Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 329: Cornerfest '26 Part A

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Cornerfest is back, baby! Join Mathas and Jesse as Alex takes them on a journey through the corners of the internet in this first part of the yearly series. CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same! Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPOD Thank you to our sponsors: Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/ Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin POOPGATE https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/thats-not-water-buddy-an-oral-history-of-poopgate/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNHAgekSst3/?igsh=MXdrazFsOXJhMHcxZA%3D%3D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Matthews_Band_bus_incident https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-history/2024/08/06/dave-matthews-band-incident-bus-chicago-boat-bridge-anniversary https://maps.app.goo.gl/tgKMpCXVYjCvhxYT8 https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/dave-matthews-band--2?page=2&year=2004#concert-table https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRnhP_olVXM https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-thats-what-i-call-some-early-90s-bullsh-t/id1245946410?i=1000661862794 GHOST HOUSE  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-23-vw-14352-story.html#:~:text=In%20the%20winter%20of%201988%2D89%2C,pregnant%20with%20her%20second% https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/40792926/john_griffen-damon https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SPNP19300326.2.9&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-------- https://houseofgeekery.com/2023/01/06/creepy-mysteries-the-san-pedro-haunting/ https://tubitv.com/movies/100005762/an-unknown-encounter-the-true-account-of-the-san-pedro-haunting CRYPTOPHON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker) https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/high-stakes-hacking-euro-style/ https://www.telepolis.de/article/Hacker-leben-nicht-gefaehrlich-3404414.html https://web.archive.org/web/20141103230920/http://archive.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/12/1705 http://www.tronland.org/ OUR LADY OF ZEITOUN https://catholicexchange.com/the-unlikely-marian-apparition-at-zeitoun-egypt/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Zeitoun HORSELAUGH https://web.archive.org/web/20131015000000*/horselaugh.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i1PLMcxWuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IV8tTmWQbs https://pointraven.com/horselaugh/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vallow%E2%80%93Daybell_doomsday_murders THE APOCALYPSE PLANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm https://www.space.com/15551-nibiru.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin https://zetatalk.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine https://www.space.com/42177-when-will-we-find-planet-nine.html

Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your sister, who refuses to accept that she does not have a face for bangs. Get her a lovely hat. Amazon has a huge selection of fashionable gifts. And with Boxing Day deals, you can save big on hats, home decor, even the hottest toys. Grab some berets while you're at it. For that, oh, so awkward, sweep your hair to the side until your bangs grow outstage. From Searchlight Pictures comes Is This Thing On, now playing exclusive Toronto engagement, everywhere January 9th, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Canada's own Will Arnett.

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We're all doomed. We're all doomed. Just pop popcorn in a microwave, and that's roughly the sound effect. Yeah, it's pretty spot on, actually, if you think about it. I'm so, I'm way more excited for that than I am. for a fucking age of disclosure. Me too. All right.

It's Spielberg so you know it's going to be great on like a movie making level. Yeah. But on a like societal level, I am bracing for the amount of armchair ufologists. It's too late.

Who are just about to be like, I can't even go on some breaths now because people are like, Disclosure is, it's happening. Stephen Spielberg is working with the government to let people. I'm like, no. Like he's going to show up and then Zach Snyder's Superman is going to appear Petro Capital wants going to be the witcher and everything will be fine the world returned

to 2019 war that's actually terrible that's not that's oh yeah we don't want to go back to 2019 it's a little better for a long time a little better a little better a little better a little better than it is now 20 you wake up tomorrow it's 2019 yeah do you warn the world I move false i move best answer solid way i move to europe oh my god yeah guys guys hello again and welcome to our second or fifth or whatever corner fest the 2026 version which this time as intended i meant to do this last time is actually occurring over the gap of the year which is, you know, the corner, right? 2025 and 2026.

Give my immediate concern. And Jesse, tell me if you share this concern. Sure. The more time Alex has to plan something, the more confusing the episode ends up being rather than coherent. I think what you're about to find out is one, you're completely correct because the man already started with the end of the year is like a corner. So in his mind, years are like 90 degrees.

There's only four. There's only four, dude. Have you ever in the title of peers? Yeah. We sort of like kind of just like shift the year really hard into like a half a year. And so much like this episode, hard left into some weird stuff on the internet. That's perfect. And I must stress.

Yeah. No, you're correct. He's going to be like time slices. We vertical leap through time into a portal of your imagination. We're going to go everywhere. We're going to go everywhere today. I picture Alex in his room hunched over. he's like, this is fucking genius

and then you like zoom out and he's like in a haze. I'm naked. That's why his room is still so smoky. I'm shirtless. It's not even it's not even smoky. It's like the beams of like Nyarlathotep are like coming into my eyes. And old God writing is a notoriously

concise and sensible and not at all insane. Or maybe I'd literally brought that up right now so that later I can come full circle and seem like a genius. 5D chess. Right. Which brings me

to the topic of the episode today and something which to me I think might be one of the

most important parts of life on this earth and that's Patreon.com slash 200. I knew you're going to do it

and I'm so proud of you. It was very good. This year once Cornerfest is through we're going to be hitting the Patreon even harder

with cool stuff starting with an episode quality recording of our live show from last month yeah and last year's live show

probably come out as an episode sometime pretty soon also but also where you still get weekly minisodes movie commentaries with a show rotten popcorn even let's plays this time we're going to be doing a better job of telling you about that stuff this time also when it happens and making sure that you know that signing up and supporting us is what's keeping us making cool stuff all through next year and we've got some really good topics

for next year already we've already kind of planned out a couple months into next year what we're going to be doing and it's all very cool and all very fresh and different stuff than what we did this year so yeah no repeat topics that's a shame yeah yeah Yeah, no repeat topics, but like, no repeat, like, aesthetics, right? Like, it's, it's a, like, this year was like a, this year was like a dark magic year. There was like a, there was like a chunk of our show where we were like, we are in the muck of magic. March to now. We're in like a, we're in like a magic diversion.

Yeah. It was like an unconscious working. But, uh, totally different stuff coming next year that is totally of a different flavor. So support us if you can because this money doesn't just support us three poluccas. because out here, but everybody else who works in the show like Dean and Hilda and Mel too. And the more of our time that we can spend making the show the best that it can be the better. So that's patreon.com slash shulamati pod. Go sign up even if you can't afford a financial contribution because as long as you believe in nice, strong, potent culture, which

constantly keeps you, as you guys said, peering around the edges of what is presented to you by the various institutions that control your lives. That's a win, baby. Anyway, the real thing I'd call the most important thing on this planet. Well, besides context, which I really think is the most important thing. But really, these two things kind of go in hand, hand, hand. Context and this thing go hand in hand. It's aesthetics.

I mentioned it earlier. Aesthetics is the most important thing, which is a big, huge idea about the way things in the world are perceived and what kind of effect we can have on, like, experiences by, like, thinking about those experiences ahead of time or interacting with those experiences or whatever, right?

You guys know what I mean about you guys like know what aesthetics are, right? Like even, sure. Yeah, yeah. Even like art itself is just like one zone of aesthetics, right? So if you think, like,

if you really think about it, like aesthetics is one of the big main things. Like how things are, how we make things be, that's pretty big. Where is this going, bro? Just follow me. Just follow me.

Wait, hang on with Jesse. What are you going to say? I just love. He's like, you know, aesthetics, how we make things be. Yes. Yeah. That's the other sentence I've ever heard you say. Yeah.

How we make things be. The reason that I say it goes hand in hand with context is that even though they're not like two sides of the same coin exactly, they both kind of amp each other up into an infinity spiral together that goes straight up your own mental ass in only the best ways. For example, the last sentence I said operates on several different levels. But I didn't just think about how it would sound to your ears as you. heard me say an infinity spiral that goes straight up your own mental ass, but also how it would sound to your ears as you heard me say it, which hopefully is something like beautifully gross, like hopefully you got like a beautifully gross feeling from it. But I also thought about it, what it would make you think about, like based on what I'm guessing about your collective

cultural knowledge, which hopefully is enough to get you simultaneously to both good butt sex in your brain, but also like cool Dr. Strange. So hopefully. all that happened in the last 10 seconds. Is this like less comprehensible than usual? No, I figured if anything you would understand because this sounds like a Mathis writ.

We're talking about sending information up your butt. This is just like when you say but you think about a butt, you think about sex, you think about your Is that what you think about when you think about a butt? When you think about butts, you think about a lot of things. That's the first place your brain goes.

second right exactly exactly but like shit's in there too dr strange mental ass why is dr strange in there where is this going anyway the only reason i bring this up the only reason i bring this up is that corner fest 26 just like any good corner fest is filled with a giant and slowly growing amount of tantalizing mystery nuggets there are 25 last year now there's 26 think about it not for eating Chaluma Nasty style of these nuggets. No. But for thinking about

and mentally engaging with these things in a way that genuinely makes you excited and you want to get out there and uncover your own strange mysteries yourself maybe someday.

But to do it right requires some aesthetic considerations and because the Chiluminati I think that's what he was going to say what is required. Is it journey

that I watch you go on and I still don't know when you listen to this. back when you listen to this back just like you'll listen and you'll want to explore you'll go explore and then the aesthetics I'm second or third listen it'll sound it'll sound great uh but look the Tulumadia politely asked me uh to as we go uh talk about the aesthetics of the episode uh I'm gonna sort of like give the listeners sex six yeah yeah I tried and it's already going over so it's already going over really well so I'm gonna go sort of like give the listeners

a tutorial on how I write stuff like this as I write stuff like this does that make sense So it's like, this is it going to be an episode slash writer's workshop for new content creators? It's like a behind the scenes of how this episode was written while also being the episode. Doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. Too late to turn back now. You're trapped with me. I am the audio version of one of those people who writes really good, long, informative,

well-written Reddit posts about things you don't care about. We're live on the air. There are 26 mysteries in this year's corner between years. And today, in part A, we are going to hear the first six of them. Also, sometimes I lie for fun, but I'm never about the topic. and some of the stuff I say might be wrong by accident because I'm a comedian, not a journalist. And though I am trying my best, thirdly, please just consider this a generalized content warning as some content in this episode may not be suitable for children or those with sensitive constitutions. For example, this first segment is called the shit bus.

Well, now it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, you get it. Aesthetics, right? I mean, I feel like a bus filled with shit is extremely. extremely child oriented. I mean, do you remember being on the bus as a kid? Well, maybe he doesn't mean poo-poo. Maybe he means like stuff.

No, I mean shit. Never mind. Now, all these stories are just the leftover threads. Just like with every corner fest. All these stories are just the leftover threads of my episode research for the year. Like things that for whatever reason, while they are juicing nuggets, never get to the full episode status, either just because there's not that much to say or, you know, there's various reasons why they're the delicious thanksgiving leftovers of a cheluminati year well spent yeah but i don't like

holding on to ideas for very long either because i think they get stale and i i'm not excited about them anymore so this is like me purging for next year's ideas right gotcha so here they all here they all are for you now and you know since it's the first story out of the gate it has to be something immediately engaging with that should be a cigarette in your hand with the way you're acting and not weed i wish it should be a cocaine soon. Okay, so the next thing we're going to do. Well, I don't want to like smoke for too long. All right. Anyway, so. What the fuck? You get what I'm saying. Listen, first story at the gate. You want to start with the snappy title. This title is the shit bus. It sounds like it's going to be funny, but it also raises a lot of questions in your mind,

which you now want to know the answer to. Yeah, there's a lot of questions. All right. Yep. Also, it can't be too long. It has to be something kind of familiar. Lots of people will latch onto it right away. So instead of going immediately to the insane metaphysical places that you already think I'm going to go or the trust me bro stuff that I'm definitely going to get into later. Instead of doing that right out of the gate, we start small, we start simple and grounded by reminding the audience of what happened on Kinsey Street Bridge in Chicago on August 8th of 2004. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Maybe about the Dave Matthews band like poop incident. Yes. So they dumped a bunch of poo in the river. Yes. So just in case some listeners out there don't

know what I'm talking about. Here's a quote about it from Mathis to read from an article that's called, That's Not Water, Buddy, an oral history of Poopgate. People are either pro or anti Dave Matthews. Where are you boys on his music? I don't care about him. He's like a tree to me. He's just there. He's not trying to hurt anyone. And I don't, I don't necessarily find myself super inspired by him, but I'm sure that the people who do are like fish. Oh, God, that explains why my dad grew up. I just listen to Dave Matthews and my dad was a fish head and all that other shit. So that makes why I like him. Dave Matthews is fine. I like Dave Matthews. I don't listen to Dave Matthews anymore, but I'm not against it. And if it comes on, I'll listen to it. I will say exactly.

The reason I got into Dave Matthews was this girl Aaron who was a senior when I was in ninth grade and we were in plays together. And after plays, we would all go out. But she would take me in her card to McDonald's. We'd all go to McDonald's together and eat French fries and chat like chatty Kathy's. But she'd always plays Dave Matthews. And in my mind, I was like, He was like, she loves me. The senior girl is super into me. Ninth grade Jesse Cox. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what she should tell you via his music. Yeah. Yeah. So this article's called That's Not Water Buddy, an oral history of poop gate. It's written by Sarah Steinmer or Steamer, which would be funnier. It marked the 20th anniversary last year of the incident for Chicago magazine. And here's Mathis. It was just a lovely summer day on August 8th, 2004 when Chicago's little lady took off on the 1 p.m.

Chicago Architecture Foundation tour. At the same time, a tour bus for the Dave Matthews band in town playing a two-night show at Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin was making its way through the loop. While traveling over the Kinsey Street Bridge, the bus driver made the highly unusual and illegal choice to dump the coach's septic tank through the bridge's street grates and into the river. Just then, naturally, the tour boat was passing underneath. As Chicagoans know, when it rains, it pours. some 800 pounds worth of human waste over two thirds of the 120 passengers on the boat's deck.

Infamously, the captain of this boat actually made the joke earlier in the tour that if you look up with your mouth open under a bridge, you may get a real taste of Chicago. Little did they know. Little did they know how true that was. That's an unfortunate day to be on my boat. I've only ever watched bus videos

and like RV videos and camper videos on the internet there is some dude in florida who posts like him trying to sell people RVs online and honest god it's very entertaining but when i look at those there's a whole process we have to get out you have to unhook things like were they driving by or do they literally stop on the bridge and start dumping poop it was in motion i'll explain it to you better when we get to that point okay yeah it's it's it's one of those proper buses this is like basically an airplane on wheels you'll see what i mean in a minute are you telling me there's buses driving around and the guys like flipping a lever

and as they're driving down the road just poos come out the bottom? Hell yes. That's not what you're supposed to do and it's very illegal to do so, but you can't. And, you know, like I said, now the audience is hooked.

There's a bunch of shit in the picture. We got Dave Matthew's band. We're ready to laugh. So I wait until this point to mention that the boat's called Chicago's Little Lady. You might have picked it up from the quote. And now, just to drive the moment home for people listening,

here's Jesse with another quote about it from a man who was on that boat that day who was a writer for the Chicago Tribune at the time, Brett McNeil, whose girlfriend was in town from Boston that day and whom he took on that tour because the weather was just perfect. As we approached, the bus was moving from northeast to southwest across the bridge. And as it hit the bridge, it opened the toilets, which then began cascading down. So it's like the bus was towing a rooster tail of toilet waste.

We basically hit it like the maid of the mist. Having lived in Buffalo, I know exactly what that is. and that is dead i don't like that it's nasty it was a waterfall of toilet water that we passed under not all parts of the boat were hit but certainly not all parts of the boat were hit equally some people in the back of the boat had a much better view of the bus i was confused about what it was i thought it was either street sweeper or one of those trucks that you'll see with the big water tanks and they use them to water the flower beds and flowers along Michigan Avenue. That was my initial thought. Yeah. And about two thirds of the people on the boat were soaked with brown yellow

shit water and it was just as gross as you think it was. It got in people's eyes. It got in people's mouth. There was a pregnant violinist on board who was just barfing and crying and just everything was just going to shit. People were screaming the bar on board just like opened and started handing out drinks, whatever people wanted. It was so nasty that people literally were like, I have to go to the hospital right now to make sure that I am not going to die. You know that scene in, you know the scene in Goonies? No, I've never seen Goonies.

