And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 23

Episode Date: December 1, 2018

Christmastime is here and Christine finally gets to sing about it. This month we've got festive listener stories that include secrets revealed at a mysterious holiday party, ghostly Christmas lights, the nefarious purposes of Furbies finally revealed and a kitten who spotted either an attic ghost or Santa. We're also confronted with some hard questions about everything we've ever known about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: could this favorite tale be a cover for Christmas Eve alien abductions?! ...and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us!  Get 10% off with free shipping on your order of over $50 of Homesick Candles when you go to homesick.com and enter promo code DRINK Get free shipping on your next Rothys purchase when you go to rothys.com and use promo code DRINK

Christmas time is here. Finally, I get to do it. I feel like people who listen to the episode that played forever ago has been waiting to see if it would show up on December 1st. Well, probably not, and they just heard it, and they're like, what the, why would you do that? Nobody needs that. Go back and listen to the story of the byberry hospital and the 94 and the cannibal very sad that i figure out what we're talking about christmas time is here it's

finally december finally holiday time which means i think we're only like two away from another anniversary of listeners episodes two away from oh yeah you. Oh, my God. How do we keep doing this? We just keep going. What's happening? Welcome to another edition of our listeners episodes. Listener stories. This is your stories told by us dramatically. And if you would like to be a part of these listener stories in the future, you can send

your personal true crime or paranormal stories to and that's why we drink at gmail.com. And maybe Eva will surprise us with your story. Maybe, maybe we'll find out. I'm just gonna crack into it. Let's do it. This one is from Emily. Hi, Emily. And the subject is two paranormal stories.

One creepy, one kind of sweet. Emily says, Hi, team. Hey, that's a good coach. Sup? My name is Emily and I'm from says, hi, team. Hey, that's a good coach. Sup? My name is Emily and I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am absolutely a believer in the paranormal and have had many experiences with ghosts slash spirits. I thought I'd send in one of the creepier things to ever happen to me and one of the most heartwarming. So we get a little twofer.

Let's get to it and start with a creepy story first, says Emily. Two years ago, I graduated college and stayed in Grand Rapids to start the job hunt. I got a job as a manager at a gym. Not at all what I went to college for. Shocking, I know. The gym is open 24 hours and the only day it was ever closed was on Christmas Day. As the manager, oh, someone's a manager. Didn't say that. Oh yeah, she did. Sorry. Forgot already. I saw Christmas day and heard Christmas time. I stopped myself from seeing it. I was so close. Sorry. I threw myself off as the manager. I was the one who had to open the gym bright and early the day after Christmas at 4 30 AM. Oh God. The day after that sucks. All of my roommates were still in school and gone for christmas break so on christmas day i had to come back after spending a weekend with our family or a weekend with family to our old house alone with my six-month kitten named otis oh otis do you have a puppy named milo oh that's cute um this house has always given us a vibe since we moved in we staged the place when we moved in and we all hoped that

that would do the trick one of the roommates closets was actually a staircase to the attic what good good uh that the homeowner was just that just stuck a clothing rod in oh okay so just a staircase but put a clothing rod in oh i see we all fought for different bedrooms and i luckily didn't get the room that connected to the attic. I feel like my dumb ass would be like, cool, I want the stair closet room. Exactly. I want to, it would be like a Miley Cyrus thing of like, when you push the clothes aside, there's a whole other room.

That Christmas night, I was snuggled up with my cat and fell asleep despite being terrified of being in the house alone for that first time. At 3am, yep, 3am. Of course. I woke up to the loudest thump coming from above my head oh no i immediately thought to myself santa is that you on the roof before realizing that it was the night after christmas oh no he's late santa's evil brother oh no he's late um and i was 22 and haven't believed in santa for about years. Krampus. Yes. I jolted up and my heart was literally pounding out of my chest. Otis jumped up and ran under my bed and would not come out.

