My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 186 - Sprankers!

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover the obsessive case of Carl Tanzler and stories of people buried alive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. To my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstar. That's Karen Kilgariff. And we're here to talk to you about a couple things you need to know. Number one. If you're going to turn the fan, if you're going to be the one that turns the fan off. Yeah.

If Steven asks you very nicely. And then you agree to turn the fan off? You know it yourself, Steven. Because you're the closest, even though, you know, seniority wise, Steven should have gotten up and turned the fan off. This is a democracy. Look. We're trying to be even.

Right. Listen. Listen and look. And look. I was fine turning the fan off. Sure. I mean, you should be fine turning the fan off. It shouldn't be that.

So if you just turn it off, then don't trip over it and almost break everything in the room like a bizarre baby elephant, which is what happened moments before this recording began. That's right. Karen's a little flustered. She then hit her entire body on the table and spilled her coffee everywhere. But she's a professional. There's an energy in just around me right now.

I call it a synergy. It's a synergy. I'm working with clumsiness. We just signed a three-picture deal together, so I'm going to be tipping things over. It might be my new teeth. Your new teeth are like, you're like top heavy now. All of my balance is off. Tell everyone.

Because so we posted a new video on the fan cults and people are commenting how nice your teeth look. I had all of my front teeth replaced, everybody. That's right. I've been talking about wanting to, of course, for a long time, but I finally did it. So essentially, I got whiter, wider, and much longer teeth. So now I just look like a normal person instead of a leprechaun that bit into a brick of gold because of greed.

Look. You looked great before. You look great now. You just have wider, bigger teeth. And people at my age, middle age, we like to call it, need things to help them and chew their food, open their mouth and smile and look like a normal person and not a monster. And so from here on out, goodbye, my strange, my weird, smirky smile with my mouth closed that is in every meet and greet picture where I'm always like, not really up to snuff is

what my smile used to be. And now I look like one of those weird German mannequins that has their mouth open. Mince is going to have to be just the flash and the lighting at the meet and greets for your giant smile. I'm going to need, he's going to have to hold one of those big, weird, silver things that bounces light. That's right. It's going to be crazy.

It's going to be magic. What's new with you, Georgia? Speaking of live shows. Wow. Plug away, plugger. My favorite weekend.com for the Santa Barbara show. And then we have some at my favorite murder.com. We have some upcoming shows in the UK.

Oh yeah. You can find links for tickets there. That's it. Come to the UK with us. What's new with me? Vince is out of town at a wrestling thing in Chicago. Is he wrestling some people? He's just fighting people in the streets.

Yes, he just travels to different cities and fights on the street. Yeah, you know, and he doesn't want to get recognized, so he does it in different cities. And I, you know, it's, it have been my first, like my first time alone in the new house. There's noises. There's like, even with Vince home, I'm a little scared sometimes. Sure. I want to clear that. Get that clear.

He always is raising his back hand to you. Yeah, but it's just he's itching his shoulder. And I'm like, what are you doing? So I'm making my dad spend the night with, at my house. Marty. Marty. Which is like, I kind of don't need it, but I kind of also knew, I kind of am. And I also knew it would make him feel good too.

Sure. To be like, I'm taking care of my daughter. I'll do it. And how was it? It's good. He's there right now. We were going to have like a nice dinner. Oh, good.

And he turned his phone off and wasn't watching shit loudly on it anymore downstairs. I could hear him. Does he have his keyboard sounds on? No. Is he one of those people? No. Those people that should be, they should be locked up. Yeah.

A lot of keyboard sounds. People at the airport I found when we were on tour, I was always sitting near people where I just want to go, Hey, I guess you were raised by wolves. Turn the fucking keyboard sounds off. If you're going to write more than a couple of words to someone in a quick text, turn your clicky to click keyboard sounds off. Just for one moment, practice this for one minute every morning. Think of what you must be like to be seated next to on a plane.

That's a great, that's a great idea. Just picture it and then adjust from there if you feel like it. I think that if someone called me an asshole, they wouldn't be totally wrong. When I sit up in the morning and think about myself, what am I like sitting next to on a plane? I think like anti-social, maybe just a little like, you could be a little friendlier, Georgia. But on planes, because it's an enclosed space, I feel like air on the side of unfriendliness. First of all, I've sat next to you on a plane.

You're more like a coma patient than anything else. You pull those, those eye shutters down real quick. My eyebrow. You go, you go way away. That's as possible. Bye. I think that's ideal. Yeah.

Wake me up for snacks and drinks. Bye. Yeah, goodbye. Have you seen the photo of the one woman passed out on a plane and she has a stick-it-path post-it note on her, like, forehead that says, wake me up for snacks and drinks? Yes. Steven is making a note. Do we know for a fact that she's the one that put it there?

Oh, you gotta hope. You gotta. Or some sassy Southwest flight attendant? It was like, this'll be funny. But I'd be like, thanks, yeah. These are the things I need. Could you imagine it? What a world if we could just write on a post-it note what we wanted.

And then it's like, wake me up for interesting conversation, put two asterisks on the beginning at the end of interesting. I love it. Oh, Karen. This is laminated and it has like a little buckle or like clip. She brings it with her. This lady's a professional traveler. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it looks like the kind of thing you'd wear if you're like any other nurse, yeah. Clip to your shirt. What does it say? Please wake me up for snacks and drinks. Thank you. Yeah. That's all you need to say.

It looks like a neck brace even though it's just one of those sleeping things. I have one of those. Yeah. But it's on the front. It goes on the front. Hers looks like she's been in an accident and she's not letting it go. And then she does that. And actually, her eye covers, for some reason, I can't think of that word, doesn't it look

like a maxi pad wrapper? It does. Like exactly. Oh, go to Instagram, my favorite murder, and we're going to show this to you guys. And tell that woman she's a hero. Yeah, a hero. I don't know. Our new mascot.

Ask for what you want. That's right. And then laminate it. She's going to be at the Santa Barbara weekend. Front row center for every show. A sleep. With sleep with her mask on. We're just going to keep waking her up and giving her snacks.

So we're going to give her one pretzel every 15 minutes. That's right. But like a big pretzel, not like a shitty pretzel. No, no. A hot pretzel. We should make sure they serve good snacks at her. Anyways, cut that out. We'll make it.

Steven, list it. Am I hungry? Okay. I have a rec room. Great. Our new... Yeah. Okay.

I'm listening. That's actually a rip off of an SNL sketch. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Just want to call it. Sorry. No, you're great. Patient Zero is a podcast I'm listening to now.

And it's from New Hampshire Public Radio. And it's, they're solving medical mysteries. So the first season is about Lyme, which I'm actually fascinated with. I have a couple of friends who actually have it. And so I have weirdly learned a lot about it. And this is like the history of it and how it was, you know, figured out and all the people, the players and it's like really, it's just like soothing and it's, it's kind of like a radio lobby style, soothing, good podcast.

So cool. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. That's amazing because I feel the thing that's so frustrating about Lyme, I mean, I, from what I've heard from people that have it is that doctors don't believe you have it. You have to find doctors that think it's real. It's horrifying. I know.

What a nightmare. Yeah. Do we have, are there Lyme, Lyme arenas out there? I bet there are. I bet there are. Well, let us know. Let us know if you are. Hi friends.

Hi, we're with you. Sorry about that. Yeah. It sucks. We believe you. I mean, you don't need us to, but we think it's real. Yeah. And so that's all it counts.

We know it's real. Yeah, that's right. We're doctors. It counts what we think. My sister texted me the other day and said, oh no, we're talking on the phone. And she said, have you heard Taylor Swift's, the new song? And I was like, I haven't. I'm really not up on it.

And she was like, well, go right now and download You Need to Calm Down by Taylor Swift. And that's what me and Nora listen to every day on the way to school. And it is, first of all, I love the way these days and these, like Taylor Swift is the kind of star where, you know, she's mega humongous. And when they write these songs, they get to like talk to the people that piss them off directly. It's so funny. All I can ever think of when I listen to these songs is I want to know who she's talking

about. I want, like, if it was on a player, I want pictures of the people she's referencing to come up. I love it. It's hilarious. So yeah, I would say that one. I drove homeless. What's it called?

I haven't listened to it yet. You Need to Calm Down. It's hilarious. I love little Taylor Swift. She's very, very talented and has been for a long time and very smart. And we'll fight you on that. What else? Is that it?

That's it. Because today's Friday. Yeah. We're doing early for personal reasons. Oh, because Labor Day. Stephen. Labor Day. It's Labor Day.

No, it's Stephen Day. No, it's Stephen Day's coming up. So we had to take today. So we haven't lived a full week yet. Yeah. We don't know what the topic is right now that's like big and important. And last week, we had so many rec room. We had so many items in the rec room.

All right. So this is a short opening. Let me just see you. Sorry, super quick. Oh, of course I do. This isn't a rec room. I'm working. Let's go back up the basement stairs.

