and turned out the lights and had a mic near his legs and as soon as they

started investigating a large vase from the other side of the room threw itself into the middle of the room and crashed and like dirt got all over the oh so um while this happened while like the vase crashed in the middle of the floor and they were all focused on that, the audio in the mic next to his leg caught heavy breathing approaching the microphone. And the step, they heard like shuffling like coming towards the mic, but it was step, step, drag. So that was like the pattern. No. And then just the thought that it's by his leg and there's breathing coming toward it yeah heavy breathing like heavy panting deeply upsetting step step drag step step drag and then once the breath was directly in the mic like like this oh

my god um you heard one last like real bated breath and then the mic turned itself off and shut off and wouldn't turn back on for the rest of the investigation. And nobody heard the footsteps or breathing in real life, which just goes to show that it's just like in the first house. Yeah. They couldn't see the orbs, but they saw a green plasma, but they couldn't see any footsteps or breathing, but they heard it on the mic. This is really upsetting. Um, I couldn't hear footsteps or breathing but they heard it on the mic this is really upsetting um i couldn't hear footsteps or breathing jesus so they were also sitting in her bedroom and they were putting out more poster boards to start a new investigation and as barry was putting up a new poster board

and putting duct tape on it he would go over to the next one start putting it up and that one would be getting ripped off and taken down so like nightmare fuel one by one they were getting torn down just as he was putting them up and then the poster boards were getting thrown at doris doris no and then they realized that it they wanted to see if it was like more intelligent that it could like follow basic commands and they said do it again and so he was going around the room putting up a poster board and putting up a new one just to watch get torn down and thrown at her and just kept doing it for the entire room which is kind of a dick move i'm like yeah do it again again again again again again um so she then ended up moving immediately to san bernardino where the there was still phenomenon but a lot less like it was like doors opening and closing toilets flushing like it was lessened but still things were happening

and then she moved to Texas and they lost all contact but in that 2009 interview her son said that she passed away at 58 in 1995 from respiratory problems sad but apparently that interview was also really shady he kept contradicting himself and saying like that didn't happen and then he would talk about how it happened what so he was like kind of off his rocker too oh great um and he seemed like still really irritable and like didn't want to talk about anything he he seemed he seemed like he had his own demons okay no pun intended for lack of a better term um but he did say that there were always even before they moved to that main house in culver city there were always subtle

amounts of phenomenon that was present throughout their lives even before they moved and she actually in her teens had started playing with ouija boards and doing seances. And then also finally started mixing that hobby with drugs and alcohol. Oh no. And apparently right before, right when they moved into that Culver city house, Hey, don't mix spirits. Get it.

I love how long it took you to say it. I really thought that one through. You're like, should I do it? Should I do it? I'll do it. Oh my God. Not,

and I regret nothing not very long until after they moved into culver city um the sign also says that a woman actually came to their door banging on the door and demanding that they leave the house because there was a bad or evil dwelling in it oh no and she just kept saying you need to get out you need to get out i used to live here when this house was new. It was just a farmhouse back then. I was a little girl. There's something super evil here.

The place is haunted. You need to get out. You need to get out. Oh, my God. And eventually, like, she just walked off and they never saw her again. But only a week after that was when the phenomenon got really bad. That's not a good sign. But so since then then nobody's really heard

of her like i said the house was a shack so nobody i think has like lived in it since um it still exists i bet it still exists as a shack or maybe it just got knocked down no one's lived in it no one ever lived in it after the fact i feel like culver city is very like expensive area they probably they're probably not you're right well i don't think anyone lived in it again or if they did because it followed her there was never any reports okay um yeah that is so that one really got to me for some reason yeah happy birthday to me that was spooky i know you love a good poltergeist i love a good poltergeist. I love a good poltergeist. I love a good poltergeist. Okay.

