And That's Why We Drink - Listener Stories: Vol. 79

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Are you the record keeper or the tea sipper of your family? We hear from both this month! We’re kicking off May (and a little pre-celebration for Gemini season) with some wild true crime, family drama and Ancestry.com-related stories. Be careful what you do with your saucy pics on cameras stolen from your ex… and that’s why we drink!

happy may may it's gonna be may i feel those um it's obviously not may when we are recording this but i feel like those memes are slowly trickling in on facebook so it's gotta be i love that you're still on facebook um because i was about to say those memes really died out a long time ago but the fact that they're coming back on facebook means they're still thriving on uh they never left on one platform they never left and neither did i i i do still like facebook i don't favorite boomer i love it well i i i'm surprised you don't use facebook more often because i really do use it as like a creep tool for like creeping on people well yeah if i want to creep on someone i will but

i feel like nobody i creep on like updates their facebook so it's like what i'm not getting any useful intel from there a lot of people i creep on are more like the people that are still they were like you know who i'm talking about but i'm not going to say who out loud but uh people from my childhood that have uh gone the wrong way in history and i like to follow uh the things that they post you sound like my She's like, I need to keep track of all the people I disagree with. I'm like, yeah, it can't be good for your cortisol. It can't be good for your soul. It can't be good. Just like, you know, fuck them. I see I have the energy for that. Makes me mad. And then I get all worked up. And then my chest hurts. And I am like, I don't need more more I have enough reason to panic in life you know I think you get worked up a lot easier than I do because for sure because I definitely just see it

as like oh I'm keeping up with the drama so but it's just like such boring drama it's like we all know what they're doing you know it's like they're just bickering I don't know maybe there's too much very fun to me maybe there's bickering too much in my life I'm like I don't need. Maybe there's too much bickering. Very fun to me. Maybe there's bickering too much in my life. I'm like, I don't need more of it. I've passed that. I'm like, get away from me. I mean, I'm not at all involved in it. So it's very fun to just look through the window and judge. That's delightful.

I'm so glad. Maybe one day I'll join you. But for now. You probably won't. But I'll just tell you every now and then. But no, I'm a big Facebook fan. Also, my mother, I do have to keep tabs on what she does and she's big on facebook so um yeah yeah between those two reasons they're they're

pretty they keep me occupied so thanks well i'm glad ever the only times um i get facebook notifications it's like m shared a meme and i'm like i know i also do it i also i like one of my like favorite things to do when i wake up is like see the the time like the history like the memories of like seven years ago you posted this and i like it because i like to see how far i've come but also i like to like delete it in case it's fucking problematic and i was an asshole i was like i was like an idiot teenager who like didn't have an awakening yet on how to like be a human being. So I feel like I just, you know, before I woke up and realized that privilege exists. I don't know. I just feel like, you know, things I thought were...

I'm glad you're connected to your past. I'm like, fuck everything from before. I've luckily only had to delete like two or three things and every time it wasn't super probably like i don't think i'd get canceled or anything but i was like oh that makes me feel yucky and so i just deleted it so i like to you know maintain my own visual history and it's very uh mature of you yes thank you i like to clean house every now and then to make sure i wasn't too big of a douche as a teenager so cool um anyway there's my rant on anyway the only perks left of facebook happy may everybody should we talk about our uh eva said that uh she's just gonna tell us what order to talk in and that she had fun with this one and there's some true crime involved i did hear that because she just said it five minutes ago

and I was eating a chocolate chip muffin, so she caught me at a good time. And so for once, I can say I know that I'm supposed to go first. Oh, okay. I was like, where are we going with this? Okay, great. Okay, so the first one is my grandma knew Al Capone. And this is from Kelsey Sheher her thank you for normalizing pronouns Kelsey and uh I guess we just get into it I feel like by the way before we get into it it's fair to say when I was doing tea time Tuesday so many people would write in that

their grandparents were like connected to the mob in some way i was gonna ask if you if you had that thought because i remember every time you posted it was like my grandparents helped a mob boss escape the blah blah i'm like everybody's grandparents somehow was involved at least our listeners i i feel like kelsey you your grandma probably knows a lot of other listeners grandmas yeah yes it's true there's like a network of the of them out there of these grandmas who'd have thunk they'd all have grandchildren who would listen to the same podcast yeah that's that's i guess not as shocking anyway here's kelsey's story um hi christine m eva and geo uh here's where you pet sweet baby g for me where is geo fully ignoring me so he's not participating but i will give it a rain check noted uh i refuse to pick a team and want to

sit at all your tables my name is kelsey and i am a lover of all things spooky scary and true crime i had a friend on bookstagram send me your way, and now I'm obsessed with this podcast, which I am still behind on and have a lot of catching up to do. Well, in about May 2023, Kelsey, you will have caught up to this exact moment. Yeah, maybe you're still on Facebook with Em, living in the past.

Maybe. I contemplated writing this in because I don't want to let you down. Oh, my goodness. Whoa. We are a tall order. That's right. We do have high expectations of all of you.

I only remember very little about the stories my grandma used to tell me, but I grew up thinking Al Capone wasn't a bad guy. My grandmother insisted he was good deep down. Oh. Cool. Hmm. mother insisted he was good deep down oh cool hmm hey you know i believe that every villain has one percent good in them and they just maybe choose not to do anything with it um back in chicago in the late 1920s al capone used my great granddad's garage to make liquor well there's the good part okay i can get down with that everyone always wondered why his garage never had snow on the roof during the winters and my grandma was around seven

at the time she and her sister used to see and talk to al capone and his goons often when one of her baby sisters passed away capone paid for the entire funeral a limo and grieved with the family she also remembers people coming into the home with guns and white cloths and then being ran out by her mother my family eventually fled chicago and moved a whopping 21 hours away to south texas i'm going to assume it was a scary time that they were trying to shield her from given how far they ran sadly that is all i remember of her stories and all the other memories are now resting with her but small side story before my grandma passed away she was on hospice and non-verbal for a while and the night she passed i left the nursing home and i'm ashamed to have been one of the only ones not with her when she took her last breath i lived in denial

that we were losing her and thought she would make it back to us that night i was woken up by a cool chill and hearing the words goodbye a moment later my mom called and said she was gone oh my gosh i truly believed she visited me to say goodbye and i take some comfort in knowing maybe she forgave me for not being there. She was like, where the fuck is Kelsey? Now I got to go all the way to her house to say goodbye? It's like, I now have the power of flight, but I have to make my way over there. That is all my stories and I do not have a story for another day. Oh, that's the first we've ever heard of that.

