Endless Thread - Girls Trip

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Randi-Lynn thought she was going on a relaxing family vacation to the mountains. Just a few days later, she was hiding in a bathroom and frantically posting on Reddit, asking for help. The headline of her post? "I think I was brought on a girls trip to be brainwashed." 

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 Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Just a heads up, this episode mentions some sensitive stuff, including violence against children. So please use discretion. Okay, here's the show. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. How did you get away with making the post? I believe I was in a Starbucks bathroom. I actually wrote most of it on notes when I was with them. This is a woman named Randy Lynn, and a few weeks ago,

she was furiously trying to post a Reddit from a Starbucks bathroom. She was worried about the people she was with. She knew they wouldn't want her posting. And this was the only cell service she could get after they brought her to a cabin in the mountains. She was pretty freaked out. I can't believe I'm dealing with this, and I'm sitting in some random bathroom writing about this kind of stuff.

The strange part is that the people Randy Lynn was with were her family, her mom and a couple of aunts. She'd agreed to go on a trip with them, hours away from home, for what was supposed to be a girl's trip in a mountain town. But that wasn't how it played out. And now she was posting on Reddit looking for help. This has been going on the past few days, and I have been hesitant to call it what it is, but I believe they brought me here to attempt to reprogram me. There was next to no cell of service at the cabin, but when we went to town yesterday, I got away for a little while by claiming to need to buy some toiletries. Really, I went into a Starbucks and called my fiancé and told him everything.

He knows I can't go home and advised me not to do anything to upset them because we really don't know how far they will go. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sievertson, and you're listening to Endless Dread. Endless Threads October series of scary stories from the extraterrestrial to the existence. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode, Girls' Trip. Randy Lynn is 29. She lives in Western Canada.

She is a full-time student studying political science. And she and her fiancé have been making some pretty big life moves. We just bought a house actually near where my mother and my stepfather lives. Randy Lynn's relationship with her mom has always been a little bit rocky. I was always very much, you know, daddy's girl. And she saw that as kind of an attack on her when I was younger because I would always run to my father. I feel like that's kind of provided a base for our relationship now is all this kind of strife that we had when I was younger. And it's continued to kind of drive a wedge in between us because we have that kind of past trauma.

It's not all bad. We love to go shopping together. That was a big thing that we used to do. and we both have a lot of dogs, and we always would go for walks, and we'd go to the dog park and whatnot. About 10 years ago, though, some new strain was put on the relationship,

when Randy's mom got together with her stepdad. Politically, Randy leans left, more similar to her dad, her mom leans right, and her new stepdad? My stepfather, he leans far more right. He was very right. And I noticed that right off the bat as soon as they got together. And I feel like he was a lot of the reason why my mother started going down, you know, that rabbit hole. When did you realize that your mom was following Q&On?

When she started posting to Facebook, some of those really clickbaity kind of articles, I saw some of it. And then I realized she posted something and it was. It was that rabbit kind of logo that they have with the cue on it, and she now has that on her car as well. If you're thinking to yourself, QAnon, what is QAnon? Hit pause. Go listen to our last episode, Q&ONC casualties. It is an in-depth explainer on everything you wish you never needed to know about the popular conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, Randy Lynn's mom started sending her brother's articles about QAnon, but never directly to her. And I think part of the issue is that I'm a political sciences major in school, and I feel like sometimes she felt like she couldn't always, like she had more of an adversary in me. Her mom even sent articles to her fiancé, which Randy Lynn thinks was an attempt to get her fiancé to ultimately influence her.

Why do you think your mom became a cue follower? Really, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I think what it was was, was, So I moved out, I would say, five, six years ago. My younger brother followed shortly after. And then my youngest brother actually just moved out, I think, about two years ago. He actually moved in with my fiance and I. And she had, for the first time, in a long time, an empty house. Her hours are reduced at work because she's on her way out to retirement.