We're out of the rec room. I have two things. Thank you, everyone who tweeted at me tweeted, Stefan Gifts. Because apparently without realizing it, I started my story last week by saying, this story has everything. Oh my God, yes. Of course, these are the kind of things you can't hear as you're talking and trying to read things correctly.

And it's just words too. It's not like this story has everything. I love it. Stefan. But my sleeves are pulled over my hands. Can you believe Stefan and Barry are the same people? I know. He's so talented.

I want to see a fucking Barry episode with Barry as Stefan. Oh, Bill Hader as playing Barry has Barry do an impression of Stefan. Something like that. Would Barry do that though? No. He doesn't seem to be in his wheel now. No. He's an actor.

Someone else makes him do it. Yeah. At gunpoint. But more importantly, someone named Rachel Dukes from Mix Tape Comics sent me a tweet that says, as someone who loves cults and comics, I can't recommend this anthology enough. The stories are fascinating and the artwork is gorgeous. And then she linked me to a Kickstarter page and it's for a comic anthology coming out called American Cult.

Ooh. Remember, I talked about this before on the show. There used to be a series called The Big Book Of and it was like The Big Book of Vice. The Big Book of Death. Yeah. The Big Book of whatever. It seems like it's a relatively the same idea. And as of right now, Friday, it might be almost ending when this goes up.

But they're really close to their goal. Oh, man. You're fucking hooking them up right now. Well, I want to because I want this so I already, I did my donation or pledge or whatever you call it. I've never kickstarted anything before. I was really excited. But I got in there because I was like, I want this now.

So and then I tweeted about it. But if anybody's done that a couple of times, like a revolutionary cat toy or something like that, or like I want that. Yes. And that's the frustrating thing about this happened last year because there was a, what's that game I want? I'm too old for this game. Oh, no.

Oh, no. It's not who's who guess who guess who. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's someone made us the murder version of it. I've gotten like four different murder versions of guess who. Thank you every very amazing person who's done that for us.

But somebody made a powerful woman in history. Guess who. Oh, wow. And so you flip it up and then your match, whatever. It's super cool. I went on there and it was like all everybody had ordered it already. Yeah. Like it was like, I was like pretty soon, like just have a game company.

That's a great idea. It seems like I feel like it's very close to meeting its goal. But then let's get shipping everybody. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious.

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I'm first this week. You're first. I know I'm first and so I'm going to declare it. This one is so old, I'm positive you know about it and positive you've seen it in every kind of whatever it is, ID channel like weird, weird death love or whatever. Any kind of Valentine's Day disturbing story, anything like that. You've heard this one already. It's the very upsetting tale of Carl's Tanzler's corpse bride.

Okay, I think so. You know it. Okay. So, I got all my most of my information from of course, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, which if you don't know about Atlas Obscura, it is such an incredible, oh, I've talked about it. I've talked about it before. I think we've mentioned it before.

Because my dad gave me that book. Do I have it in mind this week? No, I don't. But I, yeah. I love it. It's great. I actually was looking through their Twitter and looking at the, how interesting every single one of their articles is.

And like this is so, how are they thinking of all these ideas and things? Well, also it just made me realize the reason they can do that is because it's about everything in the world. That's the whole idea is like travel the entire world. So this story is from this remote part of wherever they just are so good. Shout out Atlas Obscura. Love your book. And then of course Buzzfeed, tried and true.

All right. Let's start with the person that was impacted most by this whole exchange, which is the woman who ended up being the corpse bride. Her name is Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, but her family called her Helen. She's a Cuban American woman born in 1909. Her parents were Francisco Poncho Hoyos, who was a cigar maker and Aurora Milagro. And so Helen and her parents and her two sisters, they all live together in Key West Florida.

Her sisters are named Florenda and Celia. Beautiful. This time of year. Right. Key West. I'm back in Florida this week. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Welcome. There's lots of stories coming out of there. I don't know if you've heard. It's weird. Okay. So February 18th, 1926, 17 year old Helen, marries a man named Luis Mesa. But soon after their wedding, she gets pregnant and then loses the baby. Wait.

What year is this around? This is from 1926. Okay. Aw. Yeah. So he leaves her and moves to Miami. Great. See you later.

Okay. Bye. They're never officially divorced. Okay. But obviously it's over. Then so about four years later on April 22nd, 1930, Helen becomes extremely ill. So her mother takes her to the United States Marine Hospital in Key West, where she is diagnosed with tuberculosis.

So not the case today, but because it's 1930, this is basically a fatal diagnosis. So Helen and her family are in the hospital trying to process this news. And in the room walks 53 year old radiology technician, Carl Tanzler. So I'll give you a little background on old Carl. Those radiologists are real wild. They're wild men. Carl Tanzler was born George with no E. I'm sure that has a different pronunciation in German, but York, maybe Carl Tanzler, but Carl with a K on February 8th, 1877 in Dresden,

Germany. He grows up there. But just before World War two starts 1914, he emigrates to Australia. And when the war finally does break out a couple years later, the British military authorities in Australia placed Tanzler along with others from foreign countries in an internment camp for quote unquote, safekeeping. So he's eventually released, but he's no longer allowed to stay in Australia. So he ends up going back home to Germany.

He finds that his mother's still alive after the war. Very exciting reunion for them. He stays with her for about three years. And then around 1920, he marries a woman named Doris Anna Schaper, and they have two daughters together. So it's, of course, Germany is very unstable after World War one. They decide that they're going to leave Germany and emigrate to America. So Carl goes first, and then the wife and children follow after him, and they settle

in, it's all one word, but it looks like it's pronounced Zephyr Hills, Florida. But it also could be Zephyrillus. Zephyr, no, it can't because there's no other I, let's just say Zephyr Hills and feel okay with that. They settled there in 1926. But in 1927, Carl leaves his family and moves to Key West and changes his name to Carl von Kossel and takes a job as a radiology technician at the United States Marine Hospital. So boom, here we are, the cross section of these two lives.

Later on, after all of this whole weird story breaks and he gets to tell his side of it, he claims that during his childhood, he was visited by the spirits of his ancestors who would show him the face of the woman who would be his one true love. And that woman was an exotic woman with long, dark hair. And he claims to have met that dream woman several times in his childhood teen years. Like in person or in his mind? Like a ghostly experience, almost. It's ghost stuff.

It sounds ghosty. It is pretty ghost-like. So basically when he walks into Helen's hospital room and sees her on April 22, 1930, he sees the face of the woman he was shown all throughout his childhood as the woman that would be the love of his life. And she's like, I'm not feeling great. She's like, I can't do this with you right now. Can I have no visitors right now, please?

I don't know you. And the crucial element of this is that Helen is almost 22, and again, I'll say it, Carl is 53. He's 53. He looks kind of like Sigmund Freud, though. He looks like a man dressed up as an old man. That weird pointy beard that he used to have. And bald hair on the side.

Spectacles. Old guy. And it's also an old guy in the 30s, which looks like a hell of old guy for today. He's wearing, he's wearing a girdle, you know, old guy. Durnedle. Durnedle? Because he's German? Yeah.

Yeah. He's wearing those things that hold up as socks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sock holders uppers? No, they're... Yeah. What do they call them? Suspenders?

Suspenders. Sock suspenders? Yes. Oh, God. Okay. So he sees the diagnosis of TB and he sees the face of the woman of his dreams and then sees that she's dying of tuberculosis. So immediately Carl's like, I have to do something.

And he tells the family that he can treat her, that he has ways that, you know, they can't give up and he starts getting super involved. He's the radiologist, though. That's usually the person that takes X-rays and stuff like that. Not really. He's not an internist. Yeah. He's not a lifesaver.

No, he's not. So he claims he has vast medical knowledge, tries out a number of different treatments and medicines. They're all him kissing her. Let's try this. So this treatment, it has to be given orally by me and you. Again? I don't like it, though.

You're... You're like my dad's age. You're like my dad's dad. He works with her while she's in the hospital, then she gets released from the hospital and he comes to visit her home to say, how about these other treatments? All of these practices are outside the bounds of his job. They're all against hospital protocol, but because it's before the internet, no one knows, cares, or pays attention, I guess.

But of course, Helen's family and Helen are desperate to cure her and save her from this horrible disease so they allow, you know, whatever help they can get, which is another gross part of it because it's a true manipulation. They're about to lose this dear family member, so it's like, and I decided I'm in love with her, so let me into the house so I can help her and cure her. Yeah. And what are they going to be like? No, we don't want your help.

Right. Like they don't know if you can help them. Right. They're like, please anyone that can do anything. Yeah. But he doesn't just come offering medical treatment. He also starts showering her with gifts, buying her clothing and jewelry. He tells her his name is Count von Kessel, that he is royalty, German royalty, which

he's not. And he very soon professes his love to her. She does not reciprocate these feelings when he asks her to marry him. She says no and points out that he is like 30 years older than her. Of course, like any romantic of the day, he asks again and again and again. So the family's like, I think, just fucking walk away, walk away. And also the ghost face your dead aunt showed you. That's not real.

