And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 49

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Happy December, creeps and peeps! Did we request full moon stories? It sure seems like we did as we've got a whole fun batch of creepy, sweet and just plain wild stories related to the full moon! We also couldn't completely ignore the impending advent so our last story involves a special, festive yet ghostly guest appearance. Thank you to everyone who sent in their stories! Don't forget to submit your scary stories for our big 50th listener's episode bash! Send any and all stories about "How And That's Why We Drink Cursed Me" to [e-mail] by December 2nd! And if you'd like to hear your story read in a lovely Scottish accent by long-time friend of the podcast, CK for our bonus Patreon listener's episodes, you can email CK directly now at [e-mail]!Please consider supporting the companies that support us!Right now, just for our listeners you can go to HuntAKiller.com/DRINK and use promo code DRINK at check out for 20% off your first box. Head to HuntAKiller.com/DRINK for 20% off and show support for our podcast.BetterHELP wants you to start living a happier life TODAY. Visit https://betterhelp.com/drink and join the over 1,000,000 people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. Special offer for ATWWD listeners! Get 10% off your first month at https://betterhelp.com/drink.Right now, Embark has an exclusive offer on their Breed and Health Kit for our listeners this holiday season! Go to embarkvet.com now to get the best deal of the year AND free shipping. Use Promo code DRINK to save $64 off your Embark Breed and Health Kit.Rather than giving an unoriginal gift this holiday, make it unregiftable with a custom gift from Vistaprint. Go to Vistaprint.com/DRINK to get started on your unregiftable gift. The holidays are coming up! Don’t miss your chance to get an unregiftable gift. Get started today at Vistaprint.com/DRINK.

hello and welcome to my special lucky episode 49 of listener stories 49 is here literally for some reason on the mic you use every time your voice gets to a certain decibel it just cuts the audio. So I just hear silence. Like that, I hear silence. Like when you laugh. Yeah. It's very sad because every time you laugh at something I say, I just hear silence. So I have to check to see if you're laughing.

It's like really heartbreaking. Anyway, welcome. It's like your biggest fear from when we were on tour. It's like literally. What if we say something and it's just fucking crickets? Crickets. I wish they would put cricket sound instead of silence but you know that's a story for another day um welcome we're on episode 49 of our listener stories i i remember when we did 22 and it was m's lucky listener episode so i know what's the next big number uh 666

a long time from now i thought you were to say 69 and I was like, whoa. Well, definitely 69, 420, and then 666. That one's going to have a weird theme. I'll just be really honest right now. I will say real quick before we read the awesome stories that you all submitted, our next listener episode is number 150. No, it's number 50. And that is very special because

it comes out right after our 200th episode so we're going to do a special theme and are we announcing the theme here sure okay the theme is cursed by and that's why we drink so if you have a tale of being cursed by us which i think an alarming number of you do. You can submit that for our 50th listener episode. And we gave that prompt to patrons, I think like a week or two ago, just to kind of get them in the know. But so now you all know as well. So if you have a story, send that in. I know a lot of you, specifically with the dolls,

have already sent us emails before saying that they messed you up. So we know that you're out there. We know someone out there has a story. I feel like we should have like a web md profile where it's like most common side effects include like bloody nose crashing your car fender bender you can click the body and be like what part of you hurts and if it's anywhere it's just our fault my bad we again we need to find a waiver to send out to all of you. But yeah, so that's our 50th listener plan theme. So send it in. Yeah.

All right. That means we've read like 300 people's stories or something. Wow. And in the first one, I remember we were just like reading our friends' stories because we had no listeners. Spoiler alert. Yeah. The first episode, we asked our friends to text us last minute because-

Literally, we're sitting there with microphones. We were like, oh, we don't have any stories. We didn oh we don't have any stories we didn't have a following yet so we didn't have anyone send in stories so or we didn't have like enough people to email us so but the notion that we sat down to record the episode and then went oh wait we don't have any stories it's like the most emmett christine bullshit ever okay anyway you're going first this time and this is our this is december yes oh christmas time is here i'm sorry that was late sorry here i am oh do you have plans for christmas are you are you are you just staying home staying here blaze has a holiday off so i'm very happy about that but i think we're just gonna zoom it with with his fam i don't know i think

we just have to stay home you're staying home right i'm staying home although eva and i have both stayed pretty safe and so we have said we might have like christmas breakfast together which is very sweet that's so cute i'm gonna facetime you and force my way in that's fine i will rj and allison are both really braving it and going home but they're going home and quarantining for two weeks first so they're gonna be gone for like the whole month of december so i'm by myself and i'm not going home and quarantining and being with my family because i have seen too many of my fredericksburg friends not uh isolating shout out. Not to call you all out, but except you kind of deserve it. Why don't you come visit me, please?

