And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 47

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

Happy starch season!! While it will always be spooky season in our hearts, time does tend to move forward so we're also getting ready to pass the cranberry sauce if you know what we mean. But, don't worry, our listener stories this month are still wildly scary. Eva woke up at 3am to her phone glitching after reading them and Christine's printer refused to print them! Join us for our least favorite topic: Black Eyed Kids!! No one is allowed to open their doors anymore, at any point, unless it's Postmates... and that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! If you’re a homeowner, head to Policygenius.com right now to get started. They’ve saved their home and auto insurance customers an average of $1,127 a year. Policygenius. When it comes to insurance, it’s nice to get it right.Make getting dressed the easiest part of your routine at jennikayne.com. Get 20% off your first order when you use code DRINK at checkout.So many people have been using BetterHELP that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. Special offer for ATWWD listeners: get 10% off your first month at https://betterhelp.com/drink! See why Feetures has quickly become the #1 running sock in America. For listeners of And That’s Why We Drink, you can receive $10 Off Your First Pair of Feetures by going to feetures.com and using our code DRINK.

happy november 1st halloween is over but spooky season is year long i'm working on that quote it's not great but i'm working on it well i uh hmm well i seem to catch you off guard, so it is something right. What about this? Are you ready? I don't think you're ready because I haven't even told you what's happening yet. I'm certainly not. Pass. The cranberry sauce.

We're having mashed potatoes. Ooh. The turkey looks great. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being there. Thank you. For. Loving. Me. Thank. You. For. For.

For. Being. There. Everyone's. Thanking. The. Whole. Worlds. Thanking.

You. For. Thanking. Us. For. Thanking. You. Kill the turkey.

Kill the turkey. Okay. Everybody at cast is like, we don't know why that happened. I think our computers are broken and the audio just shut down. Also, if this is your very first episode of us, welcome. Okay. Well, we got that out of the way. I can't believe I just wasn't even like prepared for that.

And of course, we're recording this one over Zoom for the first time in a long time. So it's nice and lagged. Beautiful stuff it is, I lagged. Beautiful stuff. It is. I'm sure. Happy November. We are in, uh,

there's, I guess, cranberry sauce coming up. Yeah. Happy turkey month, I guess, or happy potato month for the, for the vegans out there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, that's me vegetarian over here. Don't kill the Turkey, I guess is my moral of my story.

Okay. So anyway, welcome to yet another round of, uh, spookiness because even though it is now turkey slash potato season, it is still spooky season to us because Halloween hasn't even happened when we recorded this and you're still getting this the day after Halloween. So hopefully you're still in the mood for some spooks. Yeah, I hope so. Eva promised that this one is going

to be uh spooktacular yeah we got some texts from eva being like oh i wonder do you guys have a theme in mind and i was like i don't think so like maybe i came up with them but i don't remember and then she within like a half hour was like oh dear i have stumbled upon a theme and i'm not gonna sleep tonight and then today was basically like, this is really frightening. And last night I woke up exactly 3am and my phone was flashing and my cats were nowhere to be found. And I'm like, oh my God. And then of course I looked at some of the subjects and went, oh dear, this is one of my worst fears. So anyway, this is going to be a freaky one. I think. I like how she went from, do you have a theme to, never mind, I have it for you.

I think now she's just being polite. You know, it's not like an actual ask. It's like, I'm going to override anything you say anyway, which is fair. Yep. And allowed. And preferred. And preferred. So thank you, Eva, for finding the theme.

And also sorry that you had to read these and then wake up at 3 a.m. in the middle of the night to nothing in your home and we actually didn't wait so just to be clear if this is your first episode we haven't read them yet so we're about to read them to each other and hear them for the first time yes and if you would like to submit your personal true crime slash paranormal stories uh for them to be potentially selected by eva herself then you can submit them to and that's why we drink.com and we have have a little submissions section. We also have a section there for story suggestions. I like to always throw that out at the same time. So if you have anything you'd like to throw our way, you can all you can do it all through the website. That's right. Okay, so here is our first November story.

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. This is noelle uh that's fitting almost almost next month you missed it by a month noelle's uh subject line is almost maybe christine's favorite story topic and worst nightmare okay great i don't know so noelle ielle is not new to this podcast. Noelle knows you a little too well. Uh-oh. Okay. Noelle says, Dear Em, Christine, Eva, Gio, Juniper, Lemon, and company. Hello.

I've actually been promising you this story for over two years now at personal meet and greets, and I'm finally ready to tell my tale. Oh, my goodness. It's about time. So buckle up, and Eva, please give this to m to read oh well oh eva okay so at least one of the things you've requested it has happened already um i trust their steady voice oh my goodness i like that that suggests that christine has like an off the fucking charts voice like i'm uh i'm not just gonna not even acknowledge that okay you're

squawking no no no uh, no. Woof. Okay. I trust their steady voice. Okay. So that means I have to get into character. Yeah, like no pressure, Em. Geez. To give it the drama it deserves. And I'm dying to hear Christine's reaction in real time.

Okay. So there you are. Am I squawking? You're squawking. So you go, wah! Okay. Okay. That is way more you than me, but I'll try.

You're definitely more of the midpoint and i'm the like the you're the two extremes my voice is a gemini at the same yeah that's right either i'm freaking the fuck out or i'm like too chilled okay anyways here is my story with what i can only describe as the black eyed kids yep that's what i was afraid of in college a large group of us rented a cabin in tahoe and i needed to bring my two-year-old son with me a couple of things relevant to the story one he was adorable and tiny just over two years old with bouncing curly locks and past his all the way past his shoulders and was small enough that he was still in diapers. Okay, got it.