That's literally the first time anyone's said that. So I thank you for bringing all other stories forward and will be a forever fan of the podcast. Take care and stay safe in the sick world, Kelsey. Wow, Kelsey. What a story. I do think having connections to the mob really in their favor. I really feel like it's easy to see how lovely a mob boss can be. For sure. Like, oh, they got a limo for the funeral. It's like, how bad can they be?

When you're on the receiving end of a supervillain and all of his powers, but in a good way. Totally. Especially if you're a kid and they're just so kind to you and gentle with you. You know what I mean? It's like you don't see the violent streak. You know, I don't know much about like mob history. That's not like my special interest at all, but not yet. I was going to say, I'll give it five minutes before we run a deep dive. Give it till 3 a.m. But to my understanding, they were always very against harming kids.

I don't know. I'm glad they have a line somewhere. Yeah, but then don't they recruit children? I don't know. I totally understand. I also bet it depends on what they define as harming children. I think they probably saw a seven-year-old girl and they were like,'s not a threat to us yeah let's leave that one alone but yeah so i have a question like did you understand because i don't think i understand why there was no snow on the roof i think to make

liquor isn't that like it would heat up the house oh i have no idea i wish i could say i've uh made hooch before but unfortunately i have not but i'll talk to my local hooch makers yeah you talk to your dealer and let me know what they say yeah yeah wow what a tale Kelsey thank you for sharing um let's see I have a story sorry I also have like a mini cold um oh by the way someone got mad at me on Instagram because they said that I invited you over knowing that Leona had hand, foot and mouth disease. And I just want to clarify, I did not know that when Em came over. That's true, right? Like I knew I did not know until you guys left town.

Yeah. Okay. I just want to clarify because they were like, why would you willingly spread a disease? And I was like, I wasn't trying to spread a disease. I swear to God, if I knew what it was, I wasn't trying to spread a disease I swear to god if I knew what it was I would have told you not to come over there you've been like if you're uh if your baby looked as bad as I ended up looking oh my god yeah also not wanted to be near your baby never have allowed it like even if you were like it's fine I would have been like no no blaze says

I cannot like blaze would not have allowed it let's put it that way anyway so I I feel bad that people thought I was just like inviting you into my you know germ den um but i do have a cold right now so hopefully that's i think that'll be hopefully gone by the time i see you in a few days but if not i will wear a mask and i will oh god i forgot i have to see you again i'm you're gonna get me sick all over i'm not gonna get you sick again it's it's day three of this cold i've tested for covid every day no covid it's going away i mean this is just one of the uh three more days till i see you people do wonder what it's like to go on tour and there are a lot of perks but there's also a lot of downsides and one of them

is if one of us gets sick we're it's just including eva it's like we're it's like dominoes you know yeah it's if one of us is sick, it's really not a good chance for the rest of us. Yeah, no, this came this is day three, and I won't see you for three more days. So I'm, I'm quite confident that it'll be gone. But I'll keep you keep you apprised of my situation. Thank you. Just in case I will take extra deep breaths with my nostrils and appreciate them while i can well i was like why oh right to enjoy the feeling of it got you so this i don't even know why i was talking about that oh because uh if i have a crumbly throat that's why um oh but some people like the raspiness it gives you character i think like maybe if it's raspy it'll sound good

but if it's all like snotty like mucusy it, it's not going to be as sexy. I don't know. That's just a guess. I'll determine how sexy your voice is. Thank you. That's not for me to judge. You're totally right. Okay. So this is from Olivia. She, they. Thank you, Olivia. And the title is M and Christine told me to write this in, which I'm like, I believe you, but I don't remember doing it. So I don't remember. But thanks for like doing your job. So yeah, thanks for listening to us. Nobody else does. Okay. Hi, everyone. It's me, Olivia from the LA live show. Oh my gosh. Hang on a second. Editor Jack's friend slash the one with the possum tattoo. Holy crap. Okay. Well, I'm glad you gave us context because that makes me feel a little better. Y'all told me to write in a hometown about my weird web of true crime. So here I am.

I'm going to do this in bullet point form since they're all weird little anecdotes, at least until the last one. Without further ado, here we go. My neighbor's stepbrother-in-law. So my neighbor's stepsister's brother-in-law oh my gosh it's already a family it's a web right it's already a web uh deb where are you we need help okay only deb could navigate this web you know what i mean um my neighbor's step brother-in-law stepsister's brother-in-law was jeffrey dahmer's oh jesus christ first victim stephen hicks it got dark incredibly fast yeah hey remember when we were laughing remember how

fun it was two seconds ago he was hitchhiking on her street corner when dahmer picked him up and he was never seen again her my neighbor because stephen was a bit of a troublemaker his family assumed he had just left and didn't really look for him at first oh shit that's so sad when that happens they had no idea where he was until dommer was caught and confessed to his murder imagine how shocking that would be like you'd never put two and two together and then like this famous serial killer is like oh i killed that guy too it would be the guilt of a lifetime to be like and also i mean imagine that you're the poor victim on top of everything else you're probably thinking of you're thinking oh i wonder if they'll even notice

that i'm gone it's so sad it's so sad all right so the next one says when my dad's friend was seven years old she walked outside to see a huge police presence next door and turned and asked her mom mom why are they digging up mr gacy's yard shut the fuck up oh no how old was the person who said this seven bye was it the same what did they ask al capone that or something why is there's no snow on that garage and they're digging up this one's yard oh no mom why are they digging up mr gacy's yard yep yep yep that would be the yard of john wayne gacy good thing my dad's friend was a young woman not a young man yikes oh god that's a horrific thought okay next one a few years ago i was doing a presentation on the manson family for my subcultures class and asked my Nana what she remembered from that time. Instead of recounting news stories or fears, she said, Oh, did I never tell you Kathy's maiden name? For context, Kathy

is one of her best friends and our oldest family friend. Turns out her maiden name is Krenwinkel and Patricia Krenwinkel is her first cousin. Patricia was the woman who killed Abigail Folger and participated in the LaBianca murders. What the hell? Holy shit. Are you okay? Yeah, I feel like therapy should be free for you. Yeah, somebody needs to, at least your grandma or someone needs to pay for it.

