Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep39 - Keeping Austin Weird

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

James and Alasdair do their absolute darndest to keep Austin at least a little bit odd with this selection of spooky tales from that Texan bastion of peculiarity. SPOILER ALERT: we get the fairy tale Goldilocks very wrong. But wait! Before you have your butler send us a strongly worded telegram, we do get it right in the end. Edited by Laurence Hisee Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from Days of Yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. I'm Alistair Beckett King. And Alistair Beckett King. We're going to keep Austin Weird today. Are we? Yes, we are. I got my 10-gallon hat.

Ten gallons? Yeah, it's absolutely satched. Alistair, before we get into it, though, we've got to just say, we are. are about to get the story of Goldilocks massively wrong. We will get it right by the end of the episode, but just hold your horses until we get it right. I promise you at some point we will get it right. In the meantime, enjoy the episode.

Oh, hi, Alistair. James. How's it going? Very well, thank you. How are you? I'm all right. Are you ready to keep Austin weird? I'm always ready to keep Austin weird. And I don't mean the old British car manufacturer that made the Austin Mini Metro. You mean Austin Powers? No. International Man of mystery. It's pretty darn weird already. Not wishing to kink shame. Is that is that a kink? Is that a haircut? I think the whole thing of him was, it was very kinky baby. Oh, I suppose he was, I suppose he was, yes. Yeah, yeah, now that you mention it.

Which was a bit, he was a bit peculiar at the very least because he was out of time. But no, the Austin today, that I want to keep weird, is Austin, Texas in America. Oh, yes. Because, Alistair, I've received a parcel from a listener. Thank you very much, Full Meloberg, for the book, Haunted Austin, History and Hauntings in the capital. city from the Haunted America range of books. Oh, now Austin has a reputation for being the cool, weird bit of Texas, right? Hence, keep Austin weird.

Yes, it's got its reputation that it needs to be kept weird. It's like America's Hastings. Really? Keep a Hastings weird. Have you been to Hastings? No, I haven't been to Hastings. It's weird. Yeah, it's very weird. Yeah, the people who are too weird for Brighton or had to go to Hastings.

Oh, right. But in what way? Because I've been to a lot of coastal towns. in the UK and most of them are weird in some way or another. Yeah, that is true. Hastings, yeah, oh no, it's like a more surreal Margate. Oh, wow. Because a lot of artists and creative types and oddballs went out to Hastings.

They do like the sea, don't they? Because it's a bit cheaper than living in Brighton. I've told you before that I used to go to Margate before it was cool. I mean, if you went there now, you would still be going to Margate before it was completely cool. But, yeah, I think you have told me that. And I used to go to the Margate Pleasure Beach, which had a big part of it was about its ghost, the ghost of it. But I think we've talked about that before. So I'm not going to tell you about that.

I'm going to keep it weird, Austin-wise today. All right. So we're talking about Austin. The Hastings of Texas, people are calling it. We don't know if that's accurate. It sounds like the right vibe. And yeah, I've got this great book. And I've got a couple of little stories I'd like to tell you.

First of all, Alistair, we're talking Austin. We're talking Texas. We're talking westerns. What's your vibe on westerns? Western movies. As it, Westerns with a capital W, I guess. I like them all. I like classic Hollywood westerns, like Red River and The Searchers.

Is that the one? Yeah, that's one. Yeah, and I like spaghetti westerns. Oh, yes. And I like revisionist westerns. Those ones that have got to test the next day or something. Yeah, it's just lo-fi westerns to study and relax to. Well, this, first of all, I want to take you to the edge of town, I can only presume, because this is farmland.

This is the Ains Marshall Ranch House, or Ranch House, as perhaps they say. You should never have come to this place, James Seek's aft. Get, now get. We're down by Eins Creek, which is to Austin Youth, one of the sites where you can hear, one of the sounds where you can hear. Mystery Ghost Wagon. So in the middle of the night, you would hear the creaking of straining wood and also leather and the pounding of hooves. And basically, it sounds like a loose wagon galloping towards, with horses, galloping towards you. And it would grow louder and then recede in a sort of, you know, a slightly slow motion Doppler effect, but with hooves.

