And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 75

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

Happy New Year!! We're still committed to not making any predictions because of how terribly that's gone in the past (it's a moot pursuit) but we're wishing all you boozers and shakers the absolute best this new year! We're also bringing you some of your own creepy submitted stories - no theme this time around, just general creeps, from a cursed Christmas ornament and a haunted plane to a Watcher House suspect and a celebrity mountain cult. And for February, we're calling everyone who ever sent us an email with the tagline "but that's a story for another day", now is your time! Send us your stories because today is the day! And that's why we drink!And speaking of February... WE'RE GOING BACK ON TOUR!! Be sure to get your tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

happy new year new year's eve is here no new year's eve has passed my friend new year's eve was yesterday yeah man did that that didn't sound right to you musically no you're running my song into the ground it's got to be used a very special occasion if we sing it every week what about new year's day is here yeah that's the best one so far okay but then you never have to hear it again until like 12 months around you're gonna say you say, you're going to say Flag Day, Arbor Day is here in a minute. You're going to say, I don't know. You're going to say our birthdays are here. You know, this is a very special occasion song.

It's an annual tradition. Okay. This is a bad energy that I'm dragging us into the new year with and i do apologize my first thought was i would have to know when flag day was to even piss you off first so yeah i'll have to get that on the calendar and then we'll see what happens on that okay if flag day if flag day falls on a listener's episode day i will sing it but an arbor day sounds better because it has two syllables arbor day okay good to know so i have permission on arbor day no you don't okay well okay happy new year happy new year aren't we all thrilled to be together once again

starting off strong into 2023 who knows what the year holds we're not going to make predictions because they never go as anticipated and not only that but they just go absolutely on their ass like they yeah it's not even that doesn't come true it's just the opposite day um yeah opposite day yikes well good luck to everyone that's all i'm gonna say just i hope everyone's good here's the thing that has not changed every first of the month we read stories that you send in to us about ghosts about true crimes and eva selects them we don't know them ahead of time and then we read them to each other and you yeah and to you and you and you and you and me and me and you we're all holding hands across the world. Oh, well, is there?

Eva usually will look for a certain category. But I think this this time around, Eva just went, you know what? I'm here for the creeps. And yep, she said there's not really a general theme. It's just kind of creeps and scariness. So so I'm I'm happy. I am. Would you like to go first?

Would you like me to go first? I think you should go first. Oh. As is tradition. As is tradition. But I feel like usually when I give you the option, you go, I'll go first. Nah. I'll let you go.

Not today, though. Not today. You want me to be the first story of the entire year? Yes, I do. Ah. OK. I'll take it. OK.

So this is from Julie, who's a she her pronouns thank you for normalizing pronouns julie and the subject is haunted christmas ornament i love that it feels very on par for us because are very on brand for us in this exact moment because it actually isn't even christmas for us. So we're still in the Christmas spirit and to get a haunted Christmas story is very much what I wanted. Yeah. We are still trying to prepare ourselves for Christmas. I will say,

I thought you were going to say it's very on brand for us because Christmas is over and we're still talking about it, which also is pretty on brand for us. Also on brand, also on brand. Um, but no, that is not what I meant,

but I, I do mean it now actually. So this is Julie's story. Hi, love the podcast. To the point. Last Christmas, which at the time of reading this means 2021, we were

decorating our Christmas tree and among our ornaments, I found that none of us myself husband and two teenage kids had ever seen this ornament before spooky i already love hate it yeah it was a black scotty dog with a red plaid scarf i'm not even there and i know exactly the image that we're talking about totally it's the most christmas i don't know how scottish terriers became like the dog logo and stuff you know i think the plaid does it it's a good point that's a great tartan i don't know tartan oh buffalo well buffalo every now and then buffalo plaid yeah i don't know if that's very scottish though i think buffalo is a very in north america thing i feel like though, if I had a Scottish Terrier,

I would ruin their culture and put a Buffalo plaid. Absolutely. I'd find a way to ruin it. I always do. So anyway, that little dog was on the ornament. The ornament didn't have a tag and looked to be handmade out of needle felted wool.

It was quite large, probably about four inches long. And we think, or, whoa it was quite large probably about four inches long and we think or and we tried to think if anyone had given it to us and we were all certain we had never seen it before i took pictures of it and sent it to a few family members and none of them had ever seen it either one of my kids wanted to yeet it to into the woods love it my husband who is not a superstitious man wanted to burn it oh which i feel like burning could actually make things not good i was gonna say it's not even good if you are superstitious that that's usually like a bad move well then julie goes on to say i got a

horrible ominous feeling when we talked about burning it yes good good good good listen to your gut my my friend. I'm familiar with the black dog symbolism and the whole thing made me feel yuck. I didn't even think to me that it was- I didn't think of that either because usually I think of it as being a big black lab or something, not a Scottish terrier. Some sort of like crazy big shepherd or something.

Yeah, some mutt dog. I said something like, what if it curses us if we do something to it? Which freaked us all the fuck out. So as a family, we unanimously agreed to hang it on our tree. Which I can't tell if that's better or worse than like

Yeah. Because like hang it, it almost feels like now you're inviting it. Yeah. Like you've accepted it. Yes. But yes, I agreed. But I also get it because it's like well if you throw it away like that's probably somehow worse yeah oh i would just be like okay i leave you with love and light at goodwill for someone else's problem uh after christmas i distinctly remember packing it up with the rest of our ornaments and thinking to myself well i guess i'll see you next christmas

which by the way next christmas is this year so i'm guessing that's where the story takes us uh-oh fast forward to just a few days ago i am a psychic okay fast forward to a few days ago when we put up our tree we finished hanging all the ornaments and i hadn't come across the dog i like how you knew to look for the dog this time yeah i asked anyone if i asked everyone if they had seen it or hung it up and they had not no one had seen the dog ornament now we only have three small boxes of ornaments which all fit onto on our tree each year and all those boxes were all emptied so i know we didn't miss it i checked and rechecked just in case i unpacked the one box of decorations we have and it wasn't in there either it freaking vanished here's the weirdest part i looked back in my camera roll for pictures of the dog ornament

and there aren't any what even weirder there are no pictures of our Christmas tree. I always take dozens of photos of our tree from all angles on the day we set it up. I can look back to any year except last year and find probably 50 tree pictures. My pictures from last year include our family at the Christmas tree farm where we cut our tree and a close-up of the Chuck Norris action figure we put in our tree each year. That's it. Not a single picture of the finished tree there were a few pictures from christmas day that showed the tree in the background and i've carefully zoomed in on each one looking for the dog and it's not in any of the photos if my whole

family didn't remember this i would have thought it was a dream or something but we all remember it vividly i don't know where it came from or where it went but hopefully we avoided any bad luck by respectfully hanging it on our tree last year. All of a sudden now I'm pro hanging it on the tree. Yeah. Well, yeah,

now we know it worked. I wonder where it went next. Do you think to another family who needed a Christmas lesson? Well, what's the fucking lesson? I don't know. Hang me on the tree. I don't know.