Last but not least, my own familial true crime connection. My grandma's dad was not a nice man. He grew up in Chicago as a staunch Irish Catholic, got involved in the Italian mafia there. Okay, here we go, another one. Yeah, okay. Then moved to another Midwest state where he kept in touch with his criminal buddies.

One of his best friends was Jimmy Hoffa, which we discovered when my dad was watching the History Channel and saw a picture of one of Hoffa's exclusive dinner parties and spotted his own grandfather in the picture. Oh, my God. Imagine. You're like, Dad?

Grandpa? Imagine getting busted on the fucking Discovery Channel. On the History Channel where they're talking about, like, could it be aliens? It's like, is that my grandpa? Oh, no. Oh, man. Okay. Are you sure? Next. All right, man. Okay. Are you sure?

Next. All right. Check. Okay. Spot his grandfather in the picture. In this unnamed Midwestern state, my great-grandfather continued to be a piece of shit and pimped his daughters out to his mob friends and sexually abused them himself as well. Oh, for fuck's sake.

This started when they were... So, here we go. So, we just talked about how the mob didn't hurt children. Now, it's like, oh, he's pimping them out to his mob friends. I absolutely take that back. Apparently, we were incredibly wrong. As wrong as you could be. Whoops. Hey, this is proof that I don't have a lot of mob connections. Until 3am and then you'll know. I'll know way too much at 3am and be like, I was so wrong.

Yeah, you'll have to come back and edit all of this uh let's see this started when they were as young as two years old oh mother oh fuck fun fact question mark my grandma didn't remember any of this abuse until she was 40 oh dear god and a random song on the car radio triggered a memory and everything came flooding back she had to pull over so she wouldn't crash. Oh my God. That's like my biggest fear. Like something just comes on. They just realize something.

Yeah. Oh my God. When my great grandfather was on his deathbed, like his twisted version of Irish Catholic does, he confessed all of his sins so that he'd get into heaven. That's great. Oh, and that, if that's how God works, I don't want to meet God. Yeah, right.

It's like, cool. I don't want to go to that heaven if he's there you know what i mean i guarantee you that if heaven exists he is not there okay agreed uh one such confession was this when he was 14 years old he was the getaway driver for the italians in the saint valentine's day massacre oh fuck as a refresher the saint valentine's day massacre was the murder of seven irish mafia members on valentine's day in 19, ordered allegedly slash definitely by Al Capone. Oh, Kelsey knows him. Full circle. Your grandparents are friends.

How fun. The Italian mafia guys dressed up as cops and pretended to raid the Irish mafia's warehouse where they arrested them and lined them up outside and then gunned them all down. Obviously, there's no way to confirm my great-grandpa was there because, you know, mafia, but it seems well within the realm of possibility given who he was and who his friends were. And he, on his deathbed, confessed that he was their driver. So, you know. He was even in the Freemasons. We still have his robes and medals and everything. Oh, wow. Another little fun fact is that I'm related to both William Kemmler, the first man executed by electric chair, and James Madison. He's my sixth great uncle.

Nana really went ham on Ancestry.com a few years ago. Oh, my God. I almost want to believe that Nana didn't know how to use Ancestry and just started clicking random iconic people. Yeah, I was like, that guy looks familiar. It's like, yeah, because that's Al Capone. Oh, yeah, that's James Madison. Oh, yeah, that's the president. Wow.

Okay. Hmm. Okay. If you ever feel like you're overwhelmed, just, Olivia, just pretend that your Nana didn't really know how to use Anc use the answer i mean i believe you and your nana i have no right to say she's wrong but if you ever feel like you need a break from all this just be like maybe she clicked the wrong button you know if you need to tell yourself something maybe she combined 17 trees by accident yeah oops i think i've probably done that um okay she says don't ask me how or why i seem to be connected to so many iconic crimes and criminals it baffles me too i have a shitload of ghost stories too but since

this is so long already i'll leave that for another time if you want to hear them toodles olivia p.s i don't know if you're still doing the megan bit because i'm really far behind in the podcast literally episode 100 but just know that as someone whose ex-best friend has that name it gives me great joy that you use it in an insulting way teehee smiley face oh my god wow you would not make some of the megans happy a lot of a lot of megans and a lot of scorpios must overlap yes because i've said it before but i don't think the scorpios have uh understood just yet because a lot of Scorpios will write in and go, not all Scorpios are terrible.