How did you guys like those commercials? I loved them. I liked hearing my voice. We should just have a whole show where we just hear the voice. Not just the commercials. Wow, I'm really trying to follow what you're saying. Okay, here's what I mean. So satisfying. ASMR. ASMR. here's what i mean oh so satisfying asmr also that was my segue into you cracking into your

story thank you oh my god thanks for that lovely intro um i'm honored to be here oh well you don't have to go that far fine i'm not honored to be here god so i did not think to do a birthday story for you i apologize but this is a really good one that i think you'll really like and i don't know if you then you could have just lied and said it is a birthday story yeah but i feel like i tried to come up with a reason why it would be a birthday story and i just couldn't come up with a lie so oh i thought i'd be up front we are two different people i mean i like to like save up my lives for when i really need them i hear you today figured you'd forgive me okay okay so for the birthday story that i picked for you this week

oh yeah uh-huh this is the story of bell gunness nope oh shit you did the thing where you looked at me like maybe i knew but i didn't i thought maybe you would and then i was like see just is it popular enough that I should know it? And I just don't. It's a pretty well-known one. Okay. Then I'm just ignorant. No, you're not ignorant.

I mean, you are, but not for that reason. Whoa. Okay. This is the story of Belle Gunness. A lot of people have suggested this over the past, literally over a year now. Oh, well, they're welcome. Happy birthday to them, I guess. Yeah, really?

Who's getting the real present here sorry you don't appreciate my gifts to you sorry you uh sorry i bothered you with my friendship so sorry about it hope you can forgive me so this is a story that takes place in the 1800s yes um when you were just a twinkle in your great great grandmother's eye oh i don't know she wanted me she's like oh no she's like take it back i take it back my descendants um i do wonder about that i'm like oh crap like how shitty is like who's the shittiest of my bloodline like oh hopefully it's already for sure you well yeah but i mean like runner-up status oh right i like to think it like happened

all the way in the back when like white people were extra horrible yeah then it's like it got it out of the way yeah it was but like maybe somewhere down in my bloodline it's gonna be like yeah what the devil i mean it's in it's within my blood it could it could happen you're like it's dwelling there somewhere i know it's a twinkle in my eye i'm scared i don't want it the devil is a twinkle in your eye oh my god okay just move on before i get really philosophical about it i mean it's too late you're already being real philosophical i know okay so bell gunness was born in 1859 in selbu norway um according to a recent doc so this was you know way back in the day and in norway so it's kind of hard to find like solid evidence that corroborates all the other evidence about

her early life but a recent documentary that came out in 2006 about her said that in 1877 she attended a country dance while pregnant where she was attacked by a man who kicked her in the stomach causing her to miscarry the child. Oh, my God. I hope that guy died. And that was kind of like, they think, at least in this documentary, that was our theory of like, what kind of informed the rest of her life almost. Oh, well, yeah, it would. Yeah. That's an easy theory. Yeah. Yeah.

So the man who did this to her came from a rich family and therefore he was never prosecuted but prosecuted by norwegian authorities um so according to people who knew her her personality completely changed after this um the man who attacked her died shortly afterwards and his cause of death was said to be stomach cancer uh gunness herself grew up convenient that's uh ironic yes yes it is isn't it that something from the stomach would hurt him yes gunness grew up in poverty so the following year she decided to get out of um norway and she started working on a nearby farm to save up for three years in order to pay for a trip to america so in 1881, she moved to America in search of a better life.

And three years later, she married a man named Mads Dietleff Anton Sorensen, also a Norwegian, in Chicago. And two years later, they opened a confectionery store. God, the dream. Yeah, when and where do I sign? The dream.

Their business, unfortunately, was not successful. And within a year, the shop mysteriously burned down. Oh, no. They collected the insurance, which paid for another home for the two of them. And although, again, the details are kind of contested, most researchers believe the couple had four children. Caroline, Axel, Myrtle, and Lucy. Murder? Myrtle. Oh, Myrtle.rtle i was like well that's extra ironic it was ironic that they chose a name that was murder

sounds like something we would do after this fucking podcast like oh here's my baby his name's murder it's spelled m-y-m-y-r-d-y-r yeah my name's ghost there's a silent j in the front ghost and there's an own loud on every letter you're there you're there a child called murder caroline and axel died of acute colitis when they were infants um but just to give you an idea the symptoms of acute colitis nausea fever diarrhea and lower abdominal pain and cramping sounds like they needed pepto-bismol are also symptoms of many forms of poisoning uh yep i was right pepto-bismol solves all your poisoning it sounded like the song of like heartburn indigestion yeah it does both caroline's and axel's lives were reportedly insured and so um bell received the insurance money from both of their deaths questionable little murder survived though yeah i was gonna say interesting that murder stuck around

silent jay umlaut shortly after that uh sorenson her husband died of heart failure um and it happened to me on the day that both of his life insurance policies overlapped it's convenient all of this seems to be so um so an autopsy was considered unnecessary because his death wasn't deemed suspicious as he had recently been treated for an enlarged heart um and so his doctor kind of said uh well you know he was already sick and gunness told the doctor that she had given her late husband medicinal powders to help him feel better. I like how they're like, oh, this isn't suspicious. We're good. They're like, well, yeah.

