And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 19

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

Tune in for stories of cultists in the forest, "the upside-down man," a crazy glitch in the matrix, and so much more. And that's why we drink!

hello oh hi welcome to our july listeners august oh shit that's what we meant take two welcome to our august listeners episode i just honestly can't believe it's already august i think almost august i think that's what's throwing me off it's two-thirds of the year have already passed bonkers it's bananas i'm getting married in two months so oh boy i keep pushing myself back like no we have time no i gotta start thinking of a speech no time um so for those of you who are chiming in for the first time uh go back and listen to the other ones in the past to know what's going on. But as a quick little summary, if you send in your personal true crime

and or paranormal stories to AETWNope, and that's why we drink dark. Okay, let me take over here. So if you're new here, that's cool. We love you. What we do is we read people's submissions and what you have to do is send a true crime or paranormal story that you have or anything creepy or spooky or whatever too.

And that's where we drink at gmail.com. That's the one. That's the one. And Eva goes through and kind of picks them out for us each month and we get to read your stories. And this is one of our favorite things to do through the podcast because you guys have sent in so much stuff and crazier stories than we could ever imagine or come up with ourselves so we love doing these and also eva's not here this month but thank you we're falling apart thank you to eva for uh picking

these in advance so that you could hear our live reactions that's correct and uh classic kevin um as usual is reading two bonus stories for our Patreon donors on his beautiful Scottish accent. So if you check our Patreon and you're a donor, we will post those on the first as well. Should we also shout out his podcast? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Classic Kevin of Marissa and Monsters. So if you need more of his voice, it's there.

And so he's a gem and he reads two stories or one story, two stories. I don't know. Each month on the first and so they're bonus listener stories for patrons um also today is the first of august which means in two days we're gonna be in nashville yeah yeah so as of now tickets are still available um we're running low but they're still there so if you guys are anywhere nearby please get a ticket come see us we'd love to see you and on our first leg of our u.s tour that we're oh boy kind of gearing up for so boy we'll see you there i

currently don't have a story prepped so fingers crossed it goes well and by story i mean two stories because we have two nashville shows i mean to be fair i don't we already did crime con nashville so we got to come up with I know they got to be doozies. Damn. Anyway, it'll be great though. One thing at a time. And for now, the time is for you guys for your stories. So I guess I'll start because I have the computer here. Okay.

Subject. The Charles River gave me some graduation memories. Alrighty. Like Boston Charles River. I think so. That's where we lived. Oh, yeah. On the banks of the Charles River. Hey, hey guys here's the story i tweeted at you and then resent yeah i'm glad you resent it because i don't we wouldn't have we wouldn't have found it through social media

we don't save those because it's too hard to we don't have a place to save those correct hey guys here's the story i tweeted at you last may i got my oh this is from anna by the way hi anna last may i got my phd from boston okay all right rubbing it in now we know why you've picked this one we get our master's degrees and then she's like oh i just casually got my phd it's fine yeah okay congratulations i guess do you think she lived right near us it's just funny it's just like it's just funny how she just got a phd like that we'll talk about it later we'll talk about it and we'll think about it and we'll talk about it again in two months. And just push their glasses like up the bridge of their nose. Okay.

Sorry. Anna. Last May I got my PhD from Boston University. On the afternoon of the actual graduation ceremony, I went for a run. I used to run there too along the Charles River. I did. I didn't. I had a running phase.

I don't know why. To deal with the jitters of having to walk across a stage in a stupid floppy hat. I did. I didn't. I had a running phase. I don't know why. To deal with the jitters of having to walk across a stage in a stupid floppy hat. Good times. It was a beautiful spring day as I was jogging back towards school. I saw a woman standing next to the river looking out a few yards with a weird look on her face. I glanced over as well because it was the season for adorable baby ducks and geese which are adorable in boston and i thought maybe she was looking at some nope she was looking oh oh she was looking at a human head and shoulders submerged in the river what face down oh my oh my god oh my god i don't think she had fully registered what she was looking at

but i knew for sure that it was a body. Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm an archaeologist and deal with plenty of dead remains, although mine are usually much older. I also watch too many procedural crime dramas. Same. Anyway, I don't know if either of these things are why I didn't freak out, but I didn't. I asked if anyone had called 911. Nobody had, so I did.

Next thing, I was on the phone with a BUPD dispatcher waiting chest deep out into the river. What? Oh, my God. I'm like, I have chills. It freaks me out. Oh, my God. To make sure that this was indeed a body and not an unconscious person needing help. Oh, you're a hero, Anna.