It might look like a lot of other people, but yeah, it's not real. Long-haired brunettes were not uncommon in the 30s. Maybe you had a fever as a child. And also what maybe like, what if something else happened? Yes. Be open to the other possibilities. You already married someone and had two children. She didn't look close enough.

She's like, I don't give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. So the family of course is slowly like, we got to get away from this guy. Like he won't leave us alone. Meanwhile, Helen is battling tuberculosis, this lasts for like a year. And on October 25th, 1931, Helen dies from the disease in her parents' home. It's very sad.

So Carl shows up again. He insists upon paying for her entire funeral and including an above ground mausoleum. And with Helen's family's permission, Helen's body is laid to rest in that mausoleum in the Key West Cemetery. But what he doesn't tell Helen's family is that he has a key to the mausoleum. He swallows it. It's mine forever. Oh my god.

Yeah. So he's the only one with the key. And so he begins to visit Helen in the mausoleum. I mean, Helen's dead body. Okay. How, as a Jew, tell me how mausoleums work. This is from what I've seen in an Ashley Judd movie where she gets locked into one one time.

So it's true or not true as that is. Is it like a coffin inside of a room? Yeah. Or it's a, it's not a coffin. It's usually based on this Ashley Judd movie. I think, is it Along Came a Spider? Also starring Morgan Freeman? Oh, that's a good one.

That's not, yeah. She did a series of films with Morgan Freeman. Oh, they were so good. God, they were all, every single one was great. Love it. But she goes in and it's like, they're made of marble, like, you know, and they're little houses, they usually have windows, I think, at least one. And then inside, it's either more marble, like the body or the coffin or inside a little

marble casing. So you can't just get to it. Okay. So it is like a coffin, but it's not, but it's not like as hardcore as it is. It's not like, it's not like Dracula's and they're waiting to get out with ease. Okay. As far as I understand. Okay.

I see it. I can picture it. Okay. We're basing this, this is all Ashley Judd based. Go ahead, Stephen. It's not a spider. It's buried alive in a grave. It's called that?

No, it's not. Wait, it's not? This is, this goes to, maybe it's, maybe she's been in multiple along, it might not be along came a spider, but then it's a different one. Oh, this is just a list of people of movies that people being buried alive in graves. It's kiss the girls. It's kiss the girls. It is kiss the girls.

Yeah. It is kiss the girls. Gotta feel alive. Or is it double jeopardy? Oh, she did double jeopardy too. Oh yeah, he said Ashley Judd has knocked out and put in a casket inside a mausoleum. That's it. In kiss the girls?

And it turns out you're fucking husband. Which one was it? Double jeopardy? Double jeopardy, yeah. Oh, it is double jeopardy. Oh, wait, no. I had the other one. Just girls along came a spider.

But we're all right. I think along came a spider also might be the Monica Potter movie. But his buried alive in a grave. Buried alive in a grave was just one of the movies that included someone being buried alive in a grave. Right, Stephen? Yeah. Okay, great.

I got excited. You're gonna have Ashley Judd marathon now. But was Ashley Judd in buried alive in a grave? No, that's not a movie. That was just a list of movies where that happens. Oh, wow. Sorry, why did that? Oh, that was the title of the list.

It's a list, yeah. Of people. Yes, yeah, sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought it was the name of a movie. No, no. It has to be now. Now I have to write that.

Oh. Stephen, on a poster note, will you write Karen, please, write buried alive in a grave. Can we get a cartoon? It's gonna be a rom-com. We gotta get a cartoon going. Listen, Ashley Judd is buried alive in a grave and, okay, so he, it's such a crazy thing. If you've ever been to a cemetery, it's not a place you want to be at all. Well, unless you're like a high school gosh.

Right. If you have clothes to smoke, yes you do. But it's not like, it's a fun hang. And then I think most of Liam's- I don't want to sound like a, I'm really dark and deep and interesting, but I like, I like them. Okay, maybe I should specify. Mazel Williams aren't the things you want to hang out in.

Okay. They're really cold. Okay. And they have a dead body in them. Yes, I don't want that. And Carl, right? Okay, thanks. You're right, because the outside of it is nice.

It's garden feel. Look at the dates. You're like, oh, when did they die? And like- But it's all, yeah, okay. No, you're right. You're right. Listen, I do not want to fight with you over the-

Look, I do. I don't want to fight about being buried alive in a grave now. I'm going to write a song called, Buried Alive in a Grave. It's fucking better. He visits Helen every single night. Maybe that's, if I had said that sentence first, and then I started talking about how maybe you don't want, if you were going to go to a cemetery, you want to save that for the weekends.

Yeah. Every night. No. No. Okay. Now, how do you feel about this? Okay. So that he can call her.

What year is this? It's 1931. Oh. He has a telephone assault so he can talk to her when he's not there. Hoi hoi. What the fuck? Well, who's going to answer the phone? I mean, what level of pretending is he doing at home on his phone?

Yeah. She's not picking up. She must be busy. 555-DEAD. The nightly visits to Helen's mausoleum continue for two full years, 1931 to 1933. And according to Carl, Helen's spirit would appear when he would visit the mausoleum. And either he, that spirit, or both of them would serenade Helen's body with her favorite Spanish songs.

That would be romantic if they had been in love with each other. Thank you. Great point. You'd hope they would move on. Like, you know, yeah, but even if they were the most in love with each other, even if it was Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, you don't want one person singing to a dead body every night. I think someone would cut in and be like, I know you guys are super in love, but like,

we got to like take you to therapy. Yeah, you don't get to be in the mausoleum anymore. Yeah. Now you have to go. Two weeks. Talk about your feelings. Yeah. And work some shit out.

You don't need to get over it. Not at all. It'll be with you for the rest of your life. That's right. We totally understand that. Yeah. It never goes away and that's fine. Yeah.

Other ways besides corpse singing to like honor and to honor their spirit. Right. And also, if that, if her spirit really did rise up out of her body to do something, it would go, hey, can you fucking leave me alone, please, Sigmund Freud? Okay. So everyone is very creeped out by Carl's nightly visits, of course. And so he gets fired from his job at the hospital. And so then he stops for a little while until one night in April of 1933.

And that night, Carl goes to Helen's mausoleum with a new plan. He's going to exhume her body and take it home with him. So he does just that. He takes her body out of the mausoleum and he puts it on a child's toy wagon and carts it out of the cemetery in the dead of night. Can you imagine if you're like going to visit your mom's grave and then you're like, hey, how are you? Oh, shit.

Who's that crone with the toy wagon? Can you cut that out? I didn't mean your mom's. Girl, that sounded so insensitive. My mom was cremated and she's in the fucking living room. Did I ever tell you that story? No. Is she really in the living room?

Yes. But my dad didn't tell me or my sister that that's where he put her. So we were all at dinner with my cousins and everybody one night and we were all talking about my, people were telling stories about my mom and then dad goes, well, she's right there. No, Jim. There's like a little box on top of like the China cabinet or whatever. We're like, I look up and I'm like, really?

Are you joking? Jim, you're supposed to tell your daughters that information. I don't know. I guess it was private. Okay. So now it's going to get, like that's, none of this has been pleasant. No. And none of this has been a good story.

Now he's got her in his clutches. At his house. Okay. So hold on. I'm going to show you a couple pictures. Yeah, please. Always. Here's the mausoleum.

Do not look underneath. Thank you. Oh, that's nice. Tasteful. Looks like a little marble house. It looks like a little tugboat. And there's them. So Carl's on the right, obviously.

Wow. He looks a hundred. Yes. She looks lovely. She's gorgeous. He looks like Albert Fish. Oh, he totally, Sigmund Freud and Albert Fish. You already look alike.

It's a mix of those fucking two. It's complete with the needles up your penis. It's crazy. Okay. House? Okay. Yeah. So everyone in Helen's family is just like, hey, old guy, drop it.

Yeah. She didn't love you in life. Right. And now you're nudging her in your, your creep in death. Back at his home. Wait. Did you see this one? No, no, no.

No, wait. Is it this one? It's this one. Look at his house. Oh. Yeah. It's a shantytown. It's a fucking middle of Joshua Tree, board, planks and little shantytown.

It looks like he, another house burned down and he went and grabbed the planks that didn't burn and built his own house. Yeah. It's not like he brought her back somewhere. Great. Put a hex on it. Yes. For fun.

So, so back at his shantytown, he does everything he can to preserve her body, obviously. He goes in and he uses a piano wire to put, to hold her bones together because her joints obviously are going to disintegrate or decompose. He gives her glass eyes. And Charity has two years of decomp, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Everything about this is so disturbing.

Disturbing and like it just feels impossible. And then on top of all of that, it's always been presented up until relatively recently as a love story. Yeah. As an absolutely his side of the story love story. Well, it's funny because you telling me this, I was like, oh, they were in love. I thought like in my mind, they were married. I haven't read it in so long because I keep seeing it.