So you like have the Gerber baby. Got it. Two, I'm a very light sleeper, especially when he was this young and all my parent instincts were on high alert and attuned with him. He couldn't rustle without me sensing it, waking up, assessing the situation and going back to sleep.

Three, we went in December, so all I brought for him was this snow outfit, sweatpants, and rubber-soled footie pajamas, all things with distinct legs and thus legged silhouettes. I don't like what that's foreshadowing. And number four, this was my first time, quote, out on the town as a single mom, and I, as such, was not drinking this weekend. Okay.

We got to the cabin on Friday afternoon, and something felt a bit unsettling. We shrugged it off, and the garbage hadn't been emptied outside. It didn't look as nice as the pictures. Maybe we were just being snobby. We cleaned up and went about our evening. We stayed up late into the night, around 1.30 or 2 in the morning. And I went to bed and had a hard time falling asleep despite being incredibly tired. I just couldn't shake this nauseous feeling. So when I thought I woke up, I was feeling like I

was hung over and confused. And I assumed it was a lack of sleep, but it was not. The sunlight was streaming into the room. and i looked over at my son next to me so pleased that he slept through the night quietly his eyes were open and he wasn't breathing as i sat up and leaned over i noticed his eyes were ink black and bulging out of their sockets slightly and i screamed uh as i did so his mouth opened slowly as though to absorb the sound and his eyes bulged growing darker and more glass like i couldn't move i couldn't scream i was stuck and felt ice cold terror fully engulfed me as i realized that this thing wasn't my son and it was not human then i sat bolt upright in bed for real this time sobbing heavily and the sunlight was the same as the nightmare i spun to look at him my heart

pounding his breathing was deep and even his eyes were closed and his face was relaxed peacefully i felt sick shaking and wiping away tears i pried open each eye gently and they were normal i like how there's i'm sure there's a gent no gentle way to do that so i would have done the same thing though i would have yeah no totally i'd be like give me your fucking eyes i gotta probably not very gently on my part i would have been like hang on i watched him sleep for about 10 minutes checked his eyes again and went to make tea okay we, we all need that. We need us to sip something after that. Right. I mean, how do you even fall asleep after that? I was convinced that I was hallucinating. My friend Jake was awake, and we both acknowledged that we had trouble

sleeping, probably because of the altitude change or the snow without elaborating any further. I did not tell anyone about my nightmare. We had one more night in the cabin and i tried to stay awake so i'd be so tired that i wouldn't dream i put my son in his playpen to sleep and then hung out in the living room with my friends until close to two in the morning checking on my son constantly i figured that it was nerves from my first time out and about as a single mom and when i went into the bedroom to sleep something felt menacing in the corner with shadows advancing on his playpen in the shifting moonlight. I scooped him up and held him tightly on my chest and tried to fall asleep. The next morning at breakfast, my friend Derek told me that he didn't really appreciate me letting my son wander around upstairs at night in his nightgown.

Stop it. When he had a bathroom down when we had a bathroom downstairs okay so remember the baby is held to her chest and also uh this baby does not have a nightgown only had not have like a victorian nightgown got it legged silhouettes let's remember legged silhouettes legged silhouette i remember that i i knew he was with me the whole night and i was feeling extra jumpy uh at that point my sister and another friend who was sleeping in another upstairs bedroom mentioned that when we were trying to fall asleep both nights every time they closed their eyes they would see two little curly haired blonde girls in vintage 1800s dresses with ink black eyes running towards their room stop goodbye why did you why is this

when you tell everyone that why did you not mention that the second it happened oh em and i would have been like wake up everybody wake up that's where you time that's the squawk that's when you hear the squawk that's both of our squawking no no i'm not gonna wait two nights of that okay you're just like stirring your teacup really loudly. Like, oops, did I wake you? I have a story to tell you. I'd just be going clang, clang, clang on an empty cup. Time to wake up.

Okay. So in case you missed that, Noelle's friends were seeing two Victorian girls running at them both nights. When the girl's hands enclosed, oh my God. When the girl's hands enclosed around their throats and began to squeeze they would wake up okay so not only were they running at you they were literally choking you and they had black eyes and they had ink black eyes oh okay so apparently they also had the same curls and the same dress as described. My sister also woke up around 3 a.m.

Both nights. Her throat was dry and scratchy, but too nervous to get out of bed. So that freaks me out because every time I wake up with a sore throat now, I'm going to think they were black eyed children grabbing my neck. Great. Not like the entire state of California is on fire, but like maybe there's a black eyed Victorian child in your house. Christine's officially going to get a text from me every time I wake up with a sore throat now so every night every night turns out four of

the six of us had seen or experienced the black eyed children and derrick the fourth one who was sleeping in an additional bedroom had seen the shadow in the hall around 3 a.m at that point it was time to go anyways uh yeah it was certainly time to go even if it wasn't already time to go we collected our things going upstairs in pairs and triple checking everything a year later we tried to drive by the cabin but couldn't find it even though i know we were on a specific street we rented it on air on airbnb but the listing doesn't show my in my account history what occasionally we'll ask each other about that weekend, but no one has any explanation.

Thank you so much for all of your storytelling. If you read this on the show, know that I'm squealing excitedly and sorry it was so long. Christine, I hope that you enjoyed it. Em, you killed it. Oh, Jesus, thank you. Wow.

Fun fact, y'all have become a fixture in our house and have made your way into my work. I even made a special jewelry collection in honor of the show called team spirit stop it oh my gosh because i can't pick between ghosts and wine i hope that you get back on the road again soon and i get to say hello fresh in person fondly noel noel oh my goodness that you're squealing we're squawking there's a lot of noise a lot ofawking. There's a lot of noise. A lot of birds.