Jesus. Jeez. I think I would have been that. I've been like, they're dead. I would have been that paralyzed person. Just like, yeah, I don't know what to do. I got within 10 feet. Smell decomp. Oh, boy. Oh, for don't know what to do. I got within 10 feet, smelled decomp.

Oh, boy. Oh, for God's sake. And informed the dispatcher that this individual was for sure beyond help. Thank God Boston has so many med schools and hospitals because there happened to be two doctors also on a run. Not me. It was definitely not me. Who helped me turn the body over and pull it to shore. Oh, my God.

Girl, what? Those are some brave people. OK. It was an adult male dressed for much cooler weather. So I don't know how long he'd been in the water, but long enough for him to be unrecognizable. Oh, no. It was a surreal experience because I must have been in shock by that point. You must have just been in an overdrive of like, let's pull his body out.

I mean, God. Oh, my gosh. Just a thought. And only have a series of vivid snapshot memories. I remember thinking that the CSI makeup effects people do a really great job with drowned bodies because that is what they look like. Oh, my God. I remember staying to give statements to the police. I remember running back to school in my squelchy wet shoes i especially remember that there was a dead

squirrel by the side of the path and someone had put a tiny bouquet of pink flowers in its little dead squirrel hands oh my god and i saw and could only think oh for fuck's sake what is this day were you on mercury was totes and retrograde you were on mushrooms but oh that's i mean both are probably what happened i remember getting myself to the student center for the world's fastest but most appreciated shower and change of clothing and then i walked across the stage in a stupid floppy hat happy graduation she's like also now i got my doctorate can you imagine you're like what a day you're like oh i just want to de-stress a little de-stress before my run or before my graduation then you're like but first let me pull a dead body imagine if she didn't have time and she just smelled like a dead person no

oh my god uh okay i hope that the police have by now given closure to that person's family he had his phone and wallet in his pocket so they must have been able to id him that's really sad that's really sad that's the story thanks for the hours of entertainment you guys are the part of the reason you guys are part of the reason i was inspired to start my own podcast of stories from archaeology and anthropology it's called the dirt and it's i mean clearly she has the experience yeah and it's premiering july 1st and holy jesus this stuff's a lot of work huh oh god no we find it really easy it's actually we go on runs to de-stress imagine that poor girl who had to give a statement to the cops and

was like okay but can i go graduate now like i gotta go she's like i just was trying to like clear my head a little bit and instead i just packed it with like trauma yeah um you guys do it super well and i hope i can make a similarly entertaining show with better sound quality someday love wine and milkshakes anna i'm so bowled over by the story though i'm like really overwhelmed because i'm picturing the whole thing from like where our apartments were right yeah i am right on the river literally right on the river where bu is i mean that's just the thought that there was a fucking body floating there and she pulled it out she didn't just see it jesus okay all right this one is from alexis hi alexis and the story is strange interactions with john wayne gacy aka pogo the clown parentheses both in real life

and through the spirit veil i have a lot of questions i'm just gonna be quiet and hear what's going on good call um hey em and christine hi this story is more of more a group of quick takes versus one solid experience but i think you will enjoy the ride i think you're right i'm ready um i grew up in north in a northwest community of chicago uh that was once terrorized by John Wayne Casey. My parents' house is actually two blocks away from the house where he buried most of his victims. He was an active member of my community, and needless to say, many people I know have had an experience with him. Starting with my mom, she actually lived next door to Gacy's aunt and uncle. She deadass knew him and thought he was a normal fucking dude

classic serial killer i was about to say that's like sociopath 101 she's a true crime buff herself and remember seeing gacy around the house specifically during murder years due to his aunt being terminally ill yeah in fact she swears that the night his aunt died matches perfectly to the timeline of one of his last victims, Robert Piest. Piest? Piest. Remember, we had this whole... I know.

Robert. Piest. I don't know. Meaning his dead body was in Gacy's car parked in front of my mom's house before he was dumped in the... River. Des Plaines? Des Plaines? Yeah.