I really am. I know a lot of people are going to say that planes are surprisingly safe, but it's safer to just not be on a plane, so I just don't want to. I'm not going to be doing anything for all of December, so we will probably FaceTime a lot

because I'll be lonely. Okay, I'll wait till next year. You'll hear from me enough. But anyway, so that's what we're doing for Christmas. Hopefully everyone's staying safe. I know a lot of people for Thanksgiving were really nervous about going home and having to deal with COVID members or people who were COVID deniers. So hopefully that's not what you have to deal with a second time again.

But if that is the case, I'm thinking about you. Mm-hmm. not what you have to deal with a second time again but if that is the case i'm thinking about you so um here's the first story not to like anyway such a bummer but talk about covid deniers and now your stories let's talk about something equally scary so this is uh this one is called a full moon story oh wasn't that our did we have a theme this time eva said it was mostly full moon and then there's a surprise guest at the end that I don't want to spoil. Is it half moon? Is it toenail moon? Which one is it? Is it a different moon? Okay, so this is Full Moon Story. And this is by Abby, who goes by she, her pronouns. Thank you for analyzing pronouns. Abby says, Hi, Eva, Em, Christine, and pets. Hi pets hi i like that just lump sum pets uh my name is

abby and i love your show i've been listening for a while now but it is especially it has especially been keeping me company since quarantine i have a slightly low-key full moon story but thought i'd send it y'all's way when i was in college i used to work at a home for people with traumatic brain injuries. A lot of the patients had other psychiatric diagnoses as well as their brain injuries. That being said, we often had days where patients would have behavior issues or even violence. But it always was a shit show during a full moon. Wait, I forgot I requested this theme. Like I literally demanded it. And now I already thought this was just random.

I wonder why we brought it up at all. Because I know why I brought up because it was Halloween and it was a blue moon full moon on Halloween. And I made a big scene about it. And then I demanded everyone send in stories. And then I promptly forgot and said that's weird. Why do we have so many full moon stories? I was thinking because I just covered werewolves twice. And we were talking about the full moon there too.

There's also that. Yeah. I didn't even think of that. And in that, we talked about how there's like studies where hospitals have said on full moons, people like act a little more wild. So it was always a shit show during a full moon. Nothing paranormal, but I always thought it was wild how we could predict when it would be crazy even the staff who maybe didn't believe in astrology or anything otherworldly

would prepare for the full moon that's wild wow in the year that i worked there there was there were three full moons the first one only two months after i started that night we had a patient called the ambulance for himself three times in one night for no reason the second time a different patient escaped from the facility and was wandering in a nearby apartment complex and the police and staff were out half the night tracking him down and the third full moon which was also a friday the 13th i had the foresight to request the night off because i'd learned my lesson and two patients got into a literal fist fight that ended up in injuring multiple staff. Oh, no. Wow. You really saved yourself there.

While bad behaviors were not extremely uncommon in this job, overall, it was pretty chill. But those three events were the biggest instances of behaviors in the entire year I worked there. Wow. And I always thought it was so interesting that it correlated with the full moon each time. Side note, even when I worked as a waitress in high school, customers were always acting up during full moons. Anyway, I know this story isn't super exciting, but I thought it was interesting when you guys were talking about full moon stories,

especially in relation to healthcare, and it is definitely a thing from Abby. Oh, also, I did submit my more paranormal story of my sorority house at Virginia Tech. So if you're interested in that, let me know, and I can send it again yes abby please send it again please do i'm sure it's somewhere in the inbox wow thank you abby that's creepy i remember i went on this whole rant about how if the moon controls the tides and