Even just the name Mystery Ghost Wagon has a very Scooby-Doo vibe to it. I think it's the prefix mystery. Well, there is a mystery associated with it. So kids would, like, dare each other to camp out at night to see if they could hear the ghost wagon. There was a time, one summer is the only time, so it could be any year. Yeah, that's quite broad. Yeah, the teenage son of, I guess, the people that lived at Eans Marshall Ranch House and his friends camped out by Eans Creek hoping to hear the wagon. They had sleeping bags, and they were all very giddy.

And then in the middle of the night, the sounds all ceased. and they heard the sound of clattering wood, the creek of the leather and the metal and the thunder of the horses, and they'd looked, but they couldn't see anything. It grew louder and louder. And then before it reached them,

their kids all ran away because they were terrified. Okay, so that could have been a wagon. That could easily have been a late 90s wagon, because I think this is narrowed down to the late 90s. I think people still ride around on horses, don't they? Yeah, but not galloping through the middle of the night. I suppose not. at a spot where a famously ghostly wagon is encountered.

So is that Eanes Creek or Eans Creek? E-A-N-E-A-N-E-S. E-A-N. Very good. So is that named after a Marshall? Marshall E-E-N? It's named after E-N-Marshal. E-Marshal is the surname because there was a Bruce Marshall

who lived there in the 90s, which is around the time that that teenage son did that camping. And one of the reasons they were doing that camping is because in 1991, the local police, the Westlake police, were searching for evidence of deer poachers, and they found a weird patch of soil. It was about six foot long and a couple of feet wide. A very suspicious shape for a patch of odd soil. Mm-hmm. It was indented. And so they digged it up.

They did some digging. They did some quite literal digging. and they found a skeleton. Yep, yes, I thought so. A hundred-year-old Skellington, as in the Skellington had been there for 100 years, not the skeleton of someone who was 100 years old when they died. Just for clarity there?

No, very good, thank you for clearing that up. But they didn't know who he was. And the Marshall that lived there at that time, a Bruce Marshall, was reminded of a story he'd heard as a child and that in 1966, a group of five parapsychologists, from San Antonio, which I guess doesn't need to be kept weird, is weird enough already. Maxed out on the weird. It's kind of like, it's mummy bear amount of weird.

It's not like a baby bear amount of weird that needs, that's not weird enough, or a daddy bear, which is too weird. It's a mummy bear where it's, you know, it's a right level of weirdness. I was just thinking about the Goldilocks story because it kind of implies that the correct level of everything for a child is a medium-sized. bear. Yeah. The amount of porridge a child would eat would be an adult female bear. Yeah, that's a point. That's a good point, in fact.

No way, that will be the same amount. The nutritional requirements of a child and a bear would be very different. Yeah, exactly. How many salmon, like, clutched from a river? Yeah, I'd like to see Goldilocks batter fish to death. Couldn't happen. No, I don't believe it. So the corpse was found.

Yes. And Bruce Marshall had been reminded of this experience by the parapsychical. from San Antonio. St. Tony to you and me. Yes. Aunt Tony, I think. Anyway, without Aunt Tony. And yeah, these parapsychologists had traveled to the farm,

or the ranch, sorry, which I'm guessing is different to a farm. I'm not sure how, but I guess it is. I think they've got those little gates that go where you drive underneath the sign for the ranch. That's the main difference. And there's only one type of dressing for your salad. And, yeah, they tried to make contact through automatic writing, and they did make contact. They contacted a spirit who responded to questions. There were lots of different ghosts, but the one in particular was a man who called himself Burns,

and he said that three men had murdered him. Could you please say this in an old-timey 49er voice? My name's Burns And three men had murdered me After I'd gotten down from my wagon To move a stone from the road So yeah what it's believed has happened Is a guy came to town

With his big, big wagon loaded up full of stuff And he was going to go back from town And he got to a bit of road Where there was just a big rock in the road Which hadn't been there on purpose Before yes And when he got down and tried to move it, he heard rustling in the bushes. Not that kind of rustling.

What kind of rustling? Wait a minute, what kind of rustling? Not people stealing cattle. No. People actually rustling. Yes, exactly. A general bush rustle, as opposed to a poach rustle. And, yeah, he heard the rustling.

He sneaked round behind the rock and then bam, shot dead. Bang, bang, bam, bam. Or rather, piquon, piquon. That's really good. Good. That's exactly what it used to sound like. And, yeah, and died it. And then the people that owned the ranch found this body, and they didn't know who he was.