In the Des Plaines River. Oh my god continuing on my mom's best friend who she met later in life was a high school student attending my eventual high school during gacy's terror across the street from the high school at the time was a butcher who was very popular in the community guess who also went there pogo the motherfucking clown so he was around my high school at least once a week while also killing young boys to make matters worse he was friendly with my mom's friends family and would often help them carry groceries in the house or would just stop in to visit she had high school aged brothers and has mentioned to me multiple times that her brothers

could have easily been his victims hindsight Hindsight is wild like that. The last story is my own paranormal experience with the man in question. Oh boy. As I mentioned, his house is very close to my own, and as any kid with a neighborhood killer, my friends and I are very fascinated by John Wayne Gacy. In the summer of 2013, my friends and I had just graduated high school and were driving around looking for fun. We decided to drive past the Gacy house because it has a history of being haunted and it was like

midnight so it seemed like a good idea it wasn't oh we parked out front the house and started to taunt gacy a bit just calling his name and speaking in weird voices suddenly at the literal same time both of our phones glitched went black and refused to turn back on i didn't have a smartphone so the phone wasn't prone to malfunctioning and my friend had a fully charged android so it was not normal so naturally we looked at each other screamed and got out of there as fast as possible we never went back to and to this day swear that gacy possessed our phones thanks for making a great podcast i listen to it at work and it makes my day every fucking day love alexis p.s come to sacramento where i live now by the way i found out i found out about

irons through your podcast after i had moved to sacramento shut up so there you go wow alexis thank you that is uh a lot of john wayne gacy interaction that imagine like just having a family friend over all the time that like preys on little boys when xandy was a kid yeah it's just the thought of looking back and thinking like things could have gone so differently yeah john wing that was an early episode yeah sometimes i regret doing those episodes so early because i'm like i wish i could just like really dive into it now but i feel like oh i do that now too where like i'm there's only so many haunted places in the world and i'm like i wish every story was like amityville because we did amityville johnny gacy yeah i did all the stories that like now i have to find all these obscure ones and i'm

like i hope they like live up to the stories that i did in the beginning they always do though it takes a lot more research yeah they're harder to look through now yeah some of the smaller ones too with me yeah i mean i still have plenty of murders but our lives are just really hard guys guys our lives are so hard oh my god give us give us a break give us a break guys are right okay this is from joshua and it's called cultults, Serial Killers, and Nuclear Reactors. Ooh. And Slagpots. No, that was just me adding that.

Okay. Dear Em and Christine, I've just started listening to your show, and it's what keeps me going on long drives. Whenever I hear your listener stories, I always think about a little place in North Georgia called Dawson Forest. This is a state park in Dawsonville, Georgia, and I always think of it as being some sort of opening or border to some other world, kind of like the town of Twin Peaks, if that makes sense. While I was in RTC at the University of North Georgia, we always did our field exercises and land navigation out there. Oh man, I dated a guy in ROTC and he'd be like, I got to do land nav tomorrow. Because I had plenty wooded land for us to get lost and run missions in.

Whenever I was there, I was always nervous and uneasy, especially when I was north of the river that runs through the forest. Like whatever was there couldn't cross the river like in the Blair Witch Project. Interesting. It was especially unnerving during night land nav as you are navigating through the woods in the pitch dark and are not allowed to use any light except to stop and check your map there were times when i would shoot an azimuth okay azimuth i don't know there were times when i would shoot an azimuth i think azimuth azimuth dead north 100 meters off of a road and then shoot an azimuth okay don't say it again uh dead south and couldn't find the road again and was only saved by seeing another cadet's red light in the distance that same night a guy in my squad disappeared for a

while when he came back he said that he was walking through the woods looking for a point he all of a sudden had no idea where he was and an hour had passed that he couldn't account for oh god oh boy he stopped called for help and waited for be waited to be picked up and there was also a decent amount of cult activity up in the rural mountains of north georgia Oh, boy. They had set up a patrol base where you rest for the night while out of the field and were pulling security when a van pulls up to the trail where they were staying. The doors open up and out pour cultists wearing animal-like masks like something out of season one of True Detective. No. God. The cultists blew through their patrol base screaming and hollering before disappearing into the woods.

That is called a nightmare. That is a nightmare. screaming and hollering before disappearing into the woods. That is called a nightmare. That is a nightmare. The event shook them and the following classes up so much that every year ROTC cadre has to remind the cadets that it is a federal crime if they bring their personal handguns with them to the field.

Wow. This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the 1950s and 60s, the Air Force and Lockheed built a nuclear reactor in the forest to test and experiment with. One of the things they were testing was the effects of radiation on flora and fauna by burying waste throughout the forest. What? What?

That's so, like, 60s. Like, we'll see what happens. And then the 70s, like, meh. Eventually, they shut the reactor down, but you can still find the remains there, and you can still find giant mutant mushrooms around where the reactor was interestingly enough if you ever ask anyone from lockheed about the reactor they deny that there was ever a reactor oh my god uh last but not least the story of the serial killer gary hilton i heard the story from one of my professors who was a retired gbi agent and hilton was his last case and the one that shook him enough to make him retire.

Hilton was a serial killer that went from Florida through Georgia, murdering and killing hikers. Oh God. His last victim was Meredith Emerson, who he kidnapped while she was hiking around Woody Gap. He kept her alive for several days until he walked her out into Dawson forest with her hands tied, bound her to a tree and then attempted to behead her with a knife.