Chunk explains about the time to the Fitellies where explains about the time where he threw up in a movie theater that everyone else started throwing up. Yeah. That's what would have happened about. I would have immediately puked. People just started throwing up. People driving while the car was, while the bus was dumping,

we're getting like a little bit splashed. And it was like also making them barf. One lady had her head out the window and was like driving a car and like got splashed and like barfed into her own hair. It was just crazy. Oh, God. That would have been me. I would have been the same way.

Like the minute that shit hit me, I would have been vomiting projectile vomit. I wouldn't judge you for that. And also obviously everyone on the tour. Yeah. Everyone on the, think you know what? Hell yeah,

dude. Everyone on the tour got their tickets refunded. Even while still on the boat, Brett McNeil, that reporter heard people talking about a tour bus up there that did it maybe, to the point that by the time word got to the mayor, the thing had gone so viral that he was like on the news, vowing to catch whoever did this, stuff like that. And that's when someone from the boat finally got interviewed by the police and gave them a literal license plate number, which supposedly led them to Dave Matthews band,

specifically for a tour bus belonging to one of their drivers, Jerry Fitzpatrick. But this is where it gets slightly odd because Jerry denied everything claiming he was still parked in front of the peninsula hotel where the band was staying that previous night in downtown Chicago with the rest of the buses and even submitted his bus's septic tank to an inspection

because as the police found it was still almost completely full so which this would be a hard thing to just do but by now it was a really rough night of dinner than I before like they there was 800 pounds of

shit oh my god okay never mind never mind that's so much more than I thought would be in a like a tour bus's septic tank 95 gallons large amount of crap 800 pounds of shit so by now Dave Matthews band is already part of the story in the news it's making national news people are talking about barfying on the boat on good morning

America the police tracked the bus like London Big Brother style from like camera to camera using footage from the surveillance cams of businesses on the street to connect it with a different one of the Dave Matthews drivers, a guy called Stefan Wall of Texas, who was the driver for the violinist from Dave Matthews Bad Boyd Tinsley. You know who that is? Yeah, sure. So yeah, that's a second random violinist in this story. So there was a violinist shit cascading down onto a violinist, maybe. And who also, after seeing the footage himself, the driver,

pled guilty to flipping the auto-release tank dump button as the bus went over the grate. He got fired. He got put on 18 months probation. He got given 150 hours of community service and he paid a $10,000 fine. It's pretty crazy. Also, Dave Matthews Band promised to always keep a log

of septic tank dumps from now on so that they could always track when their tanks were dumping. Wait, wait, rewind really quick. So they said we were still at the hotel. the septa tank was filled on the guy's bus from the yeah on the guy's bus with the license plate there was shit

but this guy's bus was seen on camera theoretically boy tinson's bus so the license plate they just got a different license plate I have no idea even how to explain that um let alone the violinist his own bus there's five buses that take Dave Matthews the band is huge the band is huge

so many people in bands I'm saying, I imagine the buses were probably like one after another and then one dumped. They looked up. They saw a different, the one that was behind it or whatever. This is the type of hotel that like everyone around comes to stay at who's like rich because it's a nice hotel and there are often buses there. So it's kind of like how it works, right? So Dave Matthews band promises to keep the log of shit.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg since they also paid themselves over $300,000 just towards protecting the local environment. improving the Chicago River and parks as part of their like settlement that they did because they're the ones in the end who are responsible, along with a bunch of insurance and compensation and personal injury suits from the tour company, people on the boat.

And as Jesse will now read for us in another quote from Brett McNeil, it sparked a larger discussion about the Chicago River as well. The reason that guy would have done this is to avoid the dumping fees that he would have had to pay for black water in Chicago. To me, the bigger story, the subtext was always,

if this guy's doing it and he's out of a and he's an out of town hack who else is doing it efforts to clean up the river obviously being subverted by these fly dumpers for lack of a better term yeah great term but now you kind of know the OG story in a little bit more depth than most people do and it resurfaces uh all over the internet every couple years and they even put up an unofficial plaque on the bridge commemorating the incident in uh 2,023 or something like that.

And now I would say that the audience has probably had enough context for the first turn of Cornerfest 26, in which I reach a point in reading this article where I saw something which tickled my own fancy in which I decided required further research, where first of all, I saw that when they first accused Stefan Wall, he denied doing it. And the band backed him and even offered DNA samples so that they could match it to their shit if they needed to with the bridge shit before that was all shut down by the photo. evidence which they got from the nearby East Bank Club, which apparently shows the bus doing exactly what was claimed. But which is kind of weird already because why would the band ever offer something that extreme as a shit test if they weren't absolutely sure that they were going to pass the shit test, right? That's A. But then here's yet another quote for Jesse to read from that same reporter who was there that day and who is now inextricably tied to this story forever Mr. Brett McNeil. I sat for a documentary.

There's an element of high bullshit to this story. The tail end of the story, this sort of, well, will we never know what happened? We know what happened. The bus driver pled and he got a misdemeanor deal out of it. The individual says, basically, I was railroaded. I didn't do it. Perhaps one of the band members, the violin player, and the jam band did. He did it.

Honestly, I feel like the way you describe this is the dude. said to them, guys, it's not me. I promise who it's not me. And so they all backed him out of like, we ride together, we die together kind of vibe. Because otherwise, none of it makes sense.

Right. And so at this point, I'm thinking to myself, like, damn, what if the Dave Matthews band shit bridge incident was a cover up? Like,

what if that's possible? Like, it's a real question I just posted the universe. I got to searching. And I got a hit somewhere else, uh, on Instagram. Of course, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, here we go.

Mic drop moment where I get to like open everybody's third eye about this. Were they framed by who? Well, according to this post by user Real Map Bunting, the answer is not even vague because another huge band was also in town that same night that Dave Matthews band was and also had a tour bus in town. And that band was none other than Lincoln Park. oh shit yeah he says that dave matthews band was staying in chicago because they were in between shows of a two-night engagement on august seventh and august eighth uh of 2004 which they were playing

with guster and gem at the alpine valley music theater in east troy wisconsin such what time capsule yeah but that is 100 miles away from their hotel that's how remote that places and how nice this hotel is, just to give you an idea. So they literally went play that show one night, came back to Chicago, and then the next day this morning when they were headed back to the venue, theoretically, that's when the shit occurred, right? So this is all true and confirmable thanks to concertarchives.org, which rules in terms of like dates, set list, stuff like that. You can check it out in the description. And Real Matt Bunting on Instagram explains that this is actually kind of strange.

Since we know that a bus traveling from the peninsula hotel in Chicago, where Dave Matthews band was staying, that's going to the Alpine Valley Music Theater in Wisconsin would not be crossing west. I'm sorry, it would be crossing west over the river. And the picture that we have from the police unmistakably shows the bus going over the bridge was going east. And here is a Google Maps link of that trip, if you guys want to look at it, to kind of like see what I'm talking about. here you can kind of trace the line right like it starts at the hotel and then it goes and it definitely goes west over the river past the east bank club to the you know off to wisconsin right yeah so that's that's that's just a real that's a real thing that's the that's the trip so anyway now's the good as time as any to show you the actual photo which again was taken from cameras at

the east bank club which is like a fitness type of club not like a dance club it's like a gym uh and it looks like this here's the photo of the bus right so this is this is the this is the highest quality photo of this bus that we've seen so white bottom black top colorful on the bottom yeah like some kind of bright color and then yeah like a black top that's that's all you can really make out from the photo but because of the orientation of the photo you can see which direction the bus is going over the bridge and then here is a link to google maps where you can see how close the east bay club is to the bridge. You can just look at it and just tell people kind of what you're seeing here. Like if you're looking at this like pick, like you're looking at this street view that I'm at, right?

Yeah, we're on street view. Kind of narrow, tall building right in front of you with the traffic light, right? So this actually gives you a lot of, um, if you look at the street view and where I assume we're pointing at is if you are looking, um, at the water, there is a very strong. small black gate. Yeah, that blue awning is where we're talking about. Yeah, the blue, the, that blue awning behind the black gate, that black gate's where the camera is taking the photo through. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's not very far. It's, it's not that far, but it's like pretty far to get a good look at the bus. Let's put it that way.

So that's that. And then that's one strange thing already. But then also this Instagram video that I watch plays a clip of this podcast called The Throwback Podcast, which is like a music and culture podcast, which is in turn playing a clip from the excellent YouTube channel, documentary forever, which I did not know about before I found this, in which, like I said, a random Dave Matthews fan in a parking lot says that her friend worked for Dave Matthews at the time. This is a concert in Chicago. She said her friend worked for Dave Matthews at the time and that Lincoln Park or that someone from their entourage were the real culprits. So that's another point for it being Lincoln Park.

But then, but it's just a random person. It's just a random person in a parking lot tailgating a Dave Matthews show. But then Real Matt Bunting looks it up. And yeah, sure enough, Lincoln Park did have a show that night, which was down at the Twitter Center, which is like only 30 miles out of Chicago. And since we know Dave Matthews was willing to drive 90 miles each way to stay in Chicago between shows, it's easy to imagine that Lincoln Park would do it for a ride that 60 miles round trip. And if they were near downtown that night, just like Dave Matthews Band made the same

similar trip, it's easy to imagine that Lincoln Park did cross the Kinsey Bridge on the way to their next tour date, which was at the Post-Cazette Pavilion in Pennsylvania. And it would certainly makes sense that if they were headed to Pennsylvania from Chicago, that they would be going east across the river that day. Right. But then again, this is just the word of some weird lady in a parking lot who swore that she knew somebody on trust me bro status. And that actually looking back, she also said that Lincoln Park in the clip was Dave Matthew band's opener that night, which they were not. So that's like she's already messing up the story. But she did hear it with Lincoln Park, which is a bummer, because it kind of, to me, discredited the idea of it being

Lincoln Park. So now, in order to create some drama in the story, even though I've already written this entire script and I know where it goes, I'll make it feel like for a while, I was at a loss and that we might never discover a decent lead in this case. And that maybe the official story was the only story. But actually, it turned out someone else kind of filled in the blanks for me perfectly because that excellent YouTube channel I was talking about, documentary forever, I kept watching the video beyond that little clip that was in that other podcast. And it's fucking really just a good ass channel that is like operating on a different level of filmmaking than most documentary channels. But then suddenly they've got

Stefan Wall, the driver of the bus, a clip of him on a radio show on the phone with a bunch of DJ, like, like, you know, zoo crew type DJs in the morning in 2014, on the 10th anniversary of the dumping. They have a clip of it. And suddenly the whole thing's blown right open again because even though it's quick and the radio show he's on, which is called free beer and hot wings

on Razor 947 in Michigan, by the way. Razor 97. They're giving him a hard time. They're giving him a hard time on the show. WR ZR. Yeah, they're talking mad shit on him because he's like saying he didn't do it. And they're like, okay, dude, yeah, you did it though.

Which is like pretty, it's pretty brutal how they're talking to him. But he also says that the band paid his fine of $10,000. when he took the blame, and also that there was one other black bus parked with all the Dave Matthews buses at the hotel that day, but that he does not remember who it was, but he knows that it was there. Curiouser and curiouser. Now, usually before the end of a story where I reveal whether or not everything's real or we're thinking about, I'd like there to be a point in the

story where the audience is fully ready to believe in the alternate version that I'm presenting them before the moment, like the detective moment where you have to say what actually happened and then it's real life. I'd love you to believe this, please. I wish, like, look, usually the detective comes and he tells you how it's done, or the magician reveals the secret, and it's very, like, underwhelming and banal. So hopefully this is that point in the story for you today. So now I'll also bring up that somehow, a year ago, documentary forever also got Stefan

Wall on the phone themselves in 2024, and they actually let him talk instead of being brutal to him. So they start talking about the incident, and immediately he mentions he's innocent, and here's Mathis as Stefan Wall? Well, you know, people that know me, you know, they know the truth. So we only had a 30 gallon tank. Well, if you do the math, there's no way it could be 800 pounds. And the other thing is, I'm the only bus driver that was using tied detergent instead

of formaldehyde products. I've always used tied detergent in my tank. And when you dump it, it suds up really big. And when they said there was no formaldehyde in it, he said, I knew it wasn't you. So, you know, and here's what I told the detective. The dumbest guy out there would not have done that on purpose at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. One o'clock in the morning? Fuck yeah.

You know, I'm sure there's guys still doing it at 1 o'clock in the morning because it's the perfect location. You're driving, you dump. You know, I didn't even know there was water under there. I've been over that bridge 25 times in my career, never even noticed there was water. Yeah. So not an impossible story to poke holes in, but then the dude asks like the one question, which I think anybody should ask him, which was like, whoa. if you're not guilty,

then why did you go down for this? And here's what he said. And here's what he said. The band came to me on September over a month later. We were in San Antonio, whatever date that was in San Antonio that year.

It was only 10 days after on August 18th. We were at the amphitheater out of Selma, Texas by San Antonio. They called me into the little office there. And I can't tell you exactly what they said because it would maybe set off a firestorm. But basically, I was a clean cut guy. if you catch my drift out of 15 buses so they wanted it to go away because of Dave being the green guy. So me and my wife had to think about it and I came back for months saying no. And then

the detective that called me, I was the only bus driver that would talk to the detective because, you know, I figured why not? I got nothing to hide, you know, I told them exactly what I did and when I queued it. And basically, you know, you saw the picture. The description called for a black bus with red riding on it, just like the one in the picture. And that was most likely just Stefan caught red-handed on video, except, thanks to that weird lady in the parking lot of the Dave Matthews band show, he also, the guy interviewing him also decides to ask Stefan about Lincoln Park, because that's kind of like a popular theory at this point. And even though he says he didn't hear anything about no Lincoln Park, nothing at all, he did, however, hear about something else, which

Mathis will read for you now. The only other bus that I was told that could have been identified as one of the buses that the people said it was. Somebody said there was another, it was a black bus with red riding on it. And the only other bus in town that year at the same time as us was Snoop Dogg's bus. Yep. So the doc then takes that fact, that like a little bit of info one step further, confirms that Snoop Dog's 2004 tour bus really was black with red riding on it and did kind of look a lot like that bus in the picture. But then he, just sort of leaves it there with like a nice little acoustic cover of gin and juice playing and some like Chicago B-roll footage, which is like really nice. Like for a movie, it was great.

It's like a nice 20 minute doc. You should go watch it. Links in the description. But before we go, here's just a few more little things that I noticed that maybe take this one step further for me personally. Okay. This is just stuff that when I had all the facts in front of me, this all this extra stuff felt extra significant. When you look up for. First of all, when you look up Lincoln Park on October 7th, 2004, it does indeed show that they played the Tweeter Center that night. But for some reason, it isn't until you look up Snoop Dog on October 7, 2004,

that you realize that Snoop Dog played the exact same show as Lincoln Park. And that Lincoln Park and Snoop Dog had been on a months-long tour together at this point. So he was in Chicago, and he was linked to Lincoln Park. Secondly, I'm not sure exactly how the shit-dunking bus was ever identified as belonging to Boyd-Tinsley, the violinist from Dave Matthews Band, right? Yep. Or who it was who first added that detail to the story.