I have no idea. I'm like, I wonder, is that the end of the story? By the way, that's the end of the story. I don't know. I have no idea. I'm like, I wonder, is that the end of the story? That's the end of the story. Thank you, Julie. I wonder if, like, can you go back through texts with family where you've texted the photo of it and say, and said like, hey, do you recognize this? Like check if those texts from last Christmas are still in there, you know? Yeah. There's even proof that you've ever mentioned it. Yeah. And maybe the photos will still be in the text messages i don't know it's worth checking

you know it's so weird it's one thing when we talk about items that just like magically appear in front of you that like it's almost as if they've been conjured or something but it's usually an item that you're already attached to and we're looking for in the first place or something that meant something to somebody but like for it to just appear to an entire family with no reference and no context inches is really like a big ornament that's a that's like funko pop size that's like that's like your phone is like six inches like a solid size ornament you don't and also the fact that everyone remember it was it was handmade so i'm like oof is the that freaks me out more because i'm like if it was handmade who put this little spell on it that it's just popping around to different houses and like i

gotta say check the grill for any sign of that plaid scarf in case your your husband went a dig in one night and decided to actually burn it without telling him yeah when you probably got snoopy about it this year he was like oh my god i don't know i shit play it cool play it cool play cool it's haunted yeah i wonder and maybe like for all we know maybe it was like if it was a ghost ornament maybe that little dog just wanted a home for christmas and then it didn't need you anymore like maybe it's maybe it's something sweet but also like keep your guard up girl because like yeah i don't want to i don't want you to accidentally welcome it back and we are talking about it quite a lot actually so and I'd like to ask too like did anything happen last year like did somebody pass did was it an omen of something or yeah I don't

know maybe it was just a friendly thing and when you felt bad about putting it in the fire it was like don't hurt me because I'm a friendly dog ornament yeah and my first i was like oh well maybe someone took it off the tree but you remember packing it away yeah yeah yeah i don't know that's very weird well keep us updated i wonder if it'll ever come back yeah by the way um to the entire um higher worlds um and other realms i'm not interested in finding this ornament if it's popping around to different homes now i don't need it on my tree maybe i'll take it okay hey okay i'm so fine with that okay okay so this is the next email it's called haunted planes do exist i think we've talked about haunted planes a few times now. We have. Are you just like, if you die on a plane, are you a ghost in the sky?

Oh my gosh, what do you do? You just floating around eating peanuts? Can you come back down or are you just stuck in the clouds forever? But not far enough into the clouds that you're in heaven. Right, right, right. Like, am I just in between? Can I? Anyway, here, I'll read this.

Hi, Eva and friends. My name is Izzy, they, them. I was listening to episode 302 where at one point Em and Christine wonder where ghosts from plane crashes go. While I don't have a personal experience, plane crashes have long been a fascination of mine. And these two stories creep me the hell out as a kid. I want to apologize in advance to anyone listening to this on the plane right now. You have my permission to switch episodes because sometimes I will be listening to an episode and they'll talk about plane crashes and i think i don't need this energy yeah i'm gonna come back to this later when i land and i'm safe on the ground yes okay so uh they say these two stories creep me the hell out as a kid each also provides a different haunting theory so to speak

so these are like oh my gosh so izzy literally put together two little like paragraphs on each of these haunted plane crashes. So. Oh, wow. Okay. I love this. This is like notes for me. Here we go. The first is Eastern Airlines Flight 401. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades in December of 1972, killing 101 of the 176 people on board. Oh, my God. Portions of the aircraft were salvaged, allegedly for reuse in other aircrafts. It was on one such aircraft that, the following year, a senior flight attendant noticed a man in full uniform seated in first class appearing dazed. When the flight attendant got closer, he noticed that it was Captain Bob Loft, a longtime veteran

of Eastern Airlines, and the deceased pilot of Flight 401. Shut up! I just got goose cam. Oh my God. This wasn't the only sighting either. A flight attendant on another plane opened an overhead storage compartment only to see Bob Loft's face.

Christine. Looking back at her. What? Why is your face up there? I don't know. Get down from there, Bob. I guess if you're a ghost pilot, there's only so many things you can do on the plane.

Eventually, you're going to get bored. Yeah, you've got to climb in there, see what it's really like. We've all wondered. You know what he was doing? What? He was snooping through someone's luggage. He's got to be.

And by the way, I can tell you, with enough of my flight attendant friends that they actually do climb into those uh yeah i was gonna say i feel like you've shown me a picture they i mean not for work or anything but like in their free time like i've my friends have sent me pictures of them just like sleeping and lounging fake sleeping in the in the baggage space yeah but i but yeah he had to have been snooping through someone's bag i would be he got caught red-handed you know i like it he was like i'm going to take my own head off of my ghost body just because that's the only one that's gonna fit the peepers gotta look around i don't

need the rest of me right now i just need the i just need the old look lookeroo you know i need the old peepers to look through somebody's baggage stuff so it says to only to see bobloff's face looking back at her and then parentheses izzy says no thanks like why was this whole grown-ass man ghost tucked up in there we already told you the snooping an entire cockpit crew once noticed that second officer don repo the flight engineer on Flight 401, was suddenly sitting amongst them. He warned them of a faulty electrical circuit before vanishing. Don's face was also seen in an oven door reflection

and he was once spotted fixing an oven with unknown success. The story goes that with unknown success, I like that. I like that. That means that if your oven ever breaks, maybe it was Pilot Bob just stopping by to fix it when it wasn't broken.

Yeah. Because he thought it needed fixing and now you have a broken oven. Poor Don. The story goes that all of the salvaged parts were eventually replaced by non-haunted parts and the ghosts of Bob and Don were never seen again. Oh, wow. Isn't that amazing that they were attached to the pieces of the plane? Like the whole plane. That's so crazy.