And I really think that's what it was. She just had too much time on her hands. and then social media kind of just took it away. For a while, Randy Lynn and her mom weren't talking that much. But then, this summer, her mom started saying to her, I want us to go on a girl's trip. Yeah, so she had actually reached out to me about a month before leaving and said, we're thinking of doing this girl's trip near the end of August.

If you wanted to come with us, we would love to have you. It's going to be me, a few of your cousins, who I've all kind of gotten on, long with well. A few of my aunts and we're going to go to the mountains and we're going to go shopping, you know. At first, Randy Lynn declined the invitation. But her mom didn't let up. And eventually she gave in.

We all loaded up into the car and the drive is about four hours. And there was really no talk on the drive. And looking back now, I feel like there was no cue talk on the drive because they didn't really want to do that where I could still. kind of get home easier. But in the moment, Randy Lynn just enjoyed the quiet. And when they finally pulled up to the cabin, it was adorable. A log cabin in the mountains, sloped roof, a little chimney, lofted beds.

It was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful. That's the thing that really kills me is that it was an absolutely beautiful setting. It's just, you know, what happened and the things I heard about was kind of, traumatizing. Things quickly took a turn. First of all, she realized that her cousins, who she likes, weren't there, and they weren't coming. It was just her and her cue supporting mom and aunts. Also, there was no cell service and no Wi-Fi. And then it basically started the moment that the bags were out of the car. The Q&Non Topics started flying, basically as soon as we started loading into the cabin. And then that's when I really realized that there was something going on that

wasn't what I thought it would be. And it just kind of builds from exactly that moment, their comments. And then they started directing it kind of more at me. And it was more of, oh, Randy, like, you need to watch this video or you need to know about this because this is going to be a big thing. They spent their first day at the cabin unpacking and settling in. And the atmosphere got real weird, real fast. They're playing, it was some sort of podcast.

It was about QAnon, and it was basically about all these children that were being found. And they were just playing it, like, out in the open. And I did mention, you know, I didn't want to have a political kind of vacation. I wanted it to be an actual vacation. And they said, well, it's not political. Like, this is what's happening right now. It's news. QAnon is a one-size-fits-all conspiracy theory.

And Randy Lynn's mom was especially interested in the child trafficking angle, as in an evil cabal of pedophiles are trafficking children, supposedly to harvest adrenachrome, a chemical compound related to adrenaline. Why are they harvesting this adrenachrome? They really believed that children were being taken to have adrenachrome harvested so that celebrities continue to be youthful. I think actually Dwayne the Rock Johnson, he came out that he had. COVID around the same time as everything was happening. And I remember one of the comments was, oh, he doesn't have that. And I remember asking, okay, well, what does he have? And my aunt literally said he has pedophilia. He's a pedophile and he's waiting for his adrenochrome.

As the hours went on into the first night, it became clear to Randy Lynn that the purpose of this relaxing girls trip was something entirely different. They were sitting on the couch and they said, well, let's just play a card game. And we're all sitting around the coffee table on the couches, playing a card game. And then my mother said something about, do you know about what kind of person Lady Gaga is? And I was like, Lady Gaga, like, that's such a weird topic to bring up. Randy Lynn is a big Lady Gaga fan, by the way, which her family knew. And then, you know, they got into talking about how Lady Gaga is one of the people that uses this,

Drina Chrome to keep herself beautiful and, you know, young looking. And the thing that they told me was that in American Horror Story, I believe her character is a vampire. And there was a scene that they showed me from the actual show where there was kids that were basically giving their blood up for her. And they said, oh, well, that's just a little bit of an Easter egg because that's actually what she does. Randy Lynn found herself in this weird upside-down world in a cabin in the mountains, where fact was fiction and fiction was reality. And I remember saying this is crazy to them. You can't believe that.