I have no idea. Couldn't really find out. But I will say that the Tweed or Center, which is the venue where Lincoln Park and Snoop Dog did their show, is located in Tinley Park which is pretty close to Tinsley and if that's where they were going maybe it was written on the bus I don't know

she's really similar and finally going back to that weird lady at Dave Matthew's tailgate and what she said exactly she said it was the bus of someone in Lincoln Park's entourage she may have been wrong

about Lincoln Park opening for Dave Matthews band but Snoop Dogg's crew technically does sort of fall into the category of Lincoln Park's entourage because he was on a tour that summer, not just with Lincoln Park, but get ready for another time capsule. Corn, the used, less than Jake, all also on the tour. So there was like an entourage vibe and it would have felt very entourage-y probably traveling with that group. So yeah, those are just some little extra things that I noticed. Now that the curtain has been pulled back and the naked mystery is revealed through cold hard facts, hopefully for the average audience member, this was a pretty satisfying story to kick off CornerFest 26.

And even though I maybe don't give the listeners a complete answer by the end, hopefully at least some wheels are now turning in everybody's heads and then everybody's prime for a fresh new story with a completely different vibe and possibly one that's legitimately pretty freaky now that we're nice and comfortable and ready to hear some stuff. Now we're in the warm poo water. Yep. This one is called Ghost House I just really quickly That guy 100% did it I don't buy any of that shit

That guy definitely dumped that poo I don't know That doesn't check It's the stories keep changing everything Ah dude that guy dumped that poo There's a lot of coincidences That guy dumped that poo I wish somebody would dead ass

Ask Snoop about it I wish Because I feel like he's at this point now Where he might just say it But also he's been in some hot water lately About his light year comments I don't know I feel like I dumped that poo.

Interesting tidbit to a story that I already knew a lot about. I thought that was interesting. This one is called Ghost House. So as you may have noticed this past year, just as I said, I was going to last Cornerfest. This year's Alex episodes, we're all about, you know, our number of the year, numerology, three. We were all about experimenting with the format and being creative and interesting. And we tried lots of new things legitimately. We like played around with a lot of different things format-wise.

and just how we conceive of the show and stuff like that. But one thing I still haven't really gotten to do is like one thing that I really wanted to try, which was inserting myself directly into a story and investigating it like boots on the ground style so I could narrate it like a detective, right? I thought that it would be possible to do something local in that style for LA Month in my hometown of San Pedro, which is home of the L.A. Harbor and one of the oldest parts of the home of the Chatter Barge. Yes.

Well, yeah, sort of, yeah. Just because I know it very well, I thought it would be good to like walk around and explore in. And I already know a lot of its history and I speak the same sort of unfriendliness the town is known for. I get it. I know what the vibe is, et cetera, et cetera. So for whatever reason, that did not happen. The story was not working. But the story itself is so crazy anyway. It's so unexpectedly interesting that I wanted to do it regardless. And yes, I realized that by mentioning an investigative detective episode that for some of you I've now created a cool thing that you could have had that I took from you like David Zaslav. But I'll simply remind you that

when writing a script ahead of time, there needs to be lots of little breadcrumbs for everybody to nibble on so that by the end, when it all pays off, literally all of it, people can go back and go, whoa, he like planned this. So that's what I'm doing right now. So hopefully just pay attention. Anyway, do with that information, what you will. This story is not the longest, most winding story ever, but there's a great documentary about it on Tooby that was co-written and possibly slightly directed by famed child and later scary adult actor, Jackie Earl Haley, who bizarrely has my same exact birthday. Maybe everybody who writes about San Pedro has to be really similar in strange ways for

Cosmic Beach. Who knows? But also, it's free. So if you do have a chance to go watch that, the link is in the description. It's called an unknown encounter, the true account of the San Pedro haunting. And whether or not you believe in this type of shit, it just goes to show like when you call the experts how good it can be sometimes because this thing is like all real footage it is like there's like no reenactments there's so much

ghost evidence in that fucking movie like go look at it it's crazy it's a real good one um can you just repeat the streaming service that's on again tube to be to be whatever that is yeah no too exactly to be to be to be jessie sorry t ubi yeah i'm aware you don't even need to have login for Tooby. That's how good Tube is. You can just... How do they make money? I don't know. I really don't know. I think it shows commercials, but like... Okay. Yeah. Anyway, Jackie Hernandez

was a single mother in 1988. You're of my birth, by the way. And she was basically the exact template for those theories about like certain types of people being more susceptible to post a poltergeist activity. She had just had a kid. She had just like sort of she I think she was still married, but she had left her husband because it was rocky and not good. And she had another baby on the way. So she was like mid-pregnancy. And though she was looking for a fresh start, she's working multiple jobs.

She's parenting. And she's going to school. So, you know, that was some hard shit. That's, that's a concoction for a stressful place to be living, which is what poltergeist. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So luckily, if you're from San Pedro, you'll know that in addition to the more normal homes you'll see in lots of other elderly neighborhoods,

It's many of the old, like, weird tiny cowboy time houses that were there in the olden days still are like around because Pidro doesn't like really advance that much. And that's exactly how Jackie ended up in a weird, cute little bungalow off the street behind another house near 11th and Grand Street with a nickel and a wish in her pocket. And also I'm going to just really quickly acknowledge something that which I'm probably going to get catch some undue flack for which is that yes, I realized that San Pedro. is the name of this place, San Pedro, right? That's the Spanish pronunciation of these words. But if you are from this town, I promise you. I promise you, even though it sounds unbelievable that actually the way to pronounce the name of this place is San Pedro.

If the fucking- Places in L.A. That's not really what it would sound like, but it's L.A. It's like, if you ask people about it, there's definitely like grounds for like, maybe you just pronounce it the Spanish way, right? but I think what's more interesting to me as a sort of account of it is like if you imagine like somebody from another country coming

and reading the word San Pedro and seeing it and how they all pronounce it together and all the words like La Sienega and Sepulveda and all those coanga all those weird things that we say rodeo rodeo whatever all that shit it's like kind of like part of the character of our place and by the way if fucking New England

can do it with like every single fucking place we can do it with a few things texas fucking does it there's a city in texas called humble and if you call it humble they're like what are you talking about because it's umble it's spelled with an age like that's always the uk but you say umble you say by the way just for the record my favorite thing ever is if you put in you're going to go down sepulvada and you put in anything into like a like a assisting driving thing it'll go now approaching suppleveda It's amazing every time. I want to supple Vader in my office.

I am your squirder. So, yeah, no, this is not Pedro, Erescia. The place is called San Pedro. And I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it is. Nevertheless, something was wrong. Pretty soon she started hearing and seeing things for small things, enough to just, like, convince yourself it wasn't happening at first, or her cat was just getting over-excited for no reason.

or whatever, the sounds or maybe just her cat, but then once an entire pencil case, just dead ass levitated across the room in broad daylight, she suddenly realized she was deep into some kind of spooky situation. She didn't fully understand, and it scared the fucking shit out of her. Also, the timeline here is a little wonky because I don't know what liberties they took in the documentary

and like every single version of the story has things happening in a different order, but they're all the same things, so I just tried to make the most sense of it that I could. Eventually, she saw a full-body apparition of an old man's corpse, that was sitting with cross legs on her son's bottom bunk bed, and he was wearing a red flannel shirt tucked into the kind of pants

that, like, pump attendants wear at a gas station, before staring right at her and vanishing before her eyes. And it was so fucked up and real seeming that she reached out to the people around her for help, starting with Susan Castaneda, her neighbor, who not only came around and often served as a witness or a babysitter or moral support, but was also instrumental in founding the classic Mexican restaurant La Chispa that used to be on Western and Westmont by the warehouse

and it totally kicked ass if you know, if you know, you know. I wish I could have those chips and cheese again. That would be tight. But a last time, sorry. Anyway, this dude was not making her feel good, almost like he wasn't happy that Jackie and her son were in the house,

this old dead flail man. And one day, while Susan was over, they heard a crazy sound in the other room. And when they went to investigate, they saw that a painting had been ripped off the wall with all the nails that were used to hang it up, pulled out of the wood, and placed on the floor in a way where it seemed like they were trying to get them to step

on it. And this really drove that unwelcoming message home. But Jackie and Susan just dealt with it and let it roll off their backs as best they could. And Jackie even like started tracking activity as it happened, trying to be proactive about it. Then in April of 1989, her new baby Samantha was born. Their babysitter, Christina Zivkovich, started experiencing all kinds of nonsense too at the house. And it kind of took over everybody's life. Christina said it was literally all they talked about because it was so impossible to ignore because it was constantly happening and everybody thought they were crazy. A dark smelling putrid ooze began pouring down the wall one day when they were washing

dishes and that became a regular thing eventually. Later, Jackie was like, what the fuck is that? And she went up to the attic to see what the fuck it was because it seemed to be coming from above the house and the house was old and had an attic. And when she climbed up the hatch, First thing, she was immediately greeted by a vision of the old man's head floating in space. And it scared the shed of a head like in the haunted mansion? Yes, yes, exactly. But vision as in like it was in her mind or like it, she opened it and as she popped her head into the attic, there was the head just floating around. There was the head.

Yes, exactly. She literally saw it. Throw a punch, dude. Yeah. And even later, when it was happening so much, they decided they had better get it tested this ooze to see what it was. It came back as having a similar makeup to certain. household chemicals combined with the blood of a human male. An unidentifiable human male, but it had the same makeup.

Balls of light were regularly seen drifting and darting around inside, and furniture around the house would often just randomly collapse like somebody was putting too much weight on it. And for a while, Jackie kept having a recurring nightmare being clubbed over her head down on the docks in what looked to her like 1930 San Pedro and then held under the water until she drowned and she hated it because she actually felt herself die. before she'd wake up and this happened a lot of times and after a while susan saw this guy dr barry taff on tv and he was like the associate director of the parapsychology lab at ucla so that's pretty cool

and he was and he was also the investigator who documented the like sexually violent like ghost rape haunting of doris bither which is another super crazy ghost story yeah it's some crazy it is like I could take a waymo there right now it's so close to my house it was turned into the Barbara Hershey movie The Entity in 1983 it's a pretty crazy ghost story

he was the investigator on it he's like a legit version of like the Warrens kind of at least more legit version of the Warrens because he was an academic for real Susan Castaneda put Jackie in touch with Barry right away and when he saw how similar Jackie situation was to Dorises

who was also an abused single mother under severe mental stress and she tries to make it on her own against domestic violence, depression and shit like that. Similar things. He also believed that the spirit's fed on this. So he decided that on August 8th, 1989, he was going to pay Jackie and her house a visit,

along with another Barry, the cameraman Barry Conrad, and another investigator called Jeff Wheatcraft. And he also brought like hella ghost hunting gear, infrared cameras and microphones and all this stuff, and almost immediately Phenomena just fucking started occurring.

They began an interview and you can look at this. You can literally go see this. It's crazy. They began an interview despite a mounting feeling of overwhelming pressure in the room which was constantly interrupted

by what Dr. Taff described as quote, what sounded like a 200 pound rat running around in the attic. And when Wheatcraft climbed up there with a cameraman, just even catch any of the activity that was causing the sounds on film,

his camera was like ripped out of his hands and he like left because he was so scared of like how much it felt like somebody took his camera out of his hands and when he finally got up the strength to go back up there and look for his camera he found the lens completely unscrewed from the body and tossed into the complete opposite corner of the room pretty crazy uh so that was the first time they were there they came back again on september 4th and wheatcraft went back up into the attic a second time with a third guy that they brought gary boom like within seconds, Gary had to rush over and free Jeff from a thick, like plastic covered cord that had been wound around his neck and looped around a nail sticking out of the wood

beams in the ceiling. All of this stuff is on camera in the tubey documentary, by the way. Lots and lots of pictures. What do you mean? Hang on. If you want to see a picture of it. Are you telling me that they captured it wrapping around his neck or captured them getting it off?

They captured him having it on him suddenly. What? yeah what it was it's like in the dark in an attic that he went up in and so like he was like help oh shit and they like went up there and immediately took a picture of him right okay so no one saw him actually wrapped up they saw him wrapped up right and when they investigated the rope they saw that it was tied in a classic fisherman's bowlin knot and uh jeff decided he wasn't going to come back to the house anymore didn't feel safe or welcome in the house uh because this ghost in his mind had tried to destroy his camera and kill him. And while Dr. Taff,

which doesn't happen that much with ghosts, and while Dr. Taff did not find the truth of what was really happening beyond a reasonable doubt, he did ultimately believe that they did capture evidence of whatever it is that ghosts are, and that most likely, as Jesse will explain for us now, he thought that Jackie Hernandez was like the catalyst. So here we go. One of the theories is that the environment can somehow store information. And under the proper circumstances, the information is reconstructed so that you can feel it, see it, or hear it. So Jack Hernandez

may have been pushing the button on the VCR. And if you are not a millennial, if you're younger than that, a VCR is what we had. Pushing the button on the Blu-ray player. Yeah, same thing. Okay. And, you know, even if you're doing well financially, right, raising

a toddler and an infant at the same time in a tiny two or three-room bungalow is crazy style town no matter what. And there There may have been something to that because as Jackie's personal life got easier, so too did the hauntings. And by the end of the fall of that same year, her and her husband were like trying to get back together. And eventually they decided to move out to Weldon. Do you know where that is? Weldon is in County. It's like not that far from L.A., but it's pretty far from L.A.

And after the first couple weeks passed with no problems, she thought she was in the clear in this new sort of trailer where she was at in Weldon. And but then just, Like last time, there was trouble at home, and her husband left her alone again, this time in a remote trailer in the middle of nowhere. And again, it's like 1989. So calling people on the phone long distance in LA or whatever was like pretty expensive to talk for hours just to have somebody with you. So this time, didn't have friends to back her up really. And all of a sudden, guess what? The activity starts up again. Her and her neighbors are carrying a big old CRT TV into a shed to be stored, totally off, totally. unpowered, totally unplugged, and they almost dropped it because there in the reflection of the screen was the dead old man's face again, and she couldn't handle it. And later that night, she couldn't fall asleep because even though she wasn't 100% sure, she knew what it was. It definitely sounded to her like somebody was locked in that same shed all night, pounding as hard as they could, trying to get out. So she picked up to the phone, spends a little

bit more money, calls Dr. Taff again. And here he comes all the way out to Weldon this time, all the way out to Kern County and they're ready to do it all over again. But somehow, for some reason, absolutely none of their equipment would stay on and powered. Like somebody kept switching it off to the point that they gave up on electronics altogether after a while switched over to literally a Ouija board, which by the way, there's got to be a Ouija board episode. That's like, yeah, I was thinking, there's a bunch of things I feel like we just didn't

cover in however many episodes of this damn show we've done. And I'm like, we got to go back. Like, we just like mess all the things. Yeah, there's a lot of things. It's kind of a crock, but it's kind of real. It's kind of weird. Yeah. If you're a chaos magician, we just at this point, it's 90% of what we're talking about is not real.

And that's fine because it's fun to talk about. Did you know that Hein? What's his name, Phil Hein? Mathis, is that a guy? Phil Hein. Yeah, for what? He's like a chaos guy. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You're talking about chaos magic. Yeah. I think his name is Phil Hein. He has a working, like a working, like a working path. that's like Cthulhu. Like anything can be chaos magic. So if it's really, I mean, that's chaos condensed is Phil Hyne,

if that's what you're talking about. Yeah, he has something called the Neo-Nama con, which is literally a working path about chaos magic that is Cthulhu themed. It's, that's the point. Chaos magic could be whatever you want.

It's wild stuff. Yeah, on that's why it's not, whatever. Immediately that's over, Jesse, that year of magic is done. We can move on. Thank God.

Yeah, we're turning. Turn in the corner. Get it? And immediately, once everybody was sat down and ready, the table shook, and they talked directly with the entity who told him that he absolutely hated Jeff Wheatcraft because he was the one that reminded him of his murderer the most. And then he threw Jeff against the wall of the house. So Jackie did keep actually a small transcript some of these Ouija sessions for a few

years because in 1993, Gary Abrams of the LA Times saw them. and he went to interview her again a few years later, you know, after all that happened in March of 93. And I'm not sure if this is all she had, but it's so compelling that I'm going to have Jesse and Mathis read it for us now, where Jesse's going to play Dr. Taff again, and Mathis is Mr. Old Dead Man Ghost entity person. How long have you been trapped here in the spirit world? Sixty years. Did you die in the San Pedro House? No. Where did you die? San Pedro Bay.