When there's no birds at all. Well, today, also, when we got on Zoom, Eva was like, there's a murder of crows outside my apartment. I was like, can you stop? Like, this is terrifying. I'm alone in my haunted house. Also, I didn't even get to add this. Okay, sorry. A couple things.

First thing is Derek's kind of an asshole. Sorry. Yeah, Derek's for sure. I mean is Derek's kind of an asshole. Sorry. Yeah, Derek's for sure. I mean, I'm sure he's a great friend, but, like, to be like, hey, I don't appreciate that. I didn't appreciate that. I didn't appreciate your child. Derek clearly is not a parent. Derek certainly doesn't want to be, which is like, okay.

Listen, I get it, but I feel like. Look, I don't want to be a parent, but I know better than to like tell someone like, hey, your kid can't do this or that. I'd be like, yeah, I'd be like, OK, I'm going to bring an extra pillow to muffle the sounds of your child running around. But also, yeah, now I know to do that no matter what, because the running around I might hear is ghost or a black eyed children running. Yeah, there's it's hard to win in this scenario. But yeah, I mean, listen, I feel like as two year olds em and i probably would have been you know running around aimlessly and it's not really our parents fault it's kind of like you know i'm surprised i didn't set things on fire at two just by accident just running

and bumping into things i once set my windowsill on fire but i was like 15 so that doesn't really count but anyway i don't i think at two i was only damaging myself because i was just running face first into walls and shit definitely a lot of like mantle injuries yeah fireplace injuries okay anyway um i have a story here this is from lindsey she her pronouns thank you lindsey and the subject is just one more time hi eva m christ I'm Christine, Gio, Junie, and scary-ass fruit demons. So my neighborhood in Baltimore is famous for Halloween. Kids literally come from all over because the close proximity of row homes think townhouses with a much cooler name.

Yeah, really. And the awesomeness of the residents mean they can collect a huge haul of candy. Supervising adults also carry around glasses of wine. Okay, well. Wait a minute. So we're going to Baltimore. Got it. Maybe that's the real reason all the parents are like, don't you remember that great neighborhood?

Hop in the car. And the adults handing out candy on the porches are usually down to replenish the supply from the bottle slash cooler that's sitting on the porch. Oh, yeah. clearly team wine here the first year i owned my house i was sitting outside handing out candy with my cat mini who was on a leash oh they're so cute there are kids and parents everywhere because it's the height of trick-or-treating but all of a sudden there's just this random woman standing in my front lawn without a child staring at the house i ask if i can help her and she tells me i used to live here okay cool i wasn't sure what i was supposed to say next but before i can think of an appropriate reply she adds yeah i just got out of

the icu they didn't think i'd make it what my grand i'm not laughing i'm just it's scary and so i don't know i would be laughing if this person said it to my face because i'd be so uncomfortable yes okay yeah exactly okay um i just got out of the icu they didn't think i'd make it my granddaughter's down the street and i wanted to see this place goodbye at this point she looked at me hopefully clearly hoping to be invited in as someone who a grew up with stranger danger warnings in the 80s b had almost been kidnapped two years before and c had a crap ton of laundry unfolded in the living room i declined politely what a roller coaster of a life this person has like

you just said so many things i want others i want other listener stories sent in about those things you just listed yeah you just gave us a through z i would like a through z yeah yeah um also i just love that like the culmination of it is laundry which like in my mind i'd be like yeah maybe she's a murderer but also like my house is so messy right now yeah can you come back where like when like the crime reporters take pictures of this place it looks spotless that'd be yeah yeah make sure you vacuum first yeah oh my god i'm the exact same way had i known about the black-eyed kids at that point thanks m for giving me yet another reason not to let randos into my house

it would have been a lot less polite all of a sudden mini the cat who'd been completely chill about the kids wandering up to the porch at this point appeared to notice the woman and freaked out i looked down to quiet her and this is where things got weird i only looked down for about 10 seconds but when i looked back up the woman was gone i ran down to the sidewalk and looked both directions, and she wasn't walking away. Keep in mind, she had just gotten out of the ICU, as I guess she just totally announced to everybody.

Yeah, very, very vaguely also. Very vague. Without any information. It's like very specific and yet very vague at the same time. Yeah. Okay. I'm assuming this person is not alive, by the way. Like, I assume this person must be a ghost.

Yeah. Something bad is happening. Between that and navigating the crowd of trick-or-treaters, she should have been moving slowly enough for me to have at least seen a retreating figure. But no, nothing. When I got back to my porch, I looked over at my neighbors and asked if they'd seen where she'd gone. my porch i looked over at my neighbors and asked if they'd seen where she'd gone they told me while they'd seen me clearly having a conversation they hadn't seen who i was talking with okay goodbye okay also scam and also the fact that the last thing that that woman said was like i didn't know if i'd make it out well i got news for you i don't think it did oh my god i didn't even think of that

m yeah so like oh so she like died and then like came back to see her house one last time yeah yeah yep um okay this is the last line i don't doubt her granddaughter was trick-or-treating down the street i just don't think she'd made it out of the icu after all yep oh goose cam lindsey okay also like sucks for you that you just moved into this house and now your neighbors are like good the lady next door talks to random people first of all that's on a leash i was gonna say i was gonna say the cat thing of like okay well you didn't start hot with the fact that like you were the one with like a public cat outdoor cat someone who puts

my public cat on a leash i know that you don't always get the best reaction from neighbors but yeah and now also you talk to yourself. And now you're like, have you seen the woman from the ICU? Like, you've lost all shots of, like, making friends. Can you imagine? You're standing there with your cat on a leash. And you're like, actually, I haven't folded the laundry yet. And they're like, what the hell is she doing?