And they're like, it's right here. It's been under your nose the whole entire time. Randy Lynn also got scared when the stuff her mom and aunts were talking about started to get even more graphic and also more personal. They said that babies who were murdered more violently produced more adrenachrome. So they were more important. They were more valuable than, you know, older kids who were murdered. And then they said that babies were being taken from hospitals to do this. So they said it was very important when you have kids not to have it at a hospital

because this might happen to your baby. And as somebody who's just going down the journey of, you know, trying to get pregnant, hearing that was, it was very upsetting and just very strange to hear from your own family. You know the saying, you can't make this stuff up? People like Randy Lynn's mom believe that about a lot of what they hear in QAnon forums, that these theories aren't too crazy to be true. They're too crazy to not be true. You can't make this youth harvesting stuff up, except someone already did. In 1993, with the release of one of the most iconic Halloween children's films. Use that today!

The Sanderson sisters are witches that survive by sucking the youth out of innocent children. Anyone who has heard the name Jeffrey Epstein knows that sexual abuse and child trafficking are real issues. And there are real stories about youth harvesting too, which is part of what makes all of this so mind-bending. Remember a few years back, it was reported that Trump supporter and tech billionaire Peter Thiel was harvesting blood from teenagers in pursuit of eternal youth. And then there was an actual startup called Ambrosia that was offering blood transfusions as a service, $8,000 for a liter of fresh teenage plasma. Mmm, delicious. But also very concerning because the lines are blurred, right? There was actually a few times, and this is kind of what scared me the most, was when they would be talking and I would actually start to go.

That makes sense. Like, that actually makes sense. And then I would slowly start to go, what did I just think? Like, I just actually kind of agreed with them. And that scared me the most because as somebody who is fairly educated, but as somebody who read that, and if I was able to say, yeah, I mean, I could see it. You know, what hope does the rest of, you know, everybody else have? We should say, unequivocally, there is zero evidence and zero credible reporting anywhere that suggests even in the slightest way that Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Lady Gaga, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, etc., are all part of a demonic cabal of globe-controlling blood-harvesting transdimensional aliens. Let's just get that very much on the record.

But to Randy Lynn's point, there are things in popular culture, deeply rooted social, political issues that we struggle to explain and understand. And her mom and her aunts were filling in the blank spaces with crazy stuff. More of that crazy stuff and Randy Lynn's plan for escape in a minute. 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 a new. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of

what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. 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. So Randy Lynn has realized that her mom and some of her

aunts have effectively kidnapped her. At least, that's how it feels to Randy Lynn, after they bring her to a cabin in the mountains and start to push her to accept these conspiracy theories and enter this upside-down world with them. Things get scary enough that Randy Lynn decides she has to get out of this cabin. So she suggests they all go into town. That way, maybe she can get Wi-Fi and check in with her fiance. Fast forward to the Starbucks. bathroom, where she's locked herself in. Randy Lynn's fiance has told her about a subreddit called QAnon Casualties, which offers support and advice for the loved ones of Q&N followers. He encourages her to post there about her situation, just to see what people think. So she does.

Right now we are in town, and I'm sitting on a toilet and in this restaurant while they are outside. I'm hurt that my mother would do this to me, but honestly, I'm more upset that I didn't see this coming. I believe she's too far gone to be saved, and when I get home, I'm going to discreet. continue contact with her. You know the feeling when you think something is crazy, but you're the only one who thinks it's crazy, which makes you feel like you're the crazy one? That had been happening to Randy Lynn a lot on this trip. Does this seem to be an attempt at reprogramming?

Am I being overly sensitive? Has anybody else dealt with something like this? And the only thing that can break through that feeling is a bunch of people telling you you're not crazy, which Randy Lynn quickly found in the comments on her post. And then the response kind of immediately just made me believe that I was thinking what everybody else was thinking that this was something that was done with a lot more sinister motives than I originally thought. Brainwashing, reprogramming, call it what you will. But after hearing from Redditors, Randy Lynn was convinced her mom and aunts were trying to turn her into a Q&on believer. That night, after they got back to the cabin, things.

escalated. They were drinking that night and I didn't want to drink because just everything that was going on. I didn't think drinking would be the best thing to do. And the other, the Q&On topic started flying in front of me again. And at that point I said, you know, no, like we're not going to do this again. And that's when they kind of got in my face a little bit more. I had made a comment about there was a TikTok that I had seen about a baby. And my aunt had said, like, oh, I hope that he doesn't get taken. And I said, he's not going to get taken. That's not a thing that's happening.