And I'm like, that sounds like something a Scorpio. Every time I was like, classic Scorpio. And I feel and a lot of Megans do that, too, where they're like, not all Megans are terrible. And I'm like, if you feel like you need to tell me that, if you think I don't think one Megan isn't terrible terrible that's kind of a megan move you know what i mean i totally know what you mean right megan's um also our social our wonderful social media manager's name is megan and you know what we give her plenty of shit for it okay yeah she sticks around you know what she fucking delivers she does deliver yeah

that's right one megan i can get behind because Megan doesn't say by the way not all Megan's right she's like I get it no to the Megan's and Scorpio's out there that aren't the stereotype I welcome you we see you and we love you we see you and there's a lot of you who listen to this show which is hilarious there's so many megans and so many scorpios that are like i'm one and i'm like ah the amount of people at meet and greets who have came up to me the first thing they said was i'm megan because they wanted to watch me roast them was like crazy yeah it's crazy it's like they would say it with like a gleam in their eyes like i'm megan what are you gonna do about it those are the megans i like when they're like,

rip me apart. They own it. All right. Here is, oh, this is a great name. I hope I say it right. Adora, who uses she, her pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns. And the subject line is attempt at family reunion almost turns into attempt at true crime. Wow. I don't know no this is one of the first times i think we've gotten i don't want to you know maybe it'll change later but so far it's all true crime you're right stories you're right that never happens eva did say she was leading into true crime but yes hardcore not a ghost in sight so far yep um okay hi eva m christine and the rest of them that's why we drink fam first i just wanted to say that i'm so excited for the new tour uh well we're coming up on the end of it so

that's okay we got more dates coming up we got vegas coming up i don't think i'm not counting it as done until vegas is in the books you know me too i may have taken a sneaky coffee break mid-shift to secure tickets for myself and my friend during the pre-sale and ended up looking like a lunatic in the bakery when I squealed about getting good seats and we'll be seeing you in Boston oh my gosh we're literally about to go to Boston we haven't even done that yet as we record so that's and I'll be in Boston in three days and I'll get sick from Christine you'll see no you won't I Anyway, on to the story. My dad's father's, my dad's dad's side of the family immigrated to Boston from Ireland during the potato famine.

To be honest, I have no idea how many years of generations, how many years or generations ago that was, but I feel like probably a lot. My grandfather was for sure born in the US and his parents might have been too. I apologize. I'm not the record keeper in this story and i'm just called nana nana knows nana knows just how many mob families are affiliated and you're probably related to them to nana as well all those trees combined i do like how adora is like i'm not the record keeper of my family, which is like such a cool way to say that. It is. Like you are, Em.

I'm the record keeper of my family. I'm not, and I wish I would be, but nobody lets me. So maybe someday. Well, Adora says, I'm not the record keeper. I'm just the tea sipper. So that's what you can be. Oh, I'll be that. Yeah, for sure.

Anyway, at some point in the family line at my great grandparents' generation. So, okay. in the family line at my great grandparents generation so okay there was a fracture between siblings and the family split into two distinct sides who had no contact with each other the first time i ever even learned about the other family lines was when i mistakenly got emailed stuff for a different adora oh not my real name for reasons that will become apparent also i love me a queer superhero oh nice is adora a queer superhero i don't know you would know better than i i don't know adora superhero princess adora is a brave competitive and noble warrior oh my god from shira okay duh i sorry i'm always in my marvel head and i was like i don't know of an adora at all okay love a queer superhero that's badass back on track okay the first time i ever even learned

about the other family line was when i mistakenly got emailed stuff for a different person with my name uh when i told my mom how strange it was she just brushed it off as oh yeah she's probably from the other side of the family we don't talk to them the only explanation she gave was that there had been a falling out but she didn't know more than that which i love how enough time has passed that we just shrug off the fact that a whole chunk of our family we don't talk just doesn't exist to us anymore like the curiosity would eat me alive i feel like something our like my parents would do. They'd be like, whatever, just forget about it. And I'm like, you don't understand. I can't.

Like, I must know. Well, also, like, I'm obsessed, again, as the record keeper, I need to know what's going on. It's important. And if I found out that there was family that I was not talking to

and there was a huge rivalry, but there really wasn't a reason and none of us knew it, I'd be like, fuck that. I'm crossing lines. I'm absolutely... Honestly, like, as the tea sipper, I also require that information. but there really wasn't a reason none of us knew it i'd be like fuck that i'm crossing lines i'm absolutely as the tea sipper i also require that information i would absolutely reach out and be like are we still mad at each other like can i get to know you are we good what's your social media

like what's the situation fast forward to a few years uh a few years ago at the height of the 23andme slash ancestry.com craze and one of my uncles decided that it would be nice to try and find all the local relatives aha see he's the record keeper i think there we go my grandfather had long since died and my dad was either dead or dying timelines are hard uh so i guess my uncle was feeling some kind of way about life being short and family not being around forever. He started to do some digging and with the help of Ancestry.com, he actually located a man who seemed to be our grandfather's cousin. My uncle was excited to learn that he still lived in Boston and with some more sleuthing,

he got the guy's contact information to ask if he wanted to meet up. The guy agreed and they set a meeting place but somewhere bizarre like a beach in southie i think beach in southie yeah that's bizarre you're right i would you would expect it to be like a pub where like your grandparents hated each other or something like the ones that's from like 1650 or whatever in boston that are like the first bar ever oh like the bell in hand or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have thought that was strange.

Why not meet for coffee or get lunch or do anything other than meet on a secluded beach? But my uncle did not think that was strange. He happily showed up to their meeting point and was eventually greeted by a man who looked maybe too young to be the guy he had been talking to. Still, my uncle happily introduced himself. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. the guy he had been talking to still my uncle happily introduced himself oh boy oh boy the man the man pulled a gun on him and asked what his intentions were in setting up the meeting oh my god intentions jesus okay so the other side of the family still has a real fucking problem with you guys i don't know if you guys the the beef has not been squashed the beef has not been squashed i repeat back out abort mission yeah i really i could that would have totally happened to me then because i would have been

like what we like i don't even know what the problem is i just want to be friends and then what a beautiful day oh no oh no as it turns out the family split into two factions because my great-grandfather was a good catholic firefighter who just wanted to go on and raise more good Catholic firefighters two generations worth. His brother got involved in organized crime and his line stayed involved in organized crime. Oh, so. OK. So they're still in the family business, so to speak. Uh huh.

So now it's like you've reached out to a mob member and you're like hey i want to get to know you so let's hang out honestly that's probably the most creative way to to like approach a mob member like yeah now i understand why the mob guy was like what the hell is your agenda i love that the mob guy agreed though he's like i will because i'm so curious about what this is i know what Can you imagine the poor uncle? He was like, I'm just a good Catholic firefighter. I'm just a good Catholic. Like my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before me.