Yeah. It's like, I thought they were married and he wouldn't let her go. No. No. He was a stalker. He was a stalker. A super weird stalker. So, but it'll make sense a little while later why it's come out that way.

So, okay. So, so as her skin decomposes and is like peeling off, he replaces it with silk cloth that's soaked in wax, I guess, mortician's wax that like that it's, you know, he uses a kind of a bunch of those processes. He uses plaster of Paris to make the face when this, when the skin on her face is peeling away. Really? The face does just become a mask and inside her body, he fills it with rags to keep the

form. Oh. Yeah. And how disrespectful. It's, it's, it's human life. Yeah. It's horrifying. He also, as her hair falls out, he makes a wig of the fallen out hair so he can put

her hair back on her as in wig form. Really? He also has her perfume and oils to hide the smell of decay and obviously he keeps her in his bed and unfortunately this piece of information is not cool. He constructs a paper tube to put in her vagina so that he can have sex with the corpse. Oh no, no, no. I mean, that's why that's the point of all of this, right? As time passes and Carl, of course, he's forced to keep diligent care of a corpse that is

now decomposing over years of time and so he has to deke, he has to disinfect it and spray it with more and more perfume. There's issues with slime and mold, different molds. So he, his medical background helps him to recognize that and check it and keep it at bay and buy the right disinfectants and, but he's also continually going out and still buying her new clothes and jewelry and presents. He actually puts a privacy curtain down the middle of his bed so that she can have some privacy that she wants to.

What the fuck? Yeah. This goes on for seven years. What the fuck? Yeah. Like seven years after he took her? Yes. Oh my God.

Seven years. Seven. So two in the mausoleum and then seven at his house. No. Right. So eventually people start to ask questions, why did Carl stop visiting the mausoleum all of a sudden? Yeah.

He'd keep buying women's clothing and jewelry and perfume if he's this single man. Can you imagine the first person who it dawned on what was happening and they were just like, oh, one know who it was? A neighborhood boy who told, who reported that he saw Carl dancing with what looked like a giant doll through his window and then needed all the therapy for the rest of his life, just trans screaming into the sea. I mean, holy. Oh my God.

Now I wish I'd saved this for Halloween because this is fucked. Well, wait until you hear mine. Oh, okay. Keep going. It's the invention of the jack-o'-lantern. Okay. So now it's October 1940. Okay.

Everyone in town is talking about this and of course Helen's family hears about it and so her sister goes to Carl's house to confront him. She says, look, we know you're not visiting the mausoleum anymore. Have you, what's going on? Did you take her body? Whatever. And so he lets her in the house and lets her into his bedroom. It's a movie.

It's a fucking horror movie. And she walks in and sees this bizarre, let me see, let me see, dressed up, masked corpse of her sister. No. No. Look at that. Oh, honey. Doesn't that look like if you were driving to Las Vegas and you stopped at a tourist

area and there was kind of like a bunch of mannequins that someone that worked there made and they were like, you know, it's the gold rush or whatever. That's what this, it has that feel to me. But now I'm looking at the photograph of her side by side with this mannequin and it's like, like the features are still the same. So I was like wondering if her sister was like, what is that, but I think her sister would have known. She would have immediately looked like my sister.

The guy that was stalking my sister as she died, as she died in the hospital and at her house, now has her in his house for years. Dude. For years. That's the fucking most crazy thing I've ever seen. It's the most. So she is of course blown out and freaked out beyond. So she just says, can you please put her body back in the mausoleum?

And he says, no. So she says, okay, I'll talk to you later. I'm just going to grab a look at it. It's all Clarice Starling voice of, may I use your phone? It's all that. But she immediately calls the cops. Of course. So the police arrive to find the horror show of Carl's making and they take Helen's body

in to perform an autopsy. And they discover all the different mechanisms that Carl has used to preserve Helen and then have sex with her, which he would later deny. And of course, Carl Tanzler is immediately taken into custody. And of course, this story goes 1930s viral. It's all anyone's talking about. It's in every newspaper. It's all over the place.

Of course. People are going crazy. Like, this is the kind of story newspapers are looking for, horror show, first horror movie. So after the autopsy, Helen's body is moved to the Dean Lopez funeral home where it is put on public display. Don't do that. She's already fucking had enough.

I don't know if it was like, I don't know who agreed to that. I don't know how that part got set up or if it was like some kind of a weird, somebody came in. It was like a money making scheme. And then there's Helen who accidentally gave the fucking Carl a key to her mausoleum because well, because he paid for it. He got his own key. Oh, remember, he act like it was a generous offer, but it was entirely self serving.

So Helen's body is viewed by as many as 6,800 people. What? Yes. In today's numbers. Oh my God. That's 2 trillion people. So eventually her body's returned to the Key West Cemetery. It's buried in an unmarked grave in a secret location so that Carl cannot go near it in

any way. And Helen can finally rest in peace. Oh my God. After almost a decade. Okay. So Carl Tanzer stands trial on October 9th, 1940 for, quote, wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization. This trial is also widely publicized, obviously.

That's the only thing everyone in Key West can talk about, but strangely enough, many people stand in support of Carl Tanzler because they believe that his crimes are nothing more than the endearing acts of a hopeless romantic. No, hopeless is correct. Hope. But I don't think. I will ask you at this moment in time, is there anything in this story that's any different than the story of Ed Gein?

Totally. Nothing at all. None. The creepy house? The mask work? Yeah. The dead body and re-articulation of, I mean, everything about it. It's just that because afterwards he was the one that was able to write the story about

it. He put this romantic tinge on it and everyone's just like, well, he said it was all about love, so good. Of course, in court, when he was asked if he had sex with this corpse, Carl Tanzler answers no. And then the entire courtroom went, sure, Jan. Which is weird because the pretty much wouldn't be out for years and years. Somehow now this gets weirder.

During the trial, Carl tells the court that he had built and planned to use an airship to send Helen high into the stratosphere. An airship. An airship, so that radiation from outer space could penetrate her tissues and restore life to her somnolent form. Someone is. I mean, and here's that airship. He built it himself.

Oh, that's what that is. I saw it in the printer. I think it's right there. God damn it. It's right there. In my papers. I like to put everything. Oh, here it is.

There it is. You just spread all your papers out. I really like to spread it all out. He fucking built it. He built that thing. Elena's airship. It basically looks like someone who saw an airplane once and then was given, again, a pile of burnt wood.

It's a shantytown airship. I like that he recycles. I think that's nice. But this airship is the work of a madman. So despite clear evidence of Carl Tanzler's guilt and questionable mental state, he is acquitted for his crimes. This as the statute of limitations had expired. Not for her being dead, you fucking assholes.

I mean, okay. Just keep her long enough and you won't get in trouble for it anymore. Right. The statute of limitations ended when he was forced to give her back, not when he kidnapped her. How about that? I see. You know what I mean?

I mean, you'd like it to be like that. I would like the statute of limitations to go fuck itself completely. I would like to know what weird corpse fuckers made those laws in the first place. Absolutely. It was like not a big deal back in 1856 or whenever that was made. NBD, the Donner Party, it just happened. Yeah, that's fine. He was in law.

It's so crazy. Oh, my God. When he's acquitted, he has the giant brass balls to actually ask the court if he can have Helen's body back. Oh. Yes. This is how much he's learned the error of his ways. Wow.

And they were like, never mind. We take that back. We take that back. For real. The judge was like, shit, I already hit my gavel. Or I would have you killed. The judge, of course, says no, Carl. Go home.

There was a debate as to whether or not Carl could be rightfully charged with necrophilia. But even though the paper tube had been found inside Helen's body, there was no concrete evidence that Carl had actually had sex with that body. Bullshit. I mean, right. So in 1944, after the trial, Carl moves to Pasco County, Florida to be near his former wife. She's like, I'm good.

No, no, no. Doris. No. She cares for him for the rest of his life. No. Come on, Doris. She's like, I'm stuffing your fucking ass with rags, bitch. See how you like it.

She's quote, unquote, taking care of him. So Carl Tanzler writes his autobiography, and in 1947, a pulp magazine called Fantastic Adventures publishes it. In his version of the story, Helen loved him back. Her family was quote, unquote, scared of science and wanted to keep them apart and wouldn't let him treat her and was, you know, against their love. They've approved that he could help her with TB, with tuberculosis. No.

They're like, I could have done it, but they didn't want me to. Yeah. Well, what would you have done? Well, have you ever heard of the airplane treatment where I built an airplane out of wood and then you go in it? Most of Helen's family had passed away by this time when the story came out. So there was no one there to go, hey, yes, absolutely not. Here's our side of the story.