we're 70 percent water then it makes sense that the moon controls us which is not my theory i read it on the internet but i thought it made sense it's maybe not your theory that you created but it's definitely a theory that i think we both own. It is a theory. And also, it makes sense. If I believe in WebMD, I can believe in pretty much anything on the internet. So there we go. Just say it. Say it loud. Say it with your chest. Okay, so that's my story. Thank you, Abby. I have a story here from let's see preferred name and pronoun says she slash they slash grandpa wait a minute that's fun okay cool I don't know how to use grandpa as a pronoun but I appreciate oh we'll figure it out don't you worry okay so the subject is chatting with my dead grandma on saw when now i need to be clear here that i said it wrong last time and i said it wrong because i asked somebody

specifically how to say it and they said oh it's pronounced samhain and i went okay and i just believed them without looking it up normally i would have looked it up it's sauer yeah you didn't correct me when when i said it last time we got a million emails being like christine pronounced it wrong huh i don't feel i feel like maybe i just missed you saying it i don't know it's that one in any case did you not hear just even oh my gosh m i swear to god we were sitting there trying to find a pronunciation guide online and you were sitting there with the knowledge this whole time. I was eating pretzels. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Oh my God. I was not listening. Well, English is not my first language and I don't think this is even necessarily English. So whatever. So Samhain. Okay. Hello, Eva and Lemon. Well, all right.

Uh, y'all asked for full moon stories but this is more of a saw sawin sawin yeah sawin yeah slash grandma story the full moon slash blue moon was on sawin sawin slash halloween see that's what i'm saying i'm so mad because i specifically asked somebody and they were like so confident that i was like oh okay it definitely looks like sam hayne like that's why i said it like that and i was like there's that's so weird it was pronounced that way but oh god i'm so mad at myself for not everybody makes mistakes everybody has those days okay says i'm eating pretzels and not listening okay don't you dare eat a pretzel right now we're gonna get even more emails okay as you may know sawin is big on communicating with your ancestors so i had an altar set up for

my grandma all october my grandma annie was the light in my family and when we lost her it was a very devastating time for all of us my aunt nancy the only other person in the family that shares the same beliefs as me has been doing a lot to communicate with my grandma and has gotten so much out of it. My grandma visited my aunt in a dream and was so excited to tell her that she finally understands her and gets it. I love that. I didn't know if I should do anything to try and communicate with her, but long story short, I kept getting intuitive hints that I should. So I did. I've been practicing for a few years but haven't ever tried a seance of any sort.

I figured my intuition was telling me she was trying to talk to me. So I got my circle set up. My, here we go. Selenite wand in hand and protection jars around me. I had four questions written out, but there was only one I was the most concerned with. Are you pain free? And are you happy? Aw.

I know. The three other questions, I got some confusing and unclear messages, but hey, it's my first only one i was the most concerned with are you pain-free and are you happy oh i know the three other questions i got some confusing and unclear messages but hey it's my first time so i expect as much when i asked if she was pain-free my pendulum shot to yes when i asked if she was happy the pendulum kept going in circles and didn't stop i remember my grandma always said when i die i'll be dancing in heaven so i asked asked, are you dancing, Grandma? And the circling stopped, then shot to yes. Oh, my God. That's precious.

I immediately started crying uncontrollably. I know wherever she is, she's dancing, and I couldn't have asked for a better answer. I thanked her for talking to me, closed my circle, and reflected for the rest of the night on everything. My heart was so full. I'm sorry this is long, but having my first seance and getting something like that was such a changing moment for me. I can't wait to be dancing with her someday. Oh, I love this. Love you both regardless if y'all read this or not.

Christine, I swear we shared the same childhood. Well, I'm sorry about that for you and me. You would have totally been on my top eight. Oh, nobody's top eight. So that's a compliment. Thank you. Em, I love when you talk about your turrets it's something i have and have always tried to hide from my friends and everyone because i was so embarrassed just a few times you've opened up about it has made me more confident to talk about it myself keep up the good work y'all are the best oh yay yeah wow thank you let's

tack uh uh attention disorders onto that long list of my maladies. We're just maladied left and right. Anyway, I'm glad someone gets a kick out of my terrestrum on audio. So first of all, I liked how wholesome that story was. I love that when it was spinning, they realized like, oh, it's her dancing. I just think that's beautiful. Yeah, we usually do a lot of uh fucked up stories it's some it's very nice when we get wholesome ones it is i love it