Also, I've almost been kidnapped twice. And they're like, this person's gotta go oh my goodness oh my god and then being like mini be quiet and they're like oh my god nobody you're definitely the enigma of the of the suburban the suburban home okay so if the row homes that's what it was the row homes if we were your neighbors we would be all over you all over this like we'd be on your side don't worry and we are on your side yeah well we for sure would have been there because there was wine being offered well that's true so yeah yeah okay next story first of all thank you for that thank you lindsey also sorry i hope you made a friend also sorry we're laughing at your story it's terrifying i

hope that hoa like got you a connection to some buddies. Okay. Oh, my God. This is a story from Natalia, who uses she, her pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns. And the story subject line is, again, encounter with a black-eyed kid. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. This is a very specific theme. Hello, and that's why we drink team.

this is a very specific theme uh hello and that's why you drink team i've never had a story to write in before but last night i had the most wild dream and i had to share so i had a dream that i was being chased in an old abandoned apartment building and at this point i wasn't sure that what was i wasn't sure what was chasing me but i knew that if it had caught me I would be in trouble um I would also feel that way I didn't have the guts to look back because I was too scared my heart was racing and my hands were sweaty and I was running up an empty stairwell this stairwell was dark and cold with all cement walls as most creepy stairwells are and the stairs were spiraling up and I finally made it to a dark gray door. I pushed it open and entered a long,

once again, dark hallway. And I started frantically trying to open all the doors. And I finally found one that was open. I entered and locked the door behind me. I was in a tiny room. Once again, gray with one light in the middle on and a single chair.

So like, it looks like an interrogation room in my mind. All of the sudden, I hear footsteps, and I turn to look back to the door, and I place my hands on the door, trying to keep it shut. And suddenly, it starts violently banging, and I hear a sickly, sweet voice say, let me in, please. Oh, God. I don't respond, but jump back in horror as I see the lock to the door slowly twist open, and suddenly this door slams open.

Running towards me with a butcher knife is the most horrifying child I have ever seen. The child was all gray and wearing all dark old-timey looking pants and shirt he looks like a photo you'd see of a farm boy from ages ago but the worst part was when he had these giant eyes that were like pools of black like nothing i'd ever seen before i was screaming so loudly as this kid was stabbing me that I woke up with my boyfriend who proceeded to wake me up. Thank God. When I woke up, I heard a distinctive childlike voice, the same as before.

And, uh, I heard it whisper, gotcha. Oh my God. Ever since the dream, my head has been spinning. I never had a headache like this. I can't focus on anything because it's spinning so much. And whenever I stand up, I feel like I'm going to faint. I was also puking all night after this dream. And it's evening now, but I don't know how I'll go to sleep tonight because I'm too scared he'll come back. I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm going to die. As a side note, I love the show and all that you do.

Thank you for creating a community of people who share such unique interests. Okay, you're welcome, Natalia. Oh my God. Are you okay? Can you please tell us that you're okay? Are you alive? Can you Skype me real quick? I need to make sure you're all right.

Natalia. I don't even know. This is horrible. That's horrible. Thank you. make sure you're all right natalia i i don't even know this is horrible that's horrible thank you we never really read letters that say like oh this happened last night that's true very timely well and i will say too eva when she was telling us about the stories was like yeah i had nightmares all night so like clearly this is yeah spreading oh my goodness okay well thank you for your story and i hope you are okay

i do as well um please let us know because that is terrifying um you gotcha that's i mean horrible i hate that i hate that very much okay um oh okay sorry i feel like i keep interrupting but one final thing is that while one final thing lol right one additional thing is that while i was printing these out i was texting you guys but my printer just like fucking so i printed out all the ads in a row fine no problem printed out a different paper no problem i tried to print out the first black eyed kid story and the printer just like completely lost its mind and it's brand new and it started flashing and then it was like error error and i i could not figure out what was wrong with it oh no so and it wouldn't turn off i had to unplug it because it like wouldn't

turn off so apparently these are just all very cursed stories so thanks everybody excellent can't wait to drive home after this i know be careful please okay so this is a story from allison she her pronouns thank you allison and the subject is black eyed kids and my new ring doorbell oh i don't like that let's see what's gonna happen okay hello to eva lemon avocado okay good order already fucking avocado i totally forgot about him. I didn't. Hello to Eva, Lemon, Avocado, Geo, Juniper, Christine, and Em in no specific order.

Okay. Uh-huh. First, may I suggest someone somehow... What? First, may I suggest someone somehow get you guys a petrified vegetable in the spirit of inclusivity? Huh. Do you want one? it depends on the vegetable okay what's like the unacceptable one versus the acceptable one uh i would like i want to i want one that's um like a squash or something like something that's got a funny sound

to it you want like a dead pumpkin okay yeah okay don't actually mail us dead pumpkin dead vegetables please because then we're gonna get kicked out of our mail like our there's gonna be so many rotten foods in our po box but they're never gonna let us come fun creativity world i would like one that that warrants a lot of fun nicknames from it you know like a fun name sure the end that's all it doesn't matter it doesn't matter but i i approve of the inclusivity that's a that's true it actually matters quite a bit but please don't send us dead fruit or dead food because um our po box will uh evict us so yeah yeah we've worked really hard to get them to like us and it's gonna end poorly that way yes

we already get enough weird shit in the mail that they're like really questioning it's true the the guy there has now officially knows my name because of the weird things that he's had to hand me and he's like yeah the the two times ago that i picked up mail for us was the time where he knew my name without me having to say it and he went m right and i went yep and he went and he goes thank god he went the podcast right and i went, the podcast, right? And I went, yep. And he went, yeah, I've got some weird stuff for you. Yeah, here are some teeth. That is not a joke. We receive teeth. Okay.

