Endless Thread - Endless Dread: An Uninvited House Guest And A Fake Doctor

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Ben and Amory swap terrifying tales from Reddit, featuring an uninvited house guest and a doctor with an unusual fetish. Happy Halloween!

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Merotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, guys, before we start the show, as many of you know, there's a little bit of an election coming up in the United States. Maybe you've heard of it. Yeah, and for the Americans out there, please vote. Oh, my God, please vote. Nah, don't vote. It's not worth it. Oh, my God, Ben.

Just kidding. Definitely vote. as if your life depended on it. And if there's one thing that we can say about the U.S. right now, it's that everything's fine and we're not at all divided. Just kidding. We are definitely divided. Here's an example.

Muffins are disgusting unless they are grilled or toasted. You mean delicious in all of their forms? Nope. Also, the dentist is the worst. Oh, come on. See, this is what we're talking about. So we want to hear from you. What is your non-political, unpopular opinion?

Your low-stakes hot take, the hill you're willing to die on, record a voice memo on your phone and email it to endless thread at wbUR.org. We just might feature it on the show. Your deadline for this is Monday, November 2nd, 3 p.m. Eastern, but the sooner the better. Keep it to 30 seconds or less. And don't forget to tell us who you are and where you listen from. And also who you voted for. Just kidding. Don't tell us that. But definitely also vote because there's a deadline for that too. Yeah. Our inbox, again, endless thread at WbUR.org. We're excited to talk about completely not. non-political, strong opinions next week. And we can't wait to include your voice in what we do. Let's get your hot takes. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston.

Hey, Amory. Hey, Ben. What kind of soap does a ghost use? No, Ben, you told the joke wrong. That's how my son tells it. No, it's not. Your son told it so much better to me. in that video you sent.

He did? Yes. So, what does a ghost use to wash his hair? What? Sam Boo! Well, here we go. We've been telling a lot of stories of, like, real existential dread, but for this week's snack time,

it seems only appropriate that we would, like, celebrate Halloween a little bit, actually. Yeah, we've got to bring people back down to, fears that they hopefully don't need to really worry about too much. But it's kind of fun to tickle that creepy bone every once in a while. Let's put the tickle back in that creepy bone. I got a scary story for you. You ready? Yeah.

The title of this post, which is from the Let's Not Meet subreddit, is how I found out someone was living in my house. Don't like it. You ready? for this. Here we go. It's a very long post, but what I will say is this house is kind of like in the middle of nowhere.

This person says a lot of weird stuff happens in this house. Of course. And about a year ago, for the month of June, my family went to France for four weeks and left me to tend to the house and take care of the animals. So this person is in their house by themselves. the family is in another country. The house is in the middle of the woods. This person, like, lived in the house for eight years, but, like, always felt like it had kind of a weird layout.

Next to my room, there's a huge wall that connects to the living room wall. But my room isn't as big as the wall, so there's just, like, a large wall in between the living room and my room. Underneath my room is the stairs to the unfinished basement. So there's some like unexplainable space in between the walls of this house, we can say. So another thing that happens is the birds congregate on top of the house, like on the roof. And the birds kind of like scratch at the roof to pick it bugs. Hmm.

About two weeks after my family left for France, the birds started their scratching noises on top of, of the roof. They do it every hour or so all day. Over time, this person says, I started to hear scratching and banging sounds coming from the wall next to me in my room. I thought we had rats in the walls. My mom assured me over Skype there was probably just birds on the roof like normal. These weird scratching sounds in the walls keep going for a couple days. Finally, I decided it was time to check the closets in the basement for signs of mice or rats so I could buy proper traps. Checks the basement, doesn't really find any signs of mice. It goes to check the hall closet, which is the only thing in between my living room and my room. It's usually locked because it's

full of a bunch of yard tools and my stepdad's shotgun, my archery equipment. Well, well, they know how to shoot a bow and arrow. That's good. And a handgun. The first thing I notice when I open the closet is that all of the tools are moved to the far side and a portion of the closet wall is missing. So the person starts to freak out a little bit, call their friend and their dad to come over and check it out. This person thinks about calling the police,

but they live far away from a lot of things. So they're like, I just discovered the hole in my wall, in my closet. Like maybe that's not enough to get them out here. Oh, no, it's enough. The friend and the friend's dad come over. They don't see anything super weird. So my friend's dad gets on his hands and knees and gets into the hole in the wall.

