And That's Why We Drink - E97 A Rogue Cork and the Millennium Special

Episode Date: December 9, 2018

Alright, call the priest, Em's future child is causing poltergeist activity again with their baking soda volcano. This week Em brings us the rollicking, spooky tale of Popper (aka Pooper) the Poltergeist, which leads us to contemplate the holy water evaporation cycle and teen girl angst. Meanwhile, Christine shares the traumatizingly dark story of Katy Harris and Krystal Surles. Christine prescribes many King of the Hill episodes post listening to this story. We also announce our spin-off show, "Poor and Spicy in Missouri"… and that's why we drink!Please consider supporting the companies that support us!For a total of $60 off - that's $20 off your first 3 Hello Fresh boxes - go to hellofresh.com/drink60 and enter promo code DRINK60Get 20% off your first order of Bombas Socks when you go to bombas.com/drink and enter promo code DRINKSign up for Firstleaf with our personal link to get your first 3 bottles of wine for just $15 plus free shipping! Then get an extra $10 off your next box when you rate those wines. Go to tryfirstleaf.com/drinkSign up for stamps.com to get up to $55 free postage, a free scale and a 4 week trial! Go to stamps.com and click on the radio mic at the top of the homepage to enter promo code DRINK

Christmas time is here. Is it right time now? I think so. It's December 9th. Christmas is here. Christmas is here. That's my Sim version. Oh.

Simlish. Ha sa fa. Ha sa fa. Christmas Sims Christmas Edition. Oh. Chauncey Christmas. A Chauncey Christmas. Eva, write that down.

Guys, we really just derailed wow we talked powerfully gross things we talked about powerfully power what a rampant discussion what a rampant discussion we discussed all of the things that freak us out about bodies which it turns out is everything yeah between the three of us there is no part of the body that does not freak us out covered every orifice everything that bends things that don't bend but you could tear yeah oh everything was bad inside outside things you can unravel oh by the way the belly button i've thought about that too wow that's my safe word oh what could you use that safe word with blaze i thought you were gonna say can you use that in a sentence and i was like yeah i was gonna say you should use that with blaze sometimes be like the safe word is isn't that sexy

um so merry almost christmas happy almost holidays wow can you Can you believe it? Also Hanukkah, since you're supposedly the Jew, but you always talk about Christmas. Yeah. And I'm the one who's like, let's be inclusive. No, let's be inclusive. But let's also like, definitely remember that I also celebrate Christmas. Right. Okay. And Hanukkah. When I remember. I was like, when have you ever celebrated Hanukkah? Usually my mom or I will text each other and be like, is it Hanukkah yet? And then we'll check her calendar and be like, it's been like six days whoops yikes goodness whoops um well I just got back from Belize oh Jesus everyone go back to episode 95 real quick and listen to me just like really embarrass myself we recorded that like before this yeah I was like you just got back from Belize and I'm like wow

crazy how time flies and then I realized this comes out in like four days and definitely I won't be in Belize yet yikes but now I've officially come back with my pet jaguar oswong what's it called oh winnebago winnebago windigo windigo I not an rv I might come back with an rv if I you know an rv full of jaguars could be caners cross could be um hello everyone and um happy holidays happy holidays happy oh we're warm so sorry question that we probably shouldn't be asking um while we're doing this but i'm also remembering just now ask away when are we gonna open christmas presents together because well i was devastated because i leave the 21st thinking oh we have a whole weekend together and then i realized you leave way earlier than that yikes so so never okay we'll just have a belated christmas we're gonna have to do a friend's miss like in january okay which

blaze's birthday is january 2nd so like he's let's just steamroll blaze i mean he's used to it by now he lives with us so yay um okay so i guess everyone be prepared to hear about our christmas presents way after the fact that christmas has already happened right we're just gonna do that thing where we elongate our birthdays, but this time it's Christmas. I mean, the good thing about having a holiday in June, a holiday in December is that we've got every six months we're going to elongate something. You have a couple months to rest in between. Yes. You're welcome. Before we just inundate you again. As of right now, we have a lot of shows still available. I think we've announced the second

Denver show and some other things. If not, congratulations. You just learned something. Congratulations. Surprised us all. Otherwise, I mean, listen, we're living the best life. We're about to enter 2019. I was like, I don't remember.

2019. 2019. It's so crazy that it's already been a whole year yeah it's been a whole year whole year a whole year it's been bananas i mean it's almost been what's our anniversary i mean not our friendiversary but our podcast february 9th it's always february 9th or february 11th i always forget i think it's the 9th well technically january 19th is the is the birth of the birth the birth of the conception yes you will yes yes 11 a.m i think oh my god i remember because you texted me last year and i got all teary-eyed yes january to the minute to the minute yes i did

make sure to do that so it's i'll do it again this time now that that is a is that an aquarius or is that a pipe or a capricorn because i messed up the day i think it's a capricorn because it's right on that cusp isn't it it's almost an aquarius okay um are we gonna be together january 19th this year are we traveling traveling oh yeah i think we're in dallas we should have a little date we should be so cute it's cute yeah we should have like a a podcast birthday friend over in st louis missouri oh yeah missouri we should definitely have a date in missouri because like oh we would have never thought we were gonna have a date in miss because like we would have never thought we were going to Missouri. Let's have a date in Missouri.

Oh, we'll always have Missouri. Well, I mean, that's what I always say. I mean, yeah, we'll always have St. Louis. And we said that the day we started this podcast, we didn't even know why we said it. But now we know. Yeah. Yeah. There it is.

Amazing how we manifested St. Louis. Well, well, here's to you, St. Louis. Here's to you and to us. All right. Well, I guess we just get rolling through December, huh? We're just kind of more like tripping and falling left and right. We really don't know what we're doing. Oh, is that shocking to you?

Well, then you have really been sorely mistaken. Oh, is it surprising that we don't know what we're doing? You must be starting this podcast from backwards. Oh, you must be a person who is being forced to listen to this by your relative or your girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other. And I'm sorry for that. I'm not. You want to know why I'm not?

Because today for December, y'all are getting a poltergeist. Oh, hell yeah! It's a short one, though, guys. So we're going to... I'm just warning you now, it's not lengthy. But it's a good one. You just challenged my constitution i'm just warning you now it's not lengthy but it's it's a good one you just challenged my constitution i need a minute oh my goodness wow i'm so sickly so um we are having a show in long island yes we are um and this was originally going to be my story in long island however i like i'm saying how it's short I just didn't think that it was going to be enough information for an entire live show.

So we are replacing then with now. I'm all about it. Awesome. So this is the story of Popper the Poltergeist. Get out of town. Why does he sound so cute? Well, he sounds really cute. But I also, when I first typed it, I'm literally saying Popper.

But when I typed this, apparently I said, I typed Pooper. Pooper the folder guys. Everybody 10 twos. Everybody 10 twos. Including Pooper. Including Pooper. Oh, happy Pooper. That's the unabridged version of the, of that book.

That is. It has an extra page. Wait, I'm sorry. Is it Popper like a jalapeno popper or popper like a poor person? No, popper like a jalapeno popper. So not popper like me, but a popper like what I eat. Yes. Got it.

Yes. Spicy like me. Okay. You get it now. Spicy and poor. That's us. That's our slogan. That's our spinoff.

We'll always have Missouri. Poor and spicy. Poor and spicy in Missouri. That's what we always say. Oh my goodness. Wow. We've always have Missouri. Poor and spicy. Poor and spicy in Missouri. That's what we always say. Oh my goodness. Wow, we've had a wild day. Guys, can you tell that we've recorded way too many episodes all at once and we're just so tired? We've been trapped in a room for many hours with

Eva trying to find a way out. Eva's actively on her phone. She's trying to charge right now, I think, because she's already SOS'd everybody she knows. She's texted John 4,000 times. She's like, John, tell me you got in a car crash so I can come get you or something. Just make up an excuse. Please say that like you're pregnant and giving birth and I have to come see my baby. John is in labor. I'm so sorry. We would never catch it. I have to go see my baby. Yeah, that seems really reasonable.

We would never catch it. We'd be like, holy shit, even go. We really, I'd be like, wait, how did that work? I'd be like, don't be offensive, Em. Yeah, I would have just been like, you know what? It's not my place. It's not my place. Everybody goes into labor sometimes. Yes. That's my spinoff. Everybody's involved in something like that at some point. Bodily functions, including your belly button spiraling out.