The extremely, incredibly stupid thing is my uncle knew that. Oh, uncle. Okay. Well, then hang on. So he knew this guy was connected okay he may not have okay i just have to fucking read the story he may not have known that they were still involved but he knew that that was why the family had split and that it was very likely the man he was meeting up with had been involved at some point and it still wasn't and he still wasn't which is unclear to me

um that's interesting because i feel like you definitely wouldn't go to a secluded beach then yeah i feel like that would be probably the only place you would not want to go it's really on the top of your list of like let's meet on a street corner that is incredibly populated let's meet at the police station just in case let's meet at like park and tremont like something so like constantly busy what about a duck boat oh that'd be fun yeah it's like kind of like get to know you there's an activity involved there's a lot of tourists you know like let's meet at a at a socks game oh fun you know yeah the happy ending is that my uncle can talk his way out of anything. Okay, love that for him.

He must get that from his connected side of the family. Yeah, maybe he was born into the wrong lineage. He really would have done a number on that side. He's snappy, just like the rest of the line. He is able to talk his way out of anything and managed to convince the heat, the heat, that he was truly just trying to reconnect with his family. The dude signaled the distant cousin that it was safe and they got their little reunion. I'm pretty sure they stayed in touch.

My uncle said he's a nice guy. Oh, well, you know, that's what Kelsey said about like Al Capone. Sorry for it being so long, but that's the story of how my uncle got a gun pulled on him for knowingly getting in touch with the criminal side of his family as a final interesting note someone in my family told me that one of the families or at least a character i'm a bad bostonian and have not seen it um one of the families in the movie the town was inspired by that side of our family i i don't know if it's true uh but just in case it is, I changed my name. So if anyone hears this and gets upset about me saying it, I can pin it on my sister. Yes, I love this.

Thanks so much for everything you do. The podcast keeps me going during my long work days, and I really don't know what I would do without it. Stay spooky, Adora. Holy crap. Okay, so I think I missed that at first. So the guy that he actually met on the beach was the like associate and like signaled to the cousin like you can come out now that's what it sounds like to me or like maybe he brought another cousin for backup and so well he said like

oh it was the he was way younger than the cousin he was supposed to meet so then he told the cousin like you can come out now this guy just is on ancestry.com that's all man ancestry must have done a real a bunch i like to imagine there's like some like grungy pool hall where a bunch of mobsters hang out and at one point they all started realizing that they were getting reached out to during the ancestry craze everyone was getting a weird email like oh we want to meet you oh my gosh that is wild that would be a good reality show like chasing down the dangerous you know people in your family tree by the way have speaking of um i don't know how this totally jumped into my brain but have you watched the jury yet no but i want to i keep seeing i need to watch it is it good i don't even like i we just discussed this i

don't really watch a lot of news shows but I was going to say you never recommend news shows to me. I'd seen a few clips on TikTok and I was like, I'll watch like five minutes of it. And I ended up watching a few episodes. It's pretty good. Okay. I'm going to watch it next. I just got like another ad for it. So I guess that's my, that's my cue. Okay. Let's see. Here is the next email this is from amy she her and the title is true crime family drama oh my god really true crime this season wow i know hi eva and everybody else i've always thought m would love the absolute drama of my family, but I never thought there was a true crime slash paranormal aspect to it, so I didn't want to just send it in. But there is a true crime aspect, so here we go. My grandparents had a very horrible marriage and a very rough divorce. My grandpa also suspected

my grandma of cheating, but he never had any evidence. They got divorced in the early 80s and had four grown children by this time. After the awful divorce and after my grandma moved out, my grandpa's house was broken into and my grandpa's camera and a bunch of film was stolen. He always suspected my grandma of stealing this stuff, but again, no evidence. Fast forward to 2016, both aunts got 23andMe tests done. Funny enough, they seemed to have different dads, neither of them being my grandpa. Uh-oh. My mom and my uncle never got any DNA tests done because they decided they didn't want to know and the four siblings decided to never tell their dad. Oh, that's so hard. That's sad. Like you didn't know. I know, that makes me sad. And then later in 2016, my grandpa had been

diagnosed with cancer and was obviously struggling, and he liked to go to antique stores to relax and have fun. So one weekend, my mom, dad, and I took him to an antique store. Oh, no. I know where this is going. When he pointed out a camera and said that was the same one he had back in the 80s. Then one of the workers at the store said that particular camera came with some film that had never been developed. Shut up. Oh my god, this is crazy. But some of the pictures look

kind of racy from what the guy could tell. He then handed the film to my grandpa and he turned white. He turned to my mom and said, is this your mother? My mom took the film and after the look of shock wore off, she simply said, well, it's so small we can't really tell. He gave my mother the face that could only be described as, okay, sure, you filthy liar, judgment look. Yeah, right. Yeah, like, nice try. Just because I have cancer doesn't mean I can't read your facial expressions. Right, yeah, I know your side eye better than anyone.

Yes. I only got a glimpse of the tiny film pictures and they looked like rather racy photos of a woman in lingerie. My grandpa bought the camera and the film and found a place where they could still develop the film into large pictures. So grandpa did that. And while I never saw the photos based on the family's reactions, it's probably grandma. After my mom and her siblings confronted grandma about it, she confessed that she and one of her boyfriends at the time did break into grandpa's house and stole the camera and had a fun night afterward oh my god holy shit she thought he destroyed the film and that those pictures would never be seen by anyone while grandpa now knows what actually happened he and my grandma have never discussed it they don't talk to each other at all actually actually. But there is my true crime story.

Sorry this is so long. And Eva, you can absolutely rewrite this so it makes more sense if you want. I know it's lacking on true crime, but not drama. And it's not lacking. I mean, someone broke into his house and stole it and it reappeared. Love you all so much. It's also family true crime. It's like a crime that it happened.