Aw, Otis. After finally feeling brave enough to get up and open my bedroom door, I saw nothing and decided to brush my teeth and just head to the gym early because I was terrified. Otis was still refusing to come out from under the bed. I've always been convinced that animals sense and can maybe even see the paranormal valid in my opinion is correct very correct after i brushed my teeth i came out of the bathroom and otis was in the hallway shaking and staring at my roommate's closet where the stairs to the attic are not a good sign um he was just trying to pull the clothes away and be like look at my miley cyrus room um needless to say i sprinted

out of my house and went to work about an hour early and stayed the next few nights at a friend's house with otis and okay with otis good oh good until my roommate came back and we moved out shortly after on a light-hearted note i have a story involving my grandma and her favorite flowers my grandma's favorite flowers were sunflowers she had sunflower everything sunflower chairs sunflower plates and flowers tablecloths, you name it. That's adorable. My grandma passed away suddenly when I was 11, and we were incredibly close, and she

basically raised us as my mom when my dad's alcoholism consumed his life. Oh. My grandmother lived in a house in front of a cute little park in a small town up north. The house was on a hill that overlooked a main road that you have to drive by to really go anywhere my grandmother was cremated and all my family spread her ashes in the park so she could be in her favorite place that next spring my family and i were driving down that main road and in the park where she was cremated there was one lone sunflower there has never been flowers in the park before and there were no

other flowers except for the one sunflower sunflower my mom had a difficult time accepting her mother's death since it was so sudden and this was exactly the reassurance she needed and all of us needed to know that she is still with us to this day every time i see a sunflower i know it's my grandma watching over us i always seem to see the flowers when i need her the most and thank you guys for providing such a great podcast full of laughs terror and overall fun i am hashtag team wine and mainly hashtag team box wine love you guys never change emily oh my god that's a beautiful symbol though like a sunflower i dated someone who her and her grandma were really close and the grandma had butterfly

everything yeah yeah whenever she saw a butterfly she like i knew it was her grandma um that's what my i think it was my stepmom her mom was like ladybugs similar yeah i think sunflowers so cute there's one sunflower that's just one sunflower all right so one day when you pass away your grandchildren every time they see boxed wine just sprouting out of the ground in a park. Empty. It's just a cork. All right. I've been corks behind. Right. You know that song?

Okay. Nevermind. I'm not going to sing it. Christmas. Stop stealing my song. Okay. Is here. Hey, I'm Christine Eva and baby G.

My name is Victoria. I've been listening to your podcast since the end of December. Oh, this was in August. I was like, wait, sorry. Fast forwarding.ing okay and needless to say i'm obsessed i've been waffling with the idea of sending in a couple stories and decided to hell with it i'm gonna send them in so here i am on this rainy canadian afternoon telling you my strange and weird stories uh here's some background information i'm what is commonly referred to as a military brat my dad worked in the military for about 25 years as he rode through the ranks and did multiple tours i had to move around and travel a lot as a kid and since we

were a military family we got discounts on flights which of course my dad loved because he's the type of guys who will hunt for deals anywhere very dad thing to do right yeah this all might not sound relevant but once i explain more you'll understand now let's crack into it the guy we're going to talk about now is russell fucking williams if you don't know who that who this complete and utter asswipe is i don't blame you frankly i don't want to either but i guess we aren't going to talk about now is Russell fucking Williams. If you don't know who this complete and utter asswipe is, I don't blame you. Frankly, I don't want to either, but I guess we aren't going to get what we want. Oh my. This guy was a colonel in the Canadian Air Force and commander of CFB Trenton. CFB stands for Canadian Forces Base.

Okay. Trenton is Canada's largest military air base and a center for our foreign and domestic air transport operations. This guy not only commanded the space, but he also flew VIP aircrafts carrying none other than queen elizabeth the freaking second and also her husband the prime minister and the governor general but whatever williams was even described as a shining bright star of the military which by the way once you read what this guy did you'll be like shining bright star my ass oh i'm ready in november of 09 corporal marie france camo was found dead in her home she was 37 years old and a military traffic technician based out of CFB Trenton. A couple months later, a 27-year-old girl named Jessica Lloyd went missing on the 28th of January 2010.

There was some very distinct tire marks left in the snow by her house, so the Ontario Provincial Police did a search to find the car with a distinctive tread pattern. Needless to say, they noticed similarities between Williams vehicle and the tracks found at the scene so he was taken in for questioning where over a period of 10 hours he confessed to his crimes and later the next morning led investigators to lloyd's body it was in a very secluded area only 13 minutes away from williams house he was charged with the murders of the two women but also much more he had broken into their homes held them against their will raped and took pictures of them he also assaulted two other women who survived he basically lived this double life where he would be a respectable soldier and by