Happened to everyone. Woof. Anyway, moving on with Pooper the Poltergeist, apparently. It's so dumb and so funny. Poor, spicy, and poopy so uh other names that this story goes by are the herman poltergeist the seaford poltergeist and popper the poltergeist so herman is the family that was haunted seaford is the town oh i thought they named him herman i thought that was cute no they named him pooper apparently and you will see why.

Okay. So, the Herman family, and in case you're Googling this, this is a double R, double N kind of scenario for Herman. It's a German version. How do you say it then? Herman. Herman. Yep. Yeah?

Herman. Heymon. Yeah. Like Jamaican Heymon? Heymon. Heymon. What does that sound? What? That's somebody probably chainsawing. Oh, okay. Heymon. Heymon. What does that sound? What?

That's somebody probably chainsawing. Oh, okay. You know. Heymon. Okay. I'm sorry. So the Herman family. Right.

Let's stick with that. They lived in Seaford, New York, which is in Long Island. And it's a typical 1950s home. Just to give everyone a nice little visual of the beginning phases. I bet you there's some really cute doilies. Oh, a thousand percent. There's a whole drawer of doil beginning. There's some really cute doilies. Oh, a thousand percent. There's a whole drawer of doilies. There's definitely an icebox for sure.

With jello in it. Oh, we're getting wild. Painting a picture. Oh my goodness. And every channel was black and white. Oh, my favorite. So this was the home of James and Lucille Herman and their children. Shit you not.

James Jr. And Lucille Jr. That's the kind of shit we're going to pull someday. I know it. I really hope that you name your children M and I'll name mine Christine. Okay, even better. I was thinking we'd name them after ourselves, but after each other is even better. Yeah, well, then we're bonded by blood at that point.

So, home of James, Lucille, little James, and little Lucille. And the kids are 13 and 12. Cute. Oh, I wonder if they went by Lucy and Jimmy, the kids. Isn't that cute? I think they did, actually. Like Lucille, James, and Lucy and Jimmy? No, I hear you.

I think they did, actually. All right, cool. Painting a picture, I tell you. Because some of the articles were James Jr. and some were Jimmy. Oh, okay. So, maybe. Okay, so this happened, this pauper, the poltergeist. First appears on Februarybruary 3rd 1958

so she's an aquarius um uh the the this is also i don't know where this happens because in what i researched i could not find like what i consider the most significant part of all of the information i could not find any of it anywhere somehow this poltergeist case is the first haunting to actually ever show itself on television. What? And I couldn't find anything else about that. I don't know if that means they brought in camera crews and saw something. Like on the Andy Griffith show. Yeah, I don't know if it was a talk show and they showed home footage.

Holy shit. I don't know what what but on every article they made sure to mention like oh it's the first don't you hate that and you're like that gives me nothing i was like that's literally what i'm searching for and you gave me a lot more so apparently this is the first haunting where evidence was actually shown on television on live television wow okay i don't know what that means very interesting if anyone else figures it out please email me that actually would be great yeah you guys do the work um yeah so february 3rd 1958 3 30 p.m right when the kids came home from school the kids and lucille the mom are home and james is at work and out of nowhere various bottles of

liquid in different rooms of the house suddenly begin to pop their caps and spew contents oh no um that's a waste yeah and a mess and a mess a waste and a mess a messy waste and a wasty mess so uh no one saw the bottles explode but they heard the caps pop off from multiple rooms and when they went to go see what was going on the bottles contents were flying into the air oh my god um hence the name popper because it makes sense it's popping it's popping it's lit and it's popping you know we're hip yeah we get it we know what's going on hi eva um so we're cool eva eva write it down so we don't forget later write about how cool we are so of the bottles that were popped open was a bottle of bleach in the basement oh okay a bottle of liquid starch

in the kitchen two bottles of shampoo and medicine in the bathroom and a bottle of holy water in the master bedroom oh no so they're all totally away from each other so right so it wasn't like a contained it wasn't like someone could have set them all off at one time because they all went off at the exact same time oh my god so each of the bottles had a twist off type cap so it's not like a cork just kind of rogue popped itself so it wasn't like pressure buildup it was like literally a twist it was acting like it was a pressure buildup but they were twist off so it's like even harder to yeah so it's like it shouldn't have just been like a rogue cork um which is christine's superhero

the broad of broadcast is nix forget it we're moving on by day she's the broad of broadcast by by night she's the rogue cork spiraling out of control guess which one i am now i think it's pretty easy to determine so mrs herman lucille senior if you will um she called her husband and told him what happened and he said that he would check it out when he got home at that night right and she actually was saying like please come home i'm really freaked out and he was like nah i'll come back later i love that is such a classic like okay honey i'll check on it later what a 1950s man classic like i'll let you know when we do things if i called blaze and said there's a ghost in here please come home from your shift he'd probably be like

yeah no he'd be like um especially if you're telling me something haunted's over there i'm just gonna like make my shift longer don't you have m for that okay goodbye valid though yeah i mean it's a good point i would call you first let's be real so uh his theory when he did get home was that some sort of chemical reaction had caused the bottle lids to blow off and the fact that it happened all at the same time in different rooms was just a coincidence obviously so classic you know classic classic person not trying to think about the fact that there's a ghost in your house he's just like we'll just ignore this sounds like blaze so they decided to write it off as just one of those funny things classic 50s i was gonna say they described that to like every i just hear like a leave it to

beaver theme song in my head just one of those those funny things. Oh, he likes boys. That's just one of those silly things. He's just a funny boy. He's just silly. He'll get over it. Yeah. So grow out of it. Three days later. So the bottles all pop.

That was one day. And the dad was like, let's forget this. Three days later, at the same time at three 30, another half dozen bottles exploded from their lids on different rooms. Oh my God. A bottle of nail polish burst open a bottle of rubbing alcohol another bottle of bleach a bottle of detergent another bottle of starch and the holy water again not the holy water not the holy water creepy the next night it all happened again with another six bottles um okay so i don't like the six and i don't like threes

well also if you think about those were three different times and they were all six, six, six. Yeah. Yeah. Forget it. And the times were three, three, three, three, 30. So it's like basically the witching hour, but just the daytime version. Not in love with that, really.

So this time after it happening three times in a row. Right. James is like, okay, what the fuck is going on? And so he assumes that it must be his son, James Jr. Right. Because his son loves science and science experiments. So he thinks, okay, maybe my son rigged the bottles to pop. And like pouring stuff in them or something.

Yeah. So he actually thought it was a... Interesting theory. Yeah. Not totally wrong. Because I would first think like the classic volcano science experiment. No, you would first think there is definitely a poltergeist. Oh, right.

And then second, I'd be like... But rationally. Then second, I'd be like Mentos and Diet Coke. Right. Then third, I'd be like rationally then second i'd be like mentos and diet coke right then third i'd be like youtube bio video okay and then science so he thought that his son might be putting carbonated capsules oh that's an interesting theory okay i didn't even know those existed um me neither maybe they didn't maybe james is just a grown man in the 50s and was like one of those gizmos of yours those made on or seen on tv right carbonated capsules so james spent the entire weekend secretly observing his son to catch him

in the act smooth can you just imagine your dad just staring at you even harder than usual and he thinks he's being real discreet somehow while he was watching his son um his son had not done anything but several caps popped off bottles of starch turpentine and the holy water again while all the containers rocked back and forth on the shelves oh no without any proof of james having done it james just assumed that it was him because he couldn't think of another explanation and burst into the bathroom while james is brushing his teeth and said you're rigging the bottles i know that you're the one doing this while his son was saying it wasn't him he was swore that it wasn't him as if to prove a point something made a bottle of medicine move across the top of the sink and fall into the trash can oh my god then a bottle of shampoo moved across the sink

and fell to the floor but they also before they fell anywhere they moved they both moved on the sink and they moved in different directions oh so it wasn't like it wasn't like something or something yeah they all they moved in different directions so it wasn't an accident ew still skeptical james looked for hidden wires or strings and didn't know what to do this is literally blaze it's like i don't believe my child nothing is real um meanwhile if my kid was like something is moving and it's not me i'd be like your kid would literally put mentos in a diet coke bottle be like i didn't do it and you'd be like holy shit i'd be like we're going to a priest right now i feel like what am i all the priests i feel like one of like the things my kids are gonna have to be worried about is me always threatening

an exorcism i'm just gonna be like if you can't fuck with me it's like if you tell me there's a ghost i'm gonna believe you so get ready for me to take you to a priest and strap you down also do the thing of like get away with anything they wanted by blaming a ghost and'm gonna believe you so get ready for me to take you to a priest and also do the thing of like get away with anything they wanted by blaming a ghost and i'll probably believe it i know i mean i've i mean i know that it's a cross-eyed bear i've accepted it oh my god it's a cross-eyed bear they'll they'll get they'll they'll know my weakness and the witness's ghosts so um james looked for hidden wires and he didn't know what to do because he couldn't find anything and the whole time his son is like dude i told you i'm not doing this so dude that's

what he said in the 50s at 12 so james not knowing what to do he called the police so then you have then you have to tell the police like this is what's going on there's a bunch of bottles moving around my house so which must be horrible for a 50s man who's so like staunch and staunch in his masculinity to be like uh i don't know how to say this so we're just gonna poo bottle fell off we're just gonna rip it off like a band-aid real quick and you're gonna come here my tylenol fell off the shelf right so apparently the he sounded desperate enough that the officer sent a patrolman and he, the patrolman was very skeptical. But once he got there, multiple bottles popped lids in spewed liquid. Wow.