Yes, it is. So thank you, Amy. That is a doozy. Wow. Can you, like, what are the odds? I mean, maybe they're in the same town and the camera got, I don't know what the odds are, but it still feels incredibly rare that you would be the one to find that camera. Yeah.

It's really powerful. Like, you just happen to come i feel like the universe like put you in the right path you know what i mean wow have you found anything um particularly wild at an antique store you know i love antique stores i feel like i i love my um the thing my favorite thing i ever found was that telegram i have that where aunt agatha like uh disowns her nephew for getting married without her permission and says all the money will be going to the Humane Society now and he can't have it that's my favorite one because it's like just so bizarre I still can't believe you just found that I know like

something that is perfectly curated for you and it was like torn and it was like in the bottom of a box and I was like I have to rescue this or else no one will see it yeah what about you i keep thinking i don't know i've i've found some things at antique stores but they were like they weren't interesting enough to like be particularly memorable like i found a cool pair of sunglasses one time i found like a little trinket but i haven't found anything that was like like i want something that has drama on it like you do with anagapa yeah i keep meaning to make a tiktok of that just to like i don't know share it because i always talk about it and never like read it out loud but um yeah that's a doozy i feel like you should come i live by a bunch of antique stores we could do like a big, you know, well, one of my favorite things about growing up in Fredericksburg was that we had Fredericksburg is a huge antique town,

antique store town. And, but I still never really found anything there either. I feel like I can't tell the difference between like what's worth something and what's just kind of like tossed to the side. Cause some of it feels like it should just be like good willilled but maybe there's like maybe it's so old it's deserving of being in an antique store i don't know i know what you mean i don't know the inner workings of them but i even i went to an antique store next to your house oh yeah there's a bunch of cool ones i

got a cookbook from there from like the 20s or something oh that's fun like i don't even cook though i don't know what i was doing anyway okay here's the next story this is uh from kelly who uses she her pronouns thank you for normalizing pronouns kelly uh kelly says i'm a big fan of the show which i have been listening to uh for close to a year but i'm going through much faster now with my new job i'm currently at episode 100 and let me say your stories and banter make my workday go so much faster but um i've got more i've got more interesting things to tell you let's crack into it back in my broke post-college student days, I worked at Starbucks in the tiniest little village. Yes, it was officially classified as a village at the time of Sunbury in northern central Ohio.

I mean, the fact that it's a village, I probably never heard of it. Okay. About 20 to 25 minutes north of Columbus. Okay. I grew up there. And when I tell you that the most interesting thing was drive your tractor to school day, I am not kidding. What? What?

Have you not? We didn't celebrate drive your tractor to school day at my school, but there were schools in my town that did. I've never heard of such a thing. And that's why, like, when people are like, oh, you're from Ohio, do you live on a farm? I'm like, no, I, like, don't know anything about, like, I lived in a city, but I but I understand that like farther out, there's obviously a lot of rural areas. Wow. I've never heard of drive your tractor to school day. Oh, no. Well, I never had.

We never did it. But I would see pictures all the time on my social media of like others of other schools nearby. It does. It sounds like an Ohio thing. It does. Both. thing it does it sounds like an ohio thing it does both uh it was kind of a quiet little town where everyone knew everyone else's business but i digress i worked with a great group of people at starbucks and we became very close and one co-worker in particular i will call him s to

protect his privacy was a dear friend or my work husband uh and he was always his happy sassy self at work s went to school at a nearby ohio wesleyan university i know that one and his boyfriend nick was a frequent visitor at our store nick was kind of an odd guy and he was very shy and standoffish but we tried our best to get him to open up despite our best efforts he never got overly friendly with us he would just come to the store and wait around for s to finish his shift but we tried our best to get him to open up despite our best efforts he never got overly friendly with us he would just come to the store and wait around for s to finish his shift and honestly it seemed a little obsessive to me but i was also a 20 something year old and my own life was a mess so who the hell was i to judge that's so mature yeah you and i would

have been like we're judging because we don't want to look at our own mess we're gonna judge their mess I'm 30 and I'm judging yeah me too but I guess my gut feeling was right because S ended up breaking up with Nick S moved on with his life and was having a good time being young and single but Nick did not oh I came into work one morning and S was not there despite being scheduled I asked about where he was but no one seemed to know anything just that there was an emergency but s was okay it wasn't until he was back at work a few days later that i found out what had gone down s had lived in a frat house on campus and early in the morning nick had snuck into the frat house and stabbed s's roommate anthony in the chest what in the in the chest i do not believe s was there at the time nick blamed anthony for his breakup with s

i was gonna say what did anthony do jesus i thought for a second maybe he mistook him for s oh like wrong place wrong time nick blamed anthony for his breakup with S, which was the motive for the attack. Anthony was injured, but he lived. Nick was arrested and convicted of the stabbing, which got him six years in prison. Poor S had to go to court and testify, which was traumatic for him, and he was really shaken up about it for a long time. Imagine like that feeling of being in the middle, like your ex stabbed your roommate. You know, it's like such a terrible feeling position to be in. Shortly after all this went down, Nick was out on bail.

He stopped by the store like he hadn't just tried to murder his ex's roommate. And he was casual and acted friendly towards us. He's like, can I have a vanilla bean frappuccino? Like, no, you can't leave. He got his coffee and left. And and you know he showed up to like hopefully run into s right and it's like oh there's no other starbucks two blocks away like come on yeah you come to the one in the tiny little village yeah where your ex worked forget it he got his coffee and left without incident but it was super surreal to see him just walk

in there like everything was normal and fine a few days later i got on a facebook friend request for him and i had no nothing good happens on facebook look this is for the drama i was gonna say actually i would for sure log back in just for this to just to see what was going on a few days later i got a facebook friend request from him and i had an irrational fear that he would know if I rejected his request but I sure as hell didn't want to be friends with him not even on Facebook so I let the request sit there and it's still sitting there to this day because what the hell do you do with something like that what do you do I don't know so yeah that is the story of my Facebook friend request from an attempted murderer sorry for the length I tend to be a bit wordy but i hope you can i hope i can talk my hubby