He had no papers because, you know, his body had been ransacked. I don't think his body could have been ransacked. No, they weren't doing it for organs. There wasn't a big black market organ. Oh, they've rifled all through his liver. What were they looking for? Oh, they took both his kidneys. but yeah, they didn't know who he was

and the people who own the thumb gave him a little burial. That's kind of nice, not as nice as reporting it in some way. Well, there was a report because a newspaper reporter had witnessed this seance and he went over to the old

microfilm newspaper articles because this is 1966. It's the height of microfilm. It's microfish time. Why is it fish? I don't know. It's not on, they kept on individual scales. Yeah, maybe they're, maybe they are.

Microfiche. Yeah, so the report that the guy found, because he did find a report, that someone had been robbed and murdered on his way back from selling hay in Austin in 1871, a man by the name of Barnes. Is that the same name that the psychics gave? They said Burns. Pretty close, though. Maybe that's just an accent thing.

I don't know what the accents like in San Antonio. Antonio, but... Well, I think we just heard the accent. Hmm. Oh, sorry, yeah. My names. Marns. Yeah, exactly.

You can... Considering how weirdly that a guy talked, you can see why they were confused. When writing it down. Yes, exactly. And the horses galloped off, presumably to their death, and that's why they're the ghosties.

Right. I would have kept the horses if I'd been robbing him, but... I think they might have got startled by the gunshots. Pugh! Remember? Pugh.

Well, they're not attached to the wagon, though? Yeah, but then they're running off with the wagon. Wagons don't have a brake. You don't have a handbrake on a wagon. Your brake on the wagon is telling the horses to stop. So the robbers didn't get anything then. Well, they... I suppose the wagon only had hay on it.

Why are you robbing a guy for hay? I guess he made money from the hay. I think he would have sold the hay, maybe picked up a few provisions, made a bunch of money, which he kept as disgust in his liver. So that is the old-timey cowboyy bit, and that was from 1871. But fast forward, 14 years. years, and about seven miles away to the center of town.

Fast forward seven miles. To the Hotel Driscoll, or rather the Driscoll Hotel. What kind of establishment is this? I am picturing saloon doors and an overhead fan. It's a big brick building that is built on the site of the old spring that was there. And the fact that the spring was there sort of helped this guy's business because it meant that he could open all sorts of different businesses there out. of this big, it's basically a city block

that's mostly a big hotel but also has like a barbers in it, a cafe I'm guessing some sort of vape shop or the equivalent at the time of vape shop. Cesperilla vapes. That's that again, but in a better accent.

Give me a sasperilla vape. Casparilla. And they slide it down the bar to you. Do they refill it with the little pipette thing that I've seen people use? Or do they just leave the, do they just leave the pipette on the bar with you? Leave it here.

And then you refill your own little, I don't really understand. And the bartender with a tiny little Q-tip cleaning inside of a vape. Yeah. Tell me about your problems. So, yes, this is the Driscoll establishment owned by Colonel Driscoll who... Colonel Driscoll. Colonel Driscoll, who was an entrepreneur who had made his money after the Civil War. Which side of the Civil War do we think Colonel Driscoll was on?

It's not mentioned, so... It's not mentioned, okay. Mm, mm. All right. And he rounded up huge numbers of Texas longhorns. Cows. Cows, and kind of, you know, sold them and stuff. Just in case you were struggling to visualize that. Yes.

And he made a fair bit of money, and he had an unstoppable resolve to build the finest hotel west of the Mississippi. And he laid the first cornerstone, or he laid the cornerstone, rather, for the hotel on July 4, 1885, and it was finished around December 1886. and it was fancy. It sported the finest speakeasy Austin had to offer during Prohibition years. But it's also thick with ghosts.

Of course it is. It's got the ghost of Colonel Driscoll, apparently. He still knocks around up on the higher floors floor, sort of four and five, which are the guest floors. He's always going around going, It was about Steets Rats. Was it, Colonel? Well, well, I'm going to vanish now.

I'm going to puff of vapes smoke. There's also your classic ghost Victorian girl. Well, Victorian-looking girl, I guess. I don't know what that era is called in America. I think it's called Victorian. Is it just Victorian the Western world over? If you look at Victorian architecture, you get loads of American buildings from that era because they call that style, you know, like the Adams family house.