Did you drown? No. I was held underwater. Did you live and the San Pedro house? My murderer lived there. So, he really lays some shit out. Wait a minute, but did you drown?

Funny ass, like it's such a very, every conversation you've ever had with. You have to remember, this is how they're doing it with a plan shit, right? Oh, no, completely understand. But it's funny because every conversation that I, we talk about with ghosts is like, cryptic and weird. This guy's like, no, dude, that guy drown me, bro. Drown me in the, yeah.

No, exactly. And it syncs up with her dream that she was having, right? So apparently, they also got the dates 1912 and 1930 as being of some importance from this entity. And using that information, eventually they were able to find this newspaper article from the March 26th, 1930 edition of the San Pedro pilot, which Mathis will read a bit from now. The dead body of a man found floating early yesterday morning under the municipal fish wharf in San Pedro was identified last night as that of Herman Hendrickson, 38, a seaman formerly employed on the lumber steamer Astoria. For several hours yesterday, police investigators were in a quandary as to who the dead man was. In his clothing were found Siemens papers, giving the name of Oren B. Ballard, Marine Engineer of San Francisco. A long-distance call to the Bay City revealed, however, that Ballard is still alive.

C.H. Cleveland, the undertaker in charge of the body, talked with Ballard, who said that his papers had been stolen from him several weeks ago, while he was in San Pedro on a tank steamer. An autopsy examination made yesterday by county autopsy surgeon Frank Webb revealed that death was caused by a fractured skull and drowning. The fractured skull is believed to have been received when Hendrickson fell off the lumber dock at birth to 28, Terminal Island, while attempting to go aboard his ship. Now, granted, doesn't match up exactly. And this guy seems to possibly be 10 years older than Hendrickson because he said 1912. Hendrickson is supposed to be 38 and this guy said 1912 to 1930 which would be

18 right so maybe so maybe he's off by 20 years or something like that like maybe they just wrote the number wrong maybe the fucking newspaper article maybe but they barely knew who he was anyway he was traveling with stolen papers

maybe it was possible they got his age wrong I don't know but regardless I will say if it was if I was a ghost who was murdered and thrown in the and the cops thought that it was an accident, I would be pissed too. But is that what really happened? Because in that same Ouija session,

another big revelation was that apparently there had always been two ghosts in the house. One was of the murdered guy, which was pissed. And then there was another nicer, non-threatening ghost who Jackie later decided was probably called John Damon.

This is because, this is because she did not just name him this. This is because later, after moving back to L.A., the following year from her trailer in Weldon, she went back to visit her old house in San Pedro one spring afternoon for old time's sake. When she got there,

what do you mean? What do you mean? Did she still own the property? No, no, she just went back to like, look at it, you know,

like drive by it. Like, Oh, I thought you might like, stop by, I went inside. I would be like, if I owned the property,

be like, who are you? No, no, she just kind of went by to have a look at it. You know what I mean? And when she got there, she was shocked

see that a ball of light appeared before her eyes right in the middle of the day and which seemed to intelligently lead her about 0.8 miles down Grand Avenue, which is like a literal straight line down the street to the Harbor View Cemetery, where it stopped and it hovered over the grave of private John Griffin Damon before slowly disappearing with a calming sense of conclusion. So, looking into this guy, as I did, John Griffin Damon was a Civil War veteran in Vermont

before getting married to Anna Fruh in in Mammoth, Illinois in 1875. This is like records that I pulled out. And then he was in Tilden, Nebraska, until 1910, when he finally moved to San Pedro. According to Jackie's friends in the area, and as reported in the LA Times article, it was known in town in San Pedro that this John Damon

guy supposedly was the guy who built the bungalow that Jackie was living in back in 1910 or whatever. And according to Jackie, that day at his grave, it felt like he was saying goodbye to her. So that's what she says. The real John Damon died from a paralytic stroke in 1913 at the age of 67. And according to the funeral record from that time, which remains preserved with the San Pedro Bay historical society, every date and every piece of information perfectly mashes up other than any sort of like definitive connection between Damon and the bungalow by name, which even the best news reporters at the cooler successful 90s version of the LA Times could not find. So I submitted a request for the official records at great inconvenience to myself.

Dude, isn't it the most annoying goddamn shit in the world? And sometimes you don't even hear back. Yeah. Yeah. So I couldn't find anything at all based. on the names because there's no record of any owners of that property before 1988. And there's a high chance that it's not just coincidence that this house first appeared in the records of old San Pedro as being built on the old Routicinda tract in what year, but 1910.

The very year, Damon was meant to have arrived in town. So could he have built it based on that very meager connection? Based on what I saw for myself? Yes. Did he do it, though? Honestly, right now, as I'm telling you this, I do not know. but it is odd that I included a mystery from my hometown in Cornerfest

isn't it? Like... Yeah, it's almost like it was left out of something. Yeah, like, why did I go into such detail about all the various parts of this mystery if it's just a ghost story, right? So if you're listening to this... If you're listening to this and you're thinking of things right now,

that's so good. That's what I want to be happening right now behind the scenes. I think the act of discovery should be surprising and fun, no matter what. And by the way, I asked my mom about this since I was just born at the time and she was in town.

and she said that this haunting was like the talk of the town at the time like everybody was talking about this while it was happening she said that the detail she heard about it was the ooze and it creeped her out like the ooze coming down the wall really fucking fucked her up and that even she drove by a few times to look at it just to see if anything cool happened did anyone sample the ooze I told you they did we have tubes of it they took it to a lab and had it tested I mean like to this day do we still have okay tubes tubes of I mean maybe maybe Taft does but if he does he hasn't said um or that there's no record of it um but he might have like that's something that he brought like in he brought like thousands of dollars worth of shit over there like the documentary is like legit you should see um but yeah uh what am i saying i should you know i should go drive by it sometime next time i'm in town just to see i'll be there next week for christmas right uh now up next on the show we need a short one so here's one that i couldn't dive too deeply into because of an intense language barrier surrounding the story. But it is as far away from a ghost story as possible, almost like we want the audience to forget about what I just

said for a while, especially the part about the rudicent attract and bring in a little real world anxiety and intrigue. Because if you're not emotionally mature, anti-capitalist and interested in the world around you, you probably don't understand the show or like it very much. This next one is called Cryptofon. I don't, if you're not those, we still need you to listen. Please listen and just sign up in a Patreon, but if you're not, I'm sorry that it's hard. This is called CryptoFarn. Once upon a time, there was a guy called Tron. Tron was a computer hacker.

He was really good at it. No, Tron is for the users. What are you talking about? We'll come back to that in a minute. I don't just mean like he was a decent, respectable hacker. I mean, like, the observer called Tron, the outstanding hacker of his generation. I mean, like, his teachers nicknamed him the master because they literally thought he was the master.

He was a genius. He was handsome. He had a good head on his shoulder. He was like a nice guy. He was the best there was at what he did, like Wolverine. He was a hacker with a soul. I like to use this type of simple language when I want to romanticize the story down to its most basic elements.

But in the case of this story, however, it is not by choice because like I said, Tron was German, and the large portion of this story happened in the 90s, which just in case you relate to the world culture, the way that a Tesla driver relates to the road when their GPS is off. This was before the Marvel movies came out, so nobody in Europe spoke that much English yet. So, therefore, without much material about this written in a language I actually understand, and with my patience for Google Translate quickly waning after I tried it for a while, I booted Trond to Cornerfest and with him his beautiful child, the Cryptophone. Because you see, Tron wasn't just the best hacker in the world.

He was a hacker with a mission. One article about him from the year 2000 on ZDNet was opining about how American and European hackers are different. Like, for example, one of Tron's main claims to fame was a type of hacking called Freaking, which is all about like getting access to phone systems illegally or internet or whatever or cable or whatever. illegally. And Tron's biggest, like, freak hack thing was when he broke security on German phone cards so that people who couldn't afford German phone cards could take his clones and just make unlimited free phone calls with them. That's kind of what a freak is, right? And it's necessity that is the mother of invention, according to the article, right? And in Europe, for people like

Tron, hacking was actually more about that than writing nasty things on big websites and being a hacker-themed influencer, teenager with like weird hair and crazy Kingdom Hearts clothes. So that's why he and many other hackers were a part of the Hackers Association known as the CCC or the Chaos Computer Club, which is the largest hackers association in Europe, and whom in their own words see themselves as, quote, a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information. And basically, this means that they advocate and do hacks in the name of things like government transparency and the human right to communicate and universal tech access and

open source software and entrepreneurship against capitalist control, stuff like that. And basically, they're just one of the most important tide-changing influential entities in the digital space to this day and almost certainly the most important digital entity. in Germany. So that's the type of stuff that Trond did. He fought against signal scramblers and he worked for years to break through all kinds of encrypted TV, internet, phone services. And it became so important to that world that he sort of became an authority on it in a way to the extent that at one point he was even challenging himself to make like real operational versions of these like sort of potentially

devastating SIM card attacks that American threat assessment scientists were like just theorizing about for GSM phones, like they were like, this would be shitty if somebody figured out how to do this. And he was like, can someone? He's like, challenge accepted.

And he completely achieved it. And so unfortunately, you know, for him, he wanted to demonstrate like, no, this is not just a, like a conceptual threat.

This is a threat that could happen tomorrow. That was his, that was his message. But the side effect of that was that as a result, the bad guys also were now able to carry out a lot of these things, which before were only hypothetical, which then caused the national German phone service, the Deutsche Telecom and German law enforcement

to pay a little bit more attention to him than they had previously until eventually in March of 1995, which is like peak hackers the movie hackers. He and a friend were caught by police trying to liberate a Deutsche Telecom public card phone from its booth. That is, that is peak hackers the movie.

He had a sledgehammer and he was trying to knock this thing out of a phone booth so that he could reverse engineer what the changes that they had made to it do you think when they took him away he yelled hack the planet guys probably in german he got 15 months probation for that by the way and around that same time he was also a student at the technical university of applied sciences in berlin and while he was there he was toying around with the problem of encryption in an era of complex computing and how hard it would be to get something like a cryptographic program running securely on modern PCs and eventually he sort of came to the conclusion that external devices were a much better option for secure

encryption, especially in terms of things like ISDN phone lines, stuff like that, like real-time type stuff. Because by the end of 1997, he started working on a simple proof of concept for this idea called the crypto farm, which worked. He actually got it working. It was simple. But by 1998, with his diploma in hand, he planned to develop it into a real world working product called the Cryptron, which was actually probably going to be more work than inventing the original tech behind it in the first place. So basically, Cryptofon was a real-time telephone encryption system. But the special thing is not the encryption itself, but rather the way in which the encryption is implemented using a discrete external device, which uses digital

signal processors. And because everything was using little tiny microprocessors, instead of crazy, you know, cutting edge CPUs, you couldn't put a back door in. You couldn't fit the software onto the board in a way that you could

corrupt the encryption if it's not on the, if it's not part of the computer system. You know what I mean? Yeah. So in the end, it was like game-changingly secure communication. It was super cheap to make. It was already awesome. But the

Cryptron version was going to, like, fit on the outport of every PC forever. Everything would have been encrypted in a way where, like, even DDoS attacks could be handled in, like, seconds, even if nobody was there. Like, you didn't even have to, like, be there to stop the DDoS. So, of course, if you extrapolate this out far enough, it starts to feel like Middle Gear solid, like, what could, like, what could be achieved if phone calls were impossible to be spied on? What horrors of censorship could governments create with automated internet?

censoring systems that were literally impossible to smuggle subversive ideas through, right? Like, literally. Like, what could you do? It's scary because now we're in entering the age of like when quantum computing happens, where encryption will net will be seemingly impossible to do because everything will be crackable. Right. And what of what of the giant company this sort of tech breakthrough would inevitably create? Like, what if in real life there really was a tron who fought for us against the evil master control? Like, how different? would the digital world be if the white hats were in charge of the fucking internet? Like, how crazy would that be?

There's a lot of things in our life. I'm like, how crazy would be? Honestly, the most terrific part about this, honestly, the most terrific part about this story is the hope that I feel about it for a second before I remember that on Saturday, October 17th, 1998, after a summer of awesome hacks and travels through South Africa and Egypt, Tron walked out of his apartment, said bye to his mom, told her he was heading out. and then was found five days later in a park in Berlin at age 27 hung with his own belt. Damn!

Yeah. Now, of course, in the years that followed, what happened was that there may or may not have been some evidence of foul play, but not enough for the police to believe it would lead to anyone specific. And eventually, the whole thing sort of landed in the press as this nebulous sort of disappointingly convincing suicide thing, where if you look at the facts, it really does seem like maybe he just wasn't into living anymore, right? That's really hard. But meanwhile, the CCC, the Chaos Computer Club, who have come out time and again saying that Tron would never have

killed himself and that his characterization in the news as a depressed, unstable youth who hung himself in a park as a misguided cry for help was not just an insult to the man, but a painful wound inflicted on the people who cared about this man, right? It's like a fucking disgrace. that's how they feel. So they're furious because the police wouldn't wave 48-hour waiting period before making him a missing person once he was missing. So they waited two days while he was missing to report him, even though people were actively worried about him, mostly because on October 20th, which was two days before he was found, let me see, wait. Yeah, he went on the 17th. He left the house and he was found five days later on the 22nd. So two days before.

that, on the 20th, he was found the police were at his house, confiscating his files and equipment, claiming that the two things had nothing to do with each other and were simply meant to be a coincidence as the two operations were carried up by two completely different teams. Like, there's the one team that was dealing with the fact that he was missing and the other team that was investigating him as a hacker, right? So they came and took his shit two days, three days after, like, while he was gone. Let's put it that way.

however at the same time there were a significant number of people in each camp who felt the opposite there are plenty of prominent hackers who are willing to concede that maybe the simplest explanation is the most likely and he did do it to himself after all maybe the bus driver did pull the shit lever and maybe everyone's uh maybe everyone's paranoia about it was just like their shock getting the better of them like maybe it's just just it's tough their hero dies maybe that's what it is it's hard like

I mean, like, just like from mental health perspective, like the idea of like the people who kill themselves who end up going through with that are usually people that you don't see it coming. And it's usually because they're very good at fucking hiding it for a reason that they are depressed. Yes. Yes. So, yeah, it can be that way. Yeah. It's devastating in that way. But there also were plenty of cops who thought that the idea of Tron's work bringing a hitman to his door was not out of the question.

And with rumors of the Russian mafia wanting Tron's secrets swirling or. one officer saying that, quote, Tron may have underestimated the financial value of the information he uncovered. You know, either way, foul play or not, one fact remains. Once upon a time, there was Tron, a guy who figured out something pretty neat

that would change the world, and in some small part, even take it out of the hands of the greedy, rich monsters at the top of the world, and now he's dead. And just as many people think he did it himself as think it was murder. And that's how you know

cryptofan was probably legit as fuck. So that's a pretty short one. But let's now let you guys in on another aesthetic choice that I'm making. Obviously, sometimes these things get away from me or we have to put the episode out before I'm fully happy with what I've gotten out on the page.