night he'd be a monster who would rape and murder women oh my god let's not even forget the fact that he also broke into 80 houses in the trenton area 80 wow he was just a complete and utter douche canoe and then she goes so where do i fit exactly let's find out you remember the inexpensive plane tickets my dad got ones that would get us to my grandparents in vancouver while also not breaking the bank so we had to hang out at this old military airport hangar while we waited our plane was delayed because of the weather so my dad decided to talk to the pilot also a very dad thing to do the most dad thing chat up the how does this contraption work this gizmo make a few dad jokes now this may sound strange as most times you don't get to talk to the pilot well my dad's not a normal guy at the time he's also a base commander so you can see my dad had a bit more sway so he talked to our pilot who

just so happened to be none other than russell fucking williams holy shit and that's not all i saw the guy myself let's just say when my dad told me after we learned the truth i had nightmares for weeks honestly look up this guy his face alone will creep the shit out of you they had pictures from his confession on the vice article i read and it gave me the creeps again yikes yeah i was oh there's more on a lighter note my grandpa's ghost possessed my spotify account oh mine too mine too after he died i kept on hearing this song on my phone i wasn't too much of a fan of it but i thought i would listen to it the song was called my special angel and yes while that does sound normal let me just say it got weirder on his phone we found videos of him singing that song and in his belongings we found the lyrics written everywhere no oh my god oh no it

was very strange remember that time my spotify was hacked by somebody in like turkey and yeah that was weird bigfoot it played as we were talking about bigfoot or something it was very weird anyways i've talked too long but just in case you guys are ever in edmonton alberta just give me a shout i'll send you a list of all the haunted places you should go you guys are honestly the best i get excited every time you mention oh sorry every time you post an episode i have to pace myself or i'll devour each episode in one sitting that's the same with apple strudel or apple strudel i can't resist it hashtag german kid problems am i right love you guys keep up the fantastic work victoria p.s my dogs poppy and jasmine say hi to you and juniper oh the babies so sweet oh wow thank you victoria very

good very good job well done woof woof woo. Job well done living your life and telling us about it. Did you hear, see that somebody commented, because you know how we say woof like that? Yeah. Someone commented on our Facebook page. Did you see that? No. This woman wrote a post that was like, for God's sake, you moron, stop saying woof. That's not the proper use or something.

And I was like, what the? What is the proper use of woof beyond a dog saying it? She called us morons. I was like, that's not very nice, lady. How about every time someone calls me a moron, I'm just going to go woof. I just was so confused by that. Listen. Woof.

I feel like woof is probably the most intelligent thing we say on this podcast. It's the only thing we use in the correct context as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that that, I mean, the way that I've been using it my entire life is the way that I've decided it's going to be used so sometimes someone really called me a moron you get a podcast and just start saying meow or something yeah yeah moving on this is amanda hi amanda amanda says her well her subject is furbies and a ghost story which furbies are a ghost story so i feel like we're getting two things here i know i forgot to read the subject was fun and i forgot sorry

murderous pilots and a spotify possession okay all fun just they're such good subjects i want to give them credit yeah no you're right furbies are sometimes i feel like we also get um i know you're fine i feel like we get a uh like a little hint a little taste of what's coming a little taste smacking um furbies are spawn of hell that's all i was gonna say yeah spawn Yeah. Spawn of Satan. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They are little Satans. So Amanda says, hi, I'm in Christine. Hey. First, I want to say that I coach. Sorry. That was really funny.

We team. First, I want to say that I've only started listening, but I am obsessed. I have a 45 minute drive each way to and from work. And the podcast is the only thing I've been listening to ever since I found it. Very nice of you. Thank you. Second, just a little anecdote for you i just finished the podcast or the episode where you were talking about how creepy furbies are and i just have to tell you this oh my god i was about to go whoa we just brought that up and i was like right that's in the fucking subject

um sorry so i have an uncle who works for a government intelligence agency what i cannot wait for whatever i need more stories from you one day he called my mom said only said only the words if the kids have any furbies get rid of them and i mean it and hung up oh my god amanda you just confirmed everything i've ever thought we knew it we knew it mean, of course they're not speaking English. They're just like... Me not. Me hungry.

They're confirming something. They're sending us secret messages. They were plants for the parents, I bet. Like, listening into parents. Oh, man. Okay, let me... Let me start... Yeah.