Yeah. Those big standalone houses, they call those Victorian. And obviously, no house in Britain has ever looked anything like that. So it's very irritating whilst trying to search for Victorian stuff. There is one house in Britain. It's my favourite house in Crystal Palace. Yes, actually, yes, there is that house in Crystal Palace that looks like the Adam's family house.

We've talked about it before. Did I tell you about when I went past it and it had like a 1970s American-looking, what's that car that's got the wood on it? Is it a winner, not a Winnebago? Like a Lincoln sedan? Yeah, I know the one you mean. The one that they drive in National Lampoons

vacation or something. I think it's possible that you and I don't know the name of this type of car. Sorry, Americans. Let us know the name of that type of car. You know, with the wood on the side. Anyway, so yes, in the, going back to the Driscoll Hotel. Colonel Driscoll. There's also a little ghost Victorian girl,

which is just sort of, you know, you'd round a corner and you'd just glimpse her, just going around the other end of the corner, kind of thing. Little sound of giggling. She probably sings. the sound of a bouncing ball. Me. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, sorry, that was a little horse.

I really like your little girl, a very tiny horse. That was a small horse that got a small ghost horse there. Set her up, little Victorian girl. This, this girl would eat the same amount as a mummy horse. There's also the ghost of a jilted bride that haunts the bridal suite. Sorry, this is confusing. because we've just been talking about horses. Yeah, this is Bride Al, not Bridal, L.E.

Yes. And you get evidence of that in lights are be flickering, doors will be opening and close in. There's the scent of flowers, which again, that might be the ghost of the vape shop. And the sad sound of someone crying. That's the bride, I guess, the jilted bride. Yes. If I were jilted, I wouldn't go to the hotel. Don't hang around the bridal suite as well.

No. It's just going to draw attention to have. having been jilted. It's ever so triggering. That little selection of ghosts, by the way, I got from AustinGhosts.com, thanks, that website. But to go back to Haunted Austin, History and Hauntings in the capital city by Janine Plummer,

Janine themselves had a ghost experience. Oh. But a second-hand ghost experience. They spoke to someone who had had a first-hand ghost experience in 1999, which is, fun fact, one year before the Keep Austin weird catchphrase was coined. Oh. So at this time, Austin was maintaining its weirdness without anybody needing to put any effort in. Yeah. Yeah, it was a self-regulating amount of weirdness. But since then, weirdness has depleted. Yes. And it's, and is up to the general public to

step in. Come on, people of Austin, do you a bit? Come on, continue to be weird. So Janine was talking to a woman and the woman was telling the story of how her and her girlfriend were staying in Austin for a conference and they were staying at the Driscoll and they knew that it was haunted but they didn't get to go on the most haunted floors, the fourth and fifth floors, because they were closed for renovations. On the end of their stay, they thought, you know what, we're going to go up there anyway and see what we can find. So they go up to the fourth floor in the night and they go through the double doors and it's all, you know, it's all set up like, as it describes It basically describes, you know, how in a film, when things are done up for renovations,

there's ladders materials. Yeah, there'll be dust sheets over things. Plastic sheeting. What's that? That dust sheet appears to be taking the shape of a human figure. But no, it's just a mannequin under there, James. There's nothing, there's not a person. But that curtain seems to be shifting strangely.

They just saw a woman walking down the hallway with a bunch of shopping bags. Oh, right. How's she got? What's she doing out here at two in the morning? And what's she doing on this floor that's, you know, that's, being renovated. How come she's allowed to stay here and we weren't? And so they call out her, excuse me, doesn't it, I don't think this would have been their accent because it doesn't say they came from the south of England. Excuse me. Doesn't it bother you to stay on this floor

while the renovations are going on? And without turning, the woman clearly said, no, it doesn't bother me at all. And then they sort of felt a bit weird asking her these questions and she was sort of stood outside this door to this room and they just kind of had the weird feeling and they decided to just go away very quickly. And then the next day when they were checking out, they, they grilled that front desk clerk, clerk. We would say Clark. They would say clerk. They grilled that front desk cloak. Um, from New Jersey. From New Jersey. I'm going to grill that that front desk clerk. They were like, how come people were allowed to stay on the fourth floor? We wanted to stay on the fourth floor. See the ghosties and stuff. How come we would have?

We're not allowed to stand the floor. Come on. Woman. Oh, God, well, where did you, what, was she allowed to do that? What? The cloak. And the cloak didn't understand any of that. He said, there's no, there's no guests on that floor, mate. I'll prove it.