And then flew at him as if to like hit him and get him out of the house. Oh my God. So the patrolman left and said there needed to be a real investigation. And a man named Detective Joseph Tozzi, T-O-Z-Z-I, came to the house, also skeptic. I feel like everyone's just going to start a skeptic. Obviously. Which. Exactly. Rationally, sure.

So Detective Tozzi, he stayed the night and that night a perfume spray bottle flipped itself upside down and spilled perfume all over a bedroom. That's never going to go away. I was going to say that smell is just permanent now. I love scent bird, but man, don't want it poured on my body i love scent bird but not a pool of scent no no can we put that in the ad yeah so at this point the presence loves pooper loves scent bird pooper loves scent bird from a country sorry hello poop um yikes so at this point the presence was being called Popper because that was all he was really doing except moving sometimes around.

It's a cute nickname too. Lucille later on in life, um, was interviewed about the house and she described like her experience hearing these popping noises. Right. And this is a quote from her. She said, all of a sudden you'd hear this loud noise, like a popping bottle sound. And you'd look around and find a bottle that was 12 feet away from where it was supposed to be, and all the contents were missing, and the bottle was hot to the touch. Oh! Oh,

God, that's even creepier. Most of the action seemed to be focused on the bottle of holy water that kept popping. Oh, no, no, no, no. And so they made sure to pay attention to that every night, and one night after hearing it pop in another room, James ran into the bedroom and found the bottle on the floor, picked it up, and it was red hot.

Oh. Oh, my God. Burning hot holy water. Like boiling holy water. Wait, here's my question. Yeah. Here's my answer. I have a multi-part question that I've just invented.

Hold on. Here we go. Step one. Okay. So is the holy water spilling out? Are they getting new holy water or is it not spilling? I don't think it's spilling. I think it's just moving.

It's just popping and then like... I think becauseids i think because it's holy water it can't be touched and so like the bottle is being touched but stuff is not being poured out yet cool okay so everything is that when she said that the bleach was empty was it like on the floor all of that was empty but was it like all over the place it was like exploded like oh okay like imagine a diet coke mentos experience but with turpentine i'm imagining it and i'm loving it okay so but rain on me turpentine but so yeah it's like it's like destroying the house so but it so it is going it's not just disappearing it's like going it's like volcanoing and landing on the ground two part second question oh don't start talking again

because i have more questions so if holy water i mean i know you said that it just got hot and the holy water didn't boil but like do you think if holy water boils like you know how it evaporates do you think that like it loses its power i don't know why you would know that or if that's even a thing i'm just wondering like well isn't it like if you boil no no that's a good question after it's been blessed also someone wrote to us because in like episode three we asked if you could bless like a tankard of holy water and somebody wrote to us and said yes that priests can bless lakes priests can bless any amalgamation of water no matter what size it is anyway good to know no i don't i was in a hot spring i don't know well isn't this is gonna make me sound really uneducated but isn't holy water

like it's there's like a like a little oil in it or something no it's just water just water i mean i think you could probably put it but like if you bless like a lake or something you don't put any i was thinking if you put something in it they spray holy water on you sometimes but it's not hmm i'm thinking of like baptisms how like you're kind of greasy afterwards no i mean you bless people with oil but i think that's different holy water itself is just water right what if it just stays i just i'm like looking at you like eva help this is truly probably not gonna help any real this is probably not gonna help in any real sense but uh uh bless the rains down in africa just started playing in my head and then i started thinking that it could be like the evaporation cycle and it just

stays blessed. So it evaporates and then becomes rain. And then all the rains get blessed in Africa. Can you tell that like Eva went to school and actually listened in class? Can you tell Eva knows about science and is subtly trying to tell us how science works where I'm like, what if it boils? Where does it go? But that actually is very interesting because then if you bless a lake and it gets, you

know, a hot spring or something and evaporates and rains, why don't they just bless every water in the world and then we don't have any problems? Then we get holy rain. Holy rain. Like purple rain? Because once again, I'll just be like, thanks, priests. Like, why haven't you not done this? That should, there should be like a task force of priests that have to do that.

Damn. Eva, write that down. Write down the thing that you just told me. I'm too dumb to figure it out. And then sign it Christine. So it looks like she did it right in my handwriting that you've already learned. Okay, great. No, I always thought that, um, holy water. Cause I know like when you go into a church and you like put your, you just plain water. I think I've just always told myself that it felt weird. I think it's kind of one of those like marble bowls. Maybe that's why. Maybe. I think it's just one of those things where it's like my mind playing tricks on me where i'm like because it's holy

it has to feel different so i've always assumed it felt a little greasier i mean i'm i feel like now i'm anxious because i'm a catholic and i'm like i've spent a lot of my life with holy water so i should i mean i'm also like a paranormal investigator i should know what holy water is you know what maybe that's our weakness knowledge information factual based evidence um no holy water is just blessed water yeah all right there's nothing different about it i mean and then they bless wine which is just i just tell myself there's like a weird one no that makes sense i mean there probably is a weird aura but there's no like oil in it or anything okay yeah let's see if now that i now that i know that for sure let's see next time i go into a church if i feel if it burns feels oh well maybe because i'm like you know lgbt and a

jew sets you on fire all right so okay sorry so that was my question my multi-pronged question that just spiraled into chaos bless you for thank you offering that to us yeah you're welcome so that's so yeah so the holy water was hot to touch don't like was trying to evaporate apparently not like that um sorry she was bored of us that was a yawn are you for real right now he's such a demon he's like don't talk about holy water it's my kryptonite i mean truly the second we talk about holy water he's uncomfortable geo spoken like a true scorpio nobody should be surprised by this happy baby okay so wow he's been in here for hours and he doesn't his poor eva has to pet him every five seconds eva your hand must be tired i flew in from jesus stop it that same night after the holy water was red hot hot from evaporating in the rains of Africa, the kids were watching TV.

And then I don't know what it was actually a figure of, but a porcelain figure, which is how it was described everywhere, a porcelain figure rose off the coffee table, hovered in the air for several seconds, and then moved on its own inches away from the from the coffee table and then fell onto the rug oh no so i don't like that's not just popping things it's moving it's gonna say they're getting it's getting stronger and i don't like it so they did what anyone in my household would do they contacted a bishop for an exorcism but they were refused an exorcism because the haunting did not seem to be demonic enough. Oh, sure. I love that they called it a bishop.

They're like, priests won't do. They're like, we got to go to the high ranks. Apparently, priests are, it's actually very rare to get, like, convince them because they like fully, so wholeheartedly are in it and like believe it and like you can't. Yeah. They have to like really commit to it. And so like, it's just really hard to convince them to actually do one yeah and also apparently because like i think it's they still try to convince people that like oh there's no reason for exorcisms like you can't really get possessed

like i think they right they try really hard to keep the dark part distance themselves from that right and so i think every time people are like i need an exorcism they're like 90 of the time we're going to pretend that those don't actually happen right well i Well, I mean, and I think a lot of time probably. They don't really need it. It is probably kind of not necessarily needed, but that's just me. True. Not you. Well, in this case, they were rejected because it wasn't demonic enough and they needed to wait for it to become demonic enough.

I guess if it hasn't hurt anyone, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I should probably, actually, I'll probably do a story on that. Like, what the rules of an exorcism are. Oh, I'd be really interested to hear that. All right. You heard it here first, folks.