Oh my God. Until the blade snapped off. Oh no. Eventually, Hilton was caught after using the debit card of a previous victim and subsequently being identified at a gas station. Once he was arrested, he led

the police to Meredith's body and confessed to the other murders as well. The entire confession can also be seen on YouTube, but be aware it is four and a half hours long and quite disturbing. Shit. My professor said that out of all the cases and murders, this one is the one that haunts him and keeps him up late at night. I don't. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I know this is kind of all over the place, but Dawson Forest is a crazy place with a lot of crazy stuff. Love the show and can't get enough. Respectfully, Second Lieutenant Josh Dyer. Thank lieutenant josh dyer thank you for your service thank you for your service but also oh my god i have like full-on body chills that is wowza uh-uh nightmares all right let's switch gears all right let's switch gears to something else equally terrible yep yep yep yep let's do that let's do something called turn down the volume no Eva don't tell me what to do

how you got my boyfriend and I back together oh okay alright alright alright I mean I basically want I mean we're matchmakers we like basically want our own matchmaking show bravo show so like all right i mean i basically want i mean we're matchmakers we like basically want our own uh matchmaking show bravo show so like this seems right down our alley so this is from stephanie

hi stephanie dearest m christine baby g juniper blaze eva and allison oh but no alexander no i just i just put up no no it's good first of all congrats to linda on her wedding m m and allison looked like they had a blast. Second of all, you guys rock and keep me entertained for hours on end, so thank you. Anyway, let's crack into it. Let's do it. About six months ago, my boyfriend and I broke up. Long story, but it was dumb and we love each other and he's totally rad.

And I just started listening to you guys and knew he had this badass ghost story and kept forgetting to send it to you. Well, the breakup came and as much as i missed him or had typical breakup thoughts the most important one was okay but he has to tell me that ghost story one more time for em and christine it's critical amazing so at some point i gathered all his things and told him to come get them with a hidden agenda of course of just wanting him to tell me the damn ghost story the ghosts are always the hidden agenda we ended up ghost 2019 we ended up talking blah blah blah lame blah blah blah feelings and he then left so lame and i hadn't gotten the ghost story damn his chiseled physique and witty puns they strike again long story short this happened a couple of times where we randomly met up because of some sort of lure i made to get the ghost story but we ended up bonding and getting closer again and

you know how things go whatever most importantly i told him about how hilarious you guys were and how we need to be best friends when we move to la in a couple of years no big deal nbd side plug side plug and how i was gonna be like you forgot something in my house you should come get it it's a plane ticket to la let's go hit an agenda no to us oh right so be like oh i have a hidden ghost agenda um and how i owed you guys a good story in return for all the laughs you've given me he laughed and agreed to put something together for you realistically i think it's because of geo and he's not wrong wow thanks again for being awesome keep killing the game get it killing like serial killers okay i'll stop and get to the good stuff

enjoy so this is what he was like we but okay we get the story okay this was her intro that would have been quite quite a tease oh my gosh so this is his story when i was 10 years old my family went down to south padre islands to visit my aunt and cousins at their new house it was previously owned but still fairly new i was the youngest of all the children there which made me easy bait for all the shit over the course of our month-long stay what first of all wow that's quite a quite a vacation they would always target me when it came to scary stories and always tried to freak me out however nobody ever expected anything real to happen but that's exactly what went down about halfway through the stay the tv started to act Oh, God. However, my cousins still use this as an opportunity to mess with me. They started to explain that there was a ghost controlling the volume.

My aunt, who owned the house, quickly caught on to this and assured me that nothing like that was going on. And the TV came with the house and she wanted to get a new one anyway. It came with the house, like the dead body upstairs. Oh, God. Like the poltergeist that lives in the wall. Yeah. Great. So she gets a new TV and VCR DVD system.

Oh, fancy. And this is where the story gets weirder we had issues with the volume spiking down out of nowhere and at this point my cousin started to get freaked out because their stories were coming true huh after a few tries we left the tv alone my aunt even had a technician come in and inspect the wiring and there was no problem with the tv the cable or inputs the new tv was doing it too oh that's really bizarre one night i woke up around 2 a.m to use the bathroom and since i didn't want to wake anyone i walked without any lights on towards the bathroom when i saw my grandfather's silhouette sitting on the couch in the darkness how do you think he's sitting in the toilet oh my god i was like, Oh God, trauma. Sorry.