When the dad comes back out, he has a look of horror on his face. In the wall, the dad finds a dirty mattress, a pair of men's sized jeans, and a whole Walmart rotissory chicken partially eaten. So the person calls the police. They find no one and nothing out of the ordinary. My friend's dad nails a slab of wood over the hole. Wait a minute. They find no one and nothing out of the ordinary other than a mattress and a rotisserie chicken.

Yeah, they don't like, yeah, because like that's what's weird, right? It's like they can't really do anything if they don't find the person, right? How fresh is this chicken? I mean, my friends, fresh enough that someone's coming back to finish it. It's still discernible as a chicken. Yeah. My friend's dad nails a slab of wood over the hole and I have all the locks changed. The creepy compartment in my closet has since been sealed up.

The scary thing is that because I work during the day and leave the house unlocked most of the time, the guy who lived in there could have come and gone as he pleased until night when I was home. I have eight dogs, which is the reason my family needed me. me to stay home and I never heard any of them barked during the time the banging started, which means the man probably lived in my house a long time and my dogs got used to him. This is like my story from the last creepy snack time, that if someone was taking the pictures of those sleeping people, it would have to be someone that their pets already was familiar with. Yeah.

But that's it? They just closed up the hole and they lived happily ever after. Closed up the hole and hopefully they threw out the rotisserie chicken. No, give it to the dogs. She's got eight of them. The top comment just says, picturing the layout and spot for the second bathroom reminded me of trying to build a house on the Sims. I really don't appreciate these creepy house stories, Ben,

because they're too real. Check for any holes in the closets, Amory. That's all I'm saying. We'll do. Well, coming up in just a minute, I have a cautionary tale of a very different sort for you. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing.

Or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. and hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know.

Wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences.

Whatever your goal, We can help. Discover how the magic is made at wbUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, Ben, this story I'm going to dedicate to you because you broke. What did you break in your foot? What did you break? Yeah, I had like a, I forget what they call it, but it was like, I pulled a chunk of bone off my ankle, off the ball of my ankle, I think. Okay. Well, this is a story about someone who also, broken ankle. But things have turned out very differently for this person. Okay.

So this was made to the legal advice subreddit. Not usually a place I turn for spooky stories. Okay. Yeah, same. But I actually got tipped off on this one by my sister. So the O.P. says that they're a type one diabetic with osteopenia, I think it's pronounced, which is just kind of like your bones are weak and brittle.

And so they say that they're often in a cast because of it. But about three years ago, they broke their ankle. And the break was pretty bad. And they thought that she might need to have surgery. But instead, she ends up being in a cast for nine months. So how long did you have your boot on when you broke your chunk of bone? It was too long. It's like it was like at least six or eight weeks.

Okay. Sucked. Yeah. So nine months of this. And then this Redditer finds out that after all that, after some x-rays, the ankle is still abnormal. And they want to do an MRI, but it's going to be another $2,500. And this person is like, no, I just don't have money for that. So she goes into a boot and she kind of gives up on the idea of having surgery or doing anything else with it.

it. And then at the end of last year, she posts online and it's just like, I don't know what to do. I'm just in this boot. I can't pay for the kinds of treatment that they want me to have. And someone reaches out to her and is like, hey, I know this doctor in El Paso who helped me when nobody else would. And he works on both sides of the border. No, nope. Yeah. Nope. I don't want it. This Redditor gets the doctor's phone number, leaves a voicemail, ends up sending the doctor a text as well.

And they have some pretty straightforward doctorly text conversations, I guess, if you were to text with your doctor. Hey, Doc, what do I do? Yeah, you know, like you do. So the doctor says, come on over the border and we'll have some, I can save you money on MRIs and x-rays and all that. So this Redditor is like, ah, perfect. Instead, they actually end up meeting in El Paso because the Redditor lives in Vegas. And because they're meeting in El Paso, she's just in a hotel. And the doctor comes to her hotel room to meet with her.