So the family, instead of calling a bishop, they're like, we'll do with what we've got. And they called the father of the church next door. Oh, so a priest. So they called in Father William McLeod to bless the house. Oh, Bill. Oh, Billy. And once the priest was called, by that time, since they were now going out of their home to talk about this, somehow it had leaked.

And now newspapers, radio and television reports were going on about this story. And the home was 24-7 surrounded by reporters and they were getting random calls from strangers. And people were either calling in to give their advice or to explain, like, we don't think you're crazy. We just think like, you know. Oh, really? to explain like we don't think you're crazy we just think like you know oh really well there was a few crazies out there who um they would call in the middle of the night and be like it's not you it's happening to us too because the martians have landed nearby or um oh this isn't your fault the russians are tunneling under long island to invade new york and so they a lot of people called

about like sputnik being involved like fuck, fuck. Because it was the 50s. Right. I mean, right. It was like topical. Yeah. So there was a lot of people thinking that they were actually part of a conspiracy that they didn't know about. Ooh, popping bottles.

Very like stranger things. Yeah. And so one man actually came to the house on his own named Robert and he was a physicist and he brought his own dousing rods, which are basically an EMF detector, but rods. My, I learned that my, I think my great grandma used to use those regularly and my mom just casually mentioned it and i was like i need to know more and she's like i'll tell you at christmas how many times do i have to tell you that it was written in the stars you were gonna get this podcast like i mean my mom's like oh dowsing rods please oh yeah i lived in a cemetery my whole life and my grandma would walk around with dowsing rods well she was like well she just used them to find water and i was like or natural

springs you know in germany yeah that's what i mean they're used which is what they're used for yeah but i was just like what because like i don't want to talk about it okay meanwhile let's remember you were at least you grew up in a cemetery i'll face and also your mom's renata who's like just warded off every evil in the world nut job so a nut job. So, Robert with the dowsing rods, aka your grandma, he theorized that there were underground streams of water below the property, which was creating a freak magnetic field. Oh, okay. Okay. Popping. I get it.

Meanwhile, Detective Tazi is still on the case. Hot to try. Obvious. This sounds like a 50s TV show on its own. Detective Tazi. Watch the scoop. so uh extra extra and so um he's still talking to everyone and he is fact-checking fact-checking as much as he can so he has talked to the rca the air force the lighting companies in town the building department

and the fire department so he has a lot of time he's getting through the whole town so the air force confirmed for him that passing jets that created sonic booms could not have been what caused the issues. The RCA helps him rule out radio waves being responsible. The lighting company did not find any underground vibrations of the house. And the building department confirmed that the house was structurally sound. And the fire department checked out the property's well to make sure that the water levels had not changed at all. And they had not changed in five years. That's incredible that there was so much background put into,

like work put into this. Yeah, I mean, he was doing his job. Well, he was doing that, really. Classic detective. Was that really his job? I don't know. To look up ghosts? To look up...

Yeah, that's like me in the 50s as a cop. And I'm like, the case I've been waiting for. Do you think that he was the guy that like, they were like, let's take him off the streets and put him on desk duty. And then he like look at this cool case and they're like yeah you go do that like you do that one well we like actually deal with russian spies and right other important meanwhile sputnik is nearby but have a good time with your ghost you can call the rca um so the family started taking advice from random strangers coming to the door because at this point like obviously the detective had fact-checked everything and cleared a lot of possible sources right and they just didn't know what to do so they were taking advice from anyone so they're just desperate for an answer right okay

and so they were taking advantage of like the media and all that they were like please help us right um just like us when we run out of stories we're like help email us tweet us please so one woman named helen who just showed up at the door she had been there before but then she was also writing them letters and during one of her letters she said that she had lived in a house where the furniture moved on its own and she always thought that her house was haunted but she found out that it was actually a heavy downdraft through her fireplace that was causing it and it was fixed when she installed a rotary metal turbine into her chimney interesting which is by the way like the least like feminine thing in the 50s like oh

i installed my metal turbine hi i'm helen do you want me to install a hi i'm helen the first feminist of our time i'm a mechanic let me install this propeller in your house everyone should be a helen guys i love helen i like her too the second you mentioned her name i was like i'm gonna like this broad there's never a helen i've met that i didn't like yeah honestly me too i like a good helen so the herman family was like okay we gotta listen to this feminist bitch so we have no choice we've got to do her name's helen i mean her name's helen and she's a feminist and it's the 50s and we gotta go let's do so they installed she's debunking shit yeah sorry it's just like pretty amazing and she's debunking it like in such an industrial way yeah i thought you were gonna say she showed up and was like yeah i lived in a haunted house but she's literally like oh no here i'll show you she's

like if your issues of things are moving around that was my issue i'll fucking fix your problem such such a strong woman's a badass so the herman family was like obviously helen knows what's going on so they installed the exact same turbine into their chimney. However, the second they did that, a porcelain figure flew across the room from one table to the desk over 12 feet away. It smashed into the desk so hard that it left a dent in the wood. Oh my God. And that was a sign that the poltergeist was there to stay. I was gonna say the turbine's not working. So both.

Well, yes. Yes. So we're both right a and b um also this is where apparently it was broadcast to television audiences all over new york that was the tv part somehow okay so the turbine failing and all that yeah it says that when the porcelain figure flew after they tried to install the the turbine that part had they had a tv crew in there to see if anything would change and then nothing changed they actually caught that on camera guys fine but i don't know where i could find that and like i don't know why that's not more written about wait eva didn't you used to work at like writers can you go to like the archives i don't imagine so a few days later another figure flew across the desk and so did a bottle of ink

that popped its lid flew across the room and splashed all over the walls i was gonna say that's fucking messy so that's messy so it smells like perfume that's covered in ink so also a sugar bowl a sugar bowl also flew across the table in front of detective tozzy so now there's ants too so now there's antsf. And they're all blue because of the ink. They're leaving little ant footprints all over the carpet. Oh, the ants go marching. So I got distracted. I loved, I'm sorry.

I'm derailing you every two seconds. It's okay. It's making for a good show. Maybe I should have kept this as a live show if you were going to derail me last night. I can't stop myself. All right, well, keep it up. So a sugar bowl flew across the table where there are now ants. And it tried to hit Detective Tazi.

And then again, the next morning, the sugar bowl flew across the other side of the room and shattered into pieces. Oh, God. After that, the family left for the weekend and Detective Tazi stayed in the house on his own. Oh, dangerous. That night, Tazi woke up to a loud noise in James Jr.'s room where nobody was sleeping. And when he went to check, a large bookcase had fallen face down onto the floor. Holy shit. When the family came back, James was in his room and a record player hovered in the air and then flew 15 feet across the room at him.

No! That same week, a statue of the Virginary that was in the bedroom in the bedroom um yeah me too that's how i did my decor is all is all virgin statues virginal um they yeah the statue of virgin mary in the bedroom flew more than 12 feet and then smashed into a mirror fuck another bookcase filled with encyclopedias was turned upside down a heavy glass centerpiece from the dining room table flew from the table to the cupboard and a globe flew down the hallway chasing after detective tozzy can you imagine like being at the end of a hall and seeing a globe floating at you and you're like oh no it's like spinning a little bit yeah

i love that image i love it too i'm telling you it's a 50s tv show it's so it's a sitcom it's like get cultured i'll show you where asia minor is also a newspaper photographer came to do a story um about them and his flash bulbs all lifted off the table at the same time and threw themselves into a wall breaking on impact oh fuck so they were like no no you're not to those photographs this yeah fuck off so um popper at this point is now also knocking on walls to get attention oh that creeps me out but nobody ever tried to communicate back because they were smarter than that oh i mean finally meanwhile at duke university the parapsychology lab had heard about this whole

family and wanted to look into it and it was a research team led by dr jb rhein and they were studying psychokinesis which is when um certain people can influence objects without touching them right okay like matilda like matilda right um and to see uh they did some tests where they got to the they practiced it in their own lab they tried to recreate it and they wanted to see if pressure was building in the bottles to pop, and so they tried to put dry ice in the containers with screw caps, but the gas just passed through the spaces between the bottom and the lid, so the caps never actually popped.