He was just sitting there staring at the TV, which was turned off. Uh, nope. I asked him, grandpa, why are you up? He turned his head toward me and I couldn't see his face,

but he didn't say anything. He just sat there looking onwards and I could tell because I could just see the slightest glare in his glasses. I turned the flip i turned to flip the light switch on for the living room and when i turned back around he was gone i freaked out left the light on and had to make sure what i saw was real i decided to go back to the hallway which i came from to the room where my grandma and grandpa were sleeping i needed to make sure that my grandpa was in bed which he, totally asleep with his glasses on the nightstand. After safely making it back to my room,

I stayed up for a while, listening to hear if anyone else was awake that I could have mistaken for my grandpa. But I heard nothing and no one. After contemplating what the fuck I just saw for about an hour, I came to the conclusion that I imagined something, dreamed something, or wasn't fully awake. So I went back back to sleep a few days before we left my aunt's house she contacted the previous homeowner to ask if they had any issues with uh the tv wiring the

woman was hesitant to answer but finally confessed something my aunt never knew when she bought the house oh god which was that the woman's father had passed away years ago while they were living there how you say he was somewhere in the house while everyone else was in the living room watching tv he began to have a stroke but nobody could hear him no because the volume was too high m what the fuck oh wow that one got me good. So now he watches TV alone with the volume down just in case anyone else gets hurt. I am. No, no, no, no, no, no. Thanks for listening and for keeping my girlfriend entertained. You're welcome.

More like thanks for giving you your girlfriend back, boo. Seriously. Hold on. Love, Matt, Stephanie and Truffles and Luna. Babies. Baby, baby kitties. All right. Thank you, guys.

Oh, God. And also, wow, like, ten points for the persistence of your girlfriend getting you back just to enable us. Yeah, exactly. She's like, it was for you and Christine. It was for you. It's for you, too. And not for my heart.

Nope. Okay, I got one for you. It's called, oh, boy, Bad B. oh boy bad bo ghost love it and the stuff of nightmares love it it's from callan love it hey y'all greetings from the weird and wonderful panhandle of west virginia oh yeah i'm a fellow nova native born and raised in leesburg virginia that's where that's where eva's from that's why she probably picked that story here it is here's her response callan omg eva here and i just had to jump in and say i'm from leesburg virginia too oh that's cute oh that's precious

i'm not gonna read the rest of your meal but born and raised in leesburg but migrated because i'm poor as bold fuck and i've had numerous paranormal experiences in my life and i'm gonna tell you two-ish stories today oh let's go back to 2012 to my family's final vacation together don't oh i almost went uh-oh oh places don't panic no one died we were just growing up and apparently too old for leisure got it got it got it my parents decided that would be a good idea to stay in an old plantation guest house nope your parents were wrong in the historic triangle m knows what that is i certainly do they'll explain it um yorktown williamsburg and jamestown is the colonial triangle and they are the most haunted places on the planet i really didn't know that

so i'm glad you did explain because i think i used to work in the triangle you've mentioned it and i just always i thought it was like a courtyard but it was shaped like a triangle no it's the three counties all next to each other i had no idea so So thank you, Kellen, for making them explain it. We even brought our two cats, Loki and Charlie. Loki. What up, Loki and Charlie. It was a cute two level house with two bedrooms upstairs and the master

downstairs. There was a little kitchen off of the single bathroom. It was old as balls. Oh my, I'm talking pot belly stove and grandma lace on the sofa. Oh, I love it. Love a good grandma lace being a super smart idiot.

Oh, that's prone to nightmares i always bless the space around me before i sleep i cleanse the shit out of the little room i was staying in and forbade any bad energies from entering parentheses oops that seems like a good thing but okay i didn't think anything of it until the first night when my cats ran into my room and climbed into my bed with me and refused to leave. Jesus fucking Alexander. Your reflection just came up in my computer. And I'm reading.

I'm reading like dark energy. I let it happen. I was like, oh, I can't wait. You are such a dickhead. All right, here we go. That scared me. Okay. Climbed into my bed with me.

I turned on the light thinking that there may be a mouse or something. And there was their cat. I was scared of a a mouse and there was a dark figure in my doorway okay there was a dark figure in my doorway it was probably six feet tall shaped like a man and completely black it was definitely i was definitely in a staring contest with it and i said the only thing i could think of what's that fuck off okay but fair you're not welcome go bother my brother which is exactly what i want to say to a to Alexander right now for that bullshit that he just pulled on me. The figure disappeared and left me alone for the rest of the trip. Fuck off.