Anyway, Empire, Christine Chappell, and the boozers and shakers all over the world, you know what to do. Oh, is that Send Us Vegetables? Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, no. Now to the good stuff. I have a spoopy story to tell you guys about my first experience with black eyed kids here goes your first i know i didn't like that adjective either okay i had just listened to the episode about the black eyed kids and though i

knew about their existence beforehand the stories and hearing christine's reactions sent me over the edge into okay i, I'm thoroughly terrified of this now territory. So anyway, I listened to that episode of my car alone at night around 2.30 AM coming home from work. I work in a veterinary emergency clinic, so hours are long and random. That was my first mistake. The second mistake was apparently trying to fall asleep in my own home after listening to those stories at exactly 3 33 a.m q collective of course from those with paranormal experience yes witching hour at exactly 3 33 a.m our doorbell rang first of all if a doorbell is ringing past like 10 o'clock from like 10 o'clock to like 9 a.m yeah they're like those like 11 12 hours you just shouldn't even answer your door

because it's a serial killer it's not good unless it's postmates unless it's like food that's okay that's true i usually just tell them to leave it at the door and not ring the doorbell because of my dog. So if someone's ringing the door, I'm like, you, something's very wrong. Okay. She says, there are a few reasons this is weird. One, it was 333 in the morning. Two, the doorbell rang, but the motion activated light on our porch did not turn on. Good night.

And three, our doorbell has been broken since we moved in three years ago sayonara oh my god oh my god okay so my fiance clinks engagement ring against glass and offers some advertisement for the zola app springs out of bed and runs to the door i threw on some real pants and cautiously followed him into the hallway i watched him hesitate before peering out the peephole then he held there for about a minute before jogging up the stairs to look out the second floor window then book it to the living room to look out the back windows then check every door and window in our house to make sure they were locked. Ugh. After a long wait, I finally got up the courage to ask what he had seen.

This was my third mistake. Oh, God. Okay. I'm glad you're keeping tabs, though. Jesus. Yeah. My totally rational, serious, logical adult male fian male fiance with whom I have investigated multiple haunted locations without so much as a word about a sighting who humors me by letting me listen to the podcast while doing daily chores, but doesn't listen on his own time, looks me in the eyes and says, I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I mean, I saw something and i don't know what it was

this is not a sentence i expected to hear not from him quote it seemed like nobody was there but i waited a long time and then suddenly someone walked away i didn't see them walk up they weren't standing there but i definitely saw them leave see this is the only time though where i would assume it was a murderer before a ghost is if someone was at my door waiting for me to answer i'd be like okay this is the strangers come to life this is my worst nightmare well i felt that way until your episode on black eyed kids and then i was like it's a 50 50 toss-up like it's either realistically it could be anything at this point right like either i've become tamra or there's a black eyed kid standing on my doorstep oh okay so she says so the way our porch is set up there's

nowhere to stand that isn't seen via the peephole if you were truly desperate you could press yourself up against the door itself like full body press and maybe we wouldn't see you but this person question mark maybe person walked out of the frame like nothing happened well that's not great i managed that's that's true at least there was only one of them no such luck mistake number four had just been made he tells me no that the first person walked out onto the sidewalk where a younger kid was walking met up with each other in perfect sync without either kid having to speed up or slow down to meet the other one and then they straight up disappeared good night i have goose cam

horrifically horrible i have mega goose camp. The way he said it to me was this. They like ran right into each other and I lost them. Like lost them. Like they weren't visible anymore. I asked what they looked like. Keep in mind he has no knowledge of black eyed kids and still doesn't. According to him, they were teenagers. One much older than the other.

According to him, they were teenagers, one much older than the other, wearing matching jeans and hooded jackets opened with white or light gray sweatshirts underneath. They didn't have the hoods up and they didn't have sharp bangs, but he told me for some reason he couldn't remember their faces. I didn't prompt him. He just described them calmly, got a weird look on his face like he was trying to figure something out then told me for some reason i can't remember what their eyes looked like i could describe the face but no eyes i'm scared i'm scared bye so i oh my god so i went back to bed and bong ripped some sage and cried for the rest of my life yeah i've gotten that one in a while yep the end hope it was as spoopy for you guys as it was for me thanks for everything you

all work so hard to make this podcast amazing can't wait to see you guys if you come back to charleston south carolina allison wow so that's so interesting and i wonder if like this is when i hear about aliens or black eyed kids that i get really scared because i think is it one of those scenarios where when you know about it that like it's more likely to happen to you do you know what i mean i guess so because i feel like i hear these stories where people are like i had just learned about black eyed kids and then like a month later this thing crazy thing happened to me look i'm just'm just hoping that it never happens to me. Especially like. Well, yeah.

Well, especially like to, like, I live with someone who's also like usually pretty skeptical and like, so do you. So for them to have the reaction versus the believer is what's scarier because it's like, oh, okay. So like I, we both know between the two of us, I'm the one who would make something up like this. Exactly. Or like exaggerate or like, or not even even exaggerate but just like believe that it was something

I'd be quicker to assume it's something like that yeah yeah and if you yeah no same here and I've honestly in the past like begged blaze not to open doors like in hotels and stuff when someone this happened on our trip we were staying at this motel like in the middle of missouri nowhere and um the someone was banging on the door and it was a real person it was not a black kid but i was like don't answer the door it's two in the morning no there's no good reason some random man is banging on our door like yeah there's no reason what good could come of this right so anyway i feel like you and I are more like get away from the door. Oh, yeah. It's it's either a serial killer or a black guy. They don't need to know I'm here. Exactly. No.

