Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 586: Australian Poltergeists Part II - That's not a cross...
Episode Date: August 16, 2024This week the boys conclude their paranormal adventures in the great down-under by discussing two more cases of mischievous Australian "Polts" - The Haunting of Liz Fleming and The Haunting at Humpty ...Doo. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
There's no place to escape to.
This is the last time.
On the left.
That's when the cannibalism started.
What was that?
Yeah, dude, now we're in the do.
We're in the do.
We're finally in the do where you've wanted to be for weeks now.
Whatever man.
I saw this, it's because I was excited about finding like a good meaty poltergeist story.
Sure, this is where it started.
Yeah, but it's kind of funny because then we called in, like I wanted to get a response
from the government of Humpty Doo, right?
And we did call, so first thing I did
offer a Snickers to the child that runs the city. I offered him the Snickers, he said,
what's that then? And then we fought for a while, you know, but then afterwards he listened to my
story. No, we talked to, we tried to talk to the local government of Humpty Doo to find out, I was
like, this is this huge... They'repty Doo to find I was like this is this
Knowledge it but this is they literally came back. We're like we have no idea what you're talking about and I was like this is a cover-up
Fair this happened 30 years ago, but it's modern times. You should have just started calling random old people. I honestly I try to
I honestly, I try to. I wish I could. I don't know how the phone numbers work. They're longer than ours. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here
with the confused about telephones, Henry Zabowski. I got my coffee. That's nice. And
Ed Larson, who presumably knows how to use a phone. That's right. Now I'm ready to get stoned
and humped to Doo. Sounds nice.
We're not gonna get weed yet though.
No, it's a stone as a reference to all the stones that the ghosts in Australia throw.
I guess I'm just, I'm hankering.
I'm hankering and I need it.
Before we get to the story of the haunting at Humpty Doo, which is going to involve even
more stones than the Gyra Ghost.
Holy shit.
No fucking way. Let's visit the
Australian city of Canberra for a story that takes place over a five-year period that surprisingly
spans the early to mid 90s. This is kind of like, I've this story technically has Maxine vibes.
Yeah, well yeah I guess it does. Yeah, sexy sexy ladies Joe is it cambera or cambera?
Camera camera camera camera. That's why that's why I am we're learning
Growing now I say surprisingly because stories like these tend to happen in the late 19th early 20th century
Because of the hauntings various location. It's true and I love we're finally getting into the 90s, man.
That's what Gen Z likes.
See, this is...
Big pants, little glasses.
They look stupid, just like we did.
Yep.
See, this is not just the story of a haunted brothel,
but rather the tale of a haunted sex worker
who made her poltergeist a feature in her sexual escapades.
Now, not haunted like a normal sex worker.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No.
No, that's the, she's haunted by outside things.
She's haunted by a poltergeist.
Yeah, it's not within her.
The woman in question was Liz Fleming
who left the sex work game in 1997 to become a social worker.
When she was still in the business,
she went by the name Caressa and even wrote
a book about her experiences called Caressa from call girl to God's child. Apparently
had a very low print run. We couldn't get ahold of a copy. God's child could still
have sex like a fucking Tomcat. Yeah. I mean right. Look at me. They want them to in fact.
You know, the Pope was just like,
don't have dogs, have kids.
Well, this is poltergeist experiences began
in Australia's capital city of Canberra,
Canberra?
Yep.
Capital city of Canberra in 1992,
the same year the brothels were legalized in Australia.
Brothels are legalized in Australia?
Since 1992.
What? Yeah, it's been decriminalized since 1992. You're not are legalized in Australia? Since 1992. What?
Yeah, it's been decriminalized since 1992.
You're not supposed to do it on the street.
You're supposed to do it in like, in a brothel.
But yeah, it's been decriminalized for over 30 years.
But my wife's coming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now the brothel where Liz began her career
had experienced a bit of paranormal activity
before she arrived,
but once she walked through those doors, the poltergeist attached itself and started putting
on a show.
Objects like pencils, knives, shoes, and candles began disappearing and or flying with great
force at Liz's feet or at people, but they never flew hard enough to hurt anyone, just
like the stones in the Gyra ghost story. But while the other girls were terrified, Liz found the phenomena entertaining.
This is a common theme in all of these Australian stories, is they have a more commiserating
attitude towards the ghosts. Like this is fun, but in my mind, I do wish it can be like her dancing on the pole to
like, oh, so sugar on me as like forks fly around her in a circle.
Like that would be really fun.
She believed that there were several spirits involved and she claimed to have figured out
how to psychically communicate with them in order to encourage them to ramp up their mischievous
activity.
She found that
it was good for business if she was the haunted one.
That makes a lot of sense because that sounds like a blast. I mean, I love ghost tours.
You imagine having a ghost tour and then getting your dick sucked. That's like my favorite
things.
Yeah. Feel like busting.
Wow! Happy Day in Ampharoid!
And Ghostbusters! Wow! I want to do this!
Busting makes me feel good! Feel like busting. Wow! Happy Day in Ambroise! And Ghostbusters!
Wow! I want to do this!
Busting makes me feel good!
Soon after, Liz moved on to another brothel called the Golden Apple, and the poltergeist followed, almost like pets.
Liz came to be known as the Ghost Lady to the other girls.
So she was a sex worker at a Chinese restaurant? Oh man, fucking asshole in wontons.
But the owner of the Golden Apple wasn't impressed by the ruckus the ghost caused.
Because the poltergeists were so disruptive, the owner fired Liz, but when she went to
a third brothel, she actually became a draw to clients who wanted something a little extra.
That's like the guy who told the Beatles that guitar music was going away.