This is crazy. He's a stalker. We had to move a town away to get away from this guy. So that romantic aspect, that bent that he put on it is what has stayed with the story the entire time. But Carl's obsession with Helen did not end there. Oh, man. In his new home, Carl constructs a life-size effigy of Helen, which he keeps for the rest

of his days. And on July 3, 1952, when Carl dies at the age of 75, he is in the arms of his life-sized Helen effigy doll. Oh, my God. Some people suspect that Carl had managed to swap out that effigy for Helen's real body and that the doll he passed away beside was actually her real corpse, but this was never substantiated. Holy shit.

Yes. And if you want to read more about, because there's so many things I didn't get to, there's a whole thing about that airplane. Really? Yes. He lived in it for a while. There's so much other stuff. If you want to read more about this story like I do and I'm going to, get the book Undying

Love by Ben Harrison, it tells the full entire story. And that is the story of Carl Tanzler's Corpse Bride. Great job on a fucked up story that we just haven't done, but it was a great... I feel like I looked at the story when we did our first shows in Florida, but then I was kind of, I don't know, at the time maybe there were so many choices and I picked something else. That story had everything. The story had everything.

That was great. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just say this one thing while you do that? I just realized in my research and stuff that the victim in the story that I just read, name was Elena, somewhere I read that her family called her Helen. And maybe that was her Americanized name because the family came from Cuba and it's that thing of like, you know, people pick their American names to blend in or whatever.

But so I just want to say that her name was Elena originally, but then I read that people called her Helen, but there's a good chance people called her Elena also. I just, that felt like a weird whitewash moment, so I just want to, I want to call that out. And then everybody else can call me out too. Let's all do it together. Twitter preference, right? Call me out on Elo. That's an app I just downloaded.

Really? No. Remember Elo? No. You know what? It was supposed to be the new Twitter like, what, four years ago? No. Five years ago?

Yeah. No. People are like, I'm going over to Elo and everyone's like, go ahead, we're addicted to this poisonous river. Um, yeah. Okay. But wait. But wait, there's more?

Here's the weird thing. What? You did the same story? No. Ugh. I'm doing stories of people being accidentally buried alive. No, you're not. Swear to fucking God.

What? No. Crazy as it. That's why I was like. Ew. Ew. We should have saved this for Halloween. Do you think after a while we have the same brain?

Yeah. It's like we, these won't be, this is just how it's going to be where it's like, well, then I also. Well, I really love that we open this up a little this new after the break to like weird tales and stuff that's outside the realm of just straight up murder. This is literally buried alive in a grave. How fucking great. I love it.

I'm sorry, this whole time you've just been sitting over there with your little sit, that's why you had that smile on your face. Yeah. I was like, this is unbelievable. Okay. Got, I specifically got this when I was just searching for weird shit and found a rancor article called Scary Stories of People Who Were Buried Alive. I was like, great.

I'm doing this. God bless you, rancor. I also got a story from Reuters about a dead man who wakes up under the autopsy knife. Spoiler alert. Autopsy. Okay. Yeah. No, we're got there.

We'll get there. History collection. I'm using PlanetPopsi.com, all that's interesting.com, Wikipedia, of course. So Wikipedia and then research was from Lily Bellinghausen who's been helping me with research. God bless. Amen. A fucking man.

All right. So, Karen. Yes. Cases of being buried alive have been recorded as far back as the 14th century. Jesus. And I don't think they recorded shit before that. Yeah. There was no, they had no ability to record.

No. Inc. got invented right around that time. Yeah. They had a, what is the thing we recorded on the beginning of this podcast when we first started? A Zoom. They didn't have Zooms before the 1400s, so it wasn't recorded. In 1308.

It took too long to chisel it into a big piece of stone. Right. Like, forget it. And then you got to have the headphones, like, so you look like Steven and they have them in the mustache and that takes forever. So in 1308, the vault of Franciscan philosopher John Dunn's Scotis is open and his body is reportedly found outside of his coffin with bloodied hands. No.

A lot of bloodied hands and nails in this story. I bet. Just want to let everyone know. Of all the things I hate, and there are many things I hate about being buried alive, the smallness of waking up in a casket, the smallness of the space that you then have to suffer in. Yeah. I think that's the fear that everyone has.

Like, when I was reading through this and you'll hear, like, the, like, panic that everyone has about the idea of being buried alive, I think has a lot to do with the idea that you're fucking stuck once you're awake. Stuck in a tiny place and that scratching your way out is pretty much your only hope. Yeah. Horrifying. Here we go. Great.

Happy Halloween. Well, this story is considered a myth. The fear of being buried alive became a pandemic during the Victorian era. Yeah. That was fucking crazy. Victorians. Everything great and the creepiest of all creepy things happened during that. Fogs that would come upon the city and fogs and bustles and pandemics and lots of child

death. Right. Listen to this podcast. We'll kill you for more information. Yes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was widespread bacterial infections and cholera outbreaks. And in addition to the popular literature like Mary Shelley's, Frankenstein and Edgar Oppos, 1844 premature burial, there's also reports from doctors about people supposedly

coming back from the dead. Tapophobia, I think, is the fear of being buried alive and that spreads across Europe and the US and leads to the invention and I've always been obsessed with this idea, safety coffins. Love it. Okay. Safety coffins or security coffins are a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that they have been buried alive.

A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 19th centuries and variations on the idea are still available today. Is that true? I guess. That's what Lily said. It is and I believe her. You believe Lily? You know what's funny is that tapophobia is the name for the fear of being buried alive.

I would call it being a human being. Yeah, it's not claustrophobia. It's not tapophobia. If you are alive now, you have that fear. You're like, guess what? Oatsuck, peeing my pants, being buried alive and then what's another one? Choking. You mean being in a tone old sandwich?

Ew, yeah, exactly. Eating a salad and finding a cockroach at the bottom of it. At the bottom once you're all done. Live cockroach? A live cockroach. You ate the... First of all, who eats the entire salad? Yeah.

You usually only get about two thirds of the way down. This time you finished your salad and writers are like, ooh, one last crouton. No. No, it isn't. God, I want to fart. Okay. The most popular designs use some type of device for communication to the outside world, like a cord attached to a bell that the buried person could just ring in case they woke up.

That idea, I think you talked about this in another live show one time. Yes. Yes. Because we... I get to what I talked about. Okay. No, no, no. But I just want to say that it's like a person who makes sets and props for a horrible play

was like, what would be the creepiest thing this coffin could do? Yeah. It's so awful. So awful. You're the grave digger and you're standing in the cemetery in the middle of the early morning. Whistling. What's the creepiest thing you could hear?

How about a bell? Ding, ding, ding, ding. Also, how do those bells not go off when just the wind... Oh, sorry, sorry. No, no, no. You're right. And in addition to that, shit, I should have let you finish. No, no, no.

Okay. I should let you actually tell your story instead of guessing. That's not this podcast. Okay, you're right. Remember, we are buried alive in a grave. That's true. Other variations of the bell include flags and pyrotechnics. What?

I don't know. That's all Lily fucking told me. And I was like, this could be a whole episode of its own. You wake up in your coffin and AMD goes off above four. And then a firework show. And then the grave digger, there's like, ooh, ah, and then walks away. Yeah. It doesn't help you.

Some burial designs include ladders, escape hatches, and even feeding tubes. But most of them lacked a method to provide air. Remember air? Yeah. Remember air. Also, yeah, you're buried alive. You don't want a snack. No.

Don't worry about the feeding tube. Yeah. You don't want to live longer. Send me down an apple. Would you? No. Or just a mush apple. Okay.

In the 17th. Applesauce. Wait, they invented a thing? Yes. That's just a mushed apple? You don't just have to mush your apples anymore. Wait. Yeah.

The time I'm expense, I have been going to. There's a family named a Mott, and they figured out how to mush up your favorite apples. God bless them. Amen. Amen. In 1791, Robert Robinson, I doubt that, a man from Manchester creates the first safety coffin prototype. He was laid to rest in a mausoleum fitted with a special door that could be opened from

the outside by the watchman on duty. So inside would be his coffin, and there'd be a removable glass panel, and he instructed his family to periodically check on the glass, insert it in the coffin, basically to see if he was breathing. If there was condensation. Sure, dad. We will. No, dad will be there every day.

Absolutely. Oh, my God. Can you imagine what his living life was like? It was very stressful for all the family. Such a pain in the ass. The first true. Am I dead? Did I die?

No. You're sitting here at dinner. It's fine. Yes. Can you stop breathing in my face? You were breathing. Yes, you were breathing. A true recorded safety coffin was made on the orders of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick before

his death in 1792. He had a window installed to allow light in and air tube provided that provided the supply of fresh air. And instead of having the lid nailed down, he had a lock fitted and in a pocket of his shroud when he was buried in, he had the keys for them. Perfect. You got it. And then figured it out.

And a really cute key chain. Yeah. Dolphin magic. Yeah. Here you go. The dolphin. J.K. Living.

And when you turn it this way, the dolphin has a bathing suit on. And you turn it that way, the dolphin's bathing suit comes off. The dolphin has a humongous erect penis. And it attacks you because dolphins are rapists. Does the penis have a bathing suit on it? And its bathing suit after a bathing suit falls off, the pen is very thick. It's complicated. It was actually the pen that killed him.