But that is just the nature of the beast, right? Ideally, when everything's going to plan, I want a single episode of Cornerfest to feel like compressing time where we ease our brain into its new role as an information receiver at the top with a slow burner or two, then you hit him with a couple rapid fire ones,

and then we, you know, whatever, whatever, blam, it feels good. Filled with a lot of big images, memorable moments,

but where less shit happened. Like, hopefully that felt almost as big as the ghost story, even though it was like, not even close to twice as long. And then, yeah,

that's that. It kind of makes you feel like you're speeding up, speeding up, speeding up, until suddenly you're at the point where you're almost swimming in crazy stories,

almost actually drowning in it. And then when it's over, you hit a long one again, and it's almost like a chill, a chill rest except it's a chilluminati so you still get more story and that my friends is what it's like to be in my brain when i am having anxiety anyway speaking of time travel it is time to see our lady of zaytune the lady of the tomb or a zaytune zaytune okay zaytune okay zaytune you know a little accent to zetum zitone it sounds like a like a 1970s movie that has a little

erotica in it, but it's really for the story. Yeah, our lady of Zay too. Now, again, the way to do Cornerfest right is to constantly try and run as far away from the aesthetic of the previous story as possible for the next one. So for our next little quick guy, let's try a mystery that is set in the unexplored

corners of a genre that you've probably seen a million times. I've come close to stuff like this myself once or twice in previous corner fest or even a full episode or two, which, of course, I'm talking about mysteries that happen to Christians. It's a good genre of mystery that I think is underrated because and our lady of Zaytune is particularly fun when it comes to

mysteries that happen to Christians because number one, it's set in fucking 1960s and 1970s Egypt, which is a dope setting. And second of all, it actually isn't just Christians this time, which is kind of interesting. There's a lot of different people from a lot of different religious backgrounds that all saw this. And that's what I think is interesting. Now, I always also don't mean to sound derisive towards Christians when I say mysteries that happen to Christians because I'm really not trying to sound derisive. But it's kind of like that new movie, Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out, which is like a God movie kind of, where it's like, Christians are interesting to me because for us, we're like, the truth is out there. But Christians

are like, the truth is that magic is literally real. And I know that that is the case. And that is They, like, they don't, we're not that different in our lives, but that is a really different. Catholics in particular are the magical Christians. They're the magic Christians. And as much as, as much as, I grew up. That's probably why I like the shit. I grew up as a cat, like in the Catholic world. I mean, just rituals.

Every mass was like turning the bread into actual flesh. Yes. And turning the wine into actual blood. That is the transfiguration. I was totally Catholic. It's, uh, it's always been interesting to me that magic evil. Jesus magic awesome type awesome and it's really the same thing except what I guess is for good but it's the same thing so magic magic so the reason is like the main guy magic is like

you know selfish powered whatever Jesus magic is God working through you you're not the one doing the magic sure oh no I know that's just the justification magic but like you could say that I'm channeling an out like warlocks aren't magical they are channeling there you know do enough let me tell you do enough mushrooms you start feeling like you're channeling some shit sometimes. I think about that all the time. It's crazy. Don't worry all. Don't worry all.

We killed Jesus for that magic. So yeah. Yeah, he died for us. Don't use magic. We tron. We trond Jesus too. Listen, all this to say, as much of a general reputation Christians have for being like conservative, prudish people, in some key ways, I do think it also makes them pretty

open-minded, if you know what I mean. No, Pope Leo is pretty sick, honestly. Yeah, and just in case you don't know what I mean, let's see if I can't like help you understand a little better because to me, whenever I hear these sort of Christian mysteries told, I must admit something about how specific and how completely weird they are and the sheer number of like confident, like assertive affirming witnesses there are always makes them feel a little bit more legit to me. I don't know, like that stair one. Remember that? I was like, I was an interesting one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a high strangest. high strangeness often. I mean, the Andreessen affair, the fucking daily induction with that Christian woman and all that shit was like very Christian imagery. Yeah. Changes things.

Keep that in mind. To me, this is more legit than like the kinds of people that are just like crazy that are out there. We'll talk about one of those later. Like there's, it's not like Christians are crazy. It's like a thought out choice to just believe in something else. You know what I mean? It's not like they got there through their own insanity.

Like they're very together. people for the most part. It's just interesting to me. Yeah. I mean, look, if anything we can say on this show is that whatever you believe in, as long as it keeps you going and makes you happy and you're not a piece of shit, I don't care. Have fun. Yeah. Enjoy. Absolutely not. Yeah. Be a good person. Treat others with respect. Go nuts. That's cool with me. Yeah. Whatever. I just think that's, I just think it's interesting that there's such a huge demo of the country. And you don't think about like, they all are like, yeah, no, that is real. And that's like a huge different way to go than like how we normally go.

That's the Methodist in me who's like, dude, yeah, though, whatever, man. Yeah. No, I'm a Catholic. I saw Jesus every day when I went to church like, oh, why did you do this to me? And I was like, I know, I'm sorry. Crying and apologizing. We had a lot of rainbows and shit. We should be like, everyone's welcome.

We had like gold and fear. Golden fear and guilt. But I like, I actually like. Stations of the cross. I'm fond of the, I'm fond of Catholicism in my life. You know, I don't think the org is my favorite, but I, I'm fond of what it, what role it played in my life. Anyway, stay tuned.

So yeah, it's in Egypt. The word means olives. It's one of the eight districts of the northern area of Cairo. Apparently, according to the Coptic tradition, well, on the run from King Herod, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph also came through Zaytune at one point, or at least near it. And probably most importantly for us today, even though you've probably heard more people mention Our Lady of Fatima, the Sun Miracle one, which I've talked about on here.

Oh, with the three prophecies. Yeah, or The Our Lady of Guadalupe or Our Lady of Lourdes. Is that also three prophecies? How many prophecies we got? Now, the Fatima one was like the three kids and then there was like the big sun miracle. Right. And it was like, there's one more prophecy that will be revealed. Yes, the secret one that they told the Pope or whatever.

Yes, that's right. Yeah. This one, it's really Zaytune from April 2nd, 1968. to May 29th, 1971, which was the site for not only the biggest Virgin Mary miracle of the 20th century,

but possibly the biggest one ever since it happened for huge crowds, multiple times a week for fucking years. Here's Jesse with a quote from an article about it published. It's going to be like one of those crying statues or something?

No. Yeah. No, no. Here's an article about it from the Catholic exchange for Jesse to read. This was not something just witnessed in a mystical vision by a few. It was a supernatural experience perceived by massive crowds for years. In addition, this occurred in the predominantly Muslim country and at a Coptic church,

which might be why Catholics are less familiar with it. The Blessed Virgin Mary was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people, including Cops, C-O-P-T-S, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and even secular Marxists, like the former Egyptian president, Abdel Nassir, Nassar, the supposedly greatly influenced him in his relations with Christians, who at the time were being targeted. Red crosses painted on their houses to mark them. This was also a time of rapid expansion of Islamic fundamentalism.

Perhaps Mary had come to mollify these tensions against cops and other Christians in this very vulnerable time. Egypt had recently been defeated by Israel 10 months earlier in June, 1967, in the Six Day War. The Zaytun years were a turning point from the 67 War to the Camp David Accords, finally a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. On the one hand, oh, on the one hand, comma, and the rise of Islamism and a Muslim brotherhood on the other.

Yeah. So this was like a kind of watershed moment for, like, like some religious tensions and some release of religious tensions. It's kind of interesting. And obviously, in this area of the world, it's not ever very relaxed religious-wise, but it was kind of a beautiful moment, this, this, uh, this, uh, citing. Um, and anyway, speaking of Coptic Christians, back around 1920 in Zaytun, there was his guy, Tafik Khalil Abraham, who owned some land in town where he was excitedly planning to build a nice hotel. Uh, but then one night while he was sleeping, he had one of those really vivid

dreams, except unlike my dreams where I'm in a weird resort that I know is on fire, even though I can't see the fire and a dirty pile of blankets at my feet is actually a filthy old witch who crawls up my body and chokes me with her crackly white insect fingers. Are you okay? That sounds like, that sounds like that some sleep paralysis. That is a normal dream and you guys know. In Toffee Khalil Abraham's dreams, he was visited by who else but the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She told him that actually he shouldn't build that hotel. And that instead, he should consider building a Coptic church there in her honor. And that if he came through on his part of the bargain, that someday she'd do some kind of miracle there later on down the line. So immediately, he got up, got to work on that church. And by 1925, the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. Mary was all set and ready to make history, except it took like 45 years for Mary to like come back. So that's kind of.

Yeah, you know, times different when you're outside of the three dimensional space. You know what I mean? Exactly. Exactly. And we'll talk about that, maybe later in Cornerfest. On April 2nd, 1968, two Muslim guys were working as bus mechanics in a garage nearby the church. They said they saw what they thought was a nun who was dressed in all white, who was getting ready to commit suicide by jumping right off the top of the fucking church. They freaked out. They were like, don't do it. Like, lady, come on. It's not worth it. No, no, please. They were saying stuff like that to her, right? And they called the police and people were like, the fuck. So people started like coming because it's like, you know, kind of a bustling area because it's in front of a church. And the police were like annoyed by this because the crowd was starting to get really big. Nothing to see here, yada, yada, yada, that kind of thing. And pretty quickly it looked like that was going to be that. But then suddenly some people from inside the church came out and were like, oh my God,

she's so bright. She's like glowing. The fuck? They're like, is that Mary? Is that the Virgin Mary? And then by that point, sorry. Like, what if it was actually the Virgin Mary? Mary still contemplating suicide, though.

Dude, that's like, that's like a fucking HP Lovecraft story. Can't die ever. I can't stop talking about the guy. And so they said it's Mary. At that point, everybody's like, if the church says it's her, it's her. And nobody was relaxed. Everybody was freaking out. And it just ended out of nowhere.

She just disappeared, like after a few minutes. That was the first time. For those who are curious, by the way, Coptic churches are just ancient, an ancient branch of Christianity that kind of was one of the, very first ones after Jesus's death about 150 years later basically. And I think their founder

is the author. Supposedly the founder is the author of Mark, the gospel of Mark. Yeah, it's a whole other sect. Let's just put it that way. It's a whole other sect that's not it's not really that. It's old as fuck. It's not really that popular over here. But it's a big one. No, no. Roman

Catholicism is kind of what took root out here. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, they disperse the crowd. The thing goes away. One week later on April 9th, it happens again. and another crowd forms. And again, it stops after a few minutes. But after that, appearances start ramping up until it's happening, like I said,

multiple times a week, until eventually the Coptic Pope, which I didn't know was a thing, Pope Kirillos, the 6th, sent down his little delegation under Bishop Gregorius, Bishop of postgraduate studies of Coptic culture and of science. And just a little over a month after the first siting on May 4th, Pope Carolos officially confirmed via statement that according to the church, these apparitions

were real. And then the Ministry of Tourism starts printing pamphlets about it. People start flocking to Zaytune. We are off to the races, baby. We have a years-long Virgin Mary sighting. And here is Mathis with another quote for you from the Catholic Exchange, which I'll remind you is about the Virgin Mary and not some kind of weird encounter with an alien. Because, of course, there are no similarities between that and what math is no none whatsoever i'm excited to read this despite the length of the apparitions and the number of witnesses the blessed virgin mary did not speak or deliver any verbal messages she maintained an attitude of prayer bowing toward the cross and blessing the people mary was seen gliding slowly about the domes of the church sometimes standing

for two or to three hours in the same spot and at times kneeling before the cross on the roof she acknowledged the people's presence by smiling at the crowd and blessing them with her hands Mary had long white and blue robes and a veil of bluish white light where they could see her garments moving in the warm night breeze. She had a dazzling crown on her head with a halo of bright light.

Sometimes the witnesses saw her with the infant Jesus or sometimes with the 12 year old Jesus and other times with St. Joseph. Still other times she was seen carrying a cross or an olive branch a symbol typically for peace and unity.

Yeah. And even though you used completely like all religious imagery, there's just something about the way that that whole description is phrased that it just sounds exactly like you reading an account of an alien encounter. The Fayetteville incident

with Chris Bloodsoe and the lady in white. Yeah, exactly. Who healed him of his stomach problems. Right, right. Like, was this like a nice female presence? Yes. Some refer to her as the divine feminine. Yeah. If we're talking about all this as, as what some people call capital P phenomenon,

like the phenomena as it encompasses ghosts, aliens and whatnot. Again, if everybody here, if consciousness affects reality and everybody here believes they're seeing the Virgin Mary and then reality like whether she's actually there or not you know like that the effects of what they believe to be seeing start happening is a whole conversation there yeah exactly there is no better place for something like this to occur than Olive Town Egypt because according to various accounts some nights there were up to 250,000 people coming to see this thing per night and yet as always

and rightfully so, I might add, some people were not so sure that this was actually happening. For example, according to the Wikipedia, the only like report of this event from someone who was both secular and spoke primarily English came from Cynthia Nelson, who at the time was a professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo. She went to the church twice that first April and again on June 1st. And then the people around her were all saying it was Mary. It was Mary. It was Mary is Mary. Nelson didn't necessarily feel that the big flashes of light that she was seeing, definitely seeing, or the weird glowing shape that she could see up there between the trees was definitely the Virgin Mary, even though she conceded that, quote, the source of the light was a mystery for the streetlights had been disconnected all around the church for several days. She just wasn't like, it's Mary. Some dudes were like, I can see her teeth. And other dudes are like, I don't know. So, That's interesting. So, again, you compare it to the phenomena as it is. And thinking about Rendelson Forrest, the two people who saw the ship, but they saw,

they definitely both saw ship, but they both saw, like, different versions of the ship in some way. I was listening to a writer's workshop by Ellen Moore the other day. He was talking about how words kind of, like, are the, are the bases of our consciousness in a way, because you can't really, like, have something until you can conceive of it. Yeah. And so words are, the idea that words are a virus and like a prison to reke, to constrain your, your imagination is also a fascinating idea. Yeah, yeah. But like, if you think about like the, the train film that played the, I think it's Edison or a French guy.

It's one of the first movies played and everybody jumped out of the way because they thought they see a train coming at them on film. They'd never seen anything like that before. And so as it comes to the frame of the camera, everybody gets scared and moves. Yeah, like when modern society is all around it, that story sounds kind of just funny, right? But if you think about what it must have felt like to not know about that movies exist and then see that. Right. Because anything you've ever seen moved toward you in your life is actually moving toward you. There's no 2D presence in their world beyond like a book.

It's like when you watch the videos of people putting on VR and they fall over or like hit. Yes. It's a new experience and you don't know how. how to react. And your brain, yeah. And so if you can, if you can like wrap your mind around that idea and then take it back to like caveman times, right? And just imagine like what it was like to just like witness things in caveman times with no way of contextualizing it or explaining it or anything like that. And then somebody draws a fucking horse on the wall at eye level. And you're like, oh my God, I know what he's doing. You're like, you can communicate. No, you're like, I'm in a, I was in a

cave and I saw a horse and it was floating like he was I saw a horse you're like how did I see a horse like how could that be frozen in time yeah yeah yeah I yeah I don't know there's just something universal about that experience that I don't think we're quite able to totally grasp if you think about Frankenstein saying Victor Victor Victor it's like that it's like the same thing great movie by the way I'm so glad we went to go see that yeah that was good stuff that was our That was what we did right before the show. We went and saw Frankenstein. Yeah, it was sick.

And I met Mathis' like hilariously opposite brother. It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, everyone must understand. Meeting Mathis's siblings is one of the craziest experiences. The difference between all three is like somebody made it. It's like maybe so it's like somebody invented a game. And then there's like three characters that you can pick and you don't want to have any of the same experiences. between the three characters.

It's what? I've never seen you like it. It's incredible what trauma can do to kids. But yeah, okay. We're all two years apart too. Like we're just me and my sister are two years. And my sister and my brother are two years. I'm four years from my brother.

Like the level of dramatic. Like I can't y'all do our stand. My brother is like the one that makes sense to have been doing a show in his life. He's the ex. You're outgoing. I feel like could just replace. me on this show and we'd be fine yeah that's what he he did he was a theater boy he was like that's still what he manages like that kind of shit still like it's so funny yeah it's unbelievable

trust me it's not lost on my siblings I'm the one that ended up doing a podcast they're both like we have that conversation like once he'd be like that's really weird he said it to me while we were talking yeah yeah yeah I know both of them they're great people yeah I love my siblings are amazing they're so good uh But yeah, so just think about that. Like everybody had their own sort of like conception of what the Virgin Mary is. And you see like this light and you're coming in with a rational mind. And maybe you've read a lot of stuff.