That guy was wrong.
Obviously, that's fucking awesome.
I don't even need it.
I would just go hang out with her.
I'd pay to hang out and be like, do the ghost thing again.
You don't have to do the rest of it.
Let's just fucking hang out and do ghost shit.
Then I'll start crying, telling all my thoughts, all my sad thoughts.
We know what you do.
Now, do you think that the sex inspired the ghost?
I think that, well, it's from what it said is that the
like when your dog's in the room.
Well, the poltergeist was already there when she arrived.
But as we'll talk about here in a bit, it does seem like that sometimes
the sex did up the ante a little bit.
Now, because the poltergeists were so disliked.
It was just the term up the ante.
I'm sorry, man.
I'm fucking fading fast.
I haven't slept in a long time.
You're doing great.
Yeah, and I just look so, questions are gonna be hard.
Okay, all right.
Well, on Liz's command, it was said that she could get her poltergeist to move baseball
bats and a potted palm tree that she kept in her room.
And that's how you know that this is way before the time period of only fans and all that
stuff because you know that poltergeist would be delivering butt plucks.
It feels like a little bit of a waste because it's nice that she's making them dance, but she's not using it to make herself calm.
Yeah, that's true. Now, Liz became curious as to why this was all happening to her specifically. So she contacted a woman named Monica Hamers who belonged to a group called the Cambra skeptics. And it's weird because it's the Cambra skeptics, but it does not sound like they're skeptical in any way
whatsoever.
That's another thing.
That's why you can't really trust anybody
that says it's a skeptic group, because sometimes
it's so skeptical of being skeptical,
they're actually too open-minded.
And then if they show up and they
say it's a part of a skeptic society,
it shows like, oh no, but we're thinkers thinkers. But actually
a lot of times it's you've skeptic yourself into being a moron. Also good Dave to be a skeptic when
you got called up to go check out the brothel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Cause then
hopefully you get a couple of tugs. It's work. I gotta go honey.
work! I gotta go honey! Monica put Liz under hypnosis where Liz saw a shepherd of some kind.
Monica suggested that Liz leave a tube of lipstick open near her mirror so the
shepherd spirit could use it to communicate. And shortly after, I love you Liz, along with the
heart pierced with an arrow, appeared on the mirror. So a shepherd is gonna flirt like a lyrican?
Like a child in a middle school? Like me, yes or no? That was followed by more messages from
spirits named Matt, Roscoe, and Marty. Roscoe! Another name we never see for kids anymore.
Don't trust them. But while the mirror communication was sweet, the poltergeist activity became more violent.
Loud raps shook the walls,
a vase full of flowers was thrown about,
a large mattress hit Liz in the face
and knocked her to the floor,
and a male sex worker in the brothel
was pummeled and thrown against the wall
by an invisible attacker.
It's punching my dick.
Like, man, they have dudes in there too. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. I guess
dude side, lady side. Wow. Yeah. Again, the poltergeist activity became too much for Liz's
brothel to deal with. So Liz left and started working alone out of her home. Yeah, man.
Independent contractor. And her clients who enjoyed sexually paranormal experiences followed.
Oh yeah. There's a bunch of Ichabod cranes trying to get in there man. I'm right there.
If you were unwed this would be perfect for you.
This is all I would.
Yeah.
Now two years after the poltergeist activity began, Liz was put into contact with a paranormal
author named Ken Llewellyn who was also a reserve wing commander of the Royal Australian Air Force.
Ken found Liz to be very charming, but as she told her story in an almost non-stop monologue,
Ken suspected that she might be on meth.
Maybe.
She could just, hey, coffee.
But when he talked to Liz's friends and clients, who had all witnessed the poltergeist activity,
Ken became
convinced.
One friend named Teresa said that all she had to do was be on the phone with Liz to
experience paranormal activity.
Teresa said that the poltergeist caused her car to stall out, it smashed a vase, and caused
the electronics in her house to malfunction. One of Liz's clients, a man named Ray, who's a fucking
John if I ever heard. Oh yeah, the name's Ray. Don't look it up. He said that one time he locked his keys in his
truck and asked Liz to request help from one of her poltergeists.
Liz called upon the spirit named Matt and Ray said that the keys subsequently dropped
onto the bedroom floor from thin air.
Interesting.
Another client, David, said that he saw the potted plant move around and he also saw three
potatoes appear from out of nowhere and fly across the room.
Because for some reason, potatoes were actually a favorite object of these poltergeists.
They love potatoes.
Tasty rocks.
Do you think the guys were coming in the plant?
That's the wine scene.
Perhaps the strangest event, however, occurred as three clients were waiting for Liz to finish
with customer number four.
They said that a baby stroller rolled across the room untouched, followed by two potatoes
and a gold painted rock that appeared and bounced on the floor.
Nothing I like seeing better at my brothel appointment is several baby strollers.
Yeah.
No, that gets me in the mood more than a parasol.
No, what I don't want to see in my brothel's appointment is a line of dudes.
Yeah, I don't want to see.
Stagger, stagger the time.
Give a 15 minute breather in between.
We don't need to stack these.
I don't want to also all be sitting there being like,
I'll bet y'all doing better.
No, I'll give her a go.
Cause then you just have to, that's sad. Cause if the guy rails are real good though,
right before you have to go like,
oh now why can I go back clean up?
But it wasn't over.
After all that, pieces of rolled up bark
fell through the ceiling,
which were accompanied by the appearance
of a coin and a key.