Go bother my brother. And left me alone. However, my brother started to complain that he kept seeing a man standing at the foot of his bed and watching him sleep. Oh, my God. I wonder why. From then on, we constantly heard footsteps upstairs walking the hall and my cats absolutely refused to leave my room at night the one time i left my room to go to the bathroom i did not feel welcome at all and felt like i was being watched the entire time i

peed awkward and rude tbh yeah correct the second to last day we were there my family was eating breakfast after we had all just showered i want to emphasize that that we were all squeaky clean and eating cereal no no cooking involved. All of a sudden, the strongest smell of the rankest, most foul nose hair burning body odor wafted through the kitchen. Everyone in my family smelled it because my mother dramatically started sniffing every person at the table. This is my mother. Love it, love it, love it. To find the culprit.

Just as quickly, it was gone and my brother and I made eye contact as my father love it love it love it to find the culprit just as quickly it was gone and my brother and i made eye contact as my father commented how weird it was that night there was no activity and my cats were out of my room for the first time i think stinky ghost man was saying goodbye by sharing his pit stank weird but you do you stinky ghost man wow my second story isn't exactly sorry but an itemized list of terrifying things because of trauma i suffer from weirdly graphic nightmares and sleep paralysis i've had the same monster visit me almost every paralysis episode since i was about five oh no i call him oh god what i call him the upside down oh man oh no that gave me chills he was oh oh okay this is like is he fucking upside

down darkly upsetting he was a pale, naked man that appeared on my ceiling. Oh! Oh my god. His head... Okay, woof. I don't like this. His head was turned all the way around, hence upside down. Oh my god.

And he clacked his teeth together. Oh! And laughed like he was gasping for air. Shut the fuck up. You were five years old air shut the fuck up you were five years old shut the fuck up you should write a fucking horror film i'm freaking out too i know we're showing each other our chills right now that's our fun game that we play when we read these stories oh my god oh my god wait read that all again oh my god i'm like read that all again overwhelmed

upside down man go i called him the upside down man. He was a pale, thin, naked man that appeared on my ceiling. His head was turned all the way around, hence upside down, and he clacked his teeth together and laughed like he was gasping for air. Holy shit. There's more. Oh, it gets worse. Oh, it gets worse. I didn't even know.

He'd fall on my chest from the ceiling. What? And pin me down. Oh my God. Then, okay, oh my God. Oh my God. Then he'd strangle me with. Oh, my God. Then, okay, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Then he strangled me with his tongue. Shut up.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What? What do you mean? I don't like it. That is purely nervous laughter. Horror. I truly can't think of much worse.

I'm so scared. Okay. So then he collapses onto you holds you down and you're paralyzed and wraps his tongue around your neck until you're suffocating he falls from the ceiling laughing like he's gasping for air with his head turned the wrong way naked okay this is so upsetting oh my god i saw other monsters as a child but he was the one that appeared most often other nightmare i'm so sorry by the way to you I'm so sorry, by the way, to you. I'm so sorry, Callan.

This is so upsetting. That warrants PTSD. Yes. A thousand percent. I mean, he said he got it, or they, I don't know their pronouns, but they said they got it from trauma. Uh-huh.

This is just horrible, because it's like a... It's like trauma-inducing. It's just terrible. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. I saw other monsters, but he was one that appeared most often. Other nightmare creatures slash paralysis demons include a man who was completely white

with bright red lips, a man with eyes for teeth, babies or imps that climbed the walls and curtains, shadow figures that murmured and whispered, pale humans with skin stretched so thin you could see their organs, and more. Oh my god. Cue Billy Mays. And that's not all. I think my favorite is a gentleman in a suit who usually replaces one of my friends in my dreams and wakes me by saying, you're in danger. Oh my god. Oh my god.

You need to start screenwriting because this is wild, Callan. writing because this is wild, Callan. I'm not ever in danger, but he always wakes me while I'm on my back, which is time for sleep paralysis, which the two times I've had sleep paralysis was on my back as well. I pray never. Now, the more that's in my head, I'm like,

uh-oh. I haven't had an episode in years, probably because I sleep on my side now and prop myself with a half a dozen pillows to prevent me rolling over. I was going to say, I would weight myself down. Seriously, it's smart. Like, put on a backpack like do when you yeah are really drunk so you don't vomit in your sleep um i still have nightmares but they're pretty standard for me it actually got so bad at one point that my parents consulted an expert in possession a while back oh my god i'm not possessed just mentally ill btw BTW. Smiley face. Yay. Or like grin face.

Right. Anyway, this is way long, which everyone says, but you know. Thank you so much for reading. I'm team milkshake all the way. Thank God. He deserves a lot of calories. All the ice cream. All the ice cream.