What if there was one screw left? Would they have known? Yeah. You know, I've heard those. I think they talked on Astonishing Legends about Eastern Airlines Flight 401. And it was so creepy to hear them say, like, we couldn't figure out why people were seeing ghosts on this plane. And then they found out that pieces of it were used from that plane crash which is so scary which i wonder if that is like i don't know where you go after like your spirit is no

longer attached to items around here i mean like unless all of that stuff went into an incinerator it just got moved to a different plane right or like it just got thrown away a junkyard yes were they now haunting a junkyard or like yeah it makes you wonder is it because they're being used again for their purpose and that's why is it are they attached to all the pieces of the plane is it just like maybe it's just like the the remnants of their energy like it's not really them it's just like their essence i don't know or if it's like if there's i mean how many parts are to a plane a whole lot and. Yeah. They're all being spread out. Does that mean they're now haunting like 60 random planes?

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Wow. So many questions. Here's the second one. It says in 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 went down in a field just minutes after takeoff from Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Oh, God.

Killing all 271 people on board i mean geez this is like my biggest fear yeah the wreckage came to rest right at the edge of a mobile home park within hours of the crash while rescue workers were still on the scene people in the mobile home park began to hear knocks on their doors and windows only to find no one was there. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God. Everybody on board was killed. Oh my God. I have goose cam. Over weeks and months, the noises escalated into rattling doorknobs like someone was trying to get inside and footsteps coming up the metal front stairs. A few residents opened their doors to find people standing there worried and confused, muttering about their luggage or their connecting flight.

Oh my God., my God. Oh, my God. Which was probably the last few minutes of them before they boarded those planes. What they were thinking of and what they were. Oh, gosh. If that's my I mean, that's my personal hell. You're stuck like asking about your connecting flight in an airport. I mean, geez.

But also, like, can you imagine an entire neighborhood all of a sudden now being plagued with ghosts because there happened to be like such an event that happened in your area nearby yeah and now like all the now all the ghosts all the neighbors are just like geez like now we just we're all fucking haunted we're infiltrated we didn't even this wasn't even supposed to happen man that is so spooky um one resident was approached late at night by a gentleman who smelled strongly of gasoline and had steam coming off of his clothes the stranger told the resident he needed to make an emergency phone call that's so sad and then and then like oh and then he vanished yeah i was gonna say and then what happens like do you let him in your house yeah they i guess i guess said okay you can use my

phone and then vanished residents also reported hearing cries from the empty field and dogs would stand at the edge of it and just bark endlessly at something no one could see that just makes me really that's so fucking sad because it's like are they stuck like how do we help them out i think it's interesting because like a lot of times when we hear ghost stories we immediately want to freak out but like when you know the context of how those ghosts were created it's like all of a sudden the empathy completely switches over because you know that none of the at least you know none of the ghosts are harmful they're just confused and scared but then it's like how do you even help them yeah i wish i could do something i feel like that neighborhood like that town council should bring in like a like well-renowned medium to talk to them or something and be like it's time

you gotta go something traumatic happened and like i'm sure that that would be confusing if you were suddenly dead and you were like not sure what happened i mean oof okay yikes well izzy says anyway good thing i didn't send that until y'all were done traveling for the tour. Thank you, Izzy. Thank you, Izzy. I was at the Atlanta show and had the absolute time of my life, especially because I was sitting right by Em's mom. God bless you. I had no idea who she was and was texting my friend like, OMG, there are these wild mummies here who just went balls to the walls.

Lots of love, Izzy. That here who just went balls to the walls. Lots of love, Izzy. That is my mother. Balls to the wall. Like have photos of Em taped to their bodies. That, uh, yes. Well, I'm glad that you saw two people in their late 50s, early 60s and went, wow, I'm so glad that we have such a diverse crowd. And didn't even wonder, didn't even think, oh, that one looks a lot like Em.

That's so cute. No, I, it's very i'm i'm sure you thank you for dealing with her because i couldn't in the moment as you know so yeah remember what oh so they probably figured out who it was when you said oh my mom's here because remember you had yeah and stand up and then izzy probably went that explains of a heart attack. That explains it. That explains it. Yeah. Thank you for watching my mom for me while I couldn't. So, because I do get nervous about her with a certain amount of alcohol in her system when she's dressed like a mummy at a Halloween show where people are giving her an ego boost of her lifetime.

Yeah. Yeah. She's going to carry that well into the future. She still talks about it. So, Izzy, if you were involved in the creation of that um bravo bravo and also that it didn't help it didn't help that's now i still have to i still have to hear about it okay um well thank you so much izzy uh our next story is from deb not the web but i i will say that deb uses they, them pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns. And I am very happy to meet a fellow they, be.

Two they, bees in a row. Yeah. Yeah. And also, Deb, if you are a web, I would like to know about that. So thank you. Yeah. You should probably specify, please. If you have a best friend named Skylar, that would be really convenient for us.

For me. Yeah. Yeah. For Christine. The subject is, my English teacher was a sus... Christine. What? My English teacher was a suspect christine what my english teacher was

a suspect for the watcher house stop it i shan't here we go oh my god hi eva m christine my name is deb not the web it says that oh okay i was gonna say how do you know m but i guess if they specified they made sure to let me know um which i appreciate because i was gonna say how do you know m but i guess if they specified they made sure to let me know um which i appreciate because i was still on the fence could have been a web we don't know could have written this letter like charlotte's web just kind of kept typing away uh my name is deb not the web and i use they them pronouns i've been listening to your show while I had, I'm so sorry. What? While I had stitches over my eyelids in 2019. The F? I was healing from double eyelid surgery.

Oh, I've heard about this. Yes. I didn't know where we were going with that. All I saw was stitches over my eyelids. It sounds like Coraline when you say it like that. It sounds like Saw. I was like, what is going on um but then deb says don't worry it's extremely common for south koreans half my family got it

yes i know people who have as well and i was looking for podcasts because i couldn't open my eyes to watch tv oh you poor thing oh not the web but certainly the person i feel for right now i feel for you. Turns out your podcast is much scarier when your eyes are closed the whole time because it's easier to visualize the story. I also saw here for the booze in San Francisco right before the pandemic. And both of you did a spectacular job. So nice. Thank you.

So nice. Anyway, some hometown related lore. And then there is a content warning for suicide. So there is that in case you would like to skip this story. I grew up next to Westfield, New Jersey, which is where the Watcher House was located. For those who are unfamiliar, it was that home that started getting vaguely threatening anonymous letters in the mid-2010s. The story was pretty personal for a lot of my friends at the time who either lived a few blocks away oh my god or took piano lessons next door to that house oh shit i would be so paranoid every second that you saw the person yeah even my high

school friend who interned at the county courthouse was working on the case as well we would beg her to break her uh nda for intel but she and here we call it a friend da as in like oh like maybe you could tell your friends even though you're not supposed to wait they said that the friend da they're calling it a friend oh i love that that's so clever but she always refused so she wouldn't break the nda meanwhile i'm like constantly breaking my nda constantly uh anyway fast forward to 2022 and the netflix series the watcher releases in october did you watch it no i did how was it it was kind of meh it was like they were trying to make it really scary like like more like shock value than it was. But then they didn't really commit hard enough to that.