this one is called full moonlight mistress which is what i also call christine so this is i'm yes are you calling me okay i'm here this is from shauna who goes by she her thank you for normalizing pronouns um so shauna says hey eva m christine geo juni mooney first little shout out first mooney shout out during the moon episode oh wow i didn't even think of that yeah where's your where's your moon cat for uh that's weird okay i didn't even think of that um a ray of petrified fruits and creepy dolls the list keeps growing it sure does first a thank you my son and i came across your podcast during a road trip a couple years ago you've since become a part you have since become a part of our weekly routine thank you for the laughs the stories and the thoughtfulness used to address sensitive topics you are welcome

uh so back to the subject at hand let's cracking. I think maybe let's crack into it. That's okay. A friend of mine lived next to Clear Creek in Golden, Colorado. Oh, that's where my stepdad used to live. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Sounds lovely. He worked at a ski shop.

I feel like everyone in Colorado works at a ski shop. Yes, I believe that's true. A fact, actually. I feel like it's like a rite of passage. Yeah. a ski shop yes i believe that's true a fact it's like a rite of passage yeah uh we spent many of uh our summer days floating down the creek and nights enjoying bonfires one night in 2012 we were enjoying a fire by the creek and around 1 a.m we decided to take the four-man raft for a full moon float that is so fun sounding that sounds sounds amazing. That sounds reckless and I'm into it,

but it also sounds really fun, like spontaneity wise. And also that you're staying up late. And creepy a little bit with the full moon. I love it. Oh, I like it a lot. It was late in the summer and the water was running low. We kept getting stuck on rocks in shallow areas. We, meaning my friend, would jump out of the raft

and push us into the current. About a mile downstream from our starting point, we started drifting toward another shallow, rocky area. It was almost 2 a.m. by this point

and no one else was around. All of a sudden, a luminous woman, this is where you enter, Christine, a luminous woman wearing a flowy white dress was standing in the middle

of the creek. And she asked for a white cloth and it was me but not grapefruit please okay stop you're killing me sorry she stood on the water in the middle of the creek she had blonde hair and red lips and as our raft drifted toward her, she smiled, said hello, asked for a white claw, and pushed us down the creek. Wow. My friends and I said thank you and continued to watch as we floated away. The woman turned toward the creek bank, moved toward it, and vanished.

What? That's pretty terrifying. The bank to exit the creek is a hill. A person would have to climb up the hill, but she just disappeared. There were four people in the raft and we all saw the same thing. Okay. So she really did not climb that hill. Well, and I love that.

Like she, she like was physical. Like she helped move the raft. So it's not even just like she was like. Helpful. Helpful. Wow. That's pretty nice. That's the kind of like guardian angel I want where I'm

like, I'm inconvenienced. Can you help me? Can you push my frappuccino a little closer? Can you tell me where the nearest white claw is? The next day we were relaying this encounter to a mutual friend and she said, I wonder if that was Amy. I did not know who she was talking about and thought it was some sort of old golden ghost story passed on through the years. So I gave it a Google and found a picture of Amy Ahohen. Ahohen? I don't know. Ow.

Ahohen. And holy fuck, Batman, the picture of the luminous woman on the creek popped right up on my screen. Goose cam. Turns out Amy had gone missing in 2011 her jeep was found on the side of the road and it's believed that she went for a hike had an accident or was murdered by travis forbes dateline just did a story about him oh my god and there is still no answer to my knowledge maybe this is a future christine story yeah seriously in 2014 some bones were found in the creek a few miles from where uh we were when we saw the luminous moonlight mistress and dna results

matched amy oh no there was a facebook page set up during the search for amy and i wish i could have reached out to her family and told them the story they may have thought i was crazy but they may have found some answers sooner and that's's why I drink. Stay safe and well. Cheers. Clink, clink, woof. Wow, that is goose cam worthy. Also, if I were to die and someone had like a paranormal experience with me, I would want everybody to know.

I mean, maybe that's just the Gemini in me, but. You and I would appear to like a symphony orchestra. We just stand on top of the trumpet or something. Like we wouldn't be in a lake. I would only appear with like all of the stage lights on me only. And the rest of the place is blacked out. But that's so scary that. So she saw the apparition on the river before they even knew the body had been in the river.

I mean, that's freaky stuff. That's super bananas. I don't know. I will. The name was Amy Ahonen or something. So you can probably look her up later. How do you spell that? If Dateline just did a story too, that's got to be interesting.