No, no. Yes. No, meet in the lobby. The answer is no. Meet in the lobby. If only, where were you to wag your finger? But no, they meet in her hotel. And this doctor is, you know, is very kind.

He says he's an orthopedic surgeon. He even says he'll do this work pro bono because he just knows that she's been in a cast for so long. I'm going to need some documentation. Give me the docs, doc. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Absolutely. I mean, I'm not meeting a doctor in a hotel room.

I'm just not. But this doctor, unfortunately, doesn't have the best of news. He says, look, this is going to be a really long healing process. You're going to need to be in a long leg cast for at least another six months. What? No. And the doctor also says that she's at a high risk for needing an amputation. What?

Yeah, which, you know, to be fair, she had heard in the past that she has this really bad ankle break. She has these brittle bones. They're not sure exactly what to do. So, you know, this is kind of just the first visit. He says he'll come back the next day to her hotel room because she's all the way down there. So he comes back. He's like, oh, I'm in between surgeries right now, but I have time to see you again. And she's, you know, she's starting to get a little weirded out that this doctor is maybe offering to help her pro bono,

even though she's desperate and she needs the help. So, so definitely the longest foot finish. story I've heard so far. Well, it's funny you say that because things did start to turn a little flirty between the two of them. He's, you know, he's in between

surgeries and she's like, oh, well, if you just want to lie down for a little bit, you can lie down in my hotel room. So they have this visit, then she goes back to Las Vegas, still in a cast, and then

the coronavirus happens. And he doesn't want her traveling because of her diabetes. She's higher risk. And in the meantime, he's sending her supplies. He's sending her like casting supplies or whatever other medical supplies she might meet out there in Vegas

while the coronavirus is going down. And she finds out during this time that he actually is not a doctor. And he's like, no, no, no, I was this big deal surgeon in the UK but when I came to the U.S., I had to do my residency again. So, you know, I haven't lied to you. It's just the way things work because I came here from the U.K.

So she's really, you know, she's like, he's offering pro bono work. He has not been up front about his credentials. But they're kind of starting to date. And he also, he always has an answer for everything. So she's like, you know, I just, it just kind of made sense to me. Fast forward. Even more. It's been eight months now that she is still in a cast.

She still is not able to walk at all. She says her leg has completely shriveled up and is weak at this point. And they do finally meet up again somehow. And during this next trip, I don't know how. But she finds out that Ben, as you suspected, He is not and never was a doctor. She finds out that he's married, and according to his wife,

he has an amputee and stump fetish. And he has already tricked eight other women into thinking he was a doctor. Oh, no. He's apparently been hospitalized for this behavior in a psych ward. And... Oh, God. Yeah.

And so she's like, oh my God, during this time, he was probably just trying to make sure that my leg got worse and worse and worse so that it would eventually have to be amputated. And all of a sudden she's remembering these moments where he had said to her, you know, if your leg does have to get amputated, I won't love you any less. And just kind of off-putting things like that. So she posts in legal advice to say, can I sue this man? Is this a criminal case? What the hell do I do?

Everyone in the comments basically was like, go to the police, walk, don't run, do whatever you have to do. And maybe don't meet up with a doctor in a hotel room who says that they'll work pro bono for you. Oh, man. Because it seems like bad news. And I hope this woman does get the help that she needs.

It sounds really miserable being in a cast for that long. So I'm sending good wishes to the injured ankle, and I hope this fake doctor is held accountable. We should also say that this is one of the greatest Halloween costume moves of all time, right? Like, he really played the part. Yeah. You know? Took it a little too seriously.

He was a creepy, not doctor playing a sexy doctor. He did the sexy doctor Halloween outfit. Yeah, just a reminder, not sexy, not doctor. If someone shows up in a sexy doctor outfit on, say, October 31st, maybe don't let them in. And also get a second opinion, would you? All right, that was our creepy Halloween snack time. I hope that you can escape from real scary times. and have a nice, fun, scary Halloween this weekend.

And have all the scary snacks. We'll see you next week.