That was my opinion. And it was sort of like some of it was real and then some of it was like absolute fiction, which I feel like is fine. But like they didn't lean into that hard enough to make it. Because then at the end, they were like, anyway, this is an unsolved story. And I'm like, well, you made so much of it up. You might as well have come up with like a fantastical ending. Yeah. I just felt a little disappointed by it, I guess I should say.

I feel like if it was narrated by the way you told the story the first time I ever heard about it, that shit was scary. I think that's what bothered me, too, is like so much of it is already so scary. And then they fabricated so much. Yeah. And it was like a little much where I was like, okay, like this is, we're pushing the envelope here. Yeah. You could just tell the story and we'll be properly freaked out.

It's very scary in and of itself. Yeah. Like, honestly, that's what my thought always is with like producers and stuff. I'm like, clearly it was scary enough that you wanted to like option this. Yeah. So like, why do you need to make it scarier? You already knew it was scary yeah and i get like exaggerating or like just like kind of making some elements like combining characters to make it easier or whatever but like some of this stuff was like fully made up

and to and then to not really and then to pretend like oh anyway this all happened like that and there was no ending i don't know i i'm worried that you're about to tell me that they loved the story, that Deb, not the web, loved the story. And I just shit all over it. We'll find out. We'll find out. I'm sure we'll find out. Okay. So 2022.

The Netflix series The Watcher releases in October. Christine feels five out of ten about it. Yeah. To be honest, I didn't watch it because it felt too real and I heard it was a disappointing show. Okay, it was. I also read a bunch of reviews to make sure I wasn't the only one. Okay, perfect. Well, anyway, through the grapevine, I found out that not only my senior year English teacher was a major suspect,

but also he was featured on the show by a different actor for a whole episode. Yeah, that was one of the suspects so apparently i don't know if this means anything to you but episode six was okay a different an actor yeah there was an english teacher that they like brought into the show okay that's i didn't know that that was actually real that part yeah well there now you know at least one thing is true and uh and deb not the web was once their student that is so interesting okay roger caplan as his name was altered on the show would tell his classes that he wrote more than 50 letters to a certain house in westfield and had his students write letters to any house they loved as an

assignment i never got that project but i was in the last class he taught when he retired in 2014 the same time the watcher case began oh so maybe he was like i need to this is not the time his brother also lived down the block from the home oh so that does make it weird that does make it a bit of a suspicious thing and for all we know i mean like i think that is kind of a bit of a weird assignment but i do see like the the pure intention of it if yeah if he was never actually the person uh i do see like the, the pure intention of it. If, if, if he was never actually the person, uh, I could see like,

Oh, just like write a letter to something you love. And like, let's just pick houses and the town or something. Is there a house you have a really good memory at and like, write about it. I could see it, but also,

yeah, that is very on the nose. In the context. It's like a little too close for a little too close for me to not wonder. Yeah. Wow. If, if he really is innocent innocent he must be like wow that was that makes me look so bad it's like the worst possible and it was a house right down from his brother so he's definitely seen the house well i don't know how true this is and i assume they're gonna tell deb's gonna tell us but um in the show they made it out as like he spent time there as a kid and always loved the house and then he was obsessed

with it but I mean that might all be fiction I don't know either way I mean that's he really had to lose so much sleep over like wow that's not a cute look could it be one of his students who like did the assignment and then went I'm into this and I'm gonna keep doing it one of his students Deb

who took it too far no Deb never did it. Stop, Deb. I swear. Although it would be the perfect crime, Deb, not the web, to reach out to us

and say it wasn't you. It seems like a terrible way to get out of a crime. But okay. But either way, that is actually a really, because I mean, maybe he did inspire the idea.

Yeah, right? Weird. But then he would lose sleep about that too. He'd be like oh god not a good look um nope okay so apparently the show portrayed him accurately from what i was told you hear about him as the cool teacher the students admired but when you get to know him through the episode he gets a little creepy and pretty unlikable this was all true in real life he definitely picked favorites who were mostly conventionally pretty white girls

and bake cookies for them ew yuck like he did with an acquaintance of mine oh gosh so you've got the real intel that's the friend da i want to know that's the friend da indeed uh he was that teacher that would say fuck you verbatim to the AP syllabus and gave us interesting writing assignments like making a playlist a screen bill a screenplay so writing letters to a house was not out of the ordinary for him I did always appreciate the teacher so he was like I'm not gonna follow the unique assignments yeah me too he also had his students write journal entries for his assignments which he would not only grade but also evidently take inspiration from for his own ya novels what what is going on if you think that was upsetting wait till i say that mr caplin was big enough

that he was once a regular guest on npr and that one of his books became a movie with zach efron which was directed by the guy who made the film Boyhood. So imagine what else he could do with our stories. Yeah. Ooh, that feels like he's like stealing IP. Yeah. That feels like. It's not cool, man. Can you imagine though, being like the English teacher that's already cool.

And like, granted, I'm aware of the slimy parts that I've already discussed here. But to be a teacher that's known to be the cool teacher you do all the cool assignments and then you like use that information for movies that have starred zach efron now and you're on npr yeah you're certainly not a normal teacher no you're definitely like in the top tier yeah and either you look really cool or someone's seeing through it and going yeah it's at least memorable that would be the guy i mean if i were like a detective i'd be like this guy's too interesting to not be on our suspect list for sure for sure um at this point you can

figure out roger caplan's in real life name with two clicks because a few websites wrote about his connection to the watcher house uh but anyway i wrote my journal entry once about attempting to die by suicide um and i got a b on the paper and he would never and he never said a word to me about it a b on a journal entry that's not fair you also can't get a b on a journal entry about that and then also not like talk to your student and be like are you okay that's bad wow that's really bad and then a movie starring zach efron came out the following year right after that happened if that happened to me and then i if i wrote something that vulnerable to a teacher that i thought was really cool and then like like maybe i could rely on them and then i

got a b on a on the probably the most emotional thing I've ever written down. And then didn't get checked on. Yeah. I would have some resentment. Oh, for sure. And then he's like, oh, I'm going on NPR. No big deal. Also pretty conventional white girl. Let me bake you some cookies.