Hmm. OK, well, good luck to you. I hope when you said that was your first encounter, you meant last. Yes, I do, too. Yikes. OK, so this is the this is our next story. This is from Costanza, who uses she her pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns and the subject line is the crone oh my gosh you have natalia noel and costanza what a beautiful like trio of like a real gamut of names here it sounds like a christmas trio it sounds like a like a story about magical people who are going to do something pretty spectacular on a holiday only yeah correct yeah you get it but by hallmark by hallmark only my only hallmark maybe abc family

i'm sorry free form i almost i was like i'm gonna slap you through this camera okay uh this is the story hello m christine eva geo juniper and everyone else i'm costanza from argentina i found out about your podcast well uh when you were guests on self helpless oh wow that was recent wow well if you uh if you for those who don't know we recently guested on the show self helpless and it was very fun oh it was so much fun go check it out um since then i've been listening to you guys non-stop and i have to say you're amazing oh my i love your listener stories so i thought i'd contribute with my brother's story i would really like to hear your thoughts on this one what do you think was going on here we go i initially came to la plata buenos aires for college uh i was broke so i needed to find a cheap place to live i found this spacious room in an old three-bed house

for very cheap and immediately moved in with my cat named kobu the other two rooms were rented by older people so the place was really quiet or so i thought i invited a few friends to see my new place they took a look around and saw the really beat-up furniture especially a wardrobe that had seen better days and had what looked like children's drawings all over the doors no thanks my friends used to tease me that an old woman had probably died in that room and that the old crone's spirit would come back and kill me what a fun joke your friends sound hilarious we were joking at the time i had no idea so many things were going to happen in that place that those occurrences would be the reason i'd move out the following year oh boy everything

was going well at first until I started to notice some odd things were happening. It started innocently enough, like I'd take a shower and put my things back in the wardrobe in a certain order, flip-flops, towel, and soap. And when I'd open the wardrobe later, they'd be in completely different order, soap, flip-flops, towel. Ooh.

I don't like that. Things are moving around without you knowing. Yeah, that's freaky. I would hear strange sounds all the time like metallic crickets. I don't know what that means but I hate it. It sounds like the grudge.

I don't know. That's just what I think of. All kinds of bugs started appearing everywhere. Lots of spiders, cockroaches and even rare long-legged centipedes. Goodbye. You had me at cockroaches. That's already a nightmare. I had no idea where they were coming from,

but they'd all go to the same spot in my room, a corner right next to my bed. First of all, move your fucking bed. Because like... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sleeping safely anymore when I know that. It's also no longer your bedroom. It's now their bedroom.

If you know exactly the corner they're going to, put your bed somewhere else. This is a problem. There was a big carpet covering most of the floor. So I decided to pull it off to see what was so interesting about that corner of the room. There was, oh my God, here we go. Oh no, oh no. Do you want to guess what it was? Is it a fucking dead crone?

Almost. An eyeball? There was a dead rat there was a human-sized brownish stain on the floor so it was decomp oh no which was creepy but i still didn't think much of it i just sleep with a bottle of bug spray next to my bed to fight off all the bugs oh my god is that not the most like remember when 20s remember when i got poltergroped and then deirdre moved out and there was a decomp stain right under where i was sleeping that's right good night okay eventually things got worse well kelseprise um one one day i was on my computer sitting on a chair looking out my window into the patio. And the patio connected to all three rooms.

I could see my neighbor sweeping outside and later heard her door shut when she went back into her room. I kept doing what I was doing until I saw a very tall black figure from the corner of my eye. It went past my window and kept going in the direction of the sweeping lady's door. I kept expecting to hear the door open and shut, in the direction of the sweeping lady's door i kept expecting to hear the door open and shut but the sound never came when i looked over there was no one there greats and i are seeing people on the patio good one night i was sleeping in my bed and felt chills down my spine and behind my ear a voice whispered something to me that i didn't understand it sounded like deep moth in english uh when i opened my eyes i saw a black shadow filtering through the boards of the ceiling and disappearing so it was like oh evaporating

away or climbing through your ceiling boards after whispering in your ear my cat would get very upset every time something happened and one time i saw him getting scared and going to hide under the wardrobe so i decided to take a picture something white and blurry appeared in the photo and when i saw it i sat up on the bed put my feet on the floor to get up and at that moment i saw something the size of a fox darting through my legs and running out of the room stop from then on i started texting my friends every time something strange occurred just in case something happened to me uh someone would know what was going on oh no things started happening more and more often i felt my mood change i was

very angry all the time for no apparent reason which was not normal for me i kept having dreams that i was trying to escape that room and something wouldn't let me it would just pull me back in i started having violent thoughts i would lose my temper with my cat and i thought of hurting him until i'd shake all right oh sorry until i'd shake that off sorry so i had i had thoughts of hurting him until i would shake it off horrified of what was going through my head because i love my cat so much i love him as much as you guys love geo i would never hurt him in a million years so why was i having these thoughts oh no i would shout at the neighbor i would shout at my neighbor for things that were not that big of a deal i just felt rage all the time it was awful so we're implying a little possession here i assume right or an attachment an attachment of sorts that could lead to possession something bad i

guess is how i would put it something dark is with you something not great i decided to leave that place as soon as i could a week before i moved out i was sleeping in my bed and something uh woke me at 3 36 a.m oh um i woke up because i heard a scream and I texted my friend to keep him updated and I went back to bed. An hour later, I was woken up by the same scream, but this time it was coming from right beside my bed. I opened my eyes and wanted to get up, but I couldn't. I was experiencing sleep paralysis. I saw something come out from the side corner of my bed and it grabbed my neck with one hand and pushed my shoulder with the other to keep me in bed oh no the only thing that occurred to me was to fight it with my will

to live i couldn't see it but i felt it i kept thinking over and over i want to live finally the thing went away and i couldn't move again and i got up to text my friend to tell him everything and noticed it was 4 36 a.m exactly an hour since i And I got up to text my friend to tell him everything and noticed it was 4.36 a.m., exactly an hour since I'd woken up to the first scream. Oh my God. Oh my God. After I moved away, things went back to normal. I was finally in myself again.