It crushed him to death. He invented it. It crushed him. What? Okay. So a German priest named PJ Pessler suggested in 1798 that all coffins have a tube inserted so that a cord could run to the church bells. And if an invincible had...

Oh, what's that you say? An individual. Had been buried. I've only had one can of wine, I swear to God. Why are there two sitting there? Because I'm drinking the other one. It just hasn't been drank yet, girl. Girl, I've been ahead.

Check my wine. Okay. They could draw attention to themselves by ringing the bell inside. They'd be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're ringing the church bells now. You want the whole town to come. I guess so. Yeah.

So this led to signaling systems that came around. But unfortunately, the coffins... Oh, wait. So then his bro, a colleague of his, was like, well, we should put trumpet-like tubes instead. So a trumpet instead of bells. Yes. Which is more annoying. And more haunting. Each day the local priest... I'm alive.

I'm alive. Each day the local priest could check the state of, oh, okay, wait, okay. The other thing is that they would have a small trumpet-like tube attached. And the point of that is not so you can blow your fucking trumpet when you realize you've been buried alive, but so that a local priest would go to the cemetery and smell each of the trumpet funnels and make sure that there was decomposition happening. Let the smell of the odors emanating from the tube would be that of decomp, not of a live person just shitting their pants or whatever.

The priests are like, have we not given up enough by never marrying, taking a valve of poverty? I wrote above my pay grade. They don't get paid that, do they? No. Well, I don't know. They get paid by going straight to heaven. That's right.

First in line, bitches. Unless. Uh-oh. It's you or me. Dr. Adolf Gutsmus was buried alive several times to demonstrate a safety coffin of his design. And in 1822, he stayed underground for several hours and ate a whole meal. What?

Which I'm like, whatever. What's this eating in the coffin situation? Delivered to him through the coffin's feeding tube. No. People are fools. Get up and go to a restaurant. It's a really lovely experience. So nice.

In 1829, Dr. Johann Gottfried Taburger created a more elaborate bell signaling system. So bell's house above ground connected to strings attached to the body's head, only one, hands and feet, and it prevented rainwater from going into the tube, blah, blah, blah. If the bell rang, the cemetery watchman would insert a tube into the coffin and pump air in using bellows until the casket could be dug up so they'd have fresh air. That's the most, I like that one the best so far. Here's the problem. And this is at the antidote I must have fucking told because it's one of my absolute favorites

that I must have read at a child and loved so much. Well when a corpse is decomposing and swelling and losing mass and all this shit, everything moves. And so the bells would start going off. That's right. Nope, it's not someone alive. And so like all the bells going off at once, can you imagine? The first time that happened, whoever was nearby died of a heart attack.

There's no way they didn't. That's right. This is insanity. So they would all activate the bell system which led to false positives. The worst false positive in the world. Well, I don't know. I don't think I've looked up it really. Franz Vester's 1868 burial case overcame this problem by adding a tube through which the

face of the corpse could be viewed. Oh, I remember that one. Really? Yeah. If the buried person woke up, they could ring the bell like they wanted to. And then the watchman could check to see if the person had actually returned to life or was just movement of the corpse. So that was basically the 2.0 version once they realized the bells were ringing and they're

like, okay, well then go look at it. Yeah, enough priests had quit because they're like, I'm not sniffing these fucking tubes anymore. Not going to smell those dead bodies anymore because they were always smelling a dead body. There was no time they weren't. Right, because it's still going to pass. In 1995, a modern safety coffin was patented by Fabrizio Casselli. His design included an emergency alarm, intercom system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus,

and both a heart monitor and stimulator, a corkscrew, and a nail file. Despite the fear of burial while still alive, there's no documented cases of anybody being saved by a safety coffin. Oh, man. Yeah. What a great life lesson. They just should have keep inventing them. They'd have gotten better and better.

I mean, it's like I have this fear and instead of dealing with the fear that I have, I'm going to continually invent things to make me feel like anything can be done if a bad thing happens to me. Yeah. Or maybe like add one more check to the, at the morgue to just double check that the person's dead. How about you stab them right in one of the air? Would that wake you up?

That would wake you right up. A poke in the ear maybe? Wow. With a feather? A tickle. How about smelling salts? I guess it doesn't have to be violent. Tickle.

A tickle. I'd wake up. Okay. But the practice of modern day embalming has, for the most part, eliminated the fear of premature burial. That's pretty much going to solve it. Thanks. Because no one has ever survived that process once completed.

Oh, I wonder how many people got embalmed when they were still alive. You were like, well, I still have my spleen. Yeah. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Yeah, that's all I need. It's been thought that phrases like, save by the bell, dead ringer and graveyard shift come from the use of safety coffins. Why do I keep doing that?

Coffins? Uh-huh. Like you're singing a caftan. Or attic. An attic. Yeah. In the Victorian era, but these have been dispelled as an urban myth attributed to a linguistic email hoax that was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

said that save by the bell is actually from boxing. So shut up. But that's interesting, because it really does apply. But it does sound like dead ringer could be from that. Yeah. I would love to be on any kind of a hoax email chain involving linguists. Remember all those email chains that used to be a thing, send this to five people or you're going to get smushed.

Also there was one where it was like, fill out this thing. Yeah. Did you ever do that one where it was like, you basically, you get the name of a person, you fill out all these things about them and then send it to them and then they do it for somebody else? No. We did it in our family. It was, I can't really explain that process logically, but basically, I got my, like,

ever all my cousins and all these people did it and then it came around and my dad sent me mine. And then, and the one thing he was like, it was something like, you had to say like nice things about these people and what they're like and whatever and like, I think he said my best attribute and he said smart. He just got smart. And I was like, he does a lot. But it was really exciting because all my life, he'd always been like, hey, easy smart

ass. It was always kind of like a negative and suddenly I was like, you liked it this whole time. Yeah. You were egging me on. He was like, not trying to get you to stop. That's right. That's sweet.

You still have it. The email? I bet you could find it. I printed it up. I put it in a frame. Okay. Okay. So here's some cases of people being buried alive.

Ready? I am. In November 1656. Oh wait. It really did happen. It's just that they weren't saved by those coffins. Oh yes. Spoiler alert.

Shit. I get it. I get it. But these are also like they didn't, these people weren't buried in these coffins either, but these are people who were, you'll find out. Okay. Got it. In November 1656, Alice Davies is married to William Blunder of the Baxing Stoke and

they are from a well-established local family. They're like, they're like nobles and shit like that. Sure. What country? Does it say England? Really? Yes, probably. Okay.

William Blunder was a malt maker and his wife, quote, had accustomed herself to many times to drink brandy. Sure. So she drank a lot. She had accustomed herself to it. Yeah. Me too. One evening she drank a large quantity of puppy water and fell into a deep sleep that no

one could wake her from. Opium. Oh right. Right? Oh yeah. Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It was concluded that she had died and William, being the amazing sweet wonderful husband he is, was like, hey, I have to go to London really quick.

Keep her body there. I swear I'll come right back for the funeral. What was he doing? I don't know, but it was really important, I guess, but her family was like, fuck that shit. It's hot out. We're not leaving her body out to rot. He's like, I got tickets to go see Big Ben.

I'm stoked. I'm going to go see the Book of Mormon and I can't or the New Fleabag live show. So they were like, fuck that shit, we're going to bury her. So then a few days after the burial, some boys who had been playing nearby reported hearing a voice from the grave. They didn't think it was real, but the grave was opened and her body was found. It looked like she was beaten, but in actuality it was injuries inflicted by herself on her body and her confinement.

So being unable to detect any continuing signs of life, those present at the scene, they put Alice back in the grave overnight and the coroner some of the next day. And they had found that she tore off a great part of her winding sheet, scratched herself in several places, beaten her mouth so long it was filled with blood and she was now definitely dead. Sorry, are you saying she was buried alive twice? The second time she was dead. Great.

Huge relief to me. I think in hope. I think they would have left her out just to make sure, you know? You would hope that they would make double sure, but you know, most of the stories on the show don't go that well. Yeah, exactly. No one's convicted or gets in trouble for this, although the town had a considerable fine that they had to pay because of this.

The whole town. I guess the whole town. We're all going down together. Yeah, this sucks on all of our parts. So in 1880, here's another one, 1884, Kentucky's Hickman Courier reported that a young woman by the name of Anna Hockwalt is dressing for her brother's wedding. She sits down to rest in the kitchen as we all do and then someone checks on her and she's just laying there with her head against the wall and appears lifeless.

Medical aid arrives and the doctor thought she was dead, he couldn't revive her. And she had a nervous nature and the fact that she suffered from heart palpitations was the cause of death, they said. But Anna's friends were like, this doesn't seem fucking real and her ears look pink still, her friends said. So they figured blood was still flowing through them. Her friends must have just gotten drunk at the fucking funeral though because they didn't tell her family about this and their assumption until after she's buried.