I wish you all luck in your next live show. I want to meet you, Callan. Where do you live? Oh, right. Nova. No, West Virginia. Callan, your friendly token Southern trans dude. Hey!

He's trans. Oh, what a Southern trans. From Leesburg, we're with Eva. This is a beautiful story. I mean, it's beautifully well written. What a time. What a trauma. Holy shit.

I don't know what to do with that. Okay, well, let's just finish it out, I assume. Thank you, Callan. It's called Listen. Me too. The universe is out to get me, including the Matrix and BEK, and I just need someone to tell me I'm not crazy. Okay. Can we just do that now? You're not crazy.

You're not. I mean, you might be, but... This is from Nicholas. Okay. Hello from Houston. Hi. I've been a listener since early this last school year and as soon as i heard about the listener episode that mentioned the glitches in a matrix i was astonished i didn't

know that anyone else had experiences like this and i figured i was just somewhat insane i want to go over everything that's happened to me oh Oh, yes. But that would take forever. So instead, I'll just go with one juicy story. The story of my life. Emma. First. We love glitches. I was born.

What a glitch indeed. Just kidding. Now that would take forever. I've rewritten this email like three times trying to shorten this down and make it a somewhat short story. But listen, life's hard. I think just tell a Nickelodeon writer.'s hard life's hard man i think the first place to start my story is during my freshman year of high school i am not going to get into all the

paranormal stuff i saw in my house but let's just say it wasn't easy to sleep at night i had tons and tons of crazy dreams and one day everything stopped i don't know how or why but it was amazing i was so happy and everything started going great in life. I skipped the whole part about how my friends and I always talked on the phone while we sat in bed. But to summarize, from around seventh grade, my little squad was very close and would Skype call every night to help everyone calm down before bed. Oh, my God. I needed that in my life. Why weren't there mental health awareness groups for seventh graders when I was a seventh grader?

I mean, I was not a part of that. I wish I was. I would have loved a little Skype squad. That would have been nice. Okay, back to the main story. One day, one of my friends introduced me to this girl over Skype. He said he had a weird feeling that we would be perfect for each other. And even though she lived a couple states away he was so right boy throughout the rest of high school me and this girl had a

great relationship and both of us had saved money throughout high school so that we could meet after we graduated it was like a dream come true as i met the love of my life for the first time and we both lost our first kiss the first time we saw each other i thought we were going further than that but i was like whoa this is a pure story This is a pure story. This is a pure story. But that's precious. We moved in together as we both attended the University of Texas in Austin, where I was a computer science major and my girlfriend was a civil engineer. Sadly, things started happening.

Uh-oh. Another thing I totally skipped to save time was how my family has a weird connection with aliens. Oh, God. Every man on my father's side of my family has a story about aliens that is every single one but me oh god at first i figured maybe i'm too boring for them or something but boy was i wrong about that back to the story again the first thing i started noticing was how when my girlfriend and i were asleep it was dead silent this wouldn't have bothered me

if we weren't living in the middle of the city oh god the second thing was that whenever i looked at my reflection in the mirror it was never quite right i almost looked more sad than it should have oh what's his name again nicholas oh right skip forward a year and nothing had really changed except my girlfriend and i were closer than ever i was actually ready to propose to her but the same day i was going to when i looked in the mirror my reflection wasn't just off there was a tear rolling down his cheek oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god i figured it was a trick of the light even though i was a bit shaken then i heard the doorbell ring normally i liked when people came over but this time for some reason that sound gave me a feeling of dread naturally since i was in the bathroom my girlfriend decided that she would go see who it was oh god my dread worsened as i heard the door

creak open i thought about calling my girlfriend and telling her to shut the door but i was frozen in fear i heard a young voice ask if they could use the telephone no no no no no i'm so scared okay these words give me shivers down my spine they did however also shake me enough to get me moving ahead and the first thing i did was fly out of my bathroom and right beside my girlfriend sadly this wasn't before i heard her say sure so she's welcomed in the black eyed kids so far they're black eyed kids bk no i thought it was like a murder story i'm so confused i'm so overwhelmed a knock on the door someone said can we use the telephone i thought they were supposed to ask about a telegraph oh no help me oh no when i ran into the room i felt like i was going to die

it was the scariest feeling i've ever felt in my life and right as i got into the room one of the kids looked up their eyes were like black holes their eyes were like black holes sucking in all the joy happiness and life that I had quickly my vision also turned to black and I passed out when I woke up I felt awful I woke up in bed with my soon-to-be wife and everything was back to normal except one thing neither of us were smiling I figured I would wait to propose until we both seemed a bit less sad and a couple months What? They both had cancer? Oh my god. Upon hearing this news, I looked at my girlfriend and we both burst into tears. There had to be some mistake. How could this happen to us?