He's not from New Jersey. He said, we're talking about, mate. No way. And they went up there, and they went to the room where they'd seen the lady going in, and there was mattress covered in plastic outside. The toilet was not even installed. And, you know, there was nothing there. It was not a room.

that was in use. Right. And they realized they'd seen something. And they did a bit of digging. In the early 80s, a Houston socialite's fiancé canceled their wedding. But the fiancé still went to the Driscoll. She reserved a room for five days. She went to the bar, ordered a diet soda.

And then she went on a shopping spree spending $40,000 American dollars on her ex-fiancee's credit cards. Oh, good. Good for you, honey. And then she went up to her room, this room. closed the door, locked it. And then a few days later, the housekeeper noticed the do not disturb sign was still on the doorknob

and no one had seen her. And then he kicked the door in and she was there. I died by a gunshot wound. Ah. And it says her name has been lost in time. So don't check. So don't Google it.

Don't look it up in any way. Don't look it up to see. It's been lost in time. See if there was any sort of investigation into what really sounds like a murder. But potentially that could be another, another ghost of a different jilted bride. A different, two jilted brides. Slash.

Wow. Because I suppose if you're a jilted bride, you're actually technically a jilted fiancé unless you go through with the wedding and then the husband jilts. I don't think so because I think on the day of the wedding, you are a bride. You are a bride. Yes. Even before married. All right. All right.

I'll give you that. So when do you stop being the fiancé, I suppose? I don't know. On the day of the wedding, maybe? So, midnight? Yeah. Come on, we need to narrow it down. Yes, midnight on midnight the day before.

Okay, what if you get married on the day the clock's changed? Alistair, come on. Yeah, I haven't thought this through. Well, then it's midnight minus one. Anyway. So, Alistair, those few little ghost stories was my vain effort to keep Austin weird. Yeah, I think you've made Austin a little bit weirder. It was pretty weird.

Yeah, pretty good. all the way through, all I've been wanting to do is say the lines from the 1997 Lucas Arts first person shooter outlaws. And what are the lines? Because the main character in that used to be a marshal. So as you're hunting down varmints, they taunt you by shouting, Where are you, Marshall? And hope you dance better than you shoot.

So I've had, where are you, Marshall? Stuck in my head on a loop as you've been talking. One thing I forgot to mention as well was when that guy was murdered back on the ranch, the Ains Marshall Ranch, it describes that the sound of gunfire of that guy getting murdered and the whole family come out and it says here, just up the hill, the Ines family heard the gunshot crack. There was no reason for a shot to be fired so close to their house. Could somebody be hunting on their land? The thought of foul play crossed everyone's mind as the family grabbed their weapons and hurried to where the shot sounded. So just a whole family's worth... Come on, little Lucy.

You've got daddy's gun. That's far too big. The baby gun, that's too small, whereas the mummy's gun is just the right size of gun for a young child. For a human female child. America. America. What are they like?

So are you ready to score? Yes, I am, James. Yeah? Yeah. All righty. Well, first up, I'm quite a confident on this naming. Oh, it's not the most amount of names, but it's not the least. And we've got Eins Marshall.

We've got a current, yeah, Eans Marshall. We've got Colonel Driscoll, good name. And also, there's two different ranks already there, a Marshall and a Colonel. Yeah, yeah. We've got Janine Plummer. Maybe it's Plumer. I'm not sure that's a rank, but it is a roll. A plumber of Janine's. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Very good, yep. Um, actually, my confidence is ebbing. We had no other names of any of the ghosts. Confidence ebbing? Confidence is ebbing. Yeah, we didn't have any other names, did we? We had a Bruce Marshall.

Yeah, a lot of different marshals. Eames Creek. Maybe you could have had a TV show called Marshall Law. There is a TV show called Marshall Law. I guess the main character is called Marshall in it? They'd better be called that, because if not, you've missed a trick. Or maybe, yeah, I don't know. Barnes and Burns?

that ghost had two names in a way. Yeah, okay. All right. It's a mighty fine. Two out of five for you there, James. Oh, there's twos in them. There are fives. Ah, shoot.

That was a varmint. No, I don't remember a varmint. Second category then. Supernatural. Well, it's pretty high. Yeah. Pretty high, James. We've got a ghost wagon.