So they really tried to. They tried a bunch of different ways to try to make bottles pop on their own, but the only thing they could do was they made a bottle of thin glass explode, but it had to be thin glass and in the 50s everything was that thick glass yeah sure and the cap didn't actually pop off it stayed on the neck of the bottle it's just the whole thing just exploded so that was different than what was happening yeah okay so they weren't able to figure it out and as things progressed geo no geo don't chew on that honey geo still has an ouchie because we haven't because we've

been recording it hasn't been two weeks since i haven't... Because we've been recording nonstop. It hasn't been two weeks since I haven't brought him to the vet. It's been two hours, so he's going to the vet tomorrow. Gio, don't chew on your tushy like that. It's an ouchie. Hi, I love you. Oh, yeah. So they had tested all these bottles, and they tried to recreate it, and it wasn't popping off.

Sure. So they still don't know how the bottles were doing that on their own, let alone, like, a 10-year-old doing a science experiment. Right, right, right. Is he bored? No, he's scratching, and he's waiting for me to not look at him so he can keep scratching. Look at him. He won't look at you in the eye. No, he knows what he's doing.

I know. It's hilarious. He keeps glancing at me. Oh. Hold it. Is that a fish? I don't know. It's on his belly.

That's where the skin started patching. Hey, buddy. I know you're itchy, honey. I'm sorry. Oh, poor guy. He probably doesn't even know it's all scratched up. Oh. Oh, what is that?

Was that a back stretch? He's such a lazy bum. That sound seemed like it was not coming from his butt. I don't know what that sound was. It was like his body was like... His butt. So, as things progressed and more activities started happening in the house, Dr. Ryan's assistant, Dr. Pratt, went to the house to actually see the family instead of just trying to recreate it in a lab. Right.

And Pratt believed that someone in the house, because also remember they're studying psychokinesis. Sure. So Pratt believed that someone in the house was unknowingly causing the strange incidents to occur with their mind. Oh. Much more realistic. Wow. So. I don't know if you're kidding or not i'm not or i am i okay who knows who does you never know so uh the research team noted that there was lucille jr who was an adolescent girl and adolescent girls are always around during poltergeist cases because they are in theory

actually causing the activity themselves right because they're going through so many hormonal emotional changes female teen angst in a in a patriarchy is just because girls wild drug right um they believe that teens in general are capable of psychokinesis during the height of puberty right and that's why they're usually more sensitive to spirits coming towards them. And if there ever is a poltergeist activity, 90% of the time those cases are families with teenage kids. Right. Interesting. And usually they happen to also be girls because they are more angsty because they've got more challenges.

I can confirm that. Maybe. I mean, from my own personal experience. Yes. And so James Jr., because he was... Do you mind? I'm sorry. Are we boring you, sir?

He's just yawning through my whole story, man. I'm talking about my angsty teenage years and he's yawning. He's literally... You're 21 now, Gio. You don't get to complain anymore. You were 14 a couple weeks ago and now you're 21. Yeah, you get over your angsty phase. So...

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe boys are angstier. Look at him. I mean, he's also a scorpio though that's true let's remember that different breed he's a scorpio and he's a shih tzu so you are he's 50 shih tzu that's the most scorpio dog i've ever met wow isn't it though isn't it geo he won't look at you look me in the eyes when you're going to yawn at me. You happy, stinky baby bug. You sweet baboo. My happy baby boy.

Okay. Oh, my God. He looks at me like, see? I don't need you. Gio, did you know that Funko M has a dog park right next to their home now? Oh, you can't say that word. The D-P word. Oh.

I mean, a fun place to go? A fun place to go! Yay! We could go together sometime and we could have snuggle fest! Yay! In your dino onesie. In my dino onesie! All right.

Moving on, I think. Nobody's here anymore. So they believed that teens were capable of psychokinesis during the height of puberty. Sure. And James Jr., because he happened to be the one that was blamed for all of these bottles popping, and he did happen to be near the scene of the bottles popping at least like 75% of the time. Right. They're like, well, maybe it's not the girl in this case, maybe because he's also a teenager. Maybe he's the one causing this activity because he's the one that's next to the bottles when they always happen to pop.

So Dr. Pratt wanted to see if James Jr. was involved or if his teen angst was causing this. And so he hung out, he went to actually visit the home and made sure to monitor James Jr. specifically and see how he was carrying himself and if he saw any stress. And there was no sign of any strange behavior. There was no sign of any poltergeist activity. It was almost like the poltergeist was intentionally quiet and did not want to perform for them okay um but the argument was also okay well he knows we're on to him and he's not going to do anything he doesn't want to lead you to the answer right so after the scientists left because they were like okay well we're not getting anything after they left a dish lifted itself from the kitchen cabinet and

shattered itself on the floor in front of the entire family. Fuck. I feel like that's such a classic thing. Like, oh, we reach out for help, and then it doesn't do anything. It's like, oh, you thought you were safe. So frustrating. Right? And then, like, the second they leave, it's like, I'm fucking back.

It's extra scary of, like, I know what you were trying to do. Yes. You thought you could get away from me. And now it's angrier. And now I'm more pissed. And no one can see it, and you can't prove it. Exactly. Ugh, how fucked up. That's what I i'm gonna do if i die before i'm just gonna smack you in the face all the time

and you're gonna be like what and no one's i swear no one's gonna believe you i mean you know no one's gonna believe me because i live with blaze and my brother um after the scientists left oh yeah so a dish lifted itself from the kitchen cabinet and shattered itself on the floor that night um james dude are you still so sleepy he's trying to get my attention i'm gonna keep giving in that night james's bedside table flipped over while they were sleeping and a bowl moved from either end of the dining table back and forth and then hovered in the air and then smashed holy shit a week later lucille and the kids were getting into bed when they heard a loud pop sound in the basement and they went downstairs to see what it was and they found a bleach bottle without its lid sitting in the center of the room.

Oh, I don't like the center of the room thing. Well, nobody knows why, but that was the last time the poltergeist ever did anything. Well, nobody knows why, but that was the last time the Poltergeist ever did anything. As of 1985, when scientists were still looking at this case, researchers at Duke still don't know what happened or why or how. And in those five weeks where there was activity, there were a total of 67 instances. All were reported to the police. Holy shit. Out of those 67, 64 of them involved moving objects and the other three were just um thumps and knocking okay so there were 64 individual times where

they were moving objects out of 64 40 of those times involved the same 16 objects so wow it was just the same objects over and over and over again. And out of, I know I'm giving you a lot of numbers, but so it was mainly 16 objects. Right. More than half the time. Over and over again. And also out of those 64 moving object instances, 23 of them are bottle poppings. Wow. Okay.

So Detective Tazi has been interviewed since and he said, I myself several times have heard and observed these events. So even a cop in the 50s is saying this is true. And this story is one of the main contributors and loose inspirations for the movie Poltergeist. Really? So this was somehow, but I still don't know how, one of the first publicized ghost stories which made TV appearances on Gilliganigan's island and it was also on the cover of life magazine apparently interesting so everyone was hearing about it that is crazy

it was also um very weird it was like very close to the amityville house well i was about to ask how far it was because it's same spot yeah it was so close to the amityville house that the spirit that was buried under the house in amityville that they think was a Native American chief. Right. They think that the same Native American chief is the same spirit that was Popper the Poltergeist. So that's how close they were to each other. What the fuck? And also because the Amityville case and the Popper the Poltergeist case happened within a decade of each other and children were involved in both families.

Right. happened within a decade of each other and children were involved in both families right both of those children have grown up and they have all been asked to interview about their experiences but none of them wish to comment so that's interesting too it wasn't like they were in it for well i mean the kids but yeah holy shit so all the kids are like please don't ask me about this i just want to forget what the fuck well that's interesting that like everyone has heard about amity but not everyone has. I mean, I've never heard about this. I guess because Amity, I mean, is, like, much more detailed and had, like, a whole murder case before. Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right.

And it was, like, just a wild demonic experience. This, like, I guess, in comparison, is just, like, bottles are popping. Just, like, bleach everywhere. Bottles popping, like, at a bar. In the club. In the club. Bottles pop in a club not a bar m oh whoops sorry sorry bottles anyway scissor scissor yes we're cool still we're hip eva remember

how cool we are yep you're not writing it down i see eva so there's erp all right that was the story of popper slash pooper the poltergeist wow that was a good that was a really good one then a lot of banter on that one. I liked it. I would not leave you alone. Do you love it? I really liked it. Are you sure? Yeah. I like when you talk to me. Highly annoying.

I like feeling acknowledged. I like to make you feel seen. So does Gio. That's why he yawns whenever I open my mouth. He definitely likes to do that. He really likes to steal the center stage. I can tell he's bored, but also he doesn't want to stop getting attention, so he can't decide. He keeps getting up and then going, hmm. He's like, hmm, but Eva's hand is so nice and soft.