I started to investigate who lived in that room and started to ask around. And I found out a man lived there for 12 years. At first, he was a kind, polite man. But by the time he moved out he was filled with hatred neighbors told me he'd bring odd people to the house all the time and that you could hear strange sounds coming from the room and sounded like some kind of chant oh no i didn't find out more i just know that kobu and i have a good life now away from whatever haunted that place i'm sorry this

is so long. More things happened, but I tried to stick to the most important ones. I'd like to hear your thoughts on a completely different matter. I'll be moving to the U.S. for grad school, so I hope I can catch one of your live shows. Yay! Cheers, Costanza. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Well, I'm glad you got out of there. Did Costanza give their pronouns i forget her she her i love that she's like um i want to hear your thoughts it's like we inserted them throughout the entire those were our thoughts just holy shit was our thought a lot of squawking um i wow i mean okay wait i have a guess though do you think that remember when eva said she searched a very specific phrase and then regretted it do you think it was 3 a.m maybe oh maybe i'm trying she's probably she's literally because black eyed kids wasn't in that phrase right exactly but i don't know i don't know

if the rest had 3 a.m probably not but who knows all i know is it was terrible and uh i'm i don't envy that part of your life costanza and also poor kobu because you know cats and dogs can like all see more than we can poor animals so bad for that cat but i'm glad you're both safe now me too i mean i'm glad yeah i mean that's that's the moral of the story is i'm very glad you're you're out of there because yikes yikes you made a good call leaving sorry i wish we had more like intelligent you know help i've got nothing left except ew very glad you're, you're out of there. Cause yikes. Yikes. You, you made a good call leaving. Sorry. I wish we had more like intelligent, you know,

help. I've got nothing left except ew. I hate it. And, uh, I'm glad you're gone. I'm glad you're not there. Yeah.

We got a good, thanks. I hate it. We got a good, um, love you mean it and good luck with that. Uh, but thank you for listening to our show.

You know, it makes me wonder if she's like how far she is. Cause what if she's like at the beginning and now you know in like a year is gonna hear us read that oh yeah yep or uh anyway okay so this is a story from emily who's she her pronouns thank you emily the subject is the church is the devil's playground when it's empty my grandma so that was a quote that was a quote your grandma said that okay your grandma i would like to have a conversation with too i would like to watch and have a conversation with your grandma and not be part of it oh my gosh

okay sorry so it says quote the church is the devil's playground when it's empty end quote my grandma good to know signed grandma signed xoxo grandma lol for lots of love got it lol liless okay so this says hello glorious human sweet creatures and dead produce first and foremost i'm not against any religion that's a good start way to let us know yeah yep i'm not against any religion there are good and bad religious people my family just happens to be on the shitty side of that line i think a lot of family yeah i can really you're not alone in that yeah a lot of people can relate to that i would agree so don't feel bad making fun oh i see so she's just giving us permission to yes make light of whatever's about to happen oh boy i grew up as a granddaughter niece and cousin of a shit ton of pastors oh

a good old-fashioned southern baptist family where everyone is either a pastor or married to one being a part of the church mob i had some weird experiences growing up my grandparents watched me for 90 of my childhood since my grandpa was a head pastor he lived on the church mob i had some weird experiences growing up my grandparents watched me for 90 of my childhood since my grandpa was a head pastor he lived on the church grounds growing up i spent an insane amount of time inside the dark empty church churches can be creepy in general but it's a whole different ball game when you're the only one in there at night my grandma made it clear to me that the church wasn't a safe place when the congregation wasn't there she would tell us about how the demons come out to play whenever it's

empty oh god thanks grandma i mean wow that's like setting you up for a lifetime of fear and anxiety you just need a little wop a little worship and praise worship and prayer yeah yeah we are praying oh my god okay that's Meg of the podcast always says. I'm not going to steal that without credit. Okay. She would tell us about how the demons come out to play whenever it's empty. I spent so much time playing in the church during the day, but I refused to go in alone at night unless I absolutely had to. Sometimes I would have to go get my grandpa who happened to spend most of his time in the church or walking around the property.

After dusk, entering the church felt like stepping into a nightmare there were weird drafts you didn't notice during the day unreal silence shifting shadows and mirrors and an overwhelming feeling that something was hovering right above and slightly behind me i remember this feeling being so strong that i would take off running through the halls trying to find my grandpa i'd call out his name and hear nothing in response i would circle the church and find him in his office that had been dark during my first couple of laps around oh boy the halls resembled a ladder two main halls running parallel with connecting hallways in between them oh my gosh when running through the halls you could see a figure running in the hallway parallel to you no no no you can't no you couldn't

you wrote that wrong that's that didn't happen false couldn't have been okay you could see a figure running in the hallway parallel to you when you passed by the connecting halls that's heinous i tried explaining this away as shadows when i was in my teens but the lights were always off and it was close to pitch black nothing explicitly horrible happened to me when i was out there alone but the feeling of dread was overwhelming growing up i was never allowed to watch anything scary creepy or quote of the devil that's probably our podcast so harry potter got it har Harry Potter. And then that's why we drink.