You're a professor of anthropology, right? You've seen a lot of images of Mary, like from a lot of different cultures. Some people haven't. Like, I don't know. There's something there to that. Or consider this version of events from the sociologist Eric Good and Robert Bartholomew, who cite the recent war with Israel as softening up the relationship. the people of Zaytune had at the time with just like the human world and mundane terrestrial

systems of social order and belief at the time. Like they just got out of like a crazy war and and it primed them maybe for one of the all time largest cases of mass hysteria on record, right? According to this guy, positing that quote, it appears that the Marian observers were predisposed by religious background and social expectation to interpreting light displays as related to the Virgin Mary. like maybe they only saw Mary because that's what their religion was right like and honestly yes I mean that's we talked about this before is that people see things based on their past experiences and that affects what how they perceive things sure sure sure yeah rashamon right yeah uh and uh honestly it's along those lines that it's worth noting that Mary is a big deal in Islam also uh if you may

not know that and is in fact directly referenced in the Quran as the greatest woman to have ever lived, which I think some Christians might be surprised to hear. Also, I think it's worth mentioning tectonic strain. It's the same cinematic universe. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. I think it's worth mentioning tectonic strange theory. Do you know what that is? It sounds familiar, but it's not something I'm, uh, it's proposed by seismologist John Durr and psychologist Michael Persinger. And it puts forth the idea. It's a, it's a, it's not just about Zaytune. It's about a lot of different things. But there's this idea that. Zaytune saw some seismic activity leading up to this time where the sightings happened.

And according to tectonic strain theory, it's possible that this was somehow the cause of the lights because similar phenomena have been recorded elsewhere where there's like some kind of geomagnetic wave adjustment that ripples through all our heads and we like hallucinate shit for a while or, you know, like, you know the god helmet? And yes, yes. You put it on, it stimulates your brain and you have like a real. religious experience right what is that is that a real thing yeah yeah it's like a it's electrodes that know where the the the religious experience button is in your brain and and uh so if you

google it look at it looks like it looks like it looks like way it looks like wayne zalinski yeah and uh it's it's it's literally like the idea is that something like this is happening on a mass scale to like to like people you know what i mean like and they're and it's causing them all to see these crazy lights in this one area because, you know, part of it is maybe hypnotic suggestion. Part of it is like, you know, there's actually some sort of magnetic wave thing happening. You know, something like that. That's the basic gist of what tectonic strain theory is. And that's something that maybe they think it is because it's really hard to come up with a theory that accounts for 250,000 people a day going and saying, yes, I saw Mary there.

when there really wasn't anything there seems crazy uh if you're if you're curious listener what the god helmet looks like imagine the kind of helmet someone would wear while driving herbie the love bug yeah yep meep me it looks dated it looks like an old timey helmet from like the 70s although that's not old timey but you know what i mean well this is the 70s but i'm saying like that's happening on a grander scale like i only just learned about, apparently, for astronauts in space on the ISS, sometimes a particle traveling 9.999% the speed of light, but isn't a light particle will, like, hit that one of them or whatever, and they'll taste like metal in their mouth or they'll have like a weird

flash of light, like stuff that does like happen to them, like, because, you know, you're out there not protected by the ozone layer of the earth. Right. And that, yeah, ISS can only do so much. So something that on Earth that could do that for sure. I can definitely see like a magnetic storm or gravity gravity the movie like drove that shit home for me so it's all that movie yes yes I saw that is good that movie is so scary terrible date movie don't take a date to that movie no no yeah that was a wrong choice at the end I took you a trigger similar Thaselophobia he fears for you Jesse I took my date to the movie and when I looked over at the end of the movie she was gone I hate you for that I hate you for that in every possible way oh yeah because like oh yeah

Although, admittedly, although admittedly, yeah, that was our second and last date. So, you know. So kind of. Yeah, kind of gone. I was just Jane off by myself watching gravity. And anyway, that's the gist of this. There's a bunch of photos and millions of witnesses. I gave you the Wikipedia link now.

You can look at it. The picture is basically what all the pictures look like of this shit. You can find a million pictures of it, but the one on Wikipedia is probably the most famous one. It's weird that the sky is black in it, even though it's. even though it seems like their sun on everybody's head. Just saying. But yeah.

Yeah. You guys can decide for yourself what you think it is. I don't know about you guys. I mean, okay. So like what we're seeing is like you see the church.

It seems like there's a light kind of like filtering over the church like it's exposed. Yeah. And then there's this a round circle, bright round circle with like a oval dimmer version of the light. It looks like a does almost look like.

these like nativity scene doll of mary yeah if you can if you click and open it you can see there's a dimmer there's a dimmer part in that brighter top circle that looks like there's a per they could be a person shaped silhouette there's even a little point around the chest area where maybe the hands would be i see i see them i see them i see that like that's also like it's weird enough on on the fact that it's just light being weird i don't know if it's the virgin mary but i can easily see that classic imagery of the halo that encompasses the head that it's like blows it out that's my biggest problem is it's too classical it's like clearly virgin like you can see like the praying and the person and the for those who are you know again just listening imagine the building

and at the top of the building near where the cross is is this light being that is praying towards the cross this will be in the description also by And the only issue I have is, is it so clearly looks like it could be the Virgin Mary simply based off of medieval and classical art. Like, it looks like the artistic interpretation of a votive candle image of Mary. But the thing is, there's light shining on everything. In the foreground, you can see like heavy light shining down on the people that are down by the gate. And the sky is pitch black. and I just don't get that

because it also looks like the church has lit up it looks like something's been done to this photo I don't know I don't know it's a weird photo but it's certainly interesting

I know it's fucked up those Christian mysteries something about them they sometimes they freak me out because they seem a little real I don't know why

I don't know why but a million million people saw it and maybe that's just a instatopa you know what I mean I don't know that's what I'm saying like you get the thought

like it has the imagery of something that's medieval when that's not what they would have looked like but if that's what everybody believes that they would see when they see it was that what they're going to see because that's what they would sign as recognizable and it's weird

if I tell you you're going to see something you're going to try and make the thing you see into it yeah the human mind is always looking for patterns like that and even with that said the idea that if you were to say like this is religion because its belief is the same thing as when we talk about ghosts

or aliens or cryptids or whatever because much like conversations with Mathis and I'm like well that's not real it's like well this is one of those things that if I were to say to someone who truly believe that's not real because it looks like a painting right they would say well

God would realize that we wouldn't know what the Virgin Mary would look like right so we would get the interpretation of the Virgin Mary and we'd all recognize it which makes it an impossible argument to have just like the Coke Santa bro or you know burying dinosaur bones or whatever

yeah um okay so that's that i don't know about you guys i'm feeling a little about peckish now at this point like i feel like i could go for a slice of key lime pie this next one is called horse laugh this one is called horse laugh yeah so another time out really quick really quick before we start what are the two of you think a horse laugh sounds like a horse laugh to me is like somebody who just laughs like those people who you know people who like sneeze oh you mean like okay you mean a person who laughs like a horse. I was wondering what a horse laugh. Like Scooby-Doo. Exactly like Scooby-Doo. Exactly. Exactly. Perfect. Horse laugh. So another secret rule of corner fest is that every episode needs

its own super dank, strange pothead on the computer, Captain Coochie's key lime pie, ass mystery on it, where it's like not quite a creepy pasta. It's not quite a narrative. It's not quite a narrative. but it kind of splits the diff between the two and there's just like a lot of information and you sort of like get this sort of like forensic look at something that happened on the internet at one point and I think that's interesting and I think that as long as the journey is weird

you know what I mean? As long as the journey is like surprising the whole time I think you know that's the thing that people like these and I know a lot of people think that the first mystery that I did like this was Captain Cooch's Keyline Pie, but I think probably it was Andrew WK. That was the most, that was the first one that was like

every time I said something, you guys were like, wait. The Andrew W. K. Well, it was weird enough that it actually got Andrew W.K.'s Yeah. After the episode came out. And then that was crazy. Unattentioned. And then he married Kat. And then he married Kat Dennings and, uh, does that make him part of the MCU? Tangentially. He is one. Tangentially. No, no. He's part of the Chilcyu. He's Eskimo brothers with the MCU. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. yeah um so because everyone knows cat was just rubbing face with everyone on that set just everyone just just the MCU concept yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so the thing

about we believe hard enough what are the butterfly kisses is we if we all if we all believe that the MCU is is an entity as a whole will it become an entity on its own Is that what the Celestials are? Is that what the entire season of She-Hulk was about? Yeah. I don't know what that's not give. Don't forget about Marvel. Don't forget about an intellectual layer to She-Hulk that it does not deserve, my friend.

Don't forget about Marvel today and don't forget about the Marvel Topa? Don't forget about the original chaos magic queen? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, the reason is a witch herself? There's nothing worse for chaos magic than Wanda Maximum. off. Oh, she's like, no. She is chaos magic, though, right?

She was like no more respect from your peers. I think that Blackagar Bolting ended that for you on his own. You don't say anything about it. Sorry, sorry. And the thing about the Andrew WK episode was, which everybody kind of forgets, is that it was basically solved by the end.

And that maybe Captain Coochie's key line, Pie was solved by the end, too. So it wasn't even really a mystery. Like, it kind of was, but it wasn't really. This one is definitely weird, like both of those stories. And I definitely think it has the kind of bizarre, mundane solution you'd never expect. But the reason it didn't get its own episode is frankly just because this is like not a funny story by the end.

There are unanswered questions by the end. And lots of people deleted their post about this once they've figured out what it might all be about. And trust me, it is a wild ride. So buckle up. Remember the content warning I gave at the beginning of this episode. I think people deleted their posts makes me think it's like child related. It is.

Excellent. But it's not how you think. Okay. So how do you think we think? Maybe a little bit. I know, I don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I also want to say this is where I got the idea for time slices from because, you know,

even though they eventually became a fan favorite feature of the Manson episode, you know once you once you see this segment you will understand why I came up with the idea and last November I'm going to just start last November Reddit went crazy over this site that seemed to show

these strange videos of a girl sleeping in her bed which was discovered on a creepily titled website called horse laugh.com I went to my site but I want to talk about this girl I don't know. No, I don't think so. There's a lot of, there's other girls on webcams that we've talked about.

Okay. Unfortunately, it is a genre. Yikes. Fortunately, it is a genre. I went to the site myself because of the time I didn't know what I was looking at, like back in the day, like a year ago. But I'm not sure I would go now, even though I believe it's down. But I will show you guys a short clip of what it looked like.

But I'm not going to be putting any links to that site directly in any of the notes, just like YouTube videos about it and stuff this time. because, frankly, I do not think that the general public should be looking at this anymore. And there's nothing like visceral or upsetting about this clip. So don't worry. Nothing really happens in the clip. But nonetheless, kind of tell the people what you see about this clip that might make the internet go nuts for a little bit. Okay.

So it is a room that looks like it is. Okay. It's a room that looks like it would be like in a school. or a YMCA. It's just like a completely square room where there's a girl in a bed and there is on the wall one of those tack boards it looks like

and then there's a vent or something on the ground and a dude walks in, I assume it's a dude, opens the door but doesn't come in the room. The door stays open and the girl stays in the bed completely unmoving and then a light in the hallway goes out girl still unmoving maybe she's sleeping

and or staring directly at camera I don't know is this Epstein Island no luckily no so it does look like just a tiled room like what I would imagine is like a public bathroom there's a great in the floor like it majorly has the vibe mattresses

just stacked on top of each other on the floor with that said the interesting thing that I think is so fascinating is when you think about like stereotypical And this is from a guy who watches way too much law and order SvU slash law and order. I love you, Mariska Hargatay. Come on the show, Maris. I love you,

but like if you are kidnapping someone who you're going to kill or you're treating poorly or whatever, usually those rooms are a mess and the bed's a mess and the sheets are a mess. Maybe there's not even sheets and barely a pillow. This is like white bed, white bed spread, white sheets, white pillow, comforter and it all looks sterile level clean which is very weird almost like it's set up

obviously the window's boarded yeah yeah I don't know what that is I think that I could see nails I thought that's a boarded window maybe yeah if you look at it you can see the nails at the bottom and the sides so it looks like it's a boarded window yeah so so that's the

that's the that's the reason people were worried about this girl it's obvious right This is an alarming thing to find on a website. And based on what they found after a little Google foo, just like kind of running with the general aesthetic of these clips, most people were of the opinion that what they were looking at was some type of homebrew alternate reality game.

And indeed, several particularly famous ones over the years have gone viral, which actually do feature a similar setup of short videos as someone who might be held against their will in a featureless room. So it makes sense. Mathis mentioned that we did one or two on this show before. and I remember when I was in college I can't remember the name of this one but it must have been around 2010

it was a guy sleeping on a cot that was chained to a wall and the bit in the comments was that he didn't get to eat unless someone figured out which super food he was gonna get from like that they were talking about in the video

and eventually it got so uncomfortable that YouTube just shut it down like they like stepped in because people were reporting it so there's a lot of weirdos out there that are like skirting the edge of what is an ARG and what is just torture.

So that was one that made me feel weird. But I digress. The best way for you to experience this story as an audience member, I think, is for me to place you in the POV of somebody who maybe saw this first weird clip on Reddit and then went diving into the way back machine yourself so that it unfolds in chronological order. So let's try that now, aka the OG time slice. And again, I'll give you guys out there and Jesse and Mathis the links to all these

thing. I'm sorry, I'll give you guys the links, Jesse and Mathis. I will not give these links to the audience, but you can kind of be their eyes for this. And, you know, so that I don't have to keep getting up in all these people's business. The first backup is from June 2001. Looks exactly how a site looked at the time if you registered a domain with GoDaddy, which was only four years old at the time. Somehow this feels even older than the internet from my childhood, even though it's really not. I was like 13 at this time. But, But you see it. It's a very underfeatured GoDaddy site from June 2001. But then it looks like this has been registered. Yeah. Then it looks like GoDaddy went through the dot com bubble and lived because the next backup of the site is from December of the same year. And it shows a colorful and extremely retro landing page for GoDaddy now.

Lots of 90s colors. Yeah, it's when GoDaddy finally had a logo and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing super surprising though. That's just kind of how GoDady looked at the time. It's the page that come up when you park a domain and like you haven't put anything on it yet, but it's coming. Right. But then, so that's December 2001. The next backup is from a couple years later in 2004. There's four backups. Graduating high school this year, 2004 feeling good. Yeah. There's four backups from May to July, but there's like an empty file. Just parent directory. It's like a empty file directory. Yep. Kind on a million sites. But at least somebody did something, right? And then all of a sudden, in August,

people saw that two files had been added, both of whom reference in their title, something relating to the quote, G-A-R-C-S-A-25th reunion. And then the first picture was never backed up. The second is clickable and seems to lead to some kind of old-timey photograph, which to me, and a brief reverse image search seems to be some kind of battle or moment from the Civil War. Do you guys see that? Yeah. For those who are curious, as a bunch of people standing on or sitting on a null, watch. a battle now this could be a reenactment or it literally could be a battle from the civil war because history nerd moment uh the first couple of battles people thought it was going to be like

a fun spectacle so they came out to watch yeah yeah that shit did not be a was not a fun spectacle for anybody involved to watch also i love the kid mugging the fucking camera at the bottom it even has like a little uh like a one of those civil war hats on he's got the little He has a little flat top hat. So then that happens. I think it's a civil war. Then in September, a ton of files appear in the directory.