But if I kick Eva in the boob one more time, maybe I'll get some more pets. Do you know we're talking about you? Is that so funny? Is that so nice? Oh, he's not amused. He's like, I know what you're doing. Yeah, he knows full well. He's like, I know what you're doing.

He knows full well. So I have another story for you. And guess what? What? I tried to find a really, like, less traumatizingly dark story than the one last time, which is the story of... Hannah and Jesse. Hannah and Morgan. My CNU alum.

Kind of. Well, Morgan and Hannah were the ones who were killed but then jesse was the killer was a killer right um and so i tried to find something less dark and i failed so oh good good luck can't wait so yesterday blaze came downstairs and i was sitting kind of in the dark with like one light bulb on and he was like what's going on and i was like i feel very sad so we watched a lot of king of the hill for many hours nice but otherwise here it is oh good everyone tune into king of this is like what happened in it i was like you don't want to know he's like i don't everyone set your uh set your tvs to king of the hill and press pause just start

just uh yeah came on hulu yeah oh my god my brother okay because my brother and ally started watching it and then they were like well we have to like download it illegally because it's like they're not illegal but like they have to find streaming sites and it's oh geo literally couldn't get off the couch his legs are so much freaking attention help i can't get up help i've fallen king of the hill was one of the shows that i watched all the time growing up oh it's so good i know and i've always loved it and so my brother and ally started watching it and they kept referencing it and so i felt left out and we couldn't find it anywhere because you have to watch it like streaming on the internet

yeah and then three days later hulu was like just released king of the hill added on hulu and so now blaze and i are trying to catch up they're like way ahead of us but it's a great show it's an un uh what you call it underrated show i think it's underrated well everyone go to hulu type in king of the hill and then press pause and get ready to press play after you hear the story and also look at bobby and go wow that really is christine christine definitely is bobby oh my gosh i relate so hard to him between him and linda belcher i just really don't even know who you are anymore that's right i was gonna say something about bob's burgers too i mean when don't you i mean today they released the thanksgiving episode maybe that's what it was okay so this is the story of

katie harris and crystal searles okay so katie and crystal so we're going back to new year's eve on uh in 1999 um where were you 1999 uh new year's eve yeah new year's eve on uh in 1999 um where were you 1999 new year's eve yeah new year's turning into y2k i was at chelsea morris's house oh my god that sounds so fun i'm so jealous i wasn't invited chelsea morris was one of the popular girls when we were in elementary school and she called herself seymour and i mean i called myself chrissy kiwi so i guess i can't judge chelsea morris um the only reason that i was hanging out with like one of the cool kids is because we live in the same neighborhood and our parents were friends and part of the same like party group. I felt really threatened that you hung out with the cool kids.

No, that was not. That was totally by accident. It wasn't the norm. Okay. It was because our friends, our parents were friends and they like, my mom, true to Linda form, had like a group of people that she had like monthly like parties and get togethers with. Yes. And Chelsea Morris's parents are also part of that. had like monthly like parties and get togethers with and Chelsea Morse's parents are also part of that sounds like my stepmom and we were neighbors

so sometimes we hung out so I got invited and I remember hanging out in her parents bedroom we were all together watching a movie and then I heard our parents downstairs screaming about how it was the new millennium and my mom was, you don't even know how cool this is. And I was like, you're right. And then I went back and watched. You're right, bitch. I mean, I was, to be fair, I was eight. I wasn't even, I was seven.

Well, I was eight. Yeah. So I really did not know how interesting that was. I mean, it was a thing later. I feel like years later, people were like, oh yeah, we all thought we were going to, computers were going to take over and kill us. I mean, I would have been one of those people for sure. I know you would, which makes me really happy we are not living in y2k but i was in salt lake city

oh yeah and i was at a ski resort with ellen my stepmother yeah and we were dancing and drinking a lot of champagne and eight well she was drinking a lot of champagne and i got i got some offers and i was like no my mom wouldn't like that yikes don't tell her i said that uh i was being a living doll as per usual yes i mean it's family tradition right it's family tradition she did throw a glass so yes correct it was family tradition um we were in salt lake city at a ski resort i forget what it was called it's very famous i don't remember and we were celebrating y2k and i remember afterward everyone was like great we didn't die and i was like were we gonna die and everyone was like yeah we thought the computers were gonna

kill us and i was like that's like what the fuck that's like what the children say after like the purge it's like were we gonna die yeah i don't fucking know about that for this i wouldn't have spent my day like watching my stepmom dance i would have had other plant things planned but anyway so i remember i was at a fucking like bougie-ass ski resort in Utah. I don't know. But I remember it being 2000 and I danced with my stepmom. It was really fun. Really fun times.

My mom was probably in her hot pink suit downstairs. Oh, absolutely. Her power suit. Her power suit. Right. Obviously. Where she absorbs all of her powers, I'm sure. Just like soaks them up.

Yep. All right. So anyway, we're in December 31st, 1999. Eva, where were you? Sorry. I'm so annoying annoying i played the best y2k prank on on oh i'm so glad i asked she was holding this to herself like did everyone think you were gonna die no well is that the prank that's kind of unclear because my dad's did you rig the computer okay sorry kind of kind of you're kind of on the right track because my dad's so into computers.

I'm not sure if he actually believed it or just talked about it a lot, but me and my friend, we had like family friends over. And so me and my friend, while all the adults were like in the living room, like watching everything, we were kind of on the outskirts and we fucking coordinated the shit out of this. And we turned off all the lights, including the Christmas lights. We even thought to turn off the Christmas tree light and all parents, because they had been joking about it all night long. And then, because I don't think they really believed it.

But then when we turned all the lights off, I distinctly remember my friend's mom screaming, Oh my God, it happened! Wait! Oh my God. That's so epic! Why didn't you put that on your resume on ZipRecruiter? We would have hired you faster. That's so epic.

I'm so proud of you. That is a highlight. That's a life fucking highlight. That's like a snapshot moment for sure. I'm so proud of you. Eva, I'm so proud of you. My brother just got home, so I think Gio's freaking out that... Wow, that's a good story, though.

I'm glad you asked Eva where where she was i just my story like chelsea morris okay do you know what i had a had a like a like a buzz there was like a buzz coming from even i'm like eva has a fucking story she's not gonna say anything it's like she's too nice classy broad yeah unlike us we're just classy brought a broadcast let me tell you about myself but she's a classy broad yes i was was like she has a story i bet you and she did she should be prepared wow y2k prank is so good it's like it's like the prank where like the dad is watching his like daughter at the sleepover doing the ouija board he's like turning all the lights off on purpose yeah yeah yeah but like only once every thousand years right right

right it's like extra like you got the Millennium Special. Yeah, exactly. Wow, it's so good. Anyway. Oh, it's so good, the Millennium Special. Oh, is that the title of our show? I think so. That's Eva, actually.

Okay. Our Millennium Special. Poopy the Poltergeist and the Millennium Special. Oh, man. What a gem. All right. So let's talk about really horrible things. Okay, good. I'm glad we got all the happiness out of a gem. All right. So let's talk about really horrible things. Okay, good.

I'm glad we got all the happiness out of the way. Easy transition. Yeah. December 31st, 1999. We're all over the world. Yes. Except you guys are in the same state. But I'm in Utah. Okay.

Ten-year-old Crystal Searles and her little sister, who's seven, are visiting friends in Del Rio, Texas, in preparation for their family's move from Kansas to Del Rio. So the kids went first to stay with their friends while their parents were packing up to move down. The friends they were staying with, they were the Harris family, and they also had a few kids, including a 13-year-old named Katie. So Katie and Crystal were sharing a room with bunk beds. And Crystal's little sister, it's i think it's markay i couldn't figure this out m-a-r-q-u-e okay markay i don't know mark is it a person yeah it's a little sister okay oh okay so i mean i guess technically it's pronounced mark but then i'm like i don't think that the little girl was named maybe marky

oh marky okay marky okay so marky the seven-year-old so she wanted to sleep on the floor with the older girls but classic older sister move crystal and katie told her she wasn't allowed because you know they're 13 and 10 and she's seven which at the time goodbye huge difference right so they're like no you can't sleep with us so she went to bed fuming um all she wanted to do was have a sleepover with her older sister, and they wouldn't let her. So she's in bed. She's fucking furious. And she just ends up going to bed in the other room across the hall. That night, 10-year-old Crystal is asleep in the top bunk, and she wakes up to a yelp below her.