Resay it for everyone because this is important. Okay, okay. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Hello. Hello, hello. Hi, I'm the uncle from the government intelligence agency. Oh, it's you intelligence agency you uncle frank listen i have only these words to say to you okay if the kids have any furbies get rid of them and i mean it click but why well we'll find out okay my mom was confused oh i told you i'm playing along but given his job she figured he knew something we didn't and

immediately took them to the dump first of all glad that she respected but also she respected it too much to not have questions my jewish mother would have been like no you tell me every piece of information i will buy 45 more furbies i will buy 50 and plant them right next to this fucking house with furbies yeah you don't just say okay you bet your fucking ass i will i will be always be the first to go if like there's ever like a spy near me i'm gonna try and get all the information out i just don't know how to respect privacy when it comes to like government agency stuff i'm like i need to know all the secrets of the world you'd be the worst spy on the planet or the best you just don't definitely the worst okay um yeah okay so this mom was way

respectful and not a member of my family and she just listened uh-huh then i guess that must be very scary though like if you're used to having an uncle who I guess if you're a brother or whatever relation they were like I just don't have the discipline I mean I feel like tell me what's going on but I mean if he hangs up like what are you gonna do call him back leave 13 voicemails until he am I healthy do I have a healthy brain no I mean I would do that too but I think I'd be too scared I'd get rid of them and then ask the questions that's true okay that's fair yeah because I'd be like act first question because I mean our initial and then ask the questions. That's true. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. Cause I'd be like, act first question. Cause I mean, our initial response was,

holy shit. They're definitely governments. Like we went like extreme and I feel like we panic and probably set them all on fire and then ask questions. Okay. You and I combined make quite a good pair. She hates us right now. Cause we're just not letting her tell her.

Can you just fucking tell the story? God damn. Sorry. So Amanda says, we never got an answer. I'm done. All right. I don't like this anymore.

Amanda, why did you keep writing? We never got an answer. I'm done. All right. I don't like this anymore. Amanda, why did you keep writing? We never got an answer on why he told us that. And we never talked to him about it again. See, not no false, not my family. No. But every once in a while, my mom will bring it up as an example of how she thinks technology gathers info and records us and sends it back to other countries. Because I think she's convinced that is what is happening. I mean, it's probably true. I mean, probably. I mean, if if it's in our phones it's definitely in our furbies yeah um that's what i always say if the furbies got it the rest of the world does um lastly i have a ghost story for you more specifically i have a guardian angel story that's nice i love guardian angel the opposite of a furby so truly my great-grandfather died when i was seven but he had been my favorite person in

the world before then. The night he died, I had a dream where he was in a wheelchair and someone was wheeling him toward a train. I was running after him, crying, but could never reach him. They got to the train and he was wheeled around to face me, and he just gave me a smile and wave and patted his heart to say he loved me. As the train pulled away, I remember this dream as vividly... Oh, he said he loved me as the train pulled away i remember this dream as vividly oh he said he loved me as the train pulled away i remember this dream as vividly as if it happened in real life yesterday i woke up to my dad on the phone with my grandma and i got up crawled into his lap and just said i know papa's gone he's okay though don't be sad oh my god my dad was stunned my grandfather didn't fully leave though throughout

my life i have had experiences where i know he is watching out for me from warning me to slow down suddenly when a deer i didn't see starts to run across the road to bigger things i'll just tell you about one of those bigger things so i was 16 watching my three younger siblings while my mom was out i was never a very skittish person but all of a sudden i started to feel very uneasy then all of a sudden i heard what i know to be my grandfather's voice say, take the kids and hide behind the couch now. Yikes. Oh, God. I knew better than to question it.

So I made it sound like a game and told the kids we were going to see if we could all fit behind there so we could scare Mama when she came home. I peeked out from behind the couch to see if i could figure out what was going on and i could see what looked like three people walking around the house oh my god i ducked back down and just a minute or so later i felt my uneasiness subside i got up from behind the couch and looked out the window to see that the garage motion motion detector light had turned on and there were three people running as fast as they could into the woods oh my god i don't know what he did but i know things would have gone badly if he was not there for us that day oh my god sorry for the length of this but i don't have many people who

i can talk to about this stuff so i wanted to tell you hope you enjoyed it at least even if it doesn't make it onto a listener's episode ha ha amanda jokes on you my Gio for me love Amanda I guess if you insist okay damn that is crazy that's like three people were like circling the house and then sprints it away like gut voice in your head yeah all right this is from Aubrey