Wow. A-H-O-N-E-N. Ahonen. A-H-O-N-E-N. Ahonen? I don't know. Okay. So this is a story from Shelby. Use she or pronouns. Thank you. This is called Full Moon Adjacent Story, A Ghost Named Rose, which is one of my favorite names, by the way. Fun fact. That's just Christine facts. Okay.

Flower names. I do like flower names. Yeah. Flower names. I do like flower names, yeah. Season's greetings, friends. I have a story that loosely involves a full moon that I hope you enjoy. I was born and raised in Iowa, and most of my family lives in Iowa, too. Around 2002, when I was 10 years old, shout out to my fellow 1992 babies. That's Amethy.

Amethy right there. That's me. My family and I were visiting my great-grandpas in a really small small town in iowa where much of my family lives and i mean small population is around 700 people my great grandpa lived right next to a park where my sister cousins and i would frequent when we visited him our favorite game to play was hide and seek although no one ever really enjoyed being the seeker lol well ain't that the truth who does one night all the kids headed to the park while our parents stayed back at great grandpa's house it says gg i'm just gonna say that it's a lot less syllables at gg's house okay i feel like now i have like um sympathy dry mouth i'm sorry we are all about the same age so around 10 years old and there are five of us at the park

we decided to play hide and seek and after a few rounds it was my turn to be the seeker i remember this night being quite bright out because of the full full moon see full moon adjacent it says i see but the park was down in the bottom of a hill so it was still fairly dark i shouted ready or not here i come and headed out to find my peeps you remember those structures at parks that were a connecting tube with the small holes all around them oh my god i got my fingers stuck in those many times uh like small enough where you could look through but not really see much else yes i totally remember they usually were up off the ground and kids could run or crawl through them and look out through the holes. I hope you know what I'm talking about.

Yes, for sure. There was one of those tubes at this park. I noticed a couple small hands gripping the tube through one. I'm here again. I'm stuck in the thing again. It's Christine stuck in the playground. Well,

I show up in your tiny little hands or your tiny little hands are there going. Hello. Where's my white claw? I lost it on this playground. I could totally imagine five-year-old you being like i'm looking for a white claw where could i you know a guy what's going on on this playground oh my god my fingers are stuck in this fucking tube yeah i honestly i'm sorry okay uh but okay um let's see this is very creepy. I noticed a couple of small hands gripping the tube through one of the holes, so I knew I had found someone.

I headed that way and saw what appeared to be white clothing through the holes, but couldn't see anyone's face. I ran up the stairs on the play gym and headed toward the tube, and no one was there. No. All I could see were some rose petals laying in the tube. Goodbye. Oh, my God. some rose petals laying in the tube goodbye oh my god now i would have probably said what the actual fuck but i was 10 so i shrugged and just ran off to find the hiders the night came to a close and we headed back to gigi's the next morning we headed down to the park again for a last bit of

fun i was walking around when i saw a small dedication plaque to the side of the park i walked up to check it out when i saw that the plaque read this park is dedicated in loving memory to rose and it clicked i am sure i saw rose that night before in the playground i also realized none of my cousins or sister was wearing white the night before so it couldn't have been them there were no roses around this park or flowers really just a bunch of grass and asphalt so it didn't make sense that the rose petals were there until I saw the plaque. I think Rose was just trying to play hide and seek with us that night, which had a full moon. It was so surreal because I could vividly see the ghost's little hands gripping the tube through the holes

as well as the white clothing through the tube. Hopefully the story still counts, and even if it doesn't, I hope you enjoyed my early run-in with a ghost yours in quarantine shelby that's definitely a good ghost story i that is just the fact that you saw two little hands peeking out fingers yeah yeah i don't know why fingers makes it so much more uncomfortable for me it's just creepy but the rose petals to like leave a calling card that's really sweet it's also really sweet that like this spirit felt safe to like yes hang out with you and it's nice that if you are gonna be a kid ghost you like have a playground to hang out on i think that's really cool that like somebody dedicated the park slash playground to her and then it