into buying me tickets for a live show sometime soon uh until then peace and love from me and my fuzz butts maizey onyx lily and lou from kelly team milkshake yes i can't resist showing you pictures of my fur kids and then there are pictures of that aww babies uh i love when every every time i swear to God, every time I see pictures of pets at the end of an email, I'm like, somebody almost died in this email. They're trying to make us feel better. Like, thanks for the bandaid that is your sweet little baby. It's a good bandaid. Don't get me wrong. But wowza. That is, that's just a lot. That's just a lot. Like it to be on the periphery but like involved enough

that you're getting friend requests and you see the guy repeatedly and you're friends with that i mean it's just the friend request is particularly weird because like the damage has already been done the only like either you're delusional enough to think that like we could be buddies or there's absolutely an agenda and you're gonna try to reach out to me and like maybe threaten me or something or just keep tabs like on your ex i imagine it's like oh i just want to keep keep close like keep tabs that's so sick oh yeah i hope s is okay too because i feel like that knowing that he's out the ex is out of prison must be really scary too and anthony too and

anthony for sure if i got stabbed by someone if they only got six years in jail on that sixth year i worried for the rest of my life they were gonna try to like finish the job you know for sure yeah i would be terrified um wow okay i guess ohio's not all that boring all the time i don't think so who would have? So this is the last one. This is the one Eva wanted me to read. Oh, no. Oh, no. The title is Did Israel Keys Try to Kidnap Me?

Oh, my God. You know I hate that story. That's truly one of the worst. It is. It still upsets me to this day. So let's see. Preferred name and pronouns, Raven. It says it is a false name for anonymity she her slash gemini or she her comma gemini so uh one of our

own here we go hello to my fellow gemini babies christine we are birthday twins hello and then it says m you were almost born on the perfect day too but not quite i'm sorry we can't all be perfect i guess i guess not i tell you that all the time you never really listen but um also i was born at 12 12 a.m so i was right over the line there i almost i almost shared a birthday with you m but thankfully i got raven wow you were really only like 40 minutes away isn't that weird okay so like so many of your listeners i've been surrounded by the paranormal my entire life everything from ghosts to shadow people to spirit attachments to aliens to cryptids but in honor of upcoming gemini season i love that we're already doing the pre-celebrations

yeah i thought i'd finally share one of the scariest non-paranormal experiences I've ever had. In the early 2000s, I was in high school and living in a small town southwest of Seattle. I was about 16 at the time and my older sister was 18. Our parents worked a lot, so we were left alone for long periods of time. As it was a small town with not much to do, we would often have to find creative ways to entertain ourselves. One weekend, we decided to drive our tractor to school. No, I'm just kidding. One weekend, we decided that we would do a very daring thing and toilet paper our friend's house. That's fun. We knew her and her family were away for the weekend and she lived in the middle of the woods about 30 minutes from town, so it would be easy to not get caught. Toilet paper, this is

in parentheses, toilet paper wasn't such a hot commodity 20 years ago and we used to have such a surplus, we would decorate our friends slash enemies homes with it. Yes, we were a bit nerdy and spent our weekends lip syncing Michael Jackson songs. This sounds like my, is this me? I don't know, I'm confused. Hang on a second.

I had Michael Jackson earrings in high school. People thought I was so weird. What? I know. And spent our weekends lip syncing Michael Jackson songs in high school. People thought I was so weird. What? I know. And spent our weekends lip syncing Michael Jackson songs and toilet papering houses, not partying and drinking with the cool kids. See, it's June 4th, must be. You got born on, like, the fun party day. Anyway, so off to the woods we go to have some naughty fun.

We made it to her house fine, did the deed. Well, okay. I think the toilet papering. And decided to head back home. woods we go to have some naughty fun we made it to her house fine did the deed well okay i think the toilet paper and decided to head back home it was about midnight or 1 a.m at this time and the woods around her house were spooky so we didn't do as good of a job as we normally would have a rush tp job if you will shortly after pulling out of her driveway and back onto the dirt road that would lead back to the highway an older light-colored truck flies up behind us. The truck started aggressively tailgating us and flashing his lights. He was within inches of the back of our car and would slow down and then speed up over and over.

Ew. Yeah, that is already giving me the heebie-jeebies. You know who else did that was the monster in Jeepers Creepers. Oh, I've never seen that he would like try to scare them on the road and like almost crash into them a bunch of times that's disturbing because you do hear those stories where it's like people convince you to pull over so that you're like vulnerable okay thinking at first that it was someone who may need help oh no okay exactly what i was afraid of or perhaps they saw

something wrong with our car we stupidly stopped the truck's headlights were on bright so we couldn't see much of anything when we turned to look behind us okay if somebody has their brights on and they're and they're pulling up behind you like no i'm sorry there's a reason they have their brights on they shouldn't be on if they're driving behind you. At all. They just don't want you to see. Ugh. Just a silhouette of a tall man in the driver's seat. We stopped in the middle of the dirt road and the truck rolled up within inches of our car and stopped as well. But then nothing happened.