subject is turns out my family is terrible question mark question mark okay same welcome hi ATWWD fam especially G geo and juniper what's up coach i've been listening to the podcast for a little under a year from the start btw oh thank you and i'm super close to being caught up a few months ago i got to the lion's case episode oh yeah um the lion's case episode and it reminded me of something my grandmother had told me a few years ago for a little bit of background my grandmother is a natural born storyteller who loves telling me all sorts of things about her

family i started to realize however that there were certain things in my family that were just not said my dad's side of the family's large christian and very texan so anything that was not in line with their image is pretty much ignored but those kinds of things make the best stories of course that is correct anyways over christmas a few years ago i was talking to my grandmother about different holiday parties she had been to over the years between stories of course that is correct anyways over christmas a few years ago i was talking to my grandmother about different holiday parties she had been to over the years between stories of the holidays when she was little on christmases with me she very casually mentioned something about a new year's party in 1990 something seemed a little off when she mentioned it but she refused to say anything more about the party that night later however i got most of the story out of her

here is what i can piece together the new year's party was thrown in dallas by someone related to me it's hard to keep track. According to my grandmother, the party had a really weird vibe, so she was not planning on staying long. One of the reasons she wanted to leave was because people were more or less icing out one of my cousins named Nancy Lion. Oh, my God. After asking around, my grandmother was told that Nancy kept implying that her husband had been poisoning her, and everyone thought she was being dramatic, so no one wanted to talk to her oh my god can you imagine someone like i think my husband's poisoning me and you're like get the fuck out of here you're so dramatic if you're like blaze is killing me i'd be like probably i'd be like i'm helping him honestly yeah we're commiserate

we're conspiring against you but being the polite southern woman that she is my grandmother went to make conversation sure enough nancy lion told her about the soda along with multiple times that her husband had given her food and medicine that had made her sick apparently nancy told my grandmother point blank that if she dies in the next few months it was her husband oh my god literally two weeks later she was dead even when everyone thought that it was the brother my entire family knew it was richard and no one said anything what what the fuck that's her words my grandmother didn't tell me anything more after that but i did my own research and found an hbo special that outlined the whole deal i can't say that the special was

good per se but it was really weird to watch dramatic reenactment of something that happened so close to my family that literally no one talks about oh my gosh i thought y'all might find this interesting but no pressure to put it on the podcast it's always the people who say like oh don't worry it's so long and it's like a paragraph yeah and they're like don't you don't have to like here's my two sentences i'm so sorry it's so long but also thank you for being so considerate thank you for being concise and considerate i thank y'all i also have some weird supernatural shit that's been going down lately but i'll save that for another time love what you folks do keep creeping the hell out of me much love aubrey p.s i am 19 so in the u.s i'm hardcore team milkshake but i am now going to school in canada and learning the appeal of team wine best of both worlds thank you aubrey there's

fun for on both sides yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right last one from you of 2018 no i have one more oh you get the last one this is my last one of 2018. Yeah. All right. This is from Ashley. And Ashley, her subject is lighthearted ghost story. Amanda, Aubrey, Ashley. Eva, are you just alphabetizing these? Eva, are you just trying to get through the backlog? Is that what's happening? So, not Eva.

Ashley says, hi all. What's up, coach? What's up, coach? You are spectacular and the podcast makes me feel right at home with that book with my love of all things paranormal and true crime. Anyway, here's my story. So I like the quick little compliment. Thank you.

Love it. Love it. My brother-in-law, Ryan passed away suddenly five years ago. Oh no. He was someone who was very in tune with the spiritual side of things. He would often tell friends and family members of ghosts that are present or when loved ones who have passed have communicated with him. Ooh.

of ghosts that are present or when loved ones who have passed have communicated with him. So my story happened sometime around Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I was at my in-law's house and my mother-in-law decorates for Christmas super early, so I can't remember the exact date. But it was the first holiday season without Ryan, and my sister-in-law and I were having a movie night at her parents' house. We were in the family room, which has a wide doorway that leads you to the formal room of the house. While we are watching a movie, my sister-in-law and I keep noticing a light flickering in the front formal room. We were worried one of the Christmas decorations wasn't plugged in all the way, so we paused the movie to check it out. As we walked in the front room, we realized that the decorations are off, except for the strand of christmas lights around the mantle where ryan's picture is oh i check the plug and it's plugged in and as we start to walk away

the lights flicker this is very stranger things it is it is um my sister-in-law then says me please don't think i'm crazy but i'm going to try something so she looks up and says ryan if you're doing this turn the lights off and the white christmas lights turn off oh my god then she says ryan turn them back on and the lights off. And the white Christmas lights turn off. Oh my God. Then she says, Ryan, turn them back on. And the lights turned on. Oh my God. We kept this up for a while. I know your ass is going to do this to me when I die.