Yeah, this is so, so bad. Very quickly, it switches in my mind. Yeah. Absolutely. For years, I thought it was him being professional until i left him ignoring their cries uh wow that's just so sad i'm so sorry deb not the web for years i thought it was him being professional until i learned later that he stopped one of my friends a pretty white girl favorite of his after class for having an eating disorder sorry trigger warning to ed um he stopped her

after class for that to tell her how he was so sorry for her situation oh boy so he's just picking and choosing who he's gonna express concern about so he didn't give a shit about their about their attempt but cared about this random person's well or this other students yeah uh and i want to emphasize that i'm not comparing our circumstances i'm just saying no high school teacher should just pick and choose who to offer mental health yeah that's not how that works sorry yeah not even like a recommendation for them to go to like the the school clinic or something or like put them in touch with somebody or tell it tell it faculty tell the family anything yeah he also had us write letters to everyone in the class before graduation, including one to him, if we liked.

And it turns out he used those letters addressed to him as testimonials to his character on his website. No! What a motherfucker. It's exploitative, especially because he technically runs a small business as a professional writer. Oh, God. Of course. Because he's literally making ya novels that are getting optioned for movies anyway i used to admire him so much yes even with the journal entries i felt like i had to work

extra hard to impress the coolest teacher in school in there we've all been there and looking back it feels cringy and you're like oh wow they yeah just just desperate for affirmation approval yeah but now thinking about him and his actions years later even before the watcher case would spiral me into deep anger and resentment i definitely want to see the netflix show even less now yeah it's also worth mentioning that my again suicidal urges ended years ago i'm very proud of you that's great that's very good um and that i'm doing perfectly well yay no thanks to that asshole no thanks but i'm a freelance illustrator and graphic novelist in brooklyn and i live with a rescue cat named marley who only has four teeth oh my god i love her i i don't know mar, but I love her and all of her forties.

I love her. My first graphic novel is a memoir called In Limbo. Holy shit. That's publishing March 2023. That is actually about my time in high school

as a depressed Korean American. Fuck yeah. I know Em is more of a comics person, so I would love to send them and Christine if she'd like an advanced copy. Fuck yeah. Roger Kaplan was almost featured in the book too but i figured even before the netflix show that

he doesn't need any more exposure great point uh that's it for now maybe next time i'll tell you about my three years in an internet mermaid cult or about the time my ex-friend's parents accidentally introduced a demon into their home via an ebay purchase during her senior year haunted doll best wishes deb not the web whoa um yeah deb i'd like both of those stories please and thanks you know we've talked about this before having an episode that's just like another day. That's a story for another day. I'll tell you about XYZ. We should definitely have an another day episode. Maybe that'll be the theme I request for February.

If you ever just go into Gmail and type in that's for another day and you'll get about 3000 stories. No, but I don't want those. I want the ones that they mentioned were for another day. Yes, yes, yes. So now if you're going to write in, if you've ever written in and you said, but that's a story for another day, or you said, I'll send that in another time, maybe consider sending that now. This could be the other time. Yeah, in the subject, you can write today's the other time. Now's the time.

Now's the day. Now's the time. Figure it out. You'll come up with something more clever than that. That's for another day. Today's another. Today's the day now's the time you'll figure it out you'll you'll come with something more clever than that's for another day today's another today's the day today's the another day nope it's fine you'll figure it out just write something like that okay okay um okay so this one is from m they them ah, what if I told you I just wrote those? You know, well, it's called Spending Cole's Cash in the Afterlife, so I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, I wouldn't be caught dead.

No, I'm just kidding. I love Cole's Cash. Yeah, actually, I was like, oh, sorry. This is not bougie enough for you. One of my friends was obsessed with the idea that Cole's Cash was an insult. I don't totally understand it, but she had a real... Was that me? Because I used to...

Oh, Renee and I used to oh renee and i used to do that we had like these jokes where we would just insult people about cole's cash no my friend i think just really i think she uh like her older sister worked at colds or something so she just like grew up having a hatred for cole's and so every time i got something that i thought i thought looked really cool but she didn't she'd go where'd you what how'd you pay for that with your cole's cash yeah it was like a weird insult in high school that we said i don't know why it's just rude i think that's how you know you've grown up when you're like layaway sounds awesome yeah i'm like cole's cash is great tell me the problem uh okay hello all i'm ember and i just want to quickly say i love you both and everything you

do though i am a thousand percent team milkshake now Now let's just crack into it. Thank you, Amber. I live in a town in central New Jersey. Yes, there is a central Jersey and we are home to a super creepy abandoned mall. It makes me a little sad because it used to be my go-to hangout spot in middle and high school. Though once I got rid of the Suncoast and the Hot Topic, there wasn't much reason to go there anymore. I was still a little disappointed to see the downfall over the years understandable it is it's like end of an era kind of hot topic i still i am 30 years old and i do not go to a mall and not go into their hot topic before i leave you have to i have to i love a hot topic i love a spencer's i know i won't there's really a few things i'll ever buy there but for the nostalgia i like to go in and feel like I'm about to get like carded for going into the like this

what did you know Spencer's own spirit Halloween yes oh damn I thought that was a cool fun fact I found out it is a fun fact it makes sense when you think about it it does like it's like oh uh we just read reviews of hot topics on beach to, you know, you might want to listen to that, Em. Hot Topic or was it a hot mess? It was both. It was the Hot Topic of that episode, I assume. It was. And that is not the first time that joke has been made.

Sorry to say. I'm sorry. That's okay. Now we've both disappointed ourselves. What else is new? Okay. Anyway. I was still a little disappointed to see the downfall over the years you know it's

bad when they tear down multiple walls to put in a gigantic gym with big glass walls overlooking all of the other empty storefronts yeah it's not good on the far end of the mall there's a kohl's it's the only thing that's still open the rest of the mall is slowly being torn down piece by piece and the big glass doors and the kohl's that used to open up to the mall are closed and locked but you can still look through them and watch the mall decay this is depressing imagine working at that coals and like first of all they'll walk into the into the coals to like know that like like i would imagine my lunch breaks i would totally just fuck around in that empty fucking mall like i would just be like oh i'm just gonna go explore but it's also disappointing because now you can't go eat like the chinese food from the mall food court

or like yeah but i packed i'd pack a sammy and my little in a fanny pack or something and i would just go look through all the old i mean literally the back rooms like it looks like it would look like and i bet you you can still find remnants of like the claireairs or yeah like there's got to be one like product that like didn't make it into the bag in the truck and it's just hanging on the floor some glitter something oh my god and also i'm obsessed i i may have actually seen this mall before um on reddit because i followed their the subreddit called dead malls and someone recently posted something saying it's this is one was in central jersey so really i mean they all pretty much look exactly the same but it's so fascinating it's fascinating i got hyper fixated one night on the names of all of the different tile designs from