All of this happened over the course of 25 minutes while these men were
waiting around to have sex with Liz. After hearing all these stories though, Ken Llewellyn himself
had an experience. While talking with Liz, he pulled out a cigarette and found that he didn't
have a lighter. Almost instantly, a small red lighter appeared and fell on the floor It worked perfectly and Ken presumably kept it as a souvenir of his experience
It's cool. Ghosts are flirting. Yeah
Unfortunately, though this story does have a sad ending Liz Fleming died by suicide in 1997 at the age of 42
But hypnotist Monica Hamers said that she communicated with Liz's spirit
who said that she was happy and in a beautiful place with Marty and all her
other spirit friends if that makes you feel any better
I talked to her and she's fine. She's fine. You can forget about her.
Can you imagine you die by committing suicide you go to heaven to see your ghost friends,
and in my mind, what if it's like the reveal, like the Patty Hearst reveal?
Like in your mind, you think, oh, sexy ghost, I'm going to have a good sexy ghost boyfriend
or whatever when I'm dead in heaven.
No, it's Roscoe.
Yeah, it's Roscoe.
And then you meet him and it's like, hi, I knew if we just met each other,
you could see through all my physical deformities.
You know, and you're like, fuck.
God, I should have just, I should have went with Ken.
Yeah, you know what Roscoe looks like?
Chicken and waffles.
It's unfortunate.
Fly from your grave.
But now that we got you warmed up, let's finally get to the big one.
The haunting Humpty Doo.
Now this one picks up chronologically right where Liz Fleming's story ends in the year
1998.
And 1998 is approximately the year when Australia hit the year 1975.
So it's important to remember that.
I think it did actually take,
could you Google real quickly how long it took
color television to take, to make it to Australia?
Because I think if I remember correctly,
it's a surprisingly long, I think it's like 1976.
Oh wow.
Well, they just didn't, 1975.
Wow, Marcus, I'm very impressed with that.
I don't know why I knew that.
Wow. That's very interesting.
Yeah. Color Television, 1975.
Now, the town of Humpty Doo is in the northern territory of Australia.
23 miles from the northern territory's only biggish city, Darwin.
This is straight up the outback.
Yeah, I mean, well, this is at...
This is kind of the entrance to the outback.
Got it.
It's a, Darwin's about 120,000 people.
It's right on the coast.
And it's like surrounded by kind of like
bedroom communities, including Humpty Doo.
But to give you an idea of the scope,
the Northern territory is 520,000 square miles.
Jesus.
I think it's the 11th largest province in the world.
And the nearest major city, Adelaide,
is a 31 hour drive south to the other end of the continent.
Like it's, I think Brisbane is like 33 hours
and that's like driving to the east side of the continent.
It's shorter to drive to the other end to the south
to get to
Adelaide. What the fuck? This place is big. Yeah yeah now if you think Humpty Doo is a silly name which it is
it's actually a variation on an even sillier name Uppity Doo. Uppity Doo is much sillier. Uppity Doo is where the sprinkle sounds like
was invented and that there's ice cream on the streets
but that's racist is it i don't know uppity-doo is a nearby cattle ranch
but to locals Humpty-doo is just called the do you best believe the do is through
let's do now the do is mostly an agricultural and commuter town
that also makes a fair living off
tourist dollars due to its proximity
to a national park.
It's also home to a 42 foot
tall fiberglass boxing
crocodile called
the big boxing crocodile.
Now we gotta go.
We have to go. That was commissioned by a rich
local eccentric in 1987 for $137,000 in 1987 Australian money. That's what I'm going to do
if I ever get rich. Just large crocodile statues all over Los Angeles. The do is also known. You actually, you got to go here. It's
known for what's called the jumping crocs. Yes. They lift themselves out of the Adelaide
river for pieces of meat lowered on rods by tourists from the sides of boats on river
cruises. It doesn't sound super safe. No, no, it's not safe at all, but it sounds like
a goddamn blast. Absolutely. But for our purposes, the biggest attraction in Humpty Doo is 90 McMinn's Drive, where
the Humpty Doo poltergeist made its home.
Not according to the whatever is in charge of Humpty Doo, because when I went and talked
with them, they pretended like none of this ever happened, when it was all over the damn
news and I watched all the news coverage of it.
I'll tell you what, it made me sad.
Yeah.
Because everybody inside of the story is pretty rough. Yeah.
Like the very time. Like Snowtown rough? Yeah. And so the,
there was a little documentary I saw and it's like, you saw the,
the lady character, the matriarch. 31 hours. Oh yes.
It is 31 hours in Snowtown, dude. There's a lady and it's just like,
you could tell cause she's got a black eye.
She's got a 13 month, I think is smoking a cigarette.
Like the child is just there hanging out like there.
It's an intense place.
You gotta let him finish or he starts to cry.
And he takes it right down to the filter.
One evening in early January 1998, five friends who all lived at 90 McMinn's Drive were watching a lightning storm when strange and unnatural
Things began to happen
Small pebbles started falling from out of nowhere and were landing around the five people who lived at the house
The friends were married couple Andrew and Kirstie ageeus
Unmarried couple Jill Somerville and Dave Clark no relation to Dave Clark vibe that makes me glad all over and their single friend Doug Murphy now these five
roommates thought the Pebbles were a prank pulled by some lyrican but no one
answered when they called out
Child! Child! Do they hear it?
This is what I'm saying. If it's Lerikans, there's going to be a sound of, there's going to be like, you're going to hear the games being played and marbles clacking together.
And also, Lerikanism, I was reading it in our little break, is like actually was inspired by the intense rules, social rules, the British rule put on them during the colonial times. So Lerikanism, according to Ned Kelly, the Bushwhacking hero of Australia, he says, oh,
that's the key to unlocking the Australians? Hard is understanding the Lerikan.