Mystery Kodak 2 guts. Kodak C ordinary. No idea what that really means. Leads me to believe it's more photos, maybe of cameras, not sure. None of these links are clickable. So at this point,

I'm just thinking this is some kind of weird, random file dump for a guy who likes old pictures. There's not much else to go on here. But then we go to the next backup, which is from December of 2004, and we update it again. This time, the Kodak files are nowhere to be found, but those two files from August are back, and now they're both clickable, and they've been retitled to Gettysburg reunion, Northside, and Southside. So that's pretty cool. So what they seem to be is some kind of reunion of Gettysburg soldiers from both the North and the South, reunited.

So 25 years after probably the battle of whatever. Which would explain why the. The kids have the hats at the time. Yes. Yes, exactly. So I'm just going to go ahead and assume that's what they are because the only other new folder there is called IPHO in lowercase. It's a folder, which at first I freaked out about because this was almost three years before the iPhone first dropped. But when you click on it, it's actually some kind of flyer for something called the International Photographic Historical Association, which is a group that buys old camera equipment, pictures and underdeveloped film, which started in 1985.

five. It still seemingly has a website up today, which looks like an old, slightly upgraded version of the one on the site. Here's that site right in here, if you want to see that, but I think it just means that whoever was using this site was kind of a photo enthusiast and was at one point using this to store things. And maybe he made this site. Yeah, if you click the various links, it just is like, yeah, we collect old cameras and we document old-ass cameras. And okay. Yeah. Maybe the person who made the site was keeping a copy of it. Maybe they made it. I'll tell you right now, I only have the slightest notions about this, and I already know the whole story.

In contrast to 2004, 2005 only has one backup. It's from January. It looks exactly the same as the one from December, and then we skip like eight years, and there's not another backup until June of 2013, and now things are like totally different. And instead of the directory, the site has now become a rudimentary text-based web page, though it doesn't seem to be much more than simple HTML email forms for four different people called Alan, Audrey, Tammy, and Dan. To me, it seems like a family maybe, and suddenly I'm

thinking, oh, this is probably some nerdy mom or dad who bought this URL for fun. They're a hobbyist internet coding and they use it as like a cute family zone online, which again, a lot of time and mysteries that are like this, you see something like this, right? But then, if there was a family, I think something happened between Dan and Tammy around this time. Because in all the updates from 2013 to March of 2016. Every backup that there is, they all show horse laugh as just some sort of simple yellow website, which at the top, just the one small sentence, Hi, Tammy, remember I love you more than you will ever know, Dan. To me, kind of gives divorce vibes. Please don't say her full name as it is the title of this webpage. I'm trying to

keep them at least a little bit anonymous, but if you see it, just don't read it. And it just says that message. Hi, Tammy. Remember, I love you more than you will ever know, Dan. And so that's weird, and that's in March, but then in October, things start to get a little crazy. So here we are. This time, the site has become, I don't know what else to call it, an extra incorrect false fact sheet about a link between autism and children and a certain bacteria and a certain

bacterium that commonly infects the human gastrointestinal system known as H. Pylori. You can go over the whole sheet if you want, but really. thanks to the YouTuber Scare Theater who has a great video on this and looked into this already we know that the only legit info on this whole shit is that H. Pylori does cause stomach ulcers and that autistic children do often have stomach issues.

Those are two separate facts that are true that are on this paper. But literally everything else on the paper. It's trying to say that H. Pylori is the cause. And it uses the typical like flimsy argument of like it's being diagnosed one in 91 now but in 1918 it was one in like

whatever and it's like yeah well that'd be because Science has advanced and we now know how to recognize and diagnose these things way better than you did for you more. From what I can tell, this number is 100% of those tested. That's it that nothing is 100% of a thing. No, no, exactly. In reality. So those two facts are the only true things.

H. Pylori does cause ulcers. Autistic children do often have stomach issues for everything else that there's bastard card. Is that good? Was that a joke that I should have written into this script like I did? I thought that if I said it off the cuff and I'm, it would seem like it was an improv, but no, it is not an improv, and neither is this. It's also written, that's the point that I'm trying to make about the power of aesthetics. All right,

here is another link for you that goes from that year to 2017 now, and maybe some payments lapsed or something because the site just basically becomes a for sale sign for a bit. And this continues into 2018. And then there's no backups at all between 2019 and most of 2021 until December sixth when the shitty fake autism fact shit comes back and then nothing in 2022 or 2023. Is this going to be like turning into some dude running into an autism cure fucking camp? No. Not quite.

Not quite, but you're not far off. Oh, Lord. Yeah, nothing even in most of 2024 as far as backups go until November where we finally caught up with the story breaking on the internet. And now we can see just as people were discovering and as. actually, there's much more information on the site now than at any other point in time. So here's the way it looked when people found it. In addition to the folder with the clips of the Sleeping Girl labeled Orbs,

which are time coded down to the second with a timer showing on screen, which means that even when they were originally recorded, it was in one minute clips and they were recorded at the time that it says on the clip. That's like forensically true of these clips. A couple of times a man can be seen peeking in the door, or walking by, but nothing really seems super sinister about him, at least in the clips. And honestly, if you look at the title, I think maybe in their own way, these are actually just sort of like ghost hunting clips, because if you do actually take the time to look through

them, which I don't recommend, by the way, you do, in fact, see, like, spirit orbs manifesting in the images. And that is like what the fucking folder is titled. So maybe he was checking to see if autistic kids have ghosts or something. Then there is a broken link page to a page with some. vacation picks from the painted desert. Then there's that same bad, fake wrong autism fact sheet.

There's a CGI bin folder that you obviously can access. Then finally, a link to a page with a bunch of broken image links called 2007 vacation, which literally does seem to be an account of this family road shipping from Oklahoma to California to visit relatives in 2007 that it was written by Tammy

and that Alan and Audrey are the kids. So that's the thing that we probably know from this. I read the whole thing, to be honest, seemed like a pretty nice vacation all told. Towards the end, there was this weird part where Tammy hurt her knees

on a ride at the boardwalk and then it was hurting her so bad while she was driving that she couldn't read the map and fast enough for Dan and Dan laid into her like so hard that she like wrote about how bad it made her feel.

And then later Dan like hurt his foot and she was like, I'm glad he hurts his foot. But other than that, nothing really out of the ordinary. I will remind you that I do think that something happened between them sometime around 2013.

just based on this. The Orbs folder, if you watch all those videos with the volume up, it 100% sounds like either a hospital, but since it is in a hospital room, I'm going to say maybe like a psych ward. There's people having conversations

of a technical nature around. Yeah. So by December 26th, 2024, all the files had been removed. The directory sat empty just the parent directory sitting there empty though people did find a bunch of other websites the same person ran and now today if you try to go to horse laugh dot com it's down altogether because I think he felt seen in a way they didn't want to be seen uh and now you know I was out of options I didn't really want to dig into this man's life any further than anyone else had just in case

he was like a nice oblivious guy who didn't realize the internet can see his website but for better or worse most mystery YouTubers don't really have that hang up which is why within a month of the story breaking, the YouTuber Scare Theater, who I mentioned earlier, had a pretty good video on this, had already been mercilessly chewed out both over the phone and via email by Dan himself in a way that made him feel like the dude had a few screws loose. And then he got also Dan's much calmer, rational son, Alan on the phone, even though these days he doesn't really want to be known by who his father is. And with pretty good reason, too, to explain everything, starting with the girl in the bed, who, as you may have already guessed by now, is

what I would call, like, debilitatingly autistic. Not that all autism is not debilitating in some ways, but once... It's a spectrum. Once we get into this, I think you'll understand what I mean by debilitating the artist. Absolutely. Here's Jesse with the quote. And again, this is a normal guy, not a scientist. So while he's definitely being emotionally honest, let's not judge him too much on his

tone or his academic accuracy, because unlike me, this guy is not trying to be good or entertaining. He's trying to be informative about what's going on. By the way, with all that said, even if you're not really, If it's just an autistic child, that room is like, trocious. I'm so upset that it's an empty room, dude, whatever. All right. You're going to be mad by the end of this no matter what.

That's my half sister. That is her bedroom. Now, the reason why there's nothing in her room in that is because, like I said, she has the mindset of a toddler. She can be a danger to herself. She has seizures. So that's why they have a camera in there. but why he posted the video online completely messed up the autism delusion he shouldn't have put

that online he claims that h pylori caused her autism he also won't treat her for the autism i mean he won't accept treatment he just wants to continue to believe that she's going to snap out of it one day and start talking i don't know what orbs means but orbs typically i believe it has to do with spiritual lights that pass over cameras and stuff like that i know that he has to has some really, really spiritual beliefs about the other side and purgatory and stuff like that. I mean, he's had delusions his entire life. To him, if he says it's true, it's true. You know, growing up, I was tossed around. He would throw me out the door. He would drag me around the house by my shirt. He threatened to punch me a few times. He never actually did,

but he did slap me repeatedly to the point of bloody noses and everything like that. even a black eye once. So fuck this guy, basically. Care Theater then goes on to ask about his half-sister's well-being. And Adam Allen says that thankfully Dan is not her caretaker, her caregiver. That's Alan's sister, Audrey, who like is a good person, understands her, knows how to communicate with her in a way that makes her feel good and safe and calm, which is good.

Because what if I told you, that's not even the real mystery at play here. That's just background for what the real mystery is. Right? That's weird, right? Okay. Because see, during the month or so that the internet was absolutely obsessed with this guy, people rather easily were able to find Dan's last name themselves and very quickly discovered using who is tools that he also ran a bunch of other websites, like I said earlier. And that some of them had weirdly specific names, like the first and last names of some of his kids and himself, boycottem.com, Godbefore us.com. OKlDS.com.

another directory type site which also includes that bullshit autism paper on it in some backups but also others have a folder on them which seem to be referencing the missing 116 pages of the original book of Mormon which if you're not Mormon you may not know have been lost since 1828 and are often referred to as the Book of Lehigh obviously there's a lot more to what the 116 pages are and what they represent but that is enough to get get you through this story. Anyway, now that you know that, here's Mathis with a quote from Dan himself from a forum on Mormon Dialogue.com from 2019 about a weird turn Dan Lives took a few years later. I mean, a few years earlier, not later. That's impossible. You couldn't write

about something that was not happening. In August 2013, my son Alan had been invited to church by Abby, a girl from his school, and he asked me if we could go on Wednesday night. Not being much for any specific religious sect. I despised them all equally. I reluctantly agreed and asked him what church. I knew I had a couple of Mormons way back up the family tree, but I didn't know much about them otherwise. But I didn't really object, and I went mainly to get a look at the type of girls my son liked. When I saw this one, the phrase swinging for the fence came to mind. No wonder his son hates him. Yeah, no shit, dude. Jesus. What a, anyway, that was on August 21, 2013. I got a copy of the Book of Mormon.

took it home to read. By Saturday night, I'd read enough to be absolutely fascinated, but found a lot of terminology hard to understand. So on Sunday, I took my whole family to see if we could find someone to give us more information. Out in the hall, I collared two young men with badges declaring them to be elder George and elder Zirkley. Is that you say that? I would say Zirkle. Zircle? I tried to give it more fanciness than Zircle, I guess. They didn't look very elderly to me, but I decided to play along. I asked them if they would mind-stopping by our house sometime and explaining some

passages in the book of Mormon to me and my family. There were 25 to 30 people standing in the hallway chatting, waiting for sacrament service to start, and they all went instantly silent from shock. It was as if those old E.F. Hutton commercials, when E.F. Hutton talks, I thought, I don't

know what he's talking about. There's this thing where there's like a bunch of people milling around and then it's like, E.F. Hutton starts talking and they go, okay you have heartland talks everybody listens you know that kind of thing yeah uh he go continues then i thought maybe i had overstepped some sort of doctrinal boundary so i offered to pay them for their time and gas if they would only come over and answer my question a brother cronk fucking excellent name a brother cronc saw the look on i hope he's like crook from

squeak him squeak him squeak him squeak him squeaky squeak him a brother crook saw the look on my face, clap me on the back, laughed and informed me that the process usually worked the other way around. The missionaries usually goed out to people's homes and tried to get them to come to church. We're not really used to people coming into the church and trying to get the missionaries to visit their homes. That was the O KC Fifth Ward's introduction to the family. Oh, I should have bleep that, Dean.

Over the next 94 days, I put those missionaries through a litany of trials and tribulations, ending or maybe beginning with myself, my wife, my son, and my daughter being baptized. One right after another on November 23rd, 2013. That's like fast. This started in August, and he baptized his entire family as Mormons. And from there, people were also able to locate his username on Reddit, which led me to a post in R slash X Mormon, which a random user asks about the pages, just like because they're an interesting topic in the religion. And then another random user pipes in and mentions this info, which Jesse will read for you now. Given the topic, I should chime in and say that as a member of the church from in my former war, what the, given the topic, I should chime in to say that a member of the church from my, from in my former ward believes these 160 loss pages were in a safety deposit box belonging to a family member and that he turned the contents over the church in late August or early September of 2017.

I don't know the exact date and the church has it in their possessions since that time. He only looked at the first few pages but those pages reference a new Star Fox game will be coming soon because my uncle works at Nintendo references the book of Lehigh

and several hand-drawn maps. No one knows if they're authentic yet or not but it was taken serious enough that local leadership received received multiple calls from a from church hq about it and this ward member was flown out to california multiple times by sponsors not the church itself plausible to liability to retrieve the contents of this safety deposit box rumors were rampant that the contents of this safety deposit box being handed over to the church four months ago although things have been eerily silent since that time

call it bullshit or some type of Mark Hoffman hoax if you want but I know several people directly involved with this it is legit that something with 160 pages was turned over to the church but unknown whether it is the real deal or not time will tell yeah so they're saying that they heard that somebody got access to the missing 116 pages silently turn them over to the church and there's like politics around why they can't be released and then suddenly in a comment, it's revealed that the guy who claims to have found the pages is none other than Dan himself. And Mathis here will now read you what he had to say in response. I'm going to drop you one half of it. I'm going to drop you the other half. First, I secured the sheets to their

rightful owner. They do not want to take physical possession of them because they are worried about the possibility of one of my relatives putting forth a claim to ownership. Possible, but not likely. Be that as it may, they will stay where they are until someone a lot smarter than I gives me more guidance. Second, I read the first long. of the first page. I was told someone named Bruce Porter looked at these in 2016 and pronounced them genuine. Beside the fact that Bruce Porter died in December of 2016, I have never spoken with two of, wait. I think it's supposed to say or, but he just wrote of.

Okay. I have never spoken with two or about him. My source for that data is less than reliable in my opinion. Three, I was never flown anywhere by anyone for any reason, period. I don't know where that story originated nor why. it continues. There was a call made to my bishop in late 2015 by the head of the church security, which shook him up pretty good. Neither the church nor anyone else has spent any money on locating or securing these papers. The only people involved in their

transport are not church members, but friends whom I could trust. Four, eerily silent because I am sick and tired of this whole thing. I only check in and post when another piece of erroneous information is brought forward. Five, I am personally convinced that these are the real thing, but that basically means nothing. I am an engineer, not an archaeologist nor a document expert. I also know that based upon the tiny script I saw that the 114 sheets, 228 pages I saw would amount to something more than 2,000 pages if published as the current book of Mormon is, footnotes, annotations, etc. The sheet size is roughly 8 inches wide by 17.5 long, written up on both sides. 6. I have not, nor ever will sell these and nor take money for their recovery. The other

documents included promissory notes would cause immense damage to the church in my opinion so those will also remain secured and are also not for sale seven the curtland bank notes are being evaluated and graded now as to condition and value i may sell some of those in the near future eight sean little bear does not have anything to do with these sheets i know i know brother little bear and we get along well however he does not have any influence over me regarding this matter at all all caps 9. As to the maps, I know where I know where one of them goes and will go there when I have the time and money to do so. Yes, I will take friends with me. No, not you. I wish all these experts would simply stop with a conjecture and ask me the horse's mouth and sometimes the other end, depending on my mood, whatever they wish to know. There is no pretense about me. I do not lie, although I may not choose to tell you the truth. I also do not scare easy and don't embarrass at all. have never truly felt like of all the people involved this story, this is the one that needs the most help.