You're gonna be like, turn on this light. Turn on that light. Pour my wine. Bring the wine over to the couch. You're still round enough to pour my wine. I don't really believe you're really here. If you're really here with me. If you're really here, then you would also have a straw.

So I don't have to like pour the glass into my mouth. But only a metal straw. Cause you know how I feel about turtles and please if you really love me if you really hear manifest a turtle right in front of me um okay so we kept this up for a while asking at random intervals to make sure it wasn't the just the lights but they weren't the kind you could set a flicker at various speeds so kind of confirming that he was doing it at this point we have the lights back on and realize we need to grab their parents so we wake up her mom and dad and have them come downstairs to witness this craziness my mother-in-law asks ryan to turn the lights off and then the lights

back on the light follows her orders however after they turn back on the strain of lights blows and would not come back on again whoa i'm pretty sure this was his way of letting us know he's okay oh i have always been a believer of ghosts angels and all things in between this particular experience solidified my belief that our loved ones are always with us thank you so much for letting me share the story with you today is not always in today i'm guessing it's their anniversary because she says today is not always an easy day um listening to your podcast reminded me of this night and i felt compelled to tell you all about it i hope to catch you in cincinnati dayton or columbus ohio sometime

soon thank you for all that you do ashley beautiful i love that story that's so simple and sweet yes yes you know if i go first i'm gonna be messing with all your electricity oh you know i'm gonna be just fucking shut up for you you're gonna be like okay i get it can you go some to the light now bother allison please can you or yeah go to the light you've made your point go away and then it's just gonna get worse i'm just gonna like you're not gonna be able to get away from me annoy the hell out of you constantly oh anyway okay last one of the year last Last one of 2018, baby. Oh, yeah. Here we go. The subject is just tops. Either Santa Claus is real or I was abducted by aliens.

Oh, my God. Oh. I have a book. Can't it be both? I'm working on a book with that title, actually. You're working on a book with that title? Yeah. Something that wild? Oh, whoa, whoa.

I thought you meant you were literally working on that. I was like. Oh, no. But if I had an autobiography. I got real excited. No, but if I had an autobiography, you know the title would be that you know the title is like she's stealing your intellectual property actually i wrote this in either santa claus real or is abducted by ncm schultz by m schultz story that's stolen by from julio okay thanks julio hello hello from athens georgia first of all go dogs no what

okay bulldogs sure i mean i know but i feel like I was tricked into like, go dogs. And I was like, yeah, geo go dogs. Go one dog. Go one dog. Only go cats too. I guess. I love y'all. Your show makes me laugh and gasp in public all the time. At least people leave me alone in the dining hall. That's all you really need out of life. People leave you alone in the dining hall. Yeah. I know you're just too popular. I hadn't known. I met in college when I wasn't popular. I had no idea when I wasn't popular. I had no idea I could be terrified and endlessly amused at the same time. On to the story. It was Christmas Eve back in the days when I still believed in Santa Claus to the second or third grade.

Like most children, I was sitting in bed straining for the sound of tinkling bells until I realized that I myself had to tinkle as well. This is a good story. I want Julia to write it. Sorry. This is Florida. And as such, we had a good story. I want Julia to write it. Sorry. This is, this is Florida. And as such, we had a door from the bathroom into the backyard. What?

Oh, so we could go straight from our pool to the bathroom and not like it. I was like, well, I like Florida culture. It's a lot of sense, huh? Yeah.

And not drip all over the house. There was only a sheer curtain covering the window, filling the door, but privacy was maintained because the shower and toilet were in a water closet because it was the middle of the night it did not close the water closet door sitting on the toilet i looked down at my watch 11 p.m december 24th then i looked up and a bright red light poured in and filled every corner of the bathroom oh the next moment i'm aware i'm still in the toilet but my pants are on where they had been off before oh the pants are on

so she's on the toilet with her pants on oh Oh, I was like, what is Santa doing? Oh, God. And it is exactly 12 a.m. December 25th. Oh, my gosh. So all that time passed. Oh, no. I was groggy and felt aware of the passage of time, sort of like I had fallen asleep. However, as far as I'm aware, it is not normal for a child to pass out for exactly one hour and clothe themselves in the process.