Wow. Lerikans is how we won the Revolutionary War. I'm just kidding around.
Is that true? Because I don't think we had Lerikans.
I think Lerikans are working quite a bit in the Congo.
The residents of 90 McMinn's Drive, slightly annoyed, moved inside.
But the pebbles, no larger than the gravel that made up their driveway, followed them.
The pebbles fell on their floors, tables, and heads.
But again, like the Gyra poltergeist,
the stones were dry and warm, despite the fact that it was raining outside.
One of the housemates grabbed a ladder to check the attic, to see if maybe there was some explanation,
but as soon as the ceiling hatch was opened, he was showered with even more pebbles than before.
But besides the pebbles, knives, small batteries, wrenches, and shards of broken
glass that were dropped from the air or hurled across the room on that first night, no one
again was injured.
Do you have a theory about why they don't get hit?
I have no idea. I mean, because I think it goes back to the trickster phenomenon that
you were talking about where I don't think they really want to hurt anyone. Because it
seems like an I don't know why in America to hurt anyone. Cause it seems like an,
I don't know why in America and in the UK, poltergeist are fucking angry all the time.
And they're, they're re they're really trying to hurt you all that they're trying to make
your life absolutely fucking miserable. But in Australia, it seems like they're just trying
to say hi.
Well, yeah, it does feel like a fairy, fae, weirdo scenario,
way more in the high strangeness realm.
I was thinking gnomes.
Yeah, it's very similar to that.
I talked about the cobalts.
Also, they don't travel fast,
so they could be getting hit,
and it's just not affecting them.
And they're just getting flecked.
Well, some objects, however, were destroyed.
Over the following days, a CD player was broken,
several windows and glass.
How am I going to lift up my fucking live albums that Will was delivered to us?
I'm lonely.
Love you.
The CD player was broken.
That's 1997 CD player.
That's some that's some big money.
Yeah, I know you need it.
Yeah, several windows and glass cabinet doors were smashed by flying objects.
A lot of broken windows.
They do break a lot of windows.
I'm telling you, they got to look into the glass guy in town.
The Glazier.
One night, the stones even seemed to work in tandem,
wrenching appliances from shelves and turning over mattresses.
Like they were sort of like, you remember that video game
where there was those balls that all formed like a human and it was a fighting game?
Yeah. What the hell was that called?
I don't know, but it's like that.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was as if some intelligence was using the stones to affect the corporeal world.
And all the while, the residents of 90 Men's Drive would hear scraping noises inside the walls
throughout the night that terrified them and kept them awake.
Rats.
Well, I'm scabby bearers. It's Australia. They are bigger things than rats. that terrified them and kept them awake. Rats!
But none of them could leave because they had nowhere else to go.
None of the five residents were religious, but they decided that they might as well call a priest just in case it worked. They reached Father Stephen de Souza in Darwin who came out to investigate. I love this man.
Yes.
Yes, this is a good old fashioned,
they just cut it different.
We talked about it last week,
it's the same guy from Dead Alive.
It's the fucking ass for the Lord.
He's just like a hard drinking, hard smoking priest.
The only reason why he doesn't wanna fucking
be a regular dude is cause it's cool
that it's evil to have sex with men.
And he's loving that.
He's like, this makes it extra juicy.
Also the idea of a priest from a town named Darwin
is just fun to me.
Yes. Yeah.
Well, as Father D'Souza was observing the kitchen,
a knife left on top of the microwave lifted into the air
and flew at the priest
when no one was in any position to throw it.
The knife stopped three feet from Father Jesus's chest as if it had hit a wall and it fell to the
floor. Father Jesus, however, was unfazed. And he said that he had dealt with many restless spirits
in the past. Being brutally honest though ex-wife. Why do you think I got this goddamn collar on?
Being brutally honest though,
he told the residents that prayer rarely did anything to stop the poltergeist.
He's literally just straight up like this shit,
you know, I'm the wrong guy honestly.
I'm just good to be in town.
He told them it's going to go away when it's good and ready.
He said basically fucking deal with it and then he left.
Yeah awesome.
That's all that's the most I want to deal with the priest.
Did everyone not tell you I was fake?
Like, did you know this is a whole scam for wine?
The priest prayers, he did say a couple of prayers before he left.
You know, go stay, get out of your ghost.
Oh, in the name of the dad and the boy and the enchanted.
That kept the poltergeist away for three days, but then it returned at full strength.
And the residents, suspecting that maybe Father D'Souza was just lazy, they called another
priest, a guy named Father Tom English.
He was the local Humpty Doo priest, and presumably had more invested in helping out the residents.
I don't know if the government of Humpty Doo even cares about poltergeists.
I don't even care.
They definitely aren't handling the lyrican problem and they're not handling any of this
or anything else.
What are they doing?
We need to change.
Father English visited the house four times and each time he saw flying objects.
But this priest instead of a knife, saw bullets
being thrown against the walls, flying out of the rooms no one was in. Again,
bullets! Now, Father English tried prayers as well, but when he brought holy water
into the mix, the palt, quote-unquote, went ape, and the activity got worse.
Flabbergasted, Father English said, fuck it, I've done all I can do. And he just
left. Sorry, God's not that strong. Left behind a crucifix, a bottle of holy water and a Bible
just in case. You just figure it out. This is some of the shit I use. You can try that,
right? This is all my bullshit. You can try some of that. Y'all could. My main thing is
get out of here. Throughout that night, the Poltergeist smashed windows and continued throwing objects,
including the Bible, which is used as a projectile to smash the bottle of holy water into pieces.