Great friends. No. Yeah. Parents. You know what I was thinking? Remember when her ears were pink? I just think she's still alive. Her parents are like, what the fuck, they dig her back up and they find Anna's body,

she's lying on her side, her fingers are not almost to the bone and her hair is torn out by the hands. Of course. I mean, all bets are off. You wake up in that situation. You're like, can I just kill me? Yeah. Yeah.

In 1889, a woman named Octavia Smith married a wealthy Kentuckian named James Hatcher. They had a son named Jacob, but the infant mortality rate was so high back then that this Jacob died in infancy. And Octavia goes into a deep depression, she's bedridden, and she shows signs of a mysterious illness and eventually she enters a coma-like state and no one can wake her up. She's pronounced dead in May of 1891, just four months after her infant son died. It was super hot that year, so Octavia's buried quickly and in bombing wasn't a common practice idea.

But a few days later, other people in the town began falling into a similar coma-like state that she had with shallow breathing patterns and they wake up a few days later, though. They discover it was an illness caused by the bite of the set-sea fly. Tee-tee. Thank you. Tee-tee fly. Fearing that she'd been buried alive, her husband, James Panix, has her exhumed and she had been buried alive.

But James was too late. Oh no. The coffin was airtight, he found the coffin lining had been shredded and Octavia's fingernails were bloody. Yes. Yes. So many bloody fingernails. And her face was frozen in a shriek of terror.

Yes, I believe that. James is traumatized as fuck. I mean. He buries his wife, he rucks a lifelike monument of her that sits in the cemetery that she's still buried in, I know. Ooh. Does it- Say where?

I think Kentucky was where they were from, Kentucky, yeah. I mean, there's a mausoleum you want to go visit. Oh my god. Midnight on Halloween. No. Shall we do it? Let's record on Halloween from a fucking cemetery. Inside a mausoleum.

Want to? As many people as can fit, so it'll be like an 11-person live show and we'll all be screaming at the top of our lungs the entire time. What was that? Okay, Eleanor Markham is an American woman who became one of the most prominent cases of averted premature burial in the 19th century. According to news reports, 22-year-old Markham, Eleanor Markham, was pronounced dead in Sprankers, New York.

Which is like, what? How have I not known about that? You know what I would love if Lily misspelled Yonkers. Sprankers. If Sprankers is real, we're doing an only Sprankers home town mini episode next week. Sprankers. Stephen, do you mind Wikipedia and Sprankers? He's already doing it.

He's on it. When George is done, we can do a quick update on what Sprankers is all about. Oh my god, it's real. Lily, you're off the hook. Yeah, Sprankers is a hamlet in the town of Root, Montgomery, New York. Wow, Sprankers. Notable people, George A. Mitchell, founder of Cadillac. Oh.

Is from Sprankers? Sprankers. And that's why every Cadillac has the trademarked Sprankers handle on the driver's home town. Please send us Sprankers hometown and put in the subject line, Sprankers hometown. Please write Sprankers, bitch, in the subject line. Please let us keep saying the word Sprankers. It's our favorite word. Wow.

Okay. This is July 8th, 1894. How am I 50, and I've never heard the town name of Sprankers, New York? They're fiercely private. I'm so tired of people keeping things from me. It does feel like people are always keeping shit from us. It feels like people are talking behind our back about Sprankers. Like everyone knows I'm out of it, us.

They refuse to tell us. Should we go to Sprankers? This is the only podcast that doesn't know about Sprankers. It's so sad when they talk and they don't know about Sprankers. They don't mention Sprankers every five minutes. Okay. She's dead, they say. It's warm.

They're going to bury her quickly. Her coffin is closed and fastened after the family members say goodbye in the church and on the way to the graveyard. The hearse has stopped after a noise is heard coming from the coffin. Oh, thank God. She doesn't go underground for this. The lid is unfastened and she says, you're burying me alive. I love her.

I'm in Sprankers and you're burying me alive. Holy Sprankers, you're going to bury me alive? You fucking Sprankers. And then the doctor who had fucking done this was like, hush child, you're all right. It's a mistake easily rectified. Yeah. Now, bro. Step off, bitch.

She says that soon after she had fainted, which is when they thought she was dead, she had recovered after being administered some stimulants. Cocaine. Yes, cocaine. All their every ailment. Except for getting alive. She said that she had been conscious the entire time of the preparations for burial, but she couldn't cry out and she thought she's going to be buried alive like the whole way

and finally she was like, move your fucking body, Sprankers, and she was able to make a noise. That's the worst thing. Knowing you're going to be here, oh my God. I don't think I usually have these feelings when we talk about terrible, terrible things to each other. No. Yeah.

This one's getting to me. Yeah. I do not like it. Well, guess what? You're going to be there tonight. Oh, I will sprank you so hard. Her cases among those included in the book premature burial and how it may be prevented by William Teb and Edward Volem.

So in 19... Teb and Volem. Teb and Volem. They wrote the best books. Yeah. So another one is in 1937, a 19-year-old from France named Angelo Hayes. He goes for a fucking motorcycle ride, hits a fucking wall, fucking head first into a brick wall.

His head is mangled. He has no pulse. He's so terrible to look at that they're like to his family, you can't see him. Yeah. You know, it sucks. He's declared dead and buried three days later. Oh no. But the insurance company was like, we don't buy it, exhume the body because they're insurance

companies. They're like, we won't pay. Yeah. Until we see. They discovered that his body is still warm. No. And in the aftermath of the accident, his body had put him into a deep coma and didn't eat a lot of oxygen, so he's still fucking alive.

After being buried alive, he received proper medical care and went on to make a full recovery. No. He went away. What's his name? Angelo? Angelo Hayes. Wow, Angelo. He invented a type of security cough tin after this.

Why do I keep saying Kaftan? You're saying Kaftan with a weird accent. I am just like dying to be in my Kaftan. A Kaftan. Kaftan. He tours across France showing off his security cough tin and in it is a small oven, a refrigerator and a high-fike cassette player. No.

Yeah. That's what it says. So this was like in the 60s? Like a later on? No. This was in the, in 37, 1937. A high-fike cassette, did you say cassette player? Did I hear that wrong?

Is that what I meant? Cassette player. High-fike cassette player. Well, those are in quotes, so I didn't, yeah. That's, Lily is quoting herself now. I'm questioning everything. You already said Lily's name and I'm like, is that this? How the fuck would I know?

Lily's like record campy, right? She's like 22, too, so she wouldn't know. She's like, cassettes are from 1843, right? They're vintage. Okay. In 2007, a Venezuelan man named Carlos Camejo, he's 33. He's declared dead after an accident, a highway accident, taken to the morgue, examiners begin their autopsy.

Then he starts bleeding, which, guess what, guys, dead bodies don't bleed. Yeah. Right? That's day one of medical school. Yeah. Remember that. Day one of autopsy school. He starts bleeding and then he wakes up and he's in excruciating pain and the autopsy.

Yeah, I bet. Because he's still alive. And that table's so cold. Oh, God. They quickly stitch him up and his grieving wife had just turned up to ID him and then finds him in the hallway alive, which is so sweet. Oh, that's, yeah, good for her. Right?

Then as recently as 2014. So sweet. Like to be so bummed to be like, oh, you're alive. Oh, I have your life. I love you. You have that huge scar. See, that's our romance story, not your fucking. That's right.

That's shitty. You did great. I didn't mean you. There was also in 2014 a case of a woman being buried alive in Greece. She had succumbed to cancer and her children heard her screams coming from her grave, not long after burial. She's exhumed and it was discovered that she actually died of cardiac arrest after she was buried.

No. I know. Did you say 2014? Yeah, I did. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Promise. Never mind. I don't want to jinx. I will. I'll come and check your grave. Thank you. Sniff your trumpet or whatever it was. Poke me with a safety pin or something.

I'll make sure that the fireworks haven't gone off. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Most of these modern cases are because of unforeseen circumstances and just plain bad luck. The possibility of... The postability. The postabilities. The postability of being buried alive today is virtually impossible because of embalming.

However, if I sum... 2014 was five years ago. I know, but it's Greece. I'm just kidding. I don't know what that means. I'm trying to say that you can survive up to 36 hours if you've been buried alive with the oxygen. Okay. So, keep knocking.

Keep knocking. Keep knocking. Shallow breaths. Make sure you get buried with tasty cakes in your pocket or something. That's why I always have a protein bar. That's right. And a cell phone. Yeah.

Right? It all depends on how much air is in the coffin. And those are stories of buried alive in a grave. Unbelievable. In a coffin. In a coffin. Oh, in a coffin in a coftan. There's... I love that because I really was getting upset, really getting upset.

You know that Ryan Reynolds movie where he is buried alive? No. And it's him in a lighter. It's very frustrating. It's not the whole movie, but it's a lot of the movie and it's insanity. It's called buried alive in a coffin. In a grave. In a grave.