really worked like in the afterlife she was still enjoying the park that was named after her i just think that's really cool and we had we had a park or no it wasn't a park we had a library named after one of the kids in my school that's worse i was gonna say if it were a park at least you'd have like fun a slide as the non-reader like if someone named a library after me i'd be like oh my god no thank you unless it was like a really haunted library that's one way to send em into the afterlife very quickly like that's that's a way to keep me in purgatory for sure yeah i'm not leaving but uh yeah no that was great that was really nice yeah that was thank you shelby this is uh my last one uh this one literally is titled eva this one is awesome oh well it worked

oh okay well congratulations you you you made it so this is abby who goes by she her thank you for normalizing pronouns and abby says so i live in east tennessee i was born and raised here and so are my parents Both of my parents have a lot of crazy stories about growing up in this region and this one was my favorite. When my dad was in his 20s before meeting my mom he lived in a tiny town on the Cumberland Plateau which leads to the Appalachian Mountains. He made his rounds in what little of a bar scene existed there during the late 80s and met some interesting people during this time one of these people was a man who fancied himself some sort of mountain wizard wait a minute i just showed up in the story sorry a mountain wizard is that what you said that

is me yes oh goodness m has taken over the stories yes hello i'm the main character it's me again hello it's me again the rain has healing energy okay i'm a mountain wizard i am a mountain wizard uh my okay so he met a man who fancied himself some sort of mountain wizard my dad was uh talking to him one night and mentioned that he had a wart on his arm that he couldn't get rid of he was saying that no matter how many times he'd got it frozen off used cream medication etc uh it kept coming back in the same place this mountain wizard man told him to come to his house the next full moon and he would take care of it okay what a vague invitation of like yes maybe not tomorrow maybe not next week but you know when the moon's looking right you can stop over

i also just like come to my house i'm not going to give you the address. You'll find me. I'm also not going to give you any information on how you could just solve this on your own. Right. True, true, true, true, true. The mountain wizard told me to come to his house. So my dad thought this was bullshit, yet intriguing, and considered that there was nothing else to do around this area. He went to this guy's house the night of the next full moon

apparently when he got there the guy took him up to a clearing on a peak in the woods under the full moon held the point of a special knife on my dad's wart for a few seconds and then told him it would be gone in a couple of weeks brave of you to have stuck your arm out while someone's holding a knife that you met him in the woods. He's a wizard. In the dark. Under a full moon. Uh-huh. Okay.

It's all bad. Your dad must have been real fucking bored. Let's just say that. Yes. Driven to this point. Yeah. Much to my dad's surprise, it was gone in a couple weeks and has never come back since. Wow. He said he asked the guy what he did and what was special about the knife multiple times afterward, but he would never give up his secret.

It was love. It was love the whole time. It was love the whole time. What if it was just like wart freeze on the edge of the knife and he was like, I'm just taking his chance here. It was just like some illegal, like it's just like a wart off in like some other country and he just like had like a little stash of it. I prefer that it was just from walgreens and he was just like actually you're right i'm just pretending like it's something really wild and mystical but it's just like a breva or whatever how do you know so many

war medication because i have i have a lot of cold sore issues not worse did you see me struggle to come up with wart off as if like it was a real thing can you imagine if someone i was like i can't get rid of my cold sores and someone were like here let me hold this knife up to your face for a few i have pink eye i know just the thing oh my god pink eye oh no um okay my dad doesn't believe in the occult or the paranormal but to this day isn't necessarily convinced that this was all a coincidence i love that i love the idea that this guy had some sort of powers that got rid of my dad's stubborn wart and stubborn attitude might i say if he's a that's true almost almost thanks for all you do love y'all abby wow i love that story that's great

that was fun that's so wild um a lot of that was a lot of sentences that could have ended very differently in a true crime story yeah it was only like a couple words off of a true crime yeah usually we know pretty early which direction the story is headed this one i think we were uh i was on the fence okay so this is the last story and And this, we've had two Abbeys. This is from Megan. Ugh, okay. Well, of course, she'd want to include herself on the last one. Go last is the finale.