That's who the fucking ghost was, man!
But this activity continued for months.
Sometimes shit would fly around for 20 minutes straight, followed by an hour
of peace, then it would start again. Other days, only a few objects would fly around.
Other days, nothing would happen at all. As far as what the residents thought about just
moving to escape all the hubbub though, they said, and this is a direct quote from Dave
Clark,
It's a nice place, we like it, and we were here first.
Yeah, it's the whole like, why should I change?
He's the asshole.
Yeah, it's my house!
Yeah.
But you know, the ghost was obviously there first.
We don't know.
That's the whole thing with ghosts.
That's the whole thing.
No, he, that ghost pay rent?
Well, they've been living there for a little while before the ghost came.
Yeah, well, it was dormant.
We'll talk a little bit about that later.
You may have something to it.
There may be something there.
Now, at one point, the poltergeist began communicating with the residents at 99 McMinn's.
It wrote in marker, it spelled out words, scrabble tiles, formed letters with the piles
of pebbles.
The words, however, were just as terrifying as the method of communication. The most common words were fire, skin, car, and help.
Okay.
But the name that kept getting spelled out was Troy.
The most mysterious name of all.
Sounds like this ghost is pretty shitty at Scrabble.
Four letter words, tops.
Come on, how you plan on winning?
Yeah, and trying to use a proper noun? Fuck you.
This doesn't count!
See, just before the activity started, a friend of the residents of 90 McMinn's named Troy Redatz had been incinerated in a horrific car accident when the car he was driving full of paint thinner had crashed and exploded.
Hey, Troy, do you think this is a good idea?
Yep.
Absolutely.
Just come because, just fumes.
He's just like, high as balls driving the car.
You gotta get lids for the paint thinner.
Now I like saying the levels.
The residents, however, were not so easily fooled You gotta get lids for the paint in it. Now I like saying the levels.
The residents, however, were not so easily fooled by the poltergeist. They loudly told the poltergeist, and this is another direct quote,
You're not Troy, you piss-wicked bastard! Why don't you just fuck off?
After that, the poltergeist stopped spelling out the name Troy.
Damn it, I got it!
Alright, I got it All right, I understand. Well, this is actually one of those where I think is interesting of if this is indeed
real, this is one of those where whatever this energy is using is coming from the people
inside of it.
Yeah, I really do think that's why they use a name they know.
Oh yeah, we're going to get into that later.
Yeah, I'm sure he was like crying about his friend Troy.
We're absolutely gonna be getting into this later.
Yeah, when we put this whole story together,
because there is a very angry Greek man
that still has yet to enter this tale.
Oh, well, Humpty do continue.
Ha ha ha!
We'll be right back.
Ha ha ha!
We'll be right back. The pretty far into month three, a local teacher, her partner and their young son were visiting
the house when they saw a number of pebbles almost instantly form themselves into a cross
that was so perfectly put together that it would have taken many hours to make by hand. The cross was so nice it could have hung a man.
Now that's a cross. That's not a cross. That's a cross.
You got it in there.
Dave Clark, however, touched the cross, and when he touched the cross, it basically exploded
in a shower of pebbles.
Not exploded, more like a skittles commercial.
But speaking of crosses, the poltergeist apparently loved to play with the crucifix that Father
English had left behind.
The artifact would disappear, reappear, and fly through the air, but it was only one of
the poltergeist's
three favorite objects.
It also loved playing with the homemade bottle opener that had a spark plug for a handle,
and it particularly enjoyed a small silver skull.
The Polt also loved knives,.44 Magnum bullets, and Father English's Bible, which was thrown
around so much that it became battered and worn.
I love playing throw the Bible.
I hate playing catch the Bible.
Now eventually the Humpty Doo Poltergeist started drawing media attention and several
reporters observed the showers of stones.
As the author of Australian Poltergeist put it, after hearing the story, journalists swooped
in quote, like seagulls onto the proverbial sick prawn.
And what proverb is the sick prawn feature?
That's what I was wondering.
It's like, oh, the proverb of the seagull and the prawn?
I have not heard of one.
It doesn't need to be sick.
No, it doesn't need to be.
Actually, I think that hurts the seagull if the prawn is sick.
Well, sick prawns are easier to catch.
Yeah.
I don't think they're even that hard to catch
when they're healthy. Isn't that the proverb? Is that sometimess are easier to catch. Yeah. I don't think they're even that hard to catch when they're healthy.
Isn't that the proverb? Is that sometimes the easier thing to catch is the thing that is not what you need.
You think you need it, but it is better to catch the healthy prawn than the sick prawn and to not go for the easy thing
because you need the hard thing instead to make you feel good.
That's the key to the proverbial sick prawn.
I just made up a proverb.
Wow.
Yeah, no, it makes sense though,
because things that are loved taste better.
Yeah.
Not lambs.
We'll find out tonight.
Mm. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I don't know if this show name is fucking horrible, fine, or really clever.
It's called Today Tonight.
Yeah, it's fun.
Yeah.
It's like last week tonight.
Yeah.
They arrived with a four-man camera crew.
With them was a journalist named Max Anderson, who had researched the methods of a skeptic
from the Chiara College of Metaphysics in Sydney.
So he was obviously there to disprove the whole thing.
This is very interesting.
I watched
all of this coverage and this guy he really is first of all I will say Australian television
really does feature the chest hair of their reporters more than any other country that I've
seen. Each one of the reporters I saw their nipples. It's a chest hair heavy country. Which makes me feel comfortable.
Yeah. And then, but this man, he's haunted. He's very much like, I came here to destroy
this story. And when my kid was like, we did not want, we wanted to bunk this entirely.