Yeah, this guy is not well. No. There's been some sickies on this show, but this guy, it's like another world. So now both Alan and other Mormons have made statements, which seem to discredit Dan's claims in small ways, especially Alan saying that Dan got obsessed with the 116 pages

way before he ever found them, which makes this whole thing a lot more suss. but the idea that Dan is just some weird outsider isn't exactly right because the more you look into him and his connections to the church, you'll eventually find that also Dan at one point found himself involved with Lori Valo and Chad Daybell who had some pretty extreme beliefs. Jesus fucking Christ, the Daybells. Pretty extreme beliefs regarding coming in Doomsday and decided that certain people

had to die to prevent it like Lori's estranged husband Charles who was shot by Lori's brother Alex and then her two kids, Tiley and JJ, who first went missing and then were eventually found dead and buried at Chad's place. Because they were like demon possessed or going to be demon possessed for some stupid shit. I literally remember doing multiple minisodes on these crimes as updates were coming out. And we slowly learned the whole weird story about how far they deviated in their beliefs from Orthodox Mormonism and how Chad believed he'd lived multiple past lives and that he also had a prophecy that the world was going to end in July of 2020, which he also convinced Lori of

and then also that he was a God and that if she didn't get rid of her family she couldn't join him in his role as the right hand of doom. But anyway, there was a subreddit made by people following the case. And on it, there's a post which mentions Dan by first and last name

using the fact that he met with Chad and Laurie in 2017 to talk to them about the 116 pages and thought that they were already in a relationship as evidence that they'd been together way before they said they had been, which is interesting. However, according to that same post, Dan also mentioned that they were a little crazy and self-obsessed to the point that they wanted to like bring finding the 116 pages into like a book that he was already writing and kind of like get Chad like popular that way somehow.

So he cut ties with them pretty quick according to him. But it was suspicious enough of a thing that when Scare Theater, the YouTuber found out about it, he could not resist asking Alan about it. here's what Alan said for Jesse to read. So those murders happened back in 2019. He kicked me out whenever I was 18, which would have been in 2016, 2015. So I don't know too much about that. I do know this. I remember hearing Chad Daybell's name come out of his mouth at one point.

I don't, I know that he has specifically tried to distance himself from those murders and everything. I also know that is right up his alley. but I do not have any evidence of any kind of claim or support the fact that he clearly had anything to do with it so yeah Jesse added the editorial clearly

for the record and with that the story of horse laugh com comes to a close was Dan just some delusional paranoid foe religious abuser who was totally toned of about what he did with private footage of his sleeping bedroom and daughter whom he refuses to really help

probably or is there even more random bullshit to find out in between the times we have already had archival backups made for like i said not the most narrative or necessarily mysterious story but you know i guess it all sort of depends on what you believe did this guy get involved with chad and lory daybell like what was going on did he find the 116 pages what happened with that where are the 116 pages the reason who never sell them isn't definitely not because he doesn't have them. Yeah, exactly. And that's Horslaff. And now that's been five nice, fresh, crazy topics, totally worthy of this year's Cornerfest. Let's do one more. Correct. Let's do one more, right? And what better way to close us out today than a short, sweet story about the end of literally

everything. This one is called, the apocalypse planet. So this one's kind of a new type of mystery that we haven't really tried before on the show. But I've been reading lots of HP Lovecraft lately, as I already said. And other than discovering that he's even more disgusting of a person that I remembered than he was on the inside, it also got me thinking about like, have there been any instances of cosmic horror in real life? And yeah, even though Jesse, Jesse sort of covered some of this stuff that I'm going to talk about already on the show, which that kind of sealed the deal that I was never going to do a full episode on this topic. Gotcha. But I, well, I mean, you basically did a bunch of this.

already. I thought it was pretty neat anyway, what the other stuff I found. And look at from Mathis, it starts right in his wheelhouse. So please help translate for Jesse at all. Okay. If we need it. Basically, around 1995, this lady from Wisconsin, her name is Nancy leader or lighter, leader or liar. Isn't that funny that that's what her name is? Fun name. Anyway, she founded this website called Zeta Talk to like share her childhood experience. Oh my God. I know. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. She shared her childhood experience of being contacted by a group of aliens

called the Zadens from Zeta Reticulai. And they put a chip in her brain so they could talk with her at a distance. So here's Mathis with the quote from her bio on the site, which she'll read for us and hopefully provide some contests for us as needed if we need it. Here you go. Nancy became aware of her contact these status in 1993 and the potential for being a communicator of the Zeta message in the midst of all of a full life with a family and a full job.

As a contactee, Nancy participated in the hybrid program and met one of her hybrid children. In preparation for a communicator role, Nancy was given life form introductions and introduced to MJ12 at an early age. Good. She got to meet the Majestic 12? That's crazy. At an early age? Nancy spends her retirement time and money on getting the Zeta talk message out. Request for interviews take top priority. She quit a professional job in California in 1999 to move to Wisconsin. to walk the talk. Born in Wisconsin, Nancy returned to her grandparents' homestead

where she first met the Zetas in the woods as a young girl. There she garden, saved seed, raised chickens, and tried to be an example of how people should prepare for the coming changes.

As the Zeta talk message is threatening to the establishment who fear the populace will panic, Nancy deals with a lot of flack. She does, and she does. Anyway, in 1997, during the perihelian of Haleybop, Halbop? How do you say it? Hailbop?

Hellbop. Yeah. Okay, the perihelian of Hailbop, she first came into the public eye because of statements she made about the comet, which made it all the way to the New York Times and which Jesse, the progenitor of the story in my mind, will read for us now. The Hail Bop comet does not exist. It is a fraud, perpetrated by those who would have the teeming masses quisient until it is. is too late. Hellbob. Quiescent? Quessant? Yeah, I don't know. Cresson? Quasson? Cuisant. Nothing more than a distant star and will draw no closer. This is, she said no. That held out real true. That held out real well. Yeah. Also on top of this, she also explained that reason anyone,

that the reason anyone was even talking about Hail Bob is that it was fed to the media, distracts from the real story, which the Zetas told her, it's actually the imminent emeritus. of a huge object from deep space, known as Planet X, and that Planet X was here to fucking kill us all. So here's Mathis with another quote about it from her site. Planet X classic. You could still, you know, if you really want to, you could dip into the Planet X theories to this day. We're about to. The inbound Planet X was cited at the coordinates given by the Zetas in early 2001, imaged by infrared twice in January 2002, tracked by ccd images in late 2002 to early 2003 and thereafter photographed by amateur astronomers around the

world that a middle-aged woman with a high school degree who does not even know which end of a telescope to look into can pinpoint the RA and DC of the brown dwarf. I don't know what that means. Planet X is astonishing and speaks to the validity of Zeta talk. I don't know those words being either, but I'm sure that one of our many astronomer followers will hit us up just like they did at the live show. That was actually great. Of course, as you may know, if you're into this kind of thing, Halebop did, in fact, come closer. And it was one of the brightest and longest perihelians of all recorded time. Nancy eventually took down those first two sentences of that post that were quoted. But the specter of Planet X remain. And as with most doomsday prophecies,

people were still somehow biting. She said, the enormous deep space object absolutely dwarfed the Earth by significant factor, and that on May 27, 2003, it was going to get so close that the Earth would stop spinning for six straight days, and that this would immediately cause the Earth to spontaneously go into a magnetic pole switching event, which would fuck up the entire planet's crust on an atomic level. So when May 27, 2003 came and went, leader said that she had actually lied about the date to fool the powers that be, and that she would not be revealing the true date so that she could stop the world governments from having enough time to declare martial law and trap everyone in

the cities where they'll die. And eventually, just like in a Lovecraft cosmic horror story, eventually Nancy became aware of a strange foreign scholar with bizarrely upsetting ideas about a set of alien gods who came before the ones we have now, who lived on a planet outpass Neptune with a fantastical name Nibiru, which this mysterious dark doctor from a land which no longer exists, without the slightly veiled racism is the fringe author Zech, Zechariah Sitchin, who was really from Soviet Azerbaijan

and Mandatory Palestine. This is so supremely coast to coast, Zacharias Sitchin, like all of them, this is like, I must stress, during my college years, during the years where I like worked at Ralph's friendly markets,

stocking shelves, I worked overnight and I listened to so much coast to coast. this is like reliving all of that and it's just as insane yeah it's it's so so this guy shows up talking about Nibiru and he's from literally a land that no longer exists Soviet Azerbaijan and mandatory Palestine both places that aren't a thing anymore and said that the planet Nibir was on a long elliptical orbit which lasted like 3,600 years so that's why we don't see it very often these godlike aliens he wrote who also seemingly created us

and visited us all through antiquity and helped found the ancient civilization of Sumer in modern day southern Iraq were actually their ancient deities the Anunnaki The Sumerian. The Sumerian deities, the Anunaki now.

The Sumerian deities, the Anunaki. Also possibly known as the Nephilim from Genesis and the Eternals. The Eternals from Marvel Comics also. And they created humans to replace them as laborers for this planet once they themselves rebelled against even greater beings, which, come on, which, which storyline have I betrayed so far? None of them, not even the Eternals. And that the original Earth civilization

was actually destroyed by nuclear weapons when Earth was used as a battleground for an alien war in 2024 BC. Battlefield Earth, dude. Yeah. He even said that on one of its ancient, ancient, ancient previous orbits, Nibiru had smashed through a giant super planet. called Tiamat that used to exist between Mars and Jupiter, which then broke in half and half of it became the asteroid belt and half it became Earth and it even knocked one of Saturn's moons all the way out of whack and that became Pluto, all because of Tiamat and Nibiru. And in 1996, Nancy went on her site and was like, oh yeah, that's this. This is, that's Planet X. That's my, that's the same thing. And a lot of people ran with that. But by 2010,

when Sitchin died, even he was like, no, it's not. It's going to be back in like 2,900, not now. This is the time doesn't match up. So when that connection kind of fizzled, they decided that maybe Planet X slash not Beiru was actually coming to ring in the Mayan apocalypse on December 21st, 2012. And even Nancy jumped on it for a second, claiming that in late 2014, Obama had tried and failed to announce that Planet X was passing near the sun, but that he was stopped by the shadow government. Thanks, Obama. Always the shadow government. Yeah. And then, as you know, if you've read some lovecraft, comes the arcane hidden knowledge that barely makes sense. And sure enough, by the time this planet X Nibiru thing hit the virality point in 2017 again, another

Narathotep called David Mead, who described himself as a Christian numerologist, whatever the fuck that is, using the geometry of the pyramids and certain passages in the Bible to like divine the dates of the planet things arrival. which according to him was square with the woman of the apocalypse's predictions from revelations on September 23rd, 2017, and claimed that the solar eclipse a month earlier of August 21st was a sign that it was true and it was about to happen. So at this point, NASA has literally been accused of covering up evidence so much that they felt they had to issue an official statement denying that a giant celestial object was coming to destroy the earth. And proper Christian

writers were making it very clear that a Christian numerologist is not a thing. But after a few more fall starts into 2018, it eventually fizzled out again. And Planet X once again was what it always probably should have been, which was a weird, dumb, impossible joke that's worth enjoying his fiction, but had no business at all trying to be real. And yet, oh no. And yet, and yet, there is a strange clustering of orbits where extreme Transeptunian objects, which orbit 250 times further from the sun than the Earth does, tend to make their closest approach to the sun in one sector, which is consistent with a clear tilt on their orbits, which, along with many objects becoming straight up detached from Neptune's gravitational influence, does seem to suggest

an undiscovered true ninth planet, sorry Pluto, and which based on the calculations would likely have a mass something like five to ten times the size of Earth. And that's all real science. And strangely, there are real respected astronomers like Constantine Batijin and Michael Brown who think that the object might have originally been the core of a different giant planet, which was blown out of its orbit by Jupiter as the solar system was first forming. And others even, real astronomers, real credentialed astronomers who think it may be some sort of rogue or captured planet from another passing star

or the leftover gaseous drag of a disintegrating solar nebula, which to me are just as wild sounding and even kind of oddly similar to the descriptions of the 12th planet and the Anunnaki story, right? Like maybe even more so than Nancy's original stuff. So anyway, there's a shitload more to this,

lots of other completely rational and supportable explanations for what it could be as well, which are probably better read, and looked at for a long time while scratching your head than trying to listen to me tell you them because it's like pure science and numbers at that point, especially this far into like one of the longest episodes I've ever written. But while I'm sitting here telling you that legitimate researchers like Brown put the likelihood of Planet 9 actually existing at 90%, and even other less involved in the creation of the theory, putting it at close to 70%, I would

say that it is not an idea to brush off. Even Jim Green, a director of NASA's science mission directorate, which is the cool part of NASA, in my opinion. Even though he also said it could be a number of other things, said that the evidence is stronger now than it has been before. And, you know, that's cool. And also he said that one of the other things it could be is a primordial black hole, which might even be cooler, which is like a little black hole that's in our solar system and fucking shit up.

Which to me, it's crazy. excuse me but yeah that's pretty much where I'm going to leave this one except to focus on one last bit of the story which I think the audience will find to be a nice little cute bow on top which is that as I've been saying

most people refer to this possible unknown planet as planet nine but that slowly a growing number of supporters of Clyde Tombao the discoverer of Pluto have come to see it as a challenge to his legacy that this thing is called Planet 9. And ironically, one of the most popular

codenames floated since at least 2018 for what to call it has consistently been, planet X. And that, folks, it was where we're going to end part A of Cornerfest 26. Thank you for listening. Please send it for Patreon. Please buy our merch. We really need it. But also, before I go,

I wanted to give you a little teaser for next time. It doesn't even make any sense. Planet X. We plan at 10. Right. But it's not X. It's like Planet X. It's like Planet Question Mark, Doesn't check out. We've got to bring Pluto back. Like Algebra.

Like Racer X. Like Racer X. But yeah, I want to give you a little teaser for next time when we start with the story in which Mathis will voice the main character. And which, from my perspective, is really all about letting the show itself guide you sometimes when you write. You know, by sometimes providing what in small doses is probably the easiest, most satisfying aesthetic flourish of all. And that, my friends, is fan service. So here's Mathis. Here's Mathis with a teaser for next time.

Three years ago, one like, so it begins, am creating a tulpa. It is a being that you give birth to inside your mind. It is sentient and have a consciousness, no, have a concisness of his or its own. The tulpa am creating was originally inspired by My Little Pony's Friendship is Magic and a pretty hardcore brony. So I stumbled upon a post on Fortune and My Little Pony. this is how I found the exx, oh man, this is the, this person can't spell, existence of tulpahs.

And there's actually a whole community on this phenomenon. I have to confess the first time I found out about this, it really had me uneased. It's so rare that something can distress me this much. The reason for this stress was deep, because deep down inside, I've made up on my mind. I wanted a tulpa. However, tulpa are beings that will likely stick with, stick with, with you for as long as you exist exist and it's a very serious thing my original motive has been because ooh i want a real life pony for myself or ooh it'll be so cool but i quickly discovered

that there's so much more to this than i first realize yes the physical shape will be a pony inspired by the show my little pony friendship is magic because those ponies are actually really beautiful beings brony or not and i have reached that the conclusion that having a tulpa will transform my life into something entirely new, it will add another dimension. I really want this. I need this. This very Tumblr will let me write and report my progress. For some reason, I know this will help me create a Tulpa faster. See you guys next time. Anyway, me and my wife were sitting outside indulging on our porch one night enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside and after a few moments, I hear my wife go, holy shit, get out here. So I quickly

dashed back outside, she's looking up the sky in the fall. I look up too, and there's a perfect line of dozen lights traveling across the sky. You know, I'm going to Thank you.