My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 134 - The Ghosts

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

This week’s minisode is a compilation of hometowns that feature ghost stories.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hi. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder.

The mini-seo'd. The mini-times when we tell you your many, many stories. So you've written so many stories into us and now we're going to present them to you. Back at you. Hometowns. Things that have happened to you that got you into true crime in the first place. That was the original. Yeah.

We've gone off into ghost stories. We've gone off into sinkholes. But this is specifically, this is where we gather all those stories and then retell them to you. It's almost like just the weird stories that you can't tell anyone else. You just want your weird stories. Bring your weird stories here and then we'll tell everybody else about them. For example.

Yeah. Are you ready? I'm ready. The subject line of this is, John Belushi haunted my baby brother. Dear Karen, Georgia, Steven and Petz, I've been wanting to write to you for some, for a long time. And finally, during a recent and still active binge of the podcast, got the inspiration. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles with my parents, younger sister and younger brother.

My brother at the time of the story takes place was two to three years old. One day our house's septic tank backed up and flooded our entire house. My mother, being who she is, decided that the only place that could comfortably house a family of five was the Chateau Marmont. Oh girl. Oh, damn. Once we're talking about the Chateau Marmont, you know we're in Hollywood, baby. Shit girl.

So, this mother of threes, like, let's get this whole act down to the Chateau Marmont. You know what? This is disgusting. Let's do it. Was your mother candy spelling? Um, okay, so we moved into one of the bungalows, a two bedroom standalone house perched above the pool, which just so happened to be the same bungalow in which John Belushi died from an overdose in 1982.

Shut up. Uh-huh. My parents took the master bedroom, my sister and I shared the second bedroom, and my brother, who was still in a crib, got a large walking closet. Enjoy. Throw your kid in the closet. Uh, strange little things would happen in the house, like smoke alarms going off for no reason.

They do that all the time. Door's slamming shut. That's the wind. Lights turning on and off. Electricity. Yeah, that's how lights work. And overall feeling that there was just some sort of energy around you, and it wasn't a negative energy, just a presence that you could feel like a soft breeze blowing by you.

Well, well. That's the breeze. Uh, that's called a breeze. My toddler brother began waking up during the night calling for my mom. She would repeatedly go check on him and comfort him and tell him to go back to sleep. One night she asked what was bothering him and he replied, the funny man woke me up. He wants to play cars. She would frequently hear my brother talking to himself while playing and strange things

continue to happen throughout the bungalow. One day my brother was playing in his room. My mom walked by and saw him sitting on the floor. She walked into the kitchen for a couple of minutes and then when she walked back in to look in on him, he was no longer on the floor, but standing up in his crib. Since she knew he couldn't climb up in there himself, she asked him how he got there. The funny man helped me. The funny man.

He said, this is absolutely the beginning of one of the insidious movies. Yeah. I'm positive. This is a cheap and ultimately boring horror movie that you're setting up. No offense. Not boring to you. I see a lot of those movies. Really boring.

We eventually changed bungalows, good plan. And didn't hear any more about, about the funny man. You have it like the funny man, like stay there because at the other bungalow, it might be the scary man. Exactly right. The mean man. It might be. The funny man is like your best possible fucking possibility.

Think about all the other crazed asshole drug addicts from Los Angeles that have stayed at the Chateau Marmont. Go with the comedian. Yeah. Okay. So a few months later, my mom was in bed with my brother reading a book on the history of the hotel. She turned to the chapter with John Belushi with a black and white portrait of him filling

a page. My brother saw the photo and clearly recognizing it started giggling. What is it? She asked. He wouldn't answer her. He just continued to smile. She asked again, what are you laughing at? Do you know who that is?

And he giggled and nodded up and down. Who is that? She asked, that's my friend. That's the funny man. It turned out my little brother had been spending his nights playing games with a very lonely John Belushi. He was so young at the time. There was no way, there was no way he knew who John Belushi was prior to all of this

happening. What if he was super into SNL as a toddler? Naturally, no one ever talked about his death in that bungalow to a toddler. I hope you enjoyed this ghost story. It made me feel sorry for John Belushi, but I'm glad he found some solace hanging out with my brother and hopefully got a few laughs from him. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered.

Gina. Oh my God. That's amazing. Yeah, it's such a good family story. Okay. This is called some spooky shit for Halloween and then a sidebar. Cats know. Oh.

That's right, Elvis. Yes, Elvis. Hi guys and gals. No. Hi guy and gals. Aww. Stephen. I thought now that it's almost Halloween, it would be a good time for me to write in

about my spooky paranormal experience. I grew up in a small town in Colorado in a house that was super far away from other houses and it was unanimously agreed was haunted as hell. All of the spooky was reported happening in the same room, the TV room in the basement, of course. The stories mostly happened during parties with my friends hearing fucked up things or people acting weird in the wee hours of the morning, except one time when a hippie lady stayed with us down there and told us she heard things screaming in the walls, which

we decided to blame on raccoons and move on. They're good catch. All those raccoons. Good bye. My personal experience happened when I was about 17. My parents were out of town and decided to leave me in the enormous haunted house alone. My dad was allergic to cats, so they had to stay outside in our garage, but I was spooked so I brought the homies inside. That's fucking right.

That's right. We went downstairs. They're really going to help you when you get killed. Cats milling around as you're murdered. I was just like so sad at the idea of a fucking garage full of cats, just like nothing as a cat person makes me more sad. No. The homies inside.

We went downstairs to watch some TV and I settled into the couch facing the TV with my back to the majority of the room. One of my cats. Mistake. One of my cats, Tito, was on my lap and uncharacteristically really on edge. He kept tilting up and staring over my shoulder at the same corner. I would turn around and look where he was looking and of course nothing was there, but he would just, but he would just stare.