My crew is now scared. We've been inside of this scenario for the last couple of, and
it was like, it was really awesome. You really, it felt like I was watching Ghost Watch. Yeah, watching ghost watch yeah nice I love ghost watch but then you know there's a little bit but while the crew
was obviously there to prove the hoax they were unable to find any evidence of interference they
had seven cameras set up for constant surveillance and while their footage was scanned they also
couldn't catch anything to explain it it was truly boring in the most paranormal sense of it. Yep the way it always should be. Apparently all they
could capture was a baby bottle falling off a microwave and a bullet falling and
bouncing off the furniture which is hardly proof of the paranormal. But
cameraman David Davidson noted that every time he went to change tapes or a battery,
that was when the poltergeist threw something that would have been quite impressive if it
was caught on film.
To further drive the point home, messages were left for the TV crew.
Messages like, no cameras, no TV, and pig camera.
Camera pig sounds much better.
Oh yeah, the Camera pig sounds much better. Oh, yeah.
The camera pig is fun. Today. Tonight's visit, however, was
actually the first time anyone was actually hurt at 99
McMen's. Apparently, the poltergeist hated the camera
crew. One of the crew got hit in the head by a flying AA
battery, but even though it hurt, it left no mark or
bruise. So even when they tried being nasty, it's still wasn't that bad
Yeah, it's just a double a wasn't like a C or a D. Yeah, D would be bad. Yeah, they're not the fucking Philadelphia Eagles fans
Well today tonight's host said this upon leaving.
We rolled up skeptics.
We're not leaving skeptics.
We'd only been there for two hours and we'd realised that it was all on.
I thought we'd come here and uncover an oaks.
We've endeared an onslaught of flying scissors, stones, knives, broken glass and yes, three
live bullets. Not once did any of us see even a suggestion
that any of the five residents was trying to pull a Swiftie.
That's very good, Marcus.
Yeah, it was very good.
Our Shailene Axon's very good.
It's not bad, I mean, I should be working.
By the end of the week, it'll be great.
Yeah, we'll do it from the show.
Save it.
I didn't.
It's warm up.. Now freelance journalist Max Anderson
invited psychic Stephen Bishop to 90 McMinn's Drive and when Bishop arrived
he started saying some very Ed and Lorraine Warren like statements like his
energy was being disturbed and that this was the most extreme case he'd ever seen.
The land is dead he said. It's lost its soul.
He's like, all right, it's fine.
It's Humpty Doo.
Bishop then declared the house oppressive.
He claimed to have detected
that it was a residual gray slime here.
And then he left.
Like all the rest.
That was just the appetizer.
I'm not into the Cereliac stuff here.
It's the only food that I'm not particularly into. It's this like mush. It's like a green mush. That's the only thing I'm not into the Cereliac stuff here. It's the only food that I'm not particularly into.
It's just like mush.
It's like a green mush.
That's the only thing I'm not into,
but I like everything else I've had.
Okay.
Good.
You like food, we know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
After exhausting their paranormal bench though,
today tonight decided to try the scientific approach
of bringing in a thermal imaging camera
to film the objects the poltergeist had thrown. And this is where things get very
interesting. The stones in particular were warm all over, which was a strange
reading. See, when someone holds an object it warms up where it's touched, but the
heat will not cover the entire object, even if you hold something in your palm.
The way these objects were warmed all the way object, even if you hold something in your palm.
The way these objects were warmed all the way through, it was like they had been put in a microwave.
Furthermore, there were no thermal fingerprints on any of the thrown objects, meaning nobody had
touched or held them just before the object flew. Unless they had socks on their hands.
But that doesn't explain why the whole object was warm all over.
Yeah.
They should work at a massage parlor at this coast.
Oh, I mean that would be incredible.
There's a career opportunity anywhere if you just look for it.
I guess maybe you could have socks on your hands.
No, but that's, that would require, to be honest, I think it would be threats.
Yeah, I think so.
Well really, the only part that pointed towards a hoax was when one
of the residents, Kearstee, was caught on camera rising up slightly as a white pot lid was thrown
across the kitchen. Later Kearstee did admit to faking that particular toss, just like the kids at
Enfield admitted to faking a thing or two as well. But the argument made in both cases was that they
were all extremely bad at faking things
because they were all caught immediately.
And as far as everything else went, nobody could give a reasonable explanation.
It's not that I don't think that people in the outback are clever, but there's something
about that family, if you watch them, that you're like, yes, I could see them pulling
a Swifty or two, but they are not the most.
It's just sophisticated is the word to come up with something on that long and that intent
for so long and holding up for so long.
Eventually something's going to fall through.
And I think that explains why she got caught doing something because she kept like seeing
all this shit happen.
And then you're like, she wants it on camera.
Yeah.
What's it on cameras?
Like pop that fake flu.
Yeah, doesn't matter.
I mean, that happens.
That's the unfortunate thing that happens with paranormal stuff is that people want
to be believed so badly and they want people to believe their
stories or their theories so badly.
They fake things thinking that this will help it'll help and they get caught every single
fucking time.
And it just ends up setting back the entire movement like untold.
I mean, it just it just it doesn't help.
Don't believe it's why people don't believe at all. Which I do understand but I also like something I completely utter 100% believe.
I just think that it's a little bit more subtle than haunted or not haunted.
Yeah it's not it's not a briefcase full of Bigfoot guts.
Yes not yet.
Now near the end of the first month Tony Healy and Paul Cropper, the authors of our
main source for this series, arrived at 90 McMinn's Drive hoping to experience some
poltergeist activity, and they discovered that stones only flew when the married couple
were together, Andrew and Kirstie.