So his family actually like was not happy. And they were like, no, this is suspicious as hell. Yeah. It's like, OK, nice. Try every test in the book. Medicinal powders. Uh-uh. Yeah, it's like, okay, nice try, but we're going to try every test in the book.

Medicinal powders. So actually, the day after her husband's funeral, she collected the insurance money. And then Sorensen's relatives, so her late husband's relatives, claimed that Gunness had poisoned him to collect on the insurance. And so they tried to get like an inquest to look into it. And it was just deemed unnecessary. So it was never properly looked into. If I were her other two kids, I'd be scared as hell. I'd be like, Oh, my God, any day now. It's our time. Don't eat anything. We're all Yeah, really, if you see a powder, you walk in the other direction. Doesn't matter if it's medicinal or not. Don't eat it. Walk in the other direction.

It doesn't matter if it's medicinal or not. Don't eat it. The insurance companies awarded her $8,500. So today it's around $220,000. And with that, she bought a farm on the outskirts of a town called La Porte, Indiana. So shortly after she moved to her new place, the new house, including the accompanying carriage house and her new boat, burned to the ground. At this point, Belle became reacquainted with a recent widower she knew named Peter Gunness, which is where she got the name. They were married in La Porte in 1902.

Just one week after the ceremony, Peter's infant daughter, so... Oh, no. It wasn't her child, but... Her stepdaughter. Yeah, exactly. Stepdaughter died while alone in the house with Belle. infant daughter so oh no it wasn't her child but her stepdaughter yeah exactly stepdaughter died while alone in the house with bell of unknown causes and not suspicious at all i'm sure as the powder sprinkled over she was just trying to give her medicinal powders right right in december 1902 peter himself met with a tragic accident this is a year and a half after they

i can't i can't stand this according to bell he was reaching for his slippers which were next to the kitchen stove when he was scalded with hot brine from the stove and then a sausage grinding machine fell from a high shelf onto his head killing him wait hang on delve into that so wait the machine like clonked him on the head and he died or it started grinding his head no it was like like a metal like oh okay so like concussion knocked his brain out this isn't like mousetrap where he like fell into it i don't know you were just like a grinder falls on him and i'm like in which way did it go oh oh and also it's the 1900s it's not like electric

oh no it's definitely not i thought it was like it like it just had like a touch sensor and start grinding his head up oh i'm i'm so extra okay so it just hit him in the head i thought maybe it was just a thing they know because i'm german about a sausage like a handheld sauce yeah that's a very german thing i mean we have one here in the house really i'm not gonna put it on a high shelf though because if i'm gonna die that's the way i'm gonna go oh a sausage grinder fall on my head it sounds like the most christine thing that ever did really not a box of wine christine was reaching for her wine and a sausage grinder fell on her head that's the most german christine thing i've ever heard very accurate so she claimed that that's what happened

um but all the locals were like um that doesn't make sense because he's an experienced butcher an experienced farm farmer like he's dealt with all sorts of expensive machinery also like seven people before him and your immediate family have died like why are we not addressing that to be fair she had just moved out of state to a new place so like nobody really knew i hear you and she met this guy there so they were like wait he's been around forever doing farm stuff with all this equipment all of a sudden like he just slips and yeah yeah it gets burned with a stove like it just didn't it just didn't fit his what they knew about him but they didn't really know much about her so yes you're right it's very questionable um a year later peter's brother

so peter was on who died he his brother took peter's older daughter, who was Belle's stepdaughter. Her name was Swanhilda. Because, you know. Nothing more German than that. Gotta say it. I mean, they're Norwegian, but close enough. Oh, yeah. Norway and Germany are the exact same country. You said it. I'm trying to give you some credit here. I don't want that credit. I take it back. So Peter's brother took his niece Swanh, away and moved her with him to Wisconsin, thankfully, because she is the only child to have ever survived living with Belle, goodness.