the malls in the 80s and that's been fun to go on dead malls and just try to like figure out which tiles were which that's interesting i'm mentally ill please continue with the story okay so let's see you can still look through them and watch the mall decay there are big potted plants that have been left there to die oh that's sad you didn't even take the pots with you geez strewn about the quarters of peeling tile what kind i don't i couldn't tell you i wasn't there maybe starburst i don't know okay that is now stained green from the leaking ceiling the doors to all of the old shops are covered with boards and there are hefty nets of cobwebs hanging from the yellowing skylights ember's a writer i'm

pretty sure ember's name is ember so you that was yeah they were destined to be a writer you can see the particles of dust and debris hanging in the blue air and last i looked through i swear i saw a rat just wandering around the old pretzel stand oh even the rats like where's my fucking where the fuck all the ants would never would never defy me like this oh all that being said it's okay all those products that they use are like never going to biodegrade so there's probably still like cinnamon sugar on the ground. That's just perfectly fine to eat. Don't worry. Rat will be okay. Yeah. All that being said, I avoid this Kohl's like the plague, though the employees are always very nice. It's always understaffed. The people who shop there are generally not the most pleasant people. And

if I'm being honest, the setting stings a little with nostalgia and I can't help but take a few minutes to look through those doors and remember how great this mall used to be when I was young. But on this day, I had to stop at Kohl's because in my tiny little town, there are no other places to drop off Amazon returns. That's why I go to Kohl's. I used to drop off my – I didn't know they do that. They do. At least someone by me does.

Well, that's how they must make their money. They're not making it from selling things in their department store. And so we walked. I remember I would bring my stuff in, and then they would be like, like every time you bring in an amazon purchase they would give you like a coupon and i was like thanks but i really don't need anything from cole's i just don't you are you are a middleman to me cole yeah yeah you do your purpose and i appreciate that but i don't need anything from here um anyway so boxed up return in hand i paused at the door noticing the potted plants had finally dropped most of their browned leaves and headed to the back

it was uneventful i gave the woman my return and headed to the bathroom i had an appointment at the dmv in 45 minutes and i really didn't want to get stuck in line while having to pee i picked the stall all the way on the end the store was empty enough i figured taking the biggest stall wouldn't be a big deal i I would be in and out in a minute. But just as I was about to flush and pull up my pants, I heard the door open and someone rush into the stall closest to the door and I froze. My public bathroom anxiety spiked. If I flushed, they would know I was here and that's just unacceptable.

Yeah. I heard, oh no, I heard the woman start violently puking. It was an awful sound and I stayed silent trying to hold my breath. Oh my god. After a few seconds, the sound shifted from puking to an inhuman, wet, guttural groaning. Oh my god. Followed by a wheezing, raspy inhale, exhale, and then the groan again. Oh my god.

It sounded like she was having some kind of seizure or asthmatic fit, but before I could say anything, I heard her leave the stall, not even bothering to flush the toilet. And I heard the wheezing get closer and closer. Absolutely not. Oh my God. As well as the other stall doors being pushed open. Oh my God.

Shut up. Oh my God, I'm so scared. She was walking up the bathroom towards my stall. I stood up trying to pull up my pants as quickly as I could when she started violently shaking my door. Oh my God, oh my God. I yelled out, hang on one second, I'll be right out and then I can help you.

But the second I opened my mouth, the room went silent. Thinking she dropped dead or something right outside my stall, I unlocked and flung the door open only to see that I was alone. Christine. Oh my God. Ember. Ember. Wow.

What the hell is going on? The writing, the goose cam is incredible. Goose cam is hardcore right now. The bathroom was empty and silent. The door to the stall on the far left was open and the toilet was clean. Ew. What is going on i know i know uh what does it mean the second it registered in my brain what had just happened i ran out of the

bathroom i saw no one in the immediate area no customers no employees and i power walked to my car pausing only to glance out the glass doors at the decomposing mall that now seem much more ominous than nostalgic i ran to my car so quickly that I smacked my head on the door as I shoved myself behind the wheel and finally exhaled, pulling out of the parking lot and speeding over to Starbucks because goddammit, I deserved a frappuccino after that shit. Oh, yeah. I posted this story on TikTok, and it is my most viewed video so far with about 40,000 views. Holy holy shit and the subject line of the story is actually from my favorite comment that someone posted on that tiktok let me read it again

spending cole's cash in the afterlife okay that's so cute and a few people quickly pointed out that through this whole ordeal and during the retelling in the video i was wearing my favorite glow in the dark and that's why we drink hoodie. I'm going to cry. That's so nice. And then it just ends. Oh, okay. Bye, Em. Bye.

Wow. What does it mean? First of all, congrats on the viral video. That's exciting. Very. Congratulations. I wonder if. What does it mean?

I mean, how many Kohl's are there in central Jersey? Like you could probably just call and be like, have you heard this from other people like like what is going on did somebody have an incident it sounds like someone maybe was having like a fucking health condition and like was desperately trying to push through the doors to like ask for help and then probably died in the bathroom or something that's my only guess just feels like a residual haunting of someone needing help and not finding yeah yeah and the the fact that you heard the vomiting and the wheezing like you clearly the wet groaning oh i mean and honestly like i imagine i mean i know there was nobody there so i imagine even if but i imagine if something had happened and this person actually was there it would have been in a news report or something, right?

Oh, God. I know, right? A person dies in a Kohl's? I don't know. Well, I wonder. I mean, the people who work at Kohl's, especially at that Kohl's, it sounds like they have no one to talk to except themselves all day long. They have had to have talked about how it feels spooky there. The bathrooms.

They've had to clean those bathrooms. Yeah. spooky there the bathrooms they've talked about they've had to clean those bathrooms yeah someone else knows i if i were you i would absolutely call and be like anyone else had an experience there because i just freaked myself out and also all of tiktok knows about it now so you're more like me and you're terrified of phone calls um a gentle email might you can do an email you can also do what i do which is just spend hours on the internet trying to find information, even though I could just call and ask. I thought you were going to say you do what I do, which is just ignore the problem and

walk away and dissociate. Oh, well, that's what I'll do about two hours later when I realize this is a moot pursuit. A moot pursuit? Stop it. A moot pursuit? I will not. Oh my god. I love that.