For example, Andrew had taken a construction job where no activity took place, but just
as soon as Kirstie showed up to work as a cook on the job site, stones started
flying and every coffee mug vanished from the mess hall, only to be discovered standing
upright on the roof of the surrounding huts or on top of tall posts.
That happened several times.
That's super weird.
Yeah, that's hard to do.
Kearstee and Andrew just laughed it off as a prank because their story was well known
by this point, but the activity was taken more seriously when a knife disappeared and
was found in a locked cold storage room stabbed into the hanging carcass of a pig.
Unless he just wanted pork belly.
As far as Keirsey went, they said that she was polite, friendly, and quite good-looking, but she rarely smiled or laughed. And according
to Haley and Cropper, this is common amongst people who attract boltergeists.
I think they're just going by this woman and Minnie Bowen. Yeah, I guess
gothy people can sort of attract it. Ha Yeah. Haunted people don't often giggle.
They're scared.
Now the landlords of 90 McMen's Drive threatened to throw everyone out because the house had
been so trashed after the poltergeist activity escalated in early to mid April.
The landlords filed for eviction, but the tenants defended themselves by saying they
had no control over the poltergeist.
So why should they be the ones thrown out?
In the end, the magistrate decided that most of the damage to the house was superficial
and could be easily repaired at the expense of the tenants, and declared that there would
therefore be no eviction.
Eventually, Healy and Cropper finally got their poltergeist show.
One night, pebbles began falling from the ceiling and while Helian
Cropper were overjoyed, Kearstee laughed wearily and said, here we go again. With this, Helian
Cropper were convinced that this was not a hoax. Simon Potter of the Northern Territory
Skeptics Association however, declared that it was indeed a hoax. This was his idea for
how they pulled it off.
He said that they were faking it by putting pebbles
and other objects on a ceiling fan.
And when the fan was turned on,
the objects gained enough speed,
then would fly off and appear to fall from out of nowhere.
And not fall that fast.
They would kind of be on the-
Oh yeah, like a log.
Yeah, it's possible. But this does not explain the thermal imaging And not fall that fast. They would kind of be on the... Like a log.
Yeah, it's possible.
But this does not explain the thermal imaging or the fact that the objects were uniformly
warm.
Unless of course...
Heated fan.
The ceiling fan was heated.
But that doesn't mean anything.
That doesn't make any sense.
That's not anything.
Why do you even have the fan at all?
Exactly.
You're just going to blow a lot of air?
What's the point of that?
Set a fire.
An impartial journalist named Frank Robson, however, writing for the Sydney Herald Good
Weekend magazine, declared the Poltergeist legitimate in his adorably titled article,
Humpty Boo.
That's good.
He noted that the pebbles fell at unnaturally slow speeds, made unnatural sounds when they
landed and did not bounce or move
once they landed. That's the interesting part about it. They just boom right to the ground.
That's scary. That's weird. I'm looking at now pictures too because they like you can kind of see
like the words that were written are very childlike like these words are very
interesting on the wall but this is here this one this one, when it just says, car. Car. Yeah. Car, skin, fire, tone. But that's the thing is that these, you know,
objects moving very strangely, just falling straight to the ground and just
hitting with a thump, this is common markers in Poltergeist phenomena. I do
remember some of the shit from Enfield. It is very similar. Enfield is the one
that this like really reminds me of. Both these and the story from last week.
Yeah. Furthermore, a woman who worked with Robson recalled while she was talking on the phone to Kirstie,
she received several electric shocks while discussing the poltergeist.
This was pretty, fairly close to the thing that was described by the woman who talked to the haunted sex worker over the phone,
where she would say, like, and...
Yeah, like weird shit would jump through the phone,
which as we all now know is the hitchhiker phenomena
that George Knapp's talked about.
Many people have talked about how a lot of times,
if you do encounter something like this,
you go home and then weird shit starts happening
in your house, and they don't know why.
Now, as far as where people landed on the entire event,
some say that the residents of 90 McMinn's
Drive did it for the money, but the only cash they ever made was a $400 appearance fee for
today tonight.
Yeah, it's again.
No one ever makes money on this stuff.
They don't.
They don't.
There was like two guys, right?
It was like Whitley Strieber made actual legit money.
Yeah.
And the family from the Amityville house, they
started and they made money, but because they engineered the whole thing, Warren's helped
help did work with them on that.
But like really don't like it.
And I guess that's what it is.
Watch the documentary, watch the footage of them.
Honestly, it's on YouTube.
I'm saying to the to the listener, they're kind of like, okay. Yeah, I don't know.
It just feels weird watching them all kind of fool everyone. Like I don't think they got it in them.
Nope. Healy and Cropper, meanwhile, believe that the death of the resident's friend, Troy,
was the incident that brought the poltergeist to their home.
Because he died screaming on fire, like literally covered in gasoline in his own car.
Well, housemate Doug Murphy was very close to Troy.
Healy and Cropper, however, are reticent to declare Tony to be the ghost and instead suggest
that it was Doug Murphy's psychic anguish that fueled the poltergeist, which is why
the name Troy appeared until the residents told the poltergeist to stop.
The other ingredient in this so-called psychic stew,
as Helian Cropper put it, was the extreme anger
of a former resident named Stavros Kynarsis,
who was evicted from 90 McMinn's Drive in 1993
after his building business failed.
Kynarsis' wife apparently put a curse on the bank
that contributed to Stavros's failure,
and their combined anger was so incredibly potent that it possibly served as the seed
that grew into the poltergeist at Humpty Doo.
That doesn't make sense to me.