What happened to murder? You'll find out. Okay. Her husband's death netted Belle another $3,000 to $4,000. Locals started to get suspicious at this point. And the district coroner himself actually reviewed the case and determined that peter had been murdered well there's that convened a jury to look into the matter um and meanwhile jenny olsen who was bell's um adopted daughter who was

14 uh was overheard confessing to a classmate quote my mama killed my papa she hit him with a meat cleaver and he died don't tell a a soul. But when she was brought before the jury, she denied having made the remark. And meanwhile, Gunness somehow convinced the coroner that she was innocent of any wrongdoing. And it didn't hurt that she was also pregnant. So that kind of garnered some favor. Mm hmm. And in late 1906, so a little while after that bell told neighbors that her foster daughter jenny olsen who had uh you know told the classmate um she had gone away to a lutheran college in los angeles gone away like and she was never seen again kind of like how my cat like left for texas left in search of a better life no like actually left for texas that's like a real story

that happened to me yeah that your mom said that your cat left for texas uh-huh and it was dead yeah yeah that's yes yeah okay no i understand texas was a specific area to put my cat i mean why not it seems far away apparently this girl went to a lutheran college so i mean everyone's got to have their alibi you know so she said oh, yeah, Jenny went off to finishing school at 14 or whatever, and she was never seen again. Okay. Just to give you an idea of how Belle felt about Jenny's comment at school. I hear you.

Between 1903 and 06, Belle continued to run her farm, and then in 07, she decided to hire a single farmhand named Ray Lamphere to help with chores. Around the same time, Belle took out an ad in the matrimonial columns of several Chicago Daily newspapers. You know, good old, that's how Blaise and I met. Oh, yeah. Matrimonial columns. Oh, wow. Me and Allison too. Precious. The ad said, and I quote, Comley Widow, who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in LaPorte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided with view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal visit. Triflers need not apply.

Triflers. All right. So I should stay away. Got it. So back off m that was uh like i think in early my fair murder episode because they have that quote triflers need not apply like on all their merch it's so funny i read that and i was like that's where it comes from it's a real quote anyway so yeah back off but also like that is a perfect like today i should put that like in

a tinder profile or something hilarious oh it's perfect please don't please don't apply if you're a trifler i literally on twitter recently just um reached out asking for people to be my lgbtq friends right and almost put in there scorpios need not apply so i mean that's just like today's version of triflers i mean what she was talking about were people born in early november oh so scorpio's triflers same diff right yeah oh man so many we cracked the case geo is a trifler if i ever saw one um so believe it or not several wealthy middle-aged men who i guess were not triflers responded to bell's ads one of them was named john moe, and he arrived from Elpo Lake, Minnesota. Belle introduced him to her neighbors as her cousin.

And he brought $1,000 with him to pay off her mortgage. Within a week of his arrival, John Moe disappeared. First of all, it's a good cousin who brought enough money to pay off your mortgage, and then you kill him. Some cousin that's also not your cousin. He was just visiting for the week. Next up was George Anderson from Tarkio, Missouri, who was also, oh, by the way, they were all, she posted them in like Norwegian papers. So it was like she was looking for other Norwegian men. So these people have all been Norwegian.

So George Anderson was also a Norwegian immigrant and he was from tarkeo missouri um and during dinner with him bell raised the issue of her mortgage and anderson agreed that he would pay off her mortgage if they decided to wedge so if she agreed to marry him uh-huh that's a very uh it's a tall order yeah like oh commit your life to me and then i'll i mean it's fair on his end to be fair she literally put in there i'm looking for someone to combine my fortunes with so okay that's you know i hear you it seemed like that's what she was kind of looking for in the ad yeah she doesn't say anything about love no no no no um okay so he agreed to pay off her mortgage if she would marry him uh that night anderson awoke to see bell standing over his bed holding a flickering candle in her hand with a strange, sinister expression on her face.

Without uttering a word, she ran from the room. Anderson fled and took the next train to Missouri. Good boy. Never came back. But the suitors kept coming. And Anderson was the only one to ever leave the Gunness farm alive. Yeah, because he listened to his american instincts get the hell out his american instincts he's not american that's norwegian you just said they're all immigrants from norway oh my god i don't know

i'm sorry what you're talking about just ignore me those american instincts you just gotta i mean i know me and my like roman instincts are like you're Roman. Okay. All right. Nice try. Oh, I love how I get to edit and just leave all that in there. That's fine. I mean, we all know the type of person I am at this point.