In a grave. In a grave. Wow. That was amazing. Well, welcome to... Hell. It's basically fall. We're welcoming in fall.

That's what we're doing in this episode. Yeah. It's exciting. Get your shirts with bats on them. Yeah. We're getting ready to transition out of summertime. What are you going to be for Halloween this year? I'm probably going to be buried alive in a grave, I think.

The film. The lead in the film. Perfect. The live in a grave. Let's make it. Let's make it as a student film. Okay. Let's go back to school.

But the whole thing is... It's much more like... It's like a... What's that movie? It's like My Dinner with Andre, where it's the discussion about being buried alive in a grave. Okay. So no one has to go into a coffin. But it gets like St. Elsewhere kind of where it's like... Is that the one? Or it's like... St. Elmo's Fire.

Yes. Yeah. Or someone that is like, well, I'm going to try it. Yeah. I'll try it. Robbie, you're so wild. Oh my God. You're crazy.

Melio Estevez. Rob Lowe starts playing the saxophone. A lot of amazing cocaine use in that movie. I fucking bet. I love it. Demi Moore does way too much cocaine, and she opens all the windows in her room. And then there's this insanely 80s shot of her. I'm sure I've described this before, because it's truly one of my favorite memories from

my teen years. And this is how everyone in my family should have known that I was a drug addict waiting to happen, because that scene was like... I was like, yeah, she did a ton of coke by herself and then was in her room holding her knee. I think she was wearing a shirt and no pants, holding her knees. All the windows were open and these long, white curtains were blowing. And you were like, great. That looks fun.

I was like, I love this. I want to do this. That looks lonely and cold. Her room, I think it's because she had high ceilings and the walls were painted a cool color from what I remember. Romanticizing cocaine. The 80s. I mean, it's one of the more romantic elements in filmmaking.

Oh. Wow. What's your... Wow. Oh. What's your fucking hooray? My fucking hooray is... And I'm sorry because this is a... It's a tad of a repeat because I think in the rec room last week, I recommended Tara Brock's podcast, who is the... She's

a Buddhist teacher and a meditation teacher and stuff like that. Yeah. So, I was listening to her podcast this morning and I have a quote I want to read from it. Because I liked this so much and it helped me so much that I actually typed it up and sent it to my therapist because I was like, how weird is this because this is kind of what we were talking. I love it. We had been talking about it.

So if you would indulge me, I'm going to read even more off a piece of paper. Please do. Sprankers. Am I at first start by saying? Sprankers. That's got to be the name of the episode, right? Not being buried alive in the grave. Yeah, I think so.

I mean, yeah, it feels like it. Maybe Sprankers with a question mark. So this is from an episode of her podcast. I just started listening to random episodes in the morning, like it's kind of a way to wake up and be calm or whatever. And so it's a two-part series called How Hope Can Heal and Free Us, which seemed like a good thing to listen to. And this part really got me.

Everyone, close your eyes, even if you're driving. If you're driving, pull over wherever you are. Okay, so she's talking about a felt sense of severed belonging. So severed belonging is like the pain a lot of us do. But it is not real. It's just a felt sense is the way she specifies it as opposed to a reality. So she says, it happens typically in early childhood when our parents also had severed belonging and are unable to create that resonance field where we're seen and gotten for who

we are. So when there's not really a safe loving, filled with understanding sense of attunement in our home life, that is a sense of being cut off. And when there's enough nurturance, when there's really good mirroring, I see you, I get you, that's what activates the neural connections in the frontal cortex. So our capacity, especially the relational network in the frontal cortex that has to do with empathy and compassion that gets activated when as young children we're in a resonance field.

And when we're not, in other words, when we don't get seen and we don't get that loving, we don't get the activation in our frontal cortex, we're not able to engage in relationships so fully because there's no trust and there's some sense of danger. So when that happens, instead of being guided by wholeness or an activated brain and an awake heart, we're guided by our limbic system that looks for what's threatening and dangerous and tends not to trust others. In animal studies, in chimps, when the mother is erratic in mothering, sometimes there, sometimes not, the erraticness is what sets off a sense of insecurity and trauma.

When the mother's erratic, the babies end up binge eating, being antisocial, withdrawn, and fearful. And then she starts laughing and everyone in the room starts laughing. Because we're all like, hi. And then she goes, does that sound familiar? And then she says, it creates the groundwork for depression because when we're cut off from that sense of connection with others, when we're living in anxiety, the tendency is to want to push under our life energy because it's so unpleasant.

Tell us, say the podcast name again, because I, I and everyone who is closing their eyes driving needs to listen to it. I don't think it, it's just Tara Brock is the way, if you put it in. Into like iTunes, play it, play it, if you, if you play her podcast on our podcast, if you just, if you put her name in, it's the one that comes up and then you can go through and it's whatever the title is that I said at the beginning that I didn't write down. It's just the kind of thing where, because it's, it's medically based. So it's not saying conceptually, and here's these concepts or whatever, it's like, this

is the truth about how our brains, how your brains are developed. Yeah, and like you're, you're not feeding your brain with the correct, you know, nutrients that it needs, which is nurturing and reliability and. And someone looking at you and going, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So of course you're not going to fucking, you know, grow and thrive and, and not get depression and not feel, you know, you're alienated, right?

You're going to, you learn to cope. And then you kind of, and everything is like danger and it's just so fascinating because I think it's also, it's not you feeding yourself. It's like, this is what happens to tons of people in their childhoods. This is the way you come up and it's versions of this. It doesn't, you don't have to have had the worst child in the world. You could have a great one. But if there's any kind of erraticness or lack of consistency, then you, these things,

you have these reactions for a very real, almost medical reason, like a biological reason. I think that's really helped me with my anxiety and knowing that I am, I, it's all, it's all learned behavior. Yes. And it can be unlearned or, you know, it can be, if it's not unlearned while it's happening, I can remind myself of these things if I practice them enough. So I'm actually, maybe my fucking heart is that I'm doing EMDR right now, which is not electronic dance music.

You've already done that. I know. It helped you a lot. It did. I really feel free. I'm sorry. There are a few burners. And yeah.

So we were thinking of, she made me think of a positive, happy time in my life. And I thought of, you know, and it was, it was so I could cope for this weekend's baby shower that I'm throwing for my sister at my house. And lots of issues, lots of potential, a rich area, the first time my mom and I have seen each other since we kind of made up. It's going to be interesting. And the thing I thought about was a family gathering at my mom's house and how positive it can be and how great we can be together.

Totally. And it kind of changed my mind and my mood about what it's going to be like this weekend. So. Awesome. Therapy, guys. God, it works. It's just, you know what it is, instead of thinking that what you think about yourself is absolutely the truth and going with that, just running it by someone who went to school

about these things who can be like, no, no, no, hold on. You can't do it if no one did it for you. It can't, you can't, it can't come out of nowhere. It has, you have to give yourself the chance to learn it and you have to give yourself the chance to change. My favorite thing about that I've learned in therapy is that like the things we're doing now are things that we used as children and when we were younger to cope with our situation and our lives and to get, just get through.

Yes. And to survive. Yeah. And we're still doing them even though they're not needed and helping us anymore. Or effective. They're not effective and they're maybe hindering us now and so you can say to those things that you did and what you needed, like, thank you, you got me here and now I can do it in a different way.

Yes. And now I can do it in my way because I'm parenting myself now. Exactly. And that you are, it's not you, you're not this like separate special case. Broken, yeah. It's every single person, truly every person. And that's actually very helpful if you're ever intimidated or you ever feel like you can't do something because you're not good enough or you don't deserve, like, you don't

deserve therapy. I know a lot of people think that. Yes. But actually when you think about it, every person that is around you probably, most, 85% of those people, that's a guess, I've never went to any kind of school really. Everyone is working from this damaged 12 year old at the oldest. I mean, you're, you're that, that voice in your head that's the meanest and the scariest and the most convincing, the fear voice that it's, it's very uneducated, it's very young.

And they think they're helping you. Yes. That voice thinks it's helping you. Yeah. It means well, but it, it does, it means well in a mean way. So now you get to make this brilliant decision to not live your life like that anymore and how lucky are we that we get that opportunity? Yeah.

Especially me with my big white teeth. Oh my God, I'm so different. Welcome to the, I forgot to tell you the secret handshake for us big white teeth people. Fuck yeah. Oh my God. I never told you. And it's touching front teeth. I'm just trying to get you to kiss me.

You rub your teeth together and you say, you whisper very quietly, sprinkles. What's it called? Sprinklers. Sprinklers? Sprankers. You whisper. Sprankers. Sprankers.

New York. It's a hamlet in New York. Everybody knows it with big white teeth. Oh, thanks for fucking doing this with us, you guys. Once again. Wow, you guys stick with it. Yeah. Please.

Please stick with us. Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Good bye. Sprankers. Sprankers.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? Sprankers. Sprankers.