We were so young. Oh, my God. Then I woke up. What? Hold on. Whoa. Okay. Whoa.

I'm writing about this at the end of my freshman year of high school. No. I recently talked to my friend who first introduced my girlfriend and I, but when I mentioned her name, he looked at me like i was crazy because there was no way i could have ever heard about her and i don't really know what of course that was totally what i expected i called her and talked to her and we clicked again just like before the only problem is she's different and not just kind of different the girl that used to always cheer me up and brighten my day has depression and the suicidal i don't know what happened but she always talks like she's going to inevitably die and when i asked her how she answered with one word that gives me chills down my spine cancer so he like is just meeting her all over again

and then she says she's gonna die of cancer anyways who knows where this universe will take me next but whatever it is i sure hope y'all's podcast is in it i know this was a long story but i need to type it out for someone it's really been a burden on me and it has haunted me too the paranormal stuff that happened to me before i met this girl the first time has all come back and won't go away again and i still remember everything that happened in my previous life one of the weirdest parts is that i still retain my computer knowledge i had in college no even though he's a freshman in high school this is the only proof that i have that any of this happened but recently i programmed a scaling algorithm for different kinds of charts from memory and even my teacher in high school programming doesn't understand completely

how it works which just goes to show that it's not something a high school kid would know what the fuck i think i've typed enough for one email but i just wanted to say hi to you guys and you have seriously helped me through this last year of school and i couldn't have done it without you tell geo hi for me and go team wine even though i can't legally drink it anymore because he's not 21 anymore hold on nicholas are you okay what no this is so messed up oh my god oh my god this is so i don't know what to make of this it's like three glitches in the matrix in one wow i'm floored i have nothing to say about that i'm just astonished i wish i could i will say nicholas go to a doctor just in case everything else has come through so far just go get checked now the girl

saying cancer is just just super scary but maybe maybe this was supposed to maybe it was like a reset so he can like save someone or use his knowledge in college right sent back to like redo it i would kind of in in this one specific instance i would love to go get a degree and then go all the way back to high school and just keep getting new degrees but in the same amount of time through just one amount of money true i'm trying to find like a silver lining you have to go through college and all that studying over and over and over again and then you don't actually have the degree oh you just have the knowledge that's true that's true which like the knowledge is fine but the degree is what helps yeah when it comes to career

shit oh man what on earth bananas i'm like i don't know what to say about any of that done that one that one floored me it was a wild ending guys, guys. Thank you, Nicholas. I hope you're okay. I can't wait until you can drink again. Please, because you deserve it. Oh, my gosh. Go to Germany. You can drink there. You know, he'll be able to find out more and more, though, as like, you know, when he gets to college, like he'll know what college he gets into.

Maybe. Like if this all goes the same way, he'll know what college he gets into. But he said it's different, though. I wonder if he's going gonna see people from his previous future well that'd be weird and he'd be like i know to not even go near you or i know that you're a good great person or i know that the doorbell's gonna ring and i need to stop i need to get a deadbolt oh yeah or tell my girlfriend don't open the door but then that means like that means so i know so then you get into all the trippy like in the in the legend of the black-eyed kids

if we're going with the black-eyed kids are what caused the cancer sure then maybe he knows that as long as they don't open the door they won't get the cancer exactly oh my gosh this is just too real though oh this is just how do you tell somebody that oh don't worry i know how you get cancer and you won't get cancer if you don't open like it's it's just so wild, man. Oh, this is just too much. I'm so overwhelmed. Okay. Well, thanks, Nicholas, for blowing our minds. Thank you, Nicholas.

Also, you guys, if you want to read more Glitch in the Matrix, go on Reddit. Our Glitch in the Matrix is just bananas and it's a great subreddit. Okay. Well, so thank you guys for sending in your personal stories. We are very stoked that you guys are willing to send in such personal, personal moments Well, woo. So thank you guys for sending in your personal stories. Um, we are very stoked that you guys are willing to send in such personal, personal moments of your life. Yes. Very personal. And I hope everyone's doing okay. And I hope everyone is hanging in there.

Yes. Especially Nicholas. Um. We care about all of you so very much. Let us know if we can do anything to help you. And if you have not heard your story read yet yet there is still a chance you might hear it in the august 1st video september 1st october 1st so september 1st october 1st um the first of every month we put out six new stories that you guys have sent in so um thank you so much for the people who submitted and got their stories read today thank you to the people who submitted stories and they didn't get read just yet um we appreciate you and that's why we drink bye guys