It's just a lot of it doesn't make sense. It's your, don't worry. It's your, you can't control your Roman instincts. I know. I know. Um, so he fled, uh fled and went back to Missouri. I was like, fuck this. So the suitors kept coming.

And by this time, so people say she had started ordering huge trunks to be delivered to her home. a lot of the trunks to her home and would and remarked how she would lift the enormous trunks quote like boxes of marshmallows and toss them onto her wide shoulders carrying them into the house i should also add at this point that bell gunness was over six feet tall um 183 centimeters for all you non-americans and way romans or romans there's only the two. Non-Americans and Romans. And she weighed 250 pounds. Wait, what? She was over six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds. Okay.

And this was like in the early 1900s. Big girl. Big girl. And to give you an idea, 200 pounds is 91 kilograms. So she would basically like get these trunks delivered and then she would like basically toss them on her shoulder and just carry them like they were nothing it's kind of the point um she would keep the shutters of her house closed day and night and farmers traveling past would see her digging in the hog pen at night so like she was only ever seen at night and she was always digging in the hog pen um an elderly widower from iola wisconsin named olby budsberg um that doesn't even sound

like a real name his name is o-l-e olby budsberg got it uh came next he was last seen alive at the laporte savings bank on april 6 1907 when he mortgaged his Wisconsin land, signing over a deed and obtaining several thousand dollars in cash. Convenient. Olby Budsberg's son, Oscar and Matthew, had no idea that their father had gone off to visit Belle Gunness. So when they discovered where he had gone, they contacted her and she promptly responded saying she didn't know what they were talking about and had never seen him. Inconveniently for Belle, that guy she hired, Ray Lamphere, who was helping her with chores around the house, around on the farm, had fallen deeply in love with her. Of course.

He would do any chore for her, no matter how grueling it was. And he thought that he and Gunness weren't going to get married. So every time a new guy came, he would get extremely jealous and start making a scene. So on February 3rd, 1908, she finally fired him. And then she went to the LaPorte courthouse and declared that Ray was not in his right mind and was a menace to the public. But he was released and she would keep coming back to the jail or to the courthouse to say Ray needed to be arrested because he was harassing her and her family. And so finally he was arrested for trespassing but he kept returning to the farm again and again to see her and he would make

these thinly disguised threats so he told another farmer in town that one of the men who came to stay with bell quote won't bother me no more we fixed him for keeps ew so questionable creepy fixed him for keeps. Ew. So questionable, creepy as hell. The man who's, so this man who he said won't bother me no more, we fixed him, was named Andrew Helgelian. And he had long since disappeared from town, or so people thought. His brother came looking for him and Belle realized that ray was now like kind of a threat

to all her scheming because he was like mouthing off about all this stuff and she was like i need to get rid of him before because now this guy he gets rid of me yeah and now this guy's brothers are coming to like look into where where where their brother went and she's like i don't like where this is going so an attempt to get rid of ray bell told a lawyer that she feared for her and her children's lives and said ray had threatened to kill her and burn her house down she had the lawyer drop a will leaving her entire estate to her children the following day bell gunness's farm went up in flames when police approached ray without any prior information he said did widow gunness and the kids get out all right and then they were like um how do you know about the fire and he's like I had nothing

to do with it I don't know anything about it okay Ray's clearly a sharp sharp fella yeah he's really slick real slick slick Ray as you know as we say as we say in La Porte Indiana um so later a young man actually testified that he had been watching the gun in his place when it was on fire and saw Ray running down the road just before before shit went down. So Ray was arrested with all of this information. Ray was arrested and charged with murder and arson. The then scores of investigators, sheriff's dep deputies coroner's men and many volunteers began to search the ruins of the farm for evidence that's where shit gets crazy this is where it gets crazy okay got it everything's been really normal everything's really actually been super copacetic at this point did you say copacetic yeah wow you were like setting for the sats or something i know i know i know

um on bell gunness's property after the fire within the remains of the house um investigators found four skeletons they found the remains of bell gunness's three children and they also found the body of a headless woman there it is they believed the body was bell gunness's body but they couldn't figure out why her skull was missing right and what's more the body they found was soon determined to be of a woman who was five foot three and weighed between 180 and 200 pounds maybe she was always like sitting on the shoulders of another person oh and the other person's the one with the head so that person's gone now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That person ran away. Like little rascals. Leaving the headless one behind.