She got right in my face. I thought she was going to slap me. And she said, it is happening and you need to open your eyes. And at that point, I was like, okay, I need to get out of here. This is not good. How did you get out of there? So I actually was able to contact my fiancé and I said, I can't do this. Like, everybody's telling me I need to go.

I am feeling that I need to go. So he left work early. I believe that was on the Thursday. And he said, okay, well, I'm going to come get you. Pack up your stuff and make it seem like you're cleaning up your area. Four hours later. He knocked on the door and he just told me to get into the truck to lock the doors. He grabbed my stuff and I know that there were some words that were said,

but he came back to the truck and as soon as we were on the road, I started crying because of everything that had happened and I kind of just had this massive word vomit where I just told him everything that was said to me, everything that I hadn't been able to say, everything came out. And I didn't hear from any of the family for the next few days. It wasn't actually until Sunday. where I got a text message for my mother, and this is something I didn't talk about in the Reddit post, but she basically said, I don't know what you think was happening,

but there's no reason for you to leave early. We were having a good time. And I read that, and that, like, that really just was the weirdest thing to read because it was not a good time. Like, it wasn't. Like, that wasn't normal what had happened. Since then, Randy Lynn's mom has,

reached out to her pretty much every day, inviting her to go shopping, to get their nails done, the type of stuff they used to do. Randy Lynn hasn't been responding to her mother's requests, and not responding has been hard. And that has to do with the last interaction she had with her dad before he died. We had had a fight, and he had texted me, you know, I'm sorry. We got into a fight. I love you. Can you just respond to my text message?

And I didn't because I was so mad at him. and he ended up committing suicide shortly after. So I know that for me, that's a big reason why I feel that I need to reply to her all the time. The trip to the cabin happened only a few weeks ago, so some space is probably good. Randy Lynn has a lot to process still. That has been, I think, the hardest part is just realizing that I have family that's capable of thinking that, and that they believe it's so much that they're willing to take their niece or their daughter into a cabin and basically hold her there and tell her these things. That's how much they believe it.

This is maybe a strange question, but do you think all of that comes from a place of love? I think so in their way. It kind of, it's odd because a few people have reached out on Reddit and they've said, well, your mother was strong. trying to, you know, quote unquote, reprogram you, would you try to reprogram your mother and try to help her? And I would say no, because it would look the same way as what she was trying to do to me. And from her point of view, it would be just as scary. It would be just as strange, right? So I think it came from a place of love, but it was very misguided. You wrote in an update to your post. I have to find.

figure out how to mourn my still living mother. How do you articulate what it is that you're mourning here? You know, she is my mother. She gave birth to me. She's my only remaining parent. At this point, I can't have any kind of relationship with her because of everything that happened, because of the attempts at gaslighting. It's trying to be okay with moving on and ignore. her attempts. Do you see the potential for a conversation where you guys can find some sort of middle ground? Or do you really see someone that you have lost, that you're not going to get back again? I think the only way that I could get any kind of semblance of my mother back is if Trump lost the election in November.

And the only reason why I think that that would help is because at that point, It would be another four years for the election. And over four years, she would probably start to lose steam. Fatigue would definitely wear in, and that's probably how I would get her back. That's really the only way. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer, and when he thinks too much about QAnon, he gets no sleep. Mix, sound design, and original music in this episode by Matt Reed.

who goes to his mountain cabin to enjoy forbidden snacks. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and when he locks himself in the Starbucks bathroom, he likes listening to... Music French people might play at a party or just with friends around. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode, or give us a story tip so we can tell it like we did today,

hit us up there. My co-host and senior producer is Ben Brock Johnson. My co-host and producer is Amory Severson. we'll let ourselves out.