She sticks her head up, and she sees a bearded man. Oh, no. I know. I know. I know. It goes dark real fast. With dark curly hair and dark eyes standing above 13 year old Katie, her friend. The man grabs Katie, holds his hand over her mouth and slits her throat. And then stabs her 16 times.

Oh my God. Yeah. It's really bad. It's really, really bad. So Crystal watches asie falls to the floor then pushes herself back and she says while this is happening she says katie is looking at her like stay quiet like her eyes are just like my god like staring directly at her like don't fucking make a noise so after this happens like her instinct she just like pushes herself back

against the wall and the man leaves the room but right as he reaches the doorway he glances back one more time and he sees her in the top bunk so he starts walking back to crystal and she starts saying i'll be quiet i promise i won't say anything but when he reaches crystal's bed he grabs her and he cuts her throat oh it's not good it's not good oh my god then he turns the light off leaves the room and shuts the door behind him and katie says or crystal says she faked dead uh-huh she was still conscious and she fakes dead he turns he likes watches her she pretends she's unconscious he turns the light light off and leaves the room so miraculously she's still alive um she crawls out of bed and over to katie's body and katie is still barely alive. Oh, my God. And she's, like, gurgling and choking because her throat has been cut.

So Crystal is trying to comfort her. And that's when she realizes she can't talk because her windpipe has been completely severed. So she's staying with Katie and she's, like, trying to, like, comfort her. And then when Katie kind of it was very very quick she stopped breathing or making any noise and that's when crystal says her survival mode kicked in and a voice in her head told her get up come on go don't lay here you have to go so at this point she manages to crawl her way outside and she's thinking you know probably everyone in this house is dead right like this guy i would think that too like obviously he killed us because he did. He knows everyone else is here. Yeah. I'm 10.

Like I'm sure he knows there's other adults and stuff. So she's like convinced everyone's dead. And so her survival mode kicks in and she crawls outside and notices a light on down the street. So she drags herself walking, but she drags herself to this other house. Can you imagine being that neighbor? No. Can you fucking imagine? I mean, this gets wild too.

Even this neighbor story. So she starts banging on the door and a man inside like rationally keeps asking who's there he doesn't want to answer the door in the middle yeah she can't shout she can't say anything and so she's she can't talk obviously so she's like just banging and the guy i mean thankfully it's a guy who's either dumb or brave enough to open the door because i feel like if someone were banging on my door all night and i couldn't be like see ya i'd be like i'm not gonna open the fucking door right so he opens the door um and he sees crystal with her throat cut and she couldn't speak obviously so she wrote down three things one the harrises are hurt to tell them to hurry and three will i live

question mark oh and there are fucking photographs of these scribbled notes and like the ones that say the harris's are hurt and tell them to hurry are very like like she's writing and then as she goes on they just get like more and more like frenzied and like i mean she's 10 yeah but they get just more and more like um it looks like a drunk person's writing them like they're just like she's just like throwing her hand down on the paper exactly i didn't get it out and so the writing's frantic um the papers are drenched in blood so like they have photos of these fucking notes and they're just like soaked i'm like what is they're so dirty i'm like oh right her fucking throat's bleeding out like drenched in blood um and then on the side which like they didn't

mention but on the side of the note oh my god it says in that's the one that's the most scribbled and the hardest to read it says my neck needs help oh no yeah yeah so he obviously this neighbor called 9-1-1 and that they actually played the audio in the uh 48 hours clip that i watched and he's like there's a little girl here like you need to come here right now and she's really really hurt uh crystals airlift to the hospital where she undergoes emergency surgery um there was a five inch cut on her neck and the knife had slashed diagonally through her larynx oh no and can she talk now is she can she talk these days i'll tell you. Fuck. And it had missed her carotid artery by one or two millimeters.

But fortunately, she survived miraculously. And the second she woke up from surgery, she's like, I'm ready to fucking talk. And she could fucking talk. She could? Yes. Yes. I just wanted to ease your worry. Oh, my God. So investigators immediately bring in a forensic sketch artist and she describes what

the man looks like and then they brought a photo lineup based on her sketch or based on her description in the sketch and crystal looks at all the photos and then pointedly directs her finger at a man named tommy lynn sells and she's like that's the one she can barely talk but she's like that's him so investigators immediately drive to this guy tommy lynn's house around 5 30 a.m that day the doors open so they walk in and tommy lynn sells meets them at the doorway and the first words out of his mouth are i'm glad i finally got caught i was tired of doing this what motherfucker oh my god so they arrest him for murder immediately and uh soon after they this guy directs them to the murder weapon, which they find in the backyard. It was an 11-inch butcher knife that had been sharpened so many times, the blade itself was extremely thin at the top.

Oh my god. And sharp. He had just sharpened it so many times that it was distorted how sharp it was. So they took Tommy Lynn into the sheriff's office and he immediately confessed everything to their surprise um he also agreed to do a walkthrough of the crime scene which is on videotape which I watched in an episode of 48 hours and it is very eerie he climbs in the window he's like oh this window this is the one I climbed into and he like climbs in and they're videotaping it in like oh my god gross

oh my god he says he climbed in through the window he saw katie sleeping in her bunk bed he sliced off her bra shorts and underwear and began fondling her oh my god she wiggled free stood up and screamed so uh cells then turned on the light and moved to block the door but katie saw blood and said you cut me so then he moved behind her put his hand over her mouth and cut her cut her throat twice which is what when uh crystal woke up and saw that part yeah um and stabbed her 16 times um and in the video he's like he's a mullet he's like super matter of fact just like walking around in a button down with his hands in his pockets like yep this is what i did here and then then I walked over here and saw her and cut off her bra.

And I mean, this girl's 13. And he's like, so I'll just cut her throat. She was screaming. It's like, holy mother of God. Do we find out what's wrong with him? This bastard. Do we find out? Yeah.

I talk about him in a little bit. Okay. I do. Okay. I mean, a lot is wrong with him. Yeah. Obviously. Oh, my God. bit okay i do okay i mean a lot is wrong with him oh yeah obviously oh my god so this confession was only the beginning because following his arrest and on the way to jail he's pretty quiet

until he says i guess you want to know about the other murders and they're like yes please what the fuck because like they were shocked that he even admitted to this one well i mean like when he does say like i'm so glad i finally got caught i was getting tired of this my first thought would have been like what else have you done why that's a good point why what else have you done i'm tired of this right it seems like it's a habitual thing yeah right um so he confesses over the next couple months to a string of murders all over the united states spanning three decades um he says he nicknamed himself so he nicknamed himself coast to coast to describe uh both his migratory lifestyle and his trail of killings he traveled by hopping trains and stealing vehicles and made money by working

panhandling or stealing so he's basically like a migrant like traveling the u.s and he loves to call himself coast to coast which is like you know a person who gives himself a nickname right obviously a winner even though i just admitted that i called myself chrissy kiwi fuck well this is different so cells is believed by police to have murdered at least 22 people those are the confirmed kills um retired texas ranger john allen said we did confirm 22 but i know there's more i know there's a lot more so when cells was a child so i'm gonna just kind of go into like his own little mini history so when cells was a child um his twin sister died of meningitis and he was sent to live with his aunt in holcomb missouri and when he was

eight he started spending time with a man named willis clark who began to molest him with the consent of his own mother what yeah idk oh my god apparently his parents knew or his mother knew about this and she's like it's fine um he later said he would relive these abusive experiences while committing his crimes he says he committed his first murder at age 15 uh while breaking into a house he says he climbed into the house and he claims to have discovered a man performing fellatio on a young boy and that he killed this man in a fit of rage however like he's trying to play vigilante in this case yes got it and they have not been able to confirm that this is true and they've not been able to like pin this to an actual

murder that happened got it so this is not one of the 22 that were confirmed this is like just an extra one that he claims he did that they're like well he says his first murder was like a exactly like a vigilante thing but like we can't confirm that so then sells who is homeless at this point hitchhiked and train hopped across the united states from 1978 to 1999 committing various crimes along the way he had several very short-term manual labor and barber jobs he drank heavily abused drugs was in jail several times and then in july of 1985 when he was 21 he worked at a carnival in forsyth forsyth missouri forsyth i don't know in missouri you know i don't know where he met 28 year old ena court and her four-year-old son rory court ena she invited

him to her home that evening and he according to him according to cells he had sex with her fell asleep and awoke to find her stealing from his backpack so he beat her to death with her son's baseball bat oh and then murdered her son because the child was a potential witness oh my god so those bodies were found three days later and at that point he'd already left town so that one was a confirmed okay hill so he was 21 at that point um in october 1987 cells was living in winamuka winamuka winamuka nevada uh with 20 year old stephanie stroh and he convinced to drugging her with lsd then strangling her and disposing of her body by weighing her feet down with concrete and putting her body into a hot spring in the desert oh my god and then in 1990 he stole a truck in wyoming and was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment where he was diagnosed with personality disorder consisting of antisocial borderline and schizoid

features substance abuse disorder which included opioid cannabis amphetamines and alcohol dependence bipolar disorder major depressive disorder and psychosis he was diagnosed with all of that everything all of it all the above the whole menu yep including all the drug abuse wow yeah drug and alcohol abuse and at this point he's you know in his 20s like he's still a young guy yeah and he's been and he started apparently smoking when he was like smoking marijuana when he was like seven so like he's been on everything since childhood. Right, right, right. Wow. So in May of 1992, Sells raped, knifed and beat a woman with a piano stool in Charleston, West Virginia. What the fuck? And then the following year, he was sentenced to two to 10 years imprisonment for malicious wounding. Okay.