Yes. Oh, okay. I mean, that's the obvious answer. I just feel like, why didn't they figure that out? They're not as sharp as us. Oh, thank God. Thank God we were born into... Into intelligence?

Oh, yeah. Okay. Into some copacetic brains. Right. Okay, so they also, just to confirm, they got Bell's measurements from local clothing stores where she shopped, and they were able to confirm that the body was not hers. So they sent the stomach contents of the victims to a pathologist in Chicago, who later reported that all of the organs in all of the bodies that they sent contained lethal doses of strychnine a poison that happened to be a

medicinal powder um only if you say you think it is and then okay put it in people's food but no definitely not it is a poison um when investigators further explored the grounds uh they started to find shallow graves all in all they found the remains of about 40 men, women, and children. Good. It's a lot of killing. 40.

That's ridiculous. You're supposed to go, that's like a, that's a whole school bus of people. Yeah. That's horrifying. Um, most of the victims were unknown and it's scary cause it was men, women,

and children. So it was just like a mix of people. on the, and this is an addition to like her own three children that they found in the house on the first sunday after the crimes were discovered uh around 20 000 people showed up at bell's farm they said it was like a carnival people were selling ice cream and popcorn yeah selling postcards of photos of the victims and oh my god as like souvenirs and trinkets um and 20 000 people

showed up to like kind of get like a morbid carnival out of it jesus yeah pretty fucked up um so ray was questioned obviously and in his confession he admitted to having helped bell dispose of the bodies but he denied ever killing any of the victims himself. So then he told he told police what Bell would do. So I'm going to tell you her standard procedure. So excited. She would lure a victim in. So like with her ad or ads in the newspaper.

And then she would make him comfortable, charm him and cook him a large meal. She would then drug his coffee. And when the man was in a stupor, she split his head in with a meat chopper sometimes she would simply wait for the suitor to go to bed and enter the bedroom by candlelight and chloroform him um and since she was so strong gunness would then carry the body to the basement place it on a table and dissect it jesus then she would bundle the remains and bury them in a hog pen and the grounds surrounding the house. She had become an expert at dissection because of her second husband,

Peter Gunness, who was a butcher. To save time, she would just sometimes dump the corpses into a hog scalding vat and then just cover the remains with quicklime. And Ray also stated that if Belle was overly tired because she had been murdering too many people,

sometimes she would just chop up the remains and feed them to the pigs overnight. It turns out the headless corpse they had found in the burned out house belonged to a woman who had answered an ad for a housekeeper and had recently come to the house to work and then the other bodies were determined to actually be her own children and she had chloroformed them fuck before the fire and then did she say i guess she set her own house on fire

so here's kind of what they pieced together so what she, so she killed the woman who came as a housekeeper, um, and dressed the corpse in her own clothing to pretend like it was her. Um, and then removed her own false teeth and put them besides, beside the corpse to like throw off investigators. Um, and then she torched the house and fled.

So this is what, what Ray was telling them, at least is what the story they got from him. And then she set the house on fire and fled. Ray said he helped her, but he was waiting for her down the road after the fire had been set when that kid saw him. And he said she must have taken another road and fled to leave him to take the blame. She had basically betrayed him and run into the woods and left him behind uh some accounts suggest that ray actually admitted to taking her to a nearby town and putting her putting her on a

train to chicago but i think the more common theory or more common story is that he just was like she peaced out and left me to take the blame. She had planned to abscond with the money she had gathered from all her victims, which they estimate to be as much as $250,000, which today is over $6 million. Wow. Her sister told a reporter that Belle had always been obsessed with getting rich, and it was believed she was about to be exposed for her crimes. So she and Ray worked together to commit the arson. But then while he waited for her she peaced out um ray was found guilty of arson but acquitted of murder on november 26 1908 he was sentenced to 20 years in the state prison in michigan city and on december 30th 1909 he died of tuberculosis in jail oh ray said that bell was a rich woman that she had murdered 42 men by his

count, perhaps more and had taken amounts from them ranging from a thousand dollars to 32,000. Jeez. Yeah. Um, so again, $6.3 million is the estimated amount that she had gotten from all these,