I know that was possibly the smallest detail of this whole episode so far oh i'm so glad that i could make you smile oh it's so i just want to keep saying it's like a little dr seuss poem i just from now on i will be using that in my normal vernacular pursuit oh i'm so glad before i just say it 10 000 times because it feels good on the ears let's continue okay this next story is from jordan he uses she they pronouns we love a double pronoun thank you for normalizing pronouns jordan um and the subject line is my uncle almost joined a murderous mormon cult that tried to take over the original temple in kirkland ohio everything happens if it's not florida it's ohio it's oh the two of them, I hate how inextricably linked they are, but they are. I can't help it. Did you see that Spotify

recently had a playlist that was just called Florida and it was just like the craziest true crime shit I've ever seen in my life. No, but I love that. Okay, so here is Jordan's story. I just submitted this as a topic suggestion, but felt it also fit as a personal story. So my dad grew up in Missouri in the Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints. My dad and most of his brothers had moved away from the RLDS, but one uncle, we'll call him Uncle G, became more religious and is now a pastor. Uncle G had some type of spiritual experience when he was a young man which really strengthened his faith enter jeffrey lungren in the night in 1984 the rlds allowed women to join the priesthood and this combined with the church's tolerance for the lgbt community it did not sit well with lungren or many other socially conservative church members so he made an offshoot where he was the leader of

course that's the only solution it is i don't like how things are so i'm going to become the king conservative church members. So he made an offshoot where he was the leader, of course. That's the only solution. It is. I don't like how things are, so I'm going to become the king. I'm not going to look inward. I'm just going to boss everyone else around. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just either you're with me or you're not with me. And I kind of wish he made his own church and stood by himself. I wish nobody were with him, but here we are. Yeah, that's true. So near Kansas City, Missouri, he gained several followers,

damn it, in the form of usually young Mormon families. My uncle was one of them, and at the time it was more of a conservative Bible study group for RLDS members who didn't like the progressive turn of the church, at least to the people besides Lundgren. During the early to mid 80s, my uncle got to know him and really believed in lundgren's more conservative views on the rlds so far he sounds like a treat at holiday dinners yeah right um in 1987 lundgren convinced several members to move to a farmhouse in kirkland ohio near the original mormon temple oh jesus i assume the logic was like let's be closer to our original traditions. To our mecca of some bullshit, yeah. Our original core tenets, you know, let's be near the, let's symbolically move closer.

What's it called? Kirtland? Kirkland. Like Kirkland blueberries. Oh, there's a Kirtland, but not a Kirkland that I can find. Well, I'm just telling you. Close enough. Oh, it is Kirtland.

I was going to say, maybe it's actually it is kirtland i was gonna say maybe it's just the the food section of costco i was gonna say i think kirkland just probably either auto-corrected because yeah the kirtland temple is a national historic landmark in kirtland interesting well anyway in 1987 lungren convinced several members to move to a farmhouse in Kirkland, Ohio near the original Mormon temple. Well, during this time, my uncle really tried to convince his wife to move the family to Kirkland. Luckily,

my uncle's now ex-wife was pretty controlling and my uncle generally just wanted to please her. And she did not want to be that far away from the family in Missouri. Finally being controlling worked once, I guess. So without getting into all the crazy details that come down with a doomsday cult, a family of five pretty similar

to my uncle's family, also Missouri RLDS white middle class family with a few elementary middle school age kids. They ended up being massacred two years later for secretly putting some money aside to support their daughter's future rather than

giving absolutely everything to lundgren what the fuck me and my so they were probably like seeing a way out jesus christ doubting him in some way me and my cousins found out about this only a couple years ago and it blew our minds while my dad and his other brothers who knew about it this whole time and didn't think to mention it they weren't surprised at all and just saw it as very in line with g's personality i guess sometimes being in a controlling relationship has hidden perks the murders are obviously the worst thing lundgren did but the whole story is a roller coaster with some interesting mormon history so christine I hope you cover this one one day. I didn't even get into the militia or the curse from Joseph Smith or the temple coup plan or money laundering or doomsday camp in the woods or the wild trial.

It's honestly one of those stories with so many layers that you might have to split it into two parts, even without my own family drama. Wow. And that is Jordan's story. Jeez. So good luck christine have fun that is wild that's crazy that's i had no idea about this um jeez i mean i just looked up the guy yeah kurt i think it's kurtland ohio and he was an american self-proclaimed prophet, cult leader, and mass murderer who killed a family of five. And, well, he's not Uncle G, right? Or he is?

No, I don't think so. Oh, okay. Yeah, wow. That's horrifying. He died in Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. So, clearly went to prison for that. Wow, that is dark. Dark, dark, dark. dark okay um anyway moving on

thank you jordan thanks i think this is the last one so this is called a celebrity cult another cult and this is from kelly he uses she her hers pronouns and says hello lemons and only lemons okay fair enough i've been listening to your podcast since day one and has helped me get through long car drives and Sunday cleaning days. I actually went to your live show in Nashville and had an amazing time. I've been wanting to write in a story for some time now and decided today was the day. This story is not something I personally experienced, but I heard it from my boss, we'll call him Joe, who used to be a sheriff in Colorado about 25 years ago. Joe would usually be sent out into the mountains for different types of 911 calls. One night, Joe got a call from dispatch reporting that there was

a noise disturbance in the mountains an hour out of town. Joe drove to the spot where the disturbance was reported. It's important to note that he described the road leading up to this area as a one-way dirt road. It was almost impossible to get up this mountain without a truck, SUV, etc. Joe stopped his truck at the entrance of this one-way road and decided to hike up the hill so whoever was making this disturbance did not hear his tires coming up the dirt road. While walking up this hill, he saw dozens of luxury cars, Lamborghinis, Bugattis, Rolls Royce. Cars that are no way fit to be driving up this steep mountain. Oh, geez. I don't like that doesn't seem good

it seems this seems bad fishy fishy joe started to take pictures of each car and each license plate in the distance he saw a fire pit with individuals standing around it oh my god i'm scared joe got about 10 feet from where these individuals were and crouched behind a rock and some trees joe told me there was no possible way that anyone who was standing near the fire could see him due to it being dark and how far away he was he witnessed around 15 people standing in black coats cloaks i'm sorry black cloaks and one in a red one i would have absolutely backed away and never never i would have been like never i would have at least called for backup one joe versus all these people this sounds like a stephen king situation like i know oh god he was

watching them yeah i would have gone back but taken all those pictures of license plates with me and then like all of them up you know thousand percent he was watching them chant something but could not exactly hear what it was. All of a sudden, he watched the individual standing... Standing in... Oh, my God. I'm scared. I'm home alone right now. I'm so scared.