Yeah. So this is the subject. It says, ghost of Christmas past, but really. So now we have a holiday story to send you on your way. Excellent. Also, this is the last listener episode in 2020. So thank the Lord. And of course, we're sending it off well with Megangan's famous words great maybe that's the secret maybe it's just

like maybe we just needed to give megan five fucking minutes a chance yeah 2020 wouldn't have happened all right this is your fucking moment here you go redemption time megan also megan doesn't even like mention that their name is megan oh maybe you're a new person and you don't know nope they do at the end she does at the end all right thank you megan you did uh specify pronouns she her i appreciate that it says hey i'm christine eva geo juniper and moonshine oh i figured with christmas right on the corner i'd give you a creepy kind of christmas story which contains santa jingle bells and cats wow how are you going to string those things together into one storyline? We'll find out.

Let's find out. So let's crack into it. I grew up in a small town on Long Island, New York, where many of my cousins lived as well. Growing up, my grandma lived with us, and she was super close with her sister, who also lived in town, leading some of the children to stay in town and even raise their children. Well, this story in particular is about my mom's first cousin, my great aunt's son. Okay. Who had resided in the town as well. He lived a full life and was very jolly and loved to make people laugh, so it made sense that in his 50s, he pursued a new career as a mall Santa.

I love that for him. I do love that for him. Kind of cool, right? Yes, indeedy. Needless to say, he looked and acted the part. Kind of cool, right? Yes, indeedy. Needless to say, he looked and acted the part.

A few years into his new career path, he was traveling home for Thanksgiving from Texas, which was only supposed to be for a 24-hour visit before heading back out. He came in late Wednesday evening, greeted his family, and drifted off to sleep. My cousins and his wife woke up to him unresponsive the following morning. Apparently, he had passed away in his sleep from a heart attack, sadly, on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. That's horrible. Fast forward a few years later, and I'm a senior in high school. My cousins had gone away for a trip and had to leave their cat, Tess, home alone. Being only a mile away, they asked if I could come take care of the cat, to which I obliged right away. Well, I usually went to check on the cat a few times a day because being in that house

at night gave me the chills so i tried to avoid it as much as possible until one day the main reason why it gave me the chills was because i felt like when i leave the room items were misplaced in a sort of funny way like the cat the cat was just carrying shit around oh boy usually it was their entryway closet door which had opened which was weird because my cousins always left jingle bells on that door for some reason hmm my mom always left jingle bells on a door though but it was just like she wanted like a bell so like you would always hear the door open and jingle bells they just happened to be christmas decorations that she found another purpose for i was like is this another sawin like uh tradition no no my mom was just lazy and was like well now it serves another purpose so

yeah no i did that on purpose i forgot to put it away um one day i had to work during the day so after my ship shift and picking up my best friend along the way i went to check on the cat to make sure she was all set their house was a ranch style home, which was very small, but open. It had a huge window in the front of the house where the blinds were left open for the cat. I love that. If you looked into the window, you'd be able to see the living room and hallway, which led to the bathroom and some of the bedrooms. So I left my friend in the car and made my way into the house to take care of the cat.

I used the spare from their garage to make, I used the spare from their garage to make my way to the side door, spare key maybe, next to the kitchen. All the lights were off, so I began turning some on so I could clean the litter box, fill Tessa's food bowl, and water. I remember leaving the keys in the door and shutting it behind me since my friend was right outside. Well, I started doing everything I had to do when I heard a faint bang in the kitchen. I figured it was a cat, so I didn't make anything of it. After I finished up, I went to go leave and noticed, oh my god, sorry, Juniper literally just appeared in front of me. Scared the absolute Christ out of me.

I'm so sorry. Hey, guess what? My heart stopped because I watched you flinch and I was like, what can I not see in your room? I got a new office chair that he just put his head up on the other side of it and looked at me so like a little puppet just came onto stage yes just like and it's like pitched blackout because it's nighttime here now oh my god that scared me i'm so sorry okay okay i figured it was a cat uh i would have figured the same uh-huh uh after i finished i went to go leave and i noticed the keys weren't in the door so i started frantically looking for

the keys so i could leave again i didn't want to be in the house longer than i needed to be right after searching i went back to the kitchen and there were the keys on the counter oh that is weird now i know what you may be thinking this may be a burglar that is what i was thinking i would think that too i'd be like someone's messing with you someone's in the house yeah but if anyone were to enter the house you'd be able to see it from the street. And my friend was sitting outside in my car. That's true. I half as hardly looked around after that to make sure no one had come in and no one had.