He just sat there. Within a few seconds, we quickly realized that this person was not trying to help and my sister sped off. As soon as she did, he resumed his chase again tailgating flashing his lights and revving his engine this was before everyone had cell phones and we certainly didn't so our only option was to try and get away from this guy we finally got to the highway highway where we hoped to find other cars but no luck this is a very remote country highway and the road was deserted my sister sped up to try and lose the guy but he kept right with us we drove for miles this Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. He had stopped in the perfect spot as the road was too narrow for us to go around him with him being in the middle of the road so we stopped too we saw in the back of his truck he had construction tools and a chainsaw jesus christ this is like out of a horror movie oh my god we immediately assumed he was going to use the hammer to kill us and the chainsaw to dismember our bodies we were obviously terrified he then opened his door and got out of his truck we saw his face clearly as our headlights hit him he was very tall maybe six foot two had dark greasy hair and a big nose he started walking toward us my sister

immediately threw the car into reverse and was able to turn around as he lunged for my passenger door handle oh thank god oh fucking hell dude i'm so i'm so that was the sister who was able to do that yes i thank god for her because i i truly would have frozen in fear right yeah i don't even know how i would react like i have no idea but probably not as savvy as the sister yeah the look on his face will forever be imprinted in my memory we sped off again but somehow he again caught back up to us and continued his pursuit i honestly have no idea how long he followed us flashing his lights and tailgating the entire time it felt like an hour but could have just been 15 minutes he tried to pass us again multiple times but my sister cut him off each time in our hysteria we weren't really

paying attention to where we were going we were just frantically trying to lose the asshole eventually realized we realized that we were somewhat close to my sister's friend's house it was only about a mile up the road and his house sat very close to the highway we reached it pulled in the driveway and began honking our horn flashing our lights and screaming for help the man pulled up behind us blocking us in the driveway oh fuck and the friend's probably like what did i do to get yeah truly truly i thought it was gonna go hey we know our friend is up here let's turn the other direction oh oh nope it was like we need help which is fair that's fair um so we pulled in uh the man pulled up behind us

blocking us in the driveway shit what if no one was home oh my god this is fucking terrifying we again see him start to get out of his truck but just then a light flicked on inside our friend's home we continued to make as much noise as we could and the man quickly got back in his truck and drove away our friend never actually came outside which i mean is smart as the friend to be like yeah i don't know what's going on out there we later found out his mom had called the police and we were too scared to get out of the car and go in the house so we just sat there after he left for about 10 minutes looking back we should have gone inside and called police ourselves but we were afraid we'd get in trouble

for admitting that we were out late because we were toilet papering someone's house so we decided to just head home luckily we didn't see him again fast forward to about four years ago a friend of mine told me to check out the podcast true crime bullshit was which is all about israel keys his childhood the murders connected to him his mo and lesser known crimes i listened to the first season and was justifiably horrified but then i decided to google his photo holy shit i immediately was drawn back to this scary incident and was shocked at how similar he looked to our asshole tailgater. However, there was nothing in the first season of the podcast about him doing anything like this, so I relaxed a little. Then I listened to episode 210 and about shit my pants. In this episode,

there are over a dozen credible reports made to the FBI of Israel Keyes tailgating, flashing his lights, stalking, and trying to get people to pull over while driving the most credible incident is from a woman who tells a story from 01 or 02 exactly when my incident happened where a man driving a ford f-150 which is the car that keys drove at the time aggressively tailgated her he would pull up within inches of her car with his lights on bright then slow down then he passed her and either slowed way down and once stopped completely in the middle of the highway and got out of his truck she stated that this man looked exactly like israel keys this happened in clallam bay washington which is a few hours west of where

i lived her story was identical to mine there are also a number of other coincidences including he was a construction worker the tools in the back of the truck. He was living a few hours west of me. He frequented remote slash heavily wooded locations when looking for victims. And we were currently living smack dab in the middle of one of his murder hotspots. And five, he often targeted couples as well as solo victims. I still have no idea if it was really him, but the coincidences are uncanny. What would have happened if we hadn't sped off when he got out of his truck? What would have happened if our friend's mom hadn't turned her light on at the perfect moment? There's obviously no way to know,

but my gut tells me we may have skirted death that night. He truly was the epitome of a monster. Anyway, not sure how to end that without sounding falsely chipper. Welcome to our world. Although this story may have been more in Christine's wheelhouse, one of my previously sent stories was definitely in Em's. Cough, bat, squatch, cough. Oh! Hope you enjoy Gemini season and stay spooky, everyone. Whoa! Wow.

Oof-a-doo-fa. That is, that is terrifying. I like to think I would know what to do in a situation like that but i have no fucking clue like no right it's like all the true crime i cover it would just probably poof out my head and in the same vein like part of me thinks like i would still have that framework of like being nice and like being too polite and being like oh well maybe i'm confused maybe he really needs help or something like maybe it's an emergency and my first thought would be as soon as he got out of the car if i felt in danger i mean if i mean he was it was obviously threatening and if he got out of

the car and started walking towards me i'd like to think i would just straight up run him over with my car but like i don't know if i could do it that's a great point like i feel like our gut would be like well maybe not because what if he's just injured or something and now I'm gonna kill the guy or like truly like what if he's you know mentally ill and just having um right he's having some sort of episode and like you know like I don't know what I would be thinking I certainly wouldn't I would think every single thing except how to just safely get out of there like I wouldn't know what to do I don't think I would either I'm just also glad that they weren't alone you know yeah two of them to at least say like oh this is where my friend lives

and like you know one of them's driving one of them can keep an eye out oh my gosh that's so scary oh wow that's so scary oh my god well i'm glad you're safe i i can't imagine that's traumatizing like even if like even if it which I mean you know where I stand I believe it was Israel Keyes that motherfucker had apparently hundreds if not thousands of crimes that just never got reported before he died by suicide so who the fuck knows so I think it's very well likely it could have been but even if it wasn't like that's still fucking terrifying like somebody there's two people like that right yeah like that means somebody else was trying to victimize you and did victimize you so you almost hope it was israel

keys so that way there isn't another person out there he's not the same exactly exactly like oh my god he's uh put away and now deceased oh um these are doozy we don't often have true crime and these were crazy uh yeah i am stressed i i think at least if it's a ghost story i can be like well that's probably not real and then just like shut my brain off from ever having to think about it you've ever said that's probably not real i at least could excuse it if i overwork myself but like with things like this I'm like oh my god this could happen to me tomorrow and now I'm like never gonna sleep again oh god okay well

good times everyone happy May I hope tour season was fun Geminis we're about to really thrive and it's gonna be scary for everyone who isn't us so good luck alright well i guess next time we see you we will be in hot hot birthday mode

birth eva's like oh no i gotta prepare the birthday list and that's why we drink