All of a sudden, he watched the individual standing in the red cloak turn directly into his direction. He got goose cam all down his spine. Joe said everything in his body was telling him to get out of there and call for backup. Joe sprinted back down. Ooh, so they're all chanting and then the red robe person just looks right at you in the bushes. I hate it.

Joe sprinted back down where the entrance slash exit was. He called dispatch for backup and about an hour later, the other police officer showed up. Joe told them exactly what he saw. Joe and the other officers started walking back up the hill where he saw the cars and the individuals around the fire. But unfortunately, there was not a single trace that anyone had been on the mountain. I was going to say, they were gone by then. They were out of there. All of the cars were gone with no tire tracks to be seen.

Oh, yeah. There was no fire pit and no creepy-ass people in cloaks. Joe said his co-workers did not believe him fully. Well, yeah, I guess i can't blame them if there really is no trace yeah i guess so but wow like a mad like the gaslighting alone i know imagine how hard that would be like i swear to god uh joe said his co-workers fully did not believe him since there was no evidence until joe showed them the photos of the cars and license plates okay good thank god oh i hate when that happens

and you're like believe him joe and the officers all had a wary feeling and decided to call it a night and get the hell off that mountain the next day joe started running the license plate numbers in the database joe said that each car was registered to some a-lister celebrities shut the fuck up i of course being nosy immediately. To this day, he will not tell me due to it still being an ongoing investigation. Oh, my God. To this day, he does not know how they covered their tracks and left that mountain without going down that one way road. Jesus. Holy.

Thanks for reading. Love all that you do. Now, listen to me right now, Kelly. Did you just drop us into some horrible? I am so scared that they're gonna come knock on our door and be like take it down the episode oh my god if we do get an if we do get an anonymous email that just says delete it i'm gonna be like okay well done i'm telling people now if i find if i feel like there's any anonymous tip coming towards me at all it will be told it

will be told not to the masses but at least to somebody I trust and you don't know who. And if something happens to me, then Christine, I need you to cover it. It's called a friend. Yay. Okay. Also, if either of us ever get invited to this thing, what if we were at the fire that night, Christine? They just don't know. Like we just read our own story and we're

actually finding out right now that we were busted we got our memories wiped oh it's too bad i left my bugatti license plate uncovered it's too bad when i heard bugatti i thought oh that must have been me yeah the rolls rice oh god mine i hope not mine if they got my plate i'm screwed we put those and that's why i drink bumper stickers on them. So like we should have figured out who we were. Your Bugatti had a picture of my face doing this. And you hadn't put mine up yet. And I was pretty offended, honestly.

Honestly, I'm at a saved you though at this point. So I guess so. Yeah. Thank you. Wow. Well, thank you so much for that horror fest. I really hope nobody ever comes reaching out to us that we just maybe outed and an a-list you know there's a bunch of tiktok people who like

do like blind items i would be interested to see if they know anything about like an a-list what's a blind item i don't so okay i don't know what a blind item is except that like it's like anonymous tips i don't know how you oh but it's anonymous tips that have been like historically pretty accurate. A lot of those. I love those kind of conspiracy. Yeah. And it's like, it's always very vague, but you can kind of guess what it's about. And like, you know, I'm sure the people in the blind items don't like that.

They're sure being told, but, um, a lot of times things have been right. And so, uh, if there's a blind item about an A-list celebrity cult, you know, let's all pay attention to that. I mean, I know some stories that involve some very rich, powerful people because I knew some people who worked in the service industry for those rich, powerful people and were willing to break their NDAs for some girl they met at the gym aka me um back when i went to a gym that was like the only enjoyable experience ever i ever had at a gym um and also like the least productive because i was just asking questions and i'm not doing anything honestly i would hope i don't care how married and with child you are ever you better flirt your ass off if you ever hear about another nda thing any day i will not let it stay unsaid ever if allison ever came home and said that someone was willing to give her confidential celebrity gossip like in exchange for flirting and she told

me she didn't do it i'd be like we have to break up because you don't understand the assignment you failed your test a thousand percent yeah and she told me some really wild shit that i absolutely don't feel comfortable sharing in public and when she told me that i was like girl you're gonna get yourself in big fucking trouble because have you told me not yeah i think i've told you of course i've told you i've told you and i've told uh blaze and probably my mom but um that's about it i'm not gonna say it publicly because i don't want to get targeted you know i've definitely told you things that i can't say out loud it's fun to tell people things it's also fun that we've like hinted about things before but nobody knows what we're

talking about which is probably so annoying and but i love it like just know we're trying like that's the best i want to tell you so bad i promise we want to tell you and we just can't never maybe in like five or ten years depending on how things play out maybe once certain people are are gone yeah exactly once we can't actually officially get them in prison for the things that they probably deserve to be in prison for yeah um man okay well good, what a, what a good one to end on. I really do want to know if we know anybody that has, we should talk to our manager, you know? Oh, she might know.

She wouldn't tell us. She knows that we're, we have too big of mouths. I know. She would never trust. She's listening to this right now going, no, you can't hear anything. Well, also, even if she, I don't know if she would rep anybody who would be in one of those cults but i think she might have heard things through the great i feel like if anyone knows uh some gossip yeah she would know i'll text her i'll put you in the text okay amazing thank you you know

uh tell us what you know tell us what you know what do you want from me she's literally out of the country right now oh yeah it's fine it's worth it all right well uh we're gonna keep sleuthing over here i honestly i have only complete faith in christine's ability to find anything in 30 seconds or less so i think i'm itching to go research i have a feeling this is like gonna be about like a 26 27 second find for you and no no i know something i wish i don't want to insult uh their uncle here her uncle and be like no i think i would have done everything i would have done exactly everything he did i would have kept my mouth shut i would be scared because what if they saw my face and they're that powerful oh my god no i would clearly saw that or sense that he

was there which is terrifying i absolutely would have you know what i would have done my pants oh yeah not that okay that's pretty much it i wonder um i wonder how it ended so joe if you're out there we're rooting for you and your team and that's it i want to know but don't make make sure he tells you make sure he knows that the second that he's allowed to that he tells you kelly because i need to know more there you have it there you have it i uh i wish you well everybody i hope uh anyone who's an a-list celebrity in this cult or another um don't come at me it's not our fault that you got busted. We didn't mean it. We're just nosy.

We're so nosy. Curiosity really will kill a cat, and I'm the cat. And we're the cat. Until then, thank you for sending in your submissions, everybody. And you can continue to send in your submissions to just our website. We've got a submission form there. to send in your submissions to just our website. We've got a submission form there.

We will see you with more listener stories next month in February. Yay! I can't wait. And that's why we drank.