So I turned all the lights off and left the nightlights on. I quickly locked the door after saying bye to the cat. Peace. See you girl. Good luck with that, by the way, and made my way to the car. As I was walking to my car, my friend looked up and noticed that a light had gone on without with what would have been the

bathroom i would have called the police immediately goodbye yeah no something's happening in this house once i got to my car my friend said hey a light just went on in the house while you were coming out is there a timer my face turned white there hadn been a timer. I looked back up at the window and as I looked, the light went back off. Oh my God. It's like it was playing with you. Like it wanted you both times to see it. Yeah. I began telling my friend what happened in the house and that I felt as if the cousin

who played Santa was playing a trick on me. Uh-huh. Okay. At least it's nice and not terrifying. Like I'm thinking of it. A jolly ghost. I like that. Right.

Before we drove off, the light turned on in the bathroom again and we heard a distant jingle. Oh my goodness. Oh my God. I got so freaked out that I sped away. I knew it was my mom's cousin trying to mess with me as I didn't feel any bad energy. I just felt like I wasn't alone in the house. Still freaky. I went to check on the cat the next day, and she was happy as could be.

I have a funny feeling it was because of the spirit from the night before. The days after that incident, whenever I entered the house, I felt a calm presence and could almost feel like my mom's cousin was there with me. But there were never any more pranks. It's been about seven years since that night, and I still get freaked out at the fact that it was inevitably a ghost but find comfort in the fact that santa my mom's cousin is always watching over it makes the song about santa a tad less creepy if he sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake when it's just a family member parentheses maybe right

fingers crossed anyway thank you so much for reading this. I know it was a long one and may not have made much sense. Well, I mean, not through your fault, but just because Santa is a ghost now. It made sense to me, except now there's a ghost Santa who also died on Turkey Day, though. So that's interesting, too. Who had a what? He died on Thanksgiving, too. So it's like. Oh, that's true.

He didn't even make it to Christmas. A little holiday crossover there. Yeah. I hope you all have happy holidays, much love, and good vibes during these hard times. Megan, parentheses. I spell it without the H if that's any consolation. It is. That's better.

Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I guess. Okay. Thank you for the Santa send-off. I love it. A Santa send-off. That's fun.

I like that. Did you know that, I think, unless I having like a fever dream and this isn't real, I'm pretty sure like if you're a, um, like a mall Santa, you have to go through like Santa Academy, like real hardcore training. Cause you're working with like little kids and all that.

And, uh, I did not. I know there's a Santa con, but I don't know about that. Wait a minute. We're teaching each other things. What the fuck is Santa con?

Oh, it's like where all of the Santas gather for convention. It's like a real thing. Unless I'm also having a fever dream, which is entirely possible. Let's make both of those things possible if they don't exist. Wait a minute. Hang on. I'm going to go Google SantaCon.

Listen, if Santa can be a ghost slash poltergeist, then Santa can do whatever he wants at any convention. Because it's spooky, it's also a little Halloween-y. This is kind of like all three holidays combined this is true i like it um the thing about the keys moving themselves are freaky to me just saying well because it's it's just it felt so intentional yes and she heard the the drop the bang in the kitchen yeah which is freaky well there's one good megan out there at least thank god yes we'll take it say goodbye to 2020 on megan's so weird heels i don't know the phrase i don't know english very well it's fine let's just look close the book close the calendar no wait i just realized there is

another one for 2020. God damn it. This year never ends. I'm so sorry. Eva was probably having a heart attack. Like, Christine, you were going to get so many tweets about this. I'm sorry. It's fine. Surprise.

I think we might do one more. I'll do it again. Everybody makes mistakes. Apparently, it's just me over and over again. Hannah Montana wrote that about you actually. Did you know that? That's so sad. Well,

Megan, you tried and we're apparently not leaving on your story. So sorry, but close. It's fine. It's fine. That's what she'd fucking say. Anyway,

happy listener story. Happy December. I hope whatever's going on when this comes out, I hope there's like relatively good news. I'm sure it's interesting. Well, anyway, hopefully everyone's doing all right. And hopefully everyone feels safe and is safe and is healthy. Yes.

If you want to submit a story to us, you can go to andthat'swhyidrink.com. You can also message or email ckatwwd at gmail.com to submit a story for CK's bonus Patreon listener stories. And that's about all. Eva will sort through them and find us some good ones for next time. Yes. And that's why we drink. I don't know why we do that.