And that's why you drink. Yeah. Oh my God. The next line is literally no Harry Potter for me. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I don't know where I could have come up with these feelings or thoughts.

I had horrible night terrors growing up. All of them took me to the church at night. Every single one. Ew. In almost every nightmare, I was running through the church away from someone or something sometimes i could tell that i was someone else in the church and would end up witnessing some horrific scene or another what haunted me would change but it was always in the

church bears alligators wolves werewolves shadows and occasionally horrifying men with guns drills knives or whatever fucked up thing my brain could come up with i also had several dreams that were calmer than normal where i would do something that would lead to my own death no i had dreams oh my god i had dreams of drinking bleach in the supply closet drowning in the baptism tank oh my god oh my god oh my god burning myself on the furnace and crawling into a casket during a funeral and letting them bury me oh my god okay excuse me holy shit next level oh my god okay what's next i gotta know i know i feel ill oh god i've also had a few other moments at other churches we've traveled to the worst was when

we stayed the night inside another church to avoid paying for a hotel room okay i think that's that's dad that's a very dad thing to do like that's if a dad and a pat like the only pastor dads get that right like that special uh that special stereotype of like yeah it's like a venn diagram of like dads and pastors and right in the middle is sleeping in churches yeah no motel eight tonight yeah okay uh i was on a trip with only the guys from my family so they made sure i had my own room to stay in so you were so you were alone in a church a supply closet good night sorry where you have also dreamed to like drink bleach and stuff gotcha yes wait let me let me do the do the dramatic sentence again i was on a trip with the with only the guys from my family so they made sure i had my own room to stay in

a supply closet they made me sleep on a folding table in a supply closet that's just the by the way that's just dudes in general of like oh here's a great comfy bed for you alone here's a table that folds out and you're in a closet actually that is the most harry potter thing i've ever heard yeah you didn't even know at the time but you're a wizard actually did you know that i mean maybe i had to crawl onto the table straight from the doorway because it took up the entire space. I cried the entire night because I could hear toys playing music in the nursery room next to the closet. Oh, my God.

This is like really horrifying. I don't know if my fears were rational because everyone in my family told me I was imagining things. But my grandma always told me i was right to be afraid she had cleaned the church on her own for over 40 years and knew what happened when the sun went down that's a badass grandma who's like i'll do this for four decades and just deal with it yeah but also put it right on my grandchild my young my young impressionable grandchild so yeah i guess that's fair she cleaned up a lot of knocked over vases do you say vase or vase i always feel like an asshole when i say vase vases are from walmart

and vases are from target from the church okay got it so maybe this one's like a it sounds like if you're if your room is a supply closet you're allowed allowed to say vase. Okay. I was going to say vase since it was inside a fancy church. Oh, vase. You do whatever feels right. Because at this point, the story is really going downhill. So you can call it anything you'd like.

Okay, good. Cause English is certainly not my first language. Okay. She cleaned up a lot of knocked over vases and mysterious stains there were areas of the church she refused to go into those areas happen to be nightmare hot spots for me obviously i can't go back in there to this day i won't go for more reasons than just the creepies i don't believe in a lot of the things i was taught in that building but i believe in the things i felt thanks for reading my personal nightmares with love emily wow that's terrifying also like to hear imagine trying to

fall asleep in a closet and there's toys in the other room that are playing themselves i would have been like i'm a boy tonight i'm sleeping in the same space seriously that's so unfair and also like i wonder if there was something about you i mean not to like i'm not victim blaming you but i'm saying like i wonder if there was something about you. I mean, not to like, I'm not victim blaming you, but I'm saying like, I wonder if there was something about you that just the church or whatever was dark there was like not having it with you or something. Was it because you were alone or was it because you were more imaginative or was it because you were more open to that stuff?

Was it because you didn't read Harry Potter? Like there's so many options. Or maybe you just like, you already knew that place was creepy as shit and they were like, oh, you're aware. So let's mess with you. Yes. Maybe like she was on to something. I mean, who knows?

But it sounds like some people just have that natural like. Sadly, a gift. Attraction to demons. I don't know. But yikes, that's terrifying. And I'm sorry that you had that experience, because I think if I had dreams like that, I would be a lot more troubled. In today's world, I would have had my phone recording all night long

just to get as many sounds as I could. But then maybe it would have turned off by itself. Maybe it would have had an Eva thing where it was flashing at 3 in the morning for no reason. Yeah, good point. Good point. Poor Eva had to read all these alone and then sleep. And wake up at 3 a.m.

I don't know if Eva slept entirely, but, you know, definitely stayed in a space by yourself. Well, thank you, Eva, for finding these. Thank you for all of you who wrote in. And these were perfectly terrifying. I hope everyone enjoyed their belated Halloween present from us. Yes. Happy Halloween. Hope you were safe.

And we're going to, I guess, just keep spooky season going even through potato season, even through potato season. So if maybe the next theme is potatoes, I don't know how that's going to be possible. But if you know a haunted potato out there, you get to us. Oh, I need that. Remember when we were talking about vegetables, if you have a vegetable, send me a haunted starch. I want a haunted potato. Thank please and thank you. if you do have stories, you can submit them to him. That's why we drink.com. Um,

if you have story suggestions, you could also send them there. If anything you need is on our website. Um, and our socials are 80 WWD podcast. So that's right. Thank you so much. And,

happy search season. Happy search season. And that's why we drink. Yay. Yay. Yay.