Right. And she's sitting still on the toilet. It's not like she, like, fell fell on the ground i have fallen asleep on a toilet and trust me you fall yeah i fall asleep in the shower and i hit my head oh my god it's really dangerous it is very dangerous there's a lot of porcelain in those rooms right because i was a child i assumed that i had in fact seen rudolph's nose oh honey that's so and the reason that I time slipped away was due to a certain jolly elf filling mine and my neighbor's house with presents. What? Oh, my gosh. That's a precious way to look at it, I guess. When I recently told this story to several of my friends, they suggested that perhaps I had instead been abducted by a group of aliens.

Yikes. It's like, no, no, no, the elves put me to sleep so I wouldn't see them put presents under the tree. That's like the sweetest, most innocent thing I ever heard. got abducted you were probed maybe we'll find out we'll find out which leads me to the question i leave y'all with where did the legend of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer come from was it invented on a whim and spread by a movie or have others experienced a strange red light and vanishing of time as i did on christmas eve perhaps rudolph is nothing more than an attempt to explain away a strange phenomenon on a cold winter's eve okay she's really trying to like take my thunder on this book writing yeah but like i i feel very like i can relate to her very well because i actually have my own rudolph

story where i remember seeing a bright red light then up and like past the point where i knew santa might not be real for anyone who's like nine and listening um when after i had been told right that that's not true that i i like still believed for like much longer than i should have no i saw it i was like i saw i saw it i know i saw it right and now in hindsight it was my dad from the other room with a red laser out in the sky but like oh i thought you were also abducted no i was not abducted i don't think i remember all of the time oh my god okay but so originally my thought was oh her dad must just like be using a laser if she thinks that she sees a red light but apparently it's like a floodlight and she lost an hour of her life and her pants were this is really disturbing i

mean she's on the toilet it's so scary right right like you just gotta pee yeah i hope whoever reads this and that makes me scared to get up in the middle of the night oh i'm always scared to get up me too but now i'm like do i really need to go usually it's for like ghosts and murderers not like oh an alien i always excuse it like if i have if i have to pee in the middle of the night i just say like no you don't you just now have a natural alarm clock like you'll just wake up before like you really want to i can't fall back asleep if i have to pee because then it's all i think about oh i'm really good at sleeping i'm not okay i hope whoever reads this enjoys i also spent the past five years living in savannah one of my favorite cities in the world that's me saying that sorry that's me editorializing and have no shortage of

spooky stories there is after all no shortage of dark and violent history in my historic town and as y'all know that leaves behind a lot of spirits yes perhaps i can send some of those in another email until then i love y'all thanks for everything you do ardently julia she her ardently love ardently i haven't heard that one before i like she's a book writer remember i know i know i know i um am really this is very scary to me because aliens are one of the scariest things to me that's true like this really freaks me out i really it freaks me out because it could happen at any point and by the time it it's happened, you don't even know what happened to you. And I'm always in that school of thought of like, the more I think about it, the more it'll happen.

Me too. It's like, if it's like, if you don't think about it, maybe they'll ignore you. That's like the times we've had sleep paralysis when we're like, when I had sleep paralysis because I was like reading about it all day and then I had it and I was like, great. Now I fucking manifested that shit. Exactly. So if you think about it, then it happens. I don't like it.

So don't think about it. Don't think about the color. Don't think it. When the next time you're on the toilet, if you think about it then it happens i don't like it so don't think about it don't think about the color don't think it when the next time you're on the toilet don't think about aliens which i really don't think about anything else i wonder if she still had to pee right like oh that would be interesting though because what if she sat there for a whole hour and like nothing happened well what if she woke up and like she peed her pants because she was like i didn't i took those off another back off it's not really fair, is it? No, but that is a good question. That actually kind of is important to the story. Julia, please send a 2.0. Yeah, a dramatic retelling of your pee experience.

Maybe that's just the intro and now we have to go buy the book. I hear you, yes. New on Audible. Good teaser. I love it. All right, well, thank you guys so much for writing in your stories. Have a safe holiday season if you're traveling, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, nothing. And the next time you hear one of these, it'll 2019 that's right how crazy is that so thank you guys if you would like to send in your stories send them in at and that's why we drink

at gmail.com that's right and welcome to the new year no not yet well christmas kiss the old year goodbye and listen to me sing and that's why we drink christmas okay i'm just gonna stop