It's fucking, it's Ghostbusters 2.
You know what, you're right, it's bad vibes.
It's like if you're in this two people
that are in a house that are angry all
the time, they're just painting the
walls with fuck energy.
Oh, sure.
Fuck energy, but fucked up energy.
Yeah.
And then someone, these other people
come into the house with this extreme
grief and it just sort of fucking
just something just goes pop.
And if you've ever been through, if
you go through one of these where you
have to kind of you lose all of your things, I imagine it's very stressful.
I like to curse every bank I go in.
I mean, that's different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course.
Swuck in this because I curse.
Hey, good.
Yeah.
Now in all, the Humpty Doo Poltergeist hung around for about 14 weeks and a lot of people
saw a lot of really weird shit.
But the strangest of all was seen
by one of the residents' friends,
a guy named Brett Stiles.
See, around the halfway point,
the residents would wake up to find
a thick covering of pebbles on their cars.
They noticed long, shallow troughs in their gravel driveway,
as though pebbles had been vacuumed up by an object.
And as it went, their friends saw a small,
unidentified flying object above the house.
Like as was seen with the large family a century earlier, it was spherical and black, but it
had a two-foot-long stream of gravel trailing behind it.
So it could very well be that there was not only
an intelligence behind the poltergeist at Humpty Doo,
but some sort of mysterious technology as well.
Or it's just something we don't understand
about our connection to either like our own brains,
creating this type of things.
Also this stuff appearing throughout all of history
in different forms.
You know, like the idea of seeing a ghost with, seeing a UFO with gravel behind it is
to me the same equivalent as back in the day seeing like a fairy or something like they've
been talking about this. It's all very similar and it's extremely strange. And these, what
I find interesting the most is the fact that all of these stories are so similar.
And before these guys compiled all these stories, how in the living fuck would all of these
people know in these desperate, these disparate parts of the country, how their stories line
up with each other?
It's so interesting.
I think part of the thing that proves your thesis here is that
like this story, like the Humpty Doo poltergeist was obvious. It was a nationwide story. Like it
was a massive national story in the mid nineties. And today the people who run Humpty Doo don't know
anything about it. They're shutting us down. They don't want us to come. They, oh, they just don't
know. I don't think they, I think They just don't know. I don't think they
I think they just don't know. They're like please leave us alone. We live all the way in Humpty-Doo
to be forgotten. Yeah well if you want it like that's the thing if you want to talk about something
talk about the fucking gigantic crocodile. Yeah we talk about the crocodile but listen guys if
you want people to come to the crocodile, start with the ghost. Yep.
Or, I'm starting to think it's aliens.
Well, I think that that's, we're really seeing that with the capital P...
They can make things float and shit.
Yes, capital P phenomenon.
It does express itself in many different ways.
Yeah, maybe the spaceship runs on rocks.
And then the rocks are the poo-poo from the spaceship.
I feel like we've entered into an area that it's not as sophisticated.
Yeah. What I'm saying is so again wizened, beyond words, international traveler,
wizened, international lover, Henry Zaprowski. I've really learned a lot. Yeah. Grown.
And you have. Matured. As have we all.
I still think it's alien poop.
patreon.com slash last podcast on the lap
and eddytoons.com
Get his merch.
He's coming out soon.
He's selling UFO poop in little bags.
Yeah, that's right.
Like they do with the moose poop in Canada.
Man, I remember one time I went to Hoover Dam with my mom and right at the register
they were selling Hoover Dam rocks, three for 10 bucks, and she bought them and then
we went out in the parking lot and it was just filled with the rocks.
Yeah, I was like, when I got my Bigfoot cast.
Also, I forgot to bring up, there is an extremely similar story in Tucson, Arizona that I was
looking at too with the rocks, but we don't get a lot of that.
So it doesn't matter.
Is desert life?
What?
Desert.
Desert, same.
Interesting.
I don't know.
Well, go down to glasspodcast.com.
I think that by this point, we are still in Australia.
I think we might have like one or two shows left.
A few shows.
I think we might have like Perth left.
At the very least we got Perth left.
I want to see y'all in Perth.
I want to party in Perth.
Where the fuck do we party in Perth?
Yeah, and I wanted to apologize to you in person for how much I've talked about how
smelly you are over the years.
You have mentioned that people in Perth were specifically smelly on the last tour, but
I think honestly everybody had been around.
I mean, New Zealand's not smelly
No, it's also not Australia. I was told that Perth is the Florida of Australia that makes me very excited
Absolutely, correct. It is it feels exactly like Florida. Fuck. Yes. Yeah, we're gonna have fun. I can't wait
We better have fun side stories LPOTL the gmail.com
What bar should we go to in birth?
Could love they know where to hang out. Also side stories coming to Chicago September 13th. So got some tickets left. Come and check us
out at the park West theater. You're going to love it. And for all our shows in London,
Reykjavik, fucking Chicago, Chicago, so that actually, yeah. New York city and Los Angeles
last podcast on the left.com is where you can buy tickets for all those shows
and check out all the streams, twitch.tv slash LP and TV
and follow us on Instagram and TikTok at LP on the left.
Bye bye everyone, bye bye.
Goodbye.
Hail Satan.
Hail Gein.
Hail Rocks.
Yeah, hey, it's a rock world, we're just living in it.
I love rocks.
I know you do. I hope to come home with rocks. We'll get stopped in customs
I'm you know, I fucking brought human bones
Through before don't say it in the microphone
It's only bad if you bring it into Australia if you leave with a rock, I think they're fine with you
Yeah, I got a lot. I think so a lot of rocks always leave a rock. Yeah