Even though he had. So that was for that crime. But the rape charge was dropped for that. So that was for that crime, but the rape charge was dropped for that. And then while serving that sentence, he was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and then married a woman named Nora Price. Okay. So that happened at the same time, apparently. He met this woman named Nora.

A lot of things going on that year. And he met her while he was in jail. And then when he was released, he moved to Tennessee with her. Got it. So he lived with her for a short period of time. And then he got, he was like, I'm over it. And he left and resumed his cross country travels,

travels. Right. Got it. Quote unquote murder spree. And then in 1989, so that was when he committed the murder of Katie Harris, the 13 year old. Yeah. Yeah.

So despite the fact he did admitted to 22 murders and may have been, well, he actually admitted to 70. And then they were like, well, he might be pushing it to like get more leverage. Right. By saying, oh, I know where bodies are and stuff. But they knew for a fact 22 murders. And then they said he might be responsible for 50 more. Tommy Lynn Sells was ultimately convicted of just one. What?

Which was the murder of katie yes okay because they were like well we're going to convict him of this one without the the jury didn't even know about the other ones because you know they they get a jury and they're not supposed to know about this person or they're it's like for this one trial for this one right and i'll tell you why they didn't have to convict him of anything else i'll tell you after this just wait one minute so 10 year old crystal actually crazy enough was the key witness in the trial against him and when they asked if she wanted to be brought through the back so she wouldn't have to walk by cells in the courtroom she said i'm not scared of him and walked right past him in the courtroom and if you watch like 40 i watched like the 48 hours special on

this and it's like she's so tiny i mean she's 10 years old she's like tiny tiny little girl um and she's like they walk her past she's and her head is shaved because they've been like doing surgery on her she's just tiny and she's like i wasn't scared of him. And she, the whole show, the whole episode is her when she's 20 years old recounting all of this. So like, she's basically saying, I was so ready to like, put this man away and be like, you hurt my friend. And like, you can't hurt me anymore. Yeah.

And I survived you and da da da. Wow. What a strong ass woman. No, truly. Like, honest to God, it's unbelievable. So she walks right past him um and it's like heart-wrenching because she's so like defiant and brave and then when she's on the witness stand and they're like well which like who in this room hurt you and she says she like that was the one time

she looked at him and she's like and i pointed at him and i just remembered like being in bed and like seeing him turn toward me at the light switch. And she just like fucking breaks down. And there's like video of this. And she's like, and I was so brave and I was so ready. And then like. And then she met eye to eye with him. Like total breakdown.

Yikes. So they asked her to describe what what this guy did to her friend, Katie. She starts sobbing. And so they're like, well, let's take a quick break. So they I mean, she's's 10 so they take her out in the back and like her mom comes and she had told her mom actually she's like I told my mom you're not allowed to cry like if you cry I can't keep myself together so like you need to keep your shit together yeah and the mom's like I didn't cry like I had to just hold myself together because I was like I can't she made me promise basically so they go back to her in the back and they're like, OK, you can do this.

Like, stay strong. So after a quick break, she gets right back to it. She even had to lay down on a table to describe like how she was laying in bed and how she put her head up and like how he saw her in the bunk bed with like the railing and all that and so her testimony was so powerful that even sell's own defense attorney called her a brave young woman and declined to question her he's like i have no questions for you which she was a key witness wow they were like wait what the fuck like he was just smart enough to know like this isn't a winnable thing like i don't want to defend this guy yeah exactly like she was hurt um so after an only an hour and 10 minutes of deliberation the jury found cells guilty uh he was convicted of capital murder of katie an attempted murder of

crystal and he was sentenced to death good which is why they never tried him for any of the other cases because they were like well he's already he's already gone he's a goner yeah wow and also some of the ones that he admitted to interestingly enough um i guess the state of texas if you're on death row you're not allowed to leave the premises which is why like he said oh i know where the bodies are of these certain people and he wasn't allowed to leave to like show the bodies got it which i've watched a lot of criminal minds and i'm like yeah because that's how they escape. And they, it's probably not really real. So I'm glad.

I'm glad that that was his sentence. Well, but I'm saying like they, he wasn't allowed to like leave the jail. Yeah. Right. Right. So. But yeah, like he like, they were harsh on him. Yes.

Yeah. They didn't mess around with that. So when he was convicted and they announced the um sentencing uh everyone in the courtroom was in tears including cell's own defense attorney who was like you saw the like they showed the video and he was like wiping his own tears and it was like holy shit like this guy was affected and he's the fucking defense attorney for this murderer um so the state of tex Texas executed cells by lethal injection on January 3rd, 2014, at the age of 49. Texas, apparently, I looked this up, no longer offers a special last meal to condemned inmates, which I'm like, fair. And instead, the inmates offered the same meal that served the rest of the unit.

When asked if he had any final words, Tommy Lynn replied simply no. when asked if he had any final words tommy lynn replied simply no and as a lethal dose of pento barbitol was administered he took a few deep breaths closed his eyes and began to snore less than a minute later he stopped moving and 13 minutes later at 6 27 p.m he was pronounced dead got it and i also decided he did not deserve a horoscope and so i'm going to read crystal's horoscope which she was a cap she is a capricorn oh by the way so she is like our age okay she's like 30 ish and she um is i don't know too much about her but she's living in idaho and she is super close with her sisters and her family and it's just like a cool lady yeah and like a badass yeah for sure okay so this is the capricorn horoscope okay let it go capricorn sagittarius

season starts your month of closure on thursday so allow the universe to bring you experiences of healing while mercury's in retrograde friday's full moon inspires a new routine organization and structure work on the weekend if you have to you know you love it the worst part of that is i don't like working on on the weekend except we do it every week apparently yes but yeah she's a badass and she's awesome and it's just so cool and inspiring to watch her on 48 hours talk about yeah her watching her best friend get killed like it's just the wildest thing a lot of same wow so that's the story of crystal and katie that was a tough one yeah i was a rough thank you for sticking with me yeah yeah yeah yeah well i'm glad that wasn't a live show episode

me too well exactly this is why i struggle yeah i don't i don't know how you put up with it on your end when it comes to live shows how do you find ones that are i google 1700s murder gotcha gotcha with hilarious jokes no not really but i might as well well thank you guys for listening to our episode 97 which means in three weeks that's right almost up is going a hundred and um we've been doing this for a long time now help us we've covered almost 200 stories not including live shows not including live shows that's right um well thank you guys so much for everything um do you want to do the sure you can find us i have to peace i feel like i'll say it really fast you can find us on

uh all our social media and patreon at atwwd podcast you can email your listener stories too and that's what we drink at gmail.com and eva reads those and every month we do a listener stories on the first of the month um we also do a gift video every month um to thank you guys for all the cool shit you send us and if you want to send something uh send it to 1920 hillhurst ave number 26 265, Los Angeles, California, 90027. Is that it? Live shows? Live shows.

We have a lot of live shows coming up. A lot of live shows, like all over the freaking country. Check us out. Check us out. Check it out at unlesswedrink.com slash live, where we have all our tour dates set. Follow us on Instagram, truly, though, if you want to see, because we release those. We release it there first. Yeah.

And usually once they're released there there people are already getting their tickets so if it's not on the website doesn't mean it doesn't exist so yeah check it out check instagram please all right and that's why we drink