It's five out of five. Thank you very much. Supernatural. I enjoyed the, they were, they were, okay. They were all stock ghosts off the shelf. But I did think they did think encounter with the woman in the hotel was quite spooky. So five out of five. Yes. Third category. Keeping Austin weird. Well, we certainly have kept it a little bit weird.

Yeah. We've done our part. Is that, are you, what's he called? Lord Kitchener and you're pointing at yourself going, I don't mind it. Yeah. Yes, I am. Austin needs me to keep it weird from afar. Yeah. You've certainly added to Austin's weirdness. So how weird are we keeping it out of five? I've heard of weirder places, I think. But I think we've been keeping it weird because we've not mentioned anything normal. Well, we've maintained, yes, we've maintained weirdness levels, I agree, but this podcast is always about weird stuff,

so I don't think Austin is especially weird. So I'm going to say it's a three out of five because we have kept it fairly weird, but not very weird. Reasonably weird. Would you say we kept it just the right amount of weird? Probably, yes. Yeah, probably not too weird and not weird enough. Good, because I've lured you into a trap,

because my next category is the Goldilocks principle. All right. It's full disclosure for the listener. We had a little pause before we did the scores, and in that time, I checked what the plot of Goldilocks was. And of course, she eats the baby bears porridge, James. It's not a full adult woman bears. Wait a minute, what?

Porridge. Yeah, she eats baby bears porridge, not a full adult bear, female bears porridge. We're going to have to put a disclaimer in at the beginning. There's a Goldilocks error in this episode. When we got it wrong... Of course a child and a baby bear would eat a similar amount of food. Of course.

That makes sense. Okay. Well, when we record the intro, because peek behind the curtain, we record the intros afterwards, we'll mention that. In case of exactly the situation. And hopefully by this point, people will not have consistently been emailing us about how wrong we are. We're going to get postcards. But if anything, that makes this episode a better example.

of the Goldilocks principle, because we were saying that it didn't make sense, but actually the story does make sense. I think the opposite. I think this makes it not an example of the Goldilocks principle, because that is where you get things just right, and we've been getting it very wrong. Yeah, well, I suppose we were a little bit wrong about what the plot of Goldilocks is. No wonder we got so annoyed about it. Well, I think, Alistair, that this episode has been a Goldilocks of an episode. It's not been too long. It's not been too short.

It's just right. It's not been a daddy bear amount of lawmen. It's not been the kind of lawman episodes that Daddy Bear likes. Yes, where it's all murder and stuff. It's not been a mummy bear amount of, where it's not enough murder and stuff. No, we're near enough murder. There has been one murder, yeah. It's just the baby bear amount of murder in this episode.

Mm, yes. Delicious. Mm, which is two, which is probably two. Okay, well, I mean, I could give you five out of five, Jamie. I think that would be too many points. Oh, no. And I could give you one out of five. How did you not see this coming?

I could give you one out of five, but I think that would be not enough points. But I think three out of five would be just right. Oh, this patad is just right for hoisting me. You've walked right into a bear's cottage. A bear trap that was just the right size for me. Ow. James being, as we said earlier, roughly the size of a bear. Could fight.

Just because I'm fighting it doesn't mean I'm winning, by the way. Yeah, no, I just said I could fight a bear. I didn't say I would win in a fight with a bear. So actually check your facts. Also, can I have some more blood, please? Because I'm diet. Not too much blood. It's not too a positive.

It's not too negative. So we did get a positive. it right in the end. Yeah, yeah. We know the story of Goldilocks. There's a few bonus bits you can enjoy if you join us at patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. And if you do that, you can hop into the Discord to discuss things with like-minded law folk. You've got your tour coming out soon? I've announced my tour dates for 2026. I was on a recent episode of The Rules, which if you go to podcast providers, you'll be able to find it. The Rules with James Shanks. I really let eggs have it. Oh, I wouldn't only be an egg around about now.

Thank you very much to Lawrence for editing this episode. And thank you very much to all the people that already do support us on Patreon. And see you next time. Goodbye. Go ahead. Pardon. Pardon. Pardon.

head, partner, trying to do a text and accent. Hello, well, hello, Mr. Shagshaft. Do Declare? That's definitely Southern, but I don't think it's the right sort of Southern is it? Yeah, I think that's, you're in Benoit-Blank Foghorn-Leghorn territory.