all these people. Um, she had a small amount remaining in one of her saving accounts, but local banks later admitted that she had indeed drawn that had indeed withdrawn most of her funds shortly before the fire. So pretty much all of the money was out of her accounts, suggesting that she was planning to evade the law and run after the arson. Nobody ever saw Belle Gunness again. Nobody ever knew what happened to her. There were a lot of reports of her being spotted all over the

country. But it's unknown if any of those were true. For many years, people thought that a woman named Esther Carlson, what might have been Bell under another name, they looked pretty similar, and she had been arrested for murdering two people in California. But in 2014, a researcher found records of Esther's first marriage in connecticut in 1907 which is right when bell was in indiana murdering a shit ton of people so it just they don't add up so it's just another lady murderer right who happened to look like her um and so what happened to bell is a mystery to this day but only the one child ever survived living with her and only the one guy man ever survived living with her. And only the one man ever survived living with her.

Do we ever know what happened to the kid? Which kid? The one that survived. Oh, she just went off to live with her uncle and was fine. Nice. But yeah, all the other ones, including murder, were killed by their own mother. Wow. Pretty fucked up.

So yeah, that is the story of Belle Gunness. That's that on that. Happy birthday. Thank you. I get to stew in that story for a while now. Why don't we do a trifler scope? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, a trifler scope would really do the trick.

Be the cherry on top. All right, triflers slash Scorpios. Here you go. Your intuitive nature, triflers slash Scorpios. Here you go. Your intuitive nature is especially strong, Scorpio. You won't have to think about things because you'll have the ability to just know the answers. All right, don't give... Listen, don't give them more credit than they deserve. Wow, didn't know he needed that kind of ego today, but apparently Gio does.

You don't need to think about anything, Gio. Just do whatever the hell you want. If any penetrating detective work needs to be done... Oh this would be an excellent time to do it literally the last thing i need is geo being investigative going on a fucking investigation yeah your caring sensitive nature will get you through any door you want to walk through today if you keep that smile on your face at all times oh the happy handsome one and now i'm like yeah you're right you will he's so good that smile such a good boy all right all right thanks for listening guys you do it oh boy okay um get ready for an adventure here we go you guys can find us at you can okay hold on

oh my god do you want me to do it you guys can find us on facebook twitter instagram patreon at atwwd podcast you can email us at and that's why we drink at gmail.com you can find our website at and that's why we drink.com which has our live show dates um as well as some other fun info you can find us on itunes stitcher wherever the hell you get your podcast please give us a review it really helps um what else is there is that it no oh you can find her oh i thought you were just sweating and it's like no holding their shirt pulling my merch shirt i thought you were just sweaty uh you can find our merch at and that's why you drinked up big cartel.com um we have some new stuff up there we're putting a new design up

that somebody made us recently which is really cool it's a boozers and shakers shirt uh we have a we have a subreddit i keep forgetting to tell people about atwwd podcast um people post some fun stuff there you can also go if you are a patreon member you can go see our we just did a facebook live last week and we just did our um our may gift package video and we uh just did our May gift package video. And we just did our listener's story that also comes out today. So happy birthday to us. And hopefully we're doing well tonight at our show. Oh, yeah. And also, wait, no, the listener episode came out two days ago, right? On the first.

On the first, yeah. And that's my friend Alyssa's birthday. Happy birthday, Alyssa. Happy birthday to all you Geminis. We're thinking about you in this wonderful season. Tis the season. The Gemini season. Bye.

What was I going to say? Oh, I was going to say something else. Oh, yeah. Join our Facebook. That's what I was going to say. Oh, good. Join our secret Facebook group. It's the secret ATWD group on Facebook.

It's a lot of fun. We have like 12,000 people in there now, and it's a good time. And also, please send us ratings and reviews on iTunes. It does more than you realize. It does. And that's all I have. Only if they're good. Oh, yeah.

Don't say mean things that I read. Minimum four stars. Don't give me stomach aches. I have enough of those. Minimum. No four. No. Minimum five. Minimum five. Minimum minimum five minimum five minimum six stars yeah uh thanks guys we love you all

and thank you for listening again and for being awesome and for letting us do this cool thing that's now our job that's why we drink i tried to be smooth it didn't work