He did this several times. He would go from purring and drooling in my lap to high alert with all his hair on end and staring at the same fucking corner over my shoulder. Then suddenly he hissed and bolted out of the room. I decided not to day Satan and booked it upstairs to my room where he was waiting for me on my bed acting like nothing happened. So I got in bed and finally calmed down enough to fall asleep. The next thing I knew, I had opened my eyes and my nose was an inch away from a wall.

As I started to come to, I realized where I was. That's right. I was taking sleptwalk to the corner in the basement. I freaked out and sprinted upstairs and launched in my bed. I checked my phone. It was roughly 3.03 a.m. in the morning, meaning that I must have been in the corner almost exactly at 3 a.m. No!

The watching hour. Is it? I mean, yeah. Nothing like that has ever happened to me since and we are now selling the home. My mom used to tell my sister and I that the spirits have watched us grow up and so aren't a threat to us but might be mad about something else. But still, fuck that corner. Thanks for the awesome podcast.

Stay sexy and trust your cat, Taylor. And the next of Taylor in parentheses that says, girl, Taylor girl, Taylor's a female. Taylor girl. Taylor girl. That's a good story. That's right. Trust your cats. Oh my God, that's upsetting.

To fucking sleepwalk and then wake up in the basement in the corner. In the bad corner. I woke up and I had to walk to the pod loft, which is a relatively like spirit-free safe place. I would be freaked out. Oh yeah. No, no, no. There's no good place.

You can sleepwalk to the freezer where all the ice cream is and still be freaking the fuck out. Right. But to the fucking corner where your cat was kissing at? To the Blair Witch corner where the bad children go right before they're murdered or fucking killed. Exactly. At 3 or 4 a.m.

That's right. Yay! And the subject line is haunted elevator with a surprise celebrity cameo. Love it. Love it. Love it. And how about this? Hi everybody.

Perfect. Thank you. That's creative though sometimes. Love it. Love everything about it. Oh my God. That's the first line. That's the best.

Beautiful. Okay. So my hometown in Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown is Atlanta, Georgia and my hometown murder forward slash ghost story also happens to include the single most bizarre encounter in my life. Back in 1994, my mother remarried into an extremely wealthy Jewish family when she married ... Get it girl.

... my stepdad. Get it. And stack it up. My new family and I come from vastly different backgrounds, don't know if you ladies have watched the show Shameless, but the character Mickey Milokovic is a male version of me when I was coming up, if you haven't seen the show, I was on my way to being a piece of convict garbage, no offense to a convicted felon. Anyway, on the first night of Hanukkah 2002, my family celebrated at my step-grandmother's

home. She lives in a high-rise and an uber-wealthy part of Buckhead and her building has elevators you can only use after the front attendant has given you clearance. Oh, I get it. Love it. Fancy. My stepdad, Andy, is my usual sidekick at family functions, but he wasn't feeling well that night, so he didn't attend the party.

Without him, I felt out of place and ended up hanging out. That's so sweet. Her stepdad was her sidekick. I know. That's very sweet. I felt out of place and ended up hanging out with one of the concierge staff in the downstairs lobby. We were shooting the shit, drinking some booze.

Love it. I'd smuggled down from the party when I started hearing a consistent dinging sound coming from the elevator from a side corner of the lobby. It sounded like somebody was pressing the button to open and close the elevator but wasn't getting off for whatever weird reason. I looked over and could see the doors opening or closing and the lights inside flickering on and off. I asked the attendant if the elevator was broken and he casually responded, no, it's

just haunted. He told me that a few years earlier, a bloody man had run screaming into the building after being shot in an altercation down the street and had collapsed and died in the elevator. Apparently, the guy who had been the perpetrator was trying to run from the police but didn't make it very far. The guy had been the perpetrator and was trying to run from police but didn't make it very far. The attendant told me that ever since the death, the elevator had behaved strangely no

matter how many times they had had it serviced. The doors opened and closed on its own and it acted like it had a mind of its own, taking tenants to random floors, going up them all the way back down without opening the door. Going up then all the way back down without opening the door and generally being pretty creepy. I thought the attendant was just pulling my leg and I told him I thought he was full of shit when a pleasant British voice chimed in behind me saying, oh no, that's Elevator's most definitely haunted and I refused to use it.

I turned around to see who else believed this bullshit, only to see it was Elton fucking John standing there, wearing a blue, a pair of blue pajamas and one of those stocking cap hat things that you might expect to see on an elf. Wait, Stephen is laughing so hard right now. Stephen, did you write this as a prank? This is insane. You found it and you were like, I have to give this to them and you're, he's laughing in a way that he's like excited.

Oh, it's so good. It's so good. You gotta love a celebrity cameo. This is an epic. After a second of me staring at him while I tried to process what I was seeing, he gave me a cute little head nod and wandered off down a side hallway. That's the story of how I learned that Elton John lives in my step-grandmother's building, that he believes the Elevator's haunted and that he has some sweet ass pajamas.

Cheers, Amber. P.S., my step-dad is my personal hero and best friend and without him, I wouldn't be half of who I am today. He listens to the podcast with me sometimes, so on the off chance this was read, I wanted to add that to the record. Why am I crying so much this episode? That's lovely. Amber, that's very sweet.

Amber. And a great fucking story. That's beautiful. I'm so happy for you, Amber. Amber. Good job. We all deserve that. Your mother deserved it.

You, your mother, and she found a wonderful man. She's a wonderful man. It didn't matter if he had money, it helps. It doesn't. It helps. That's why my mom would say it doesn't hurt. Never hurts. It never hurts.

Okay. This is called Friendly Ghost Story, Chicago. Hi, MFM fan. Thank you so much for making Ghost Story's fair game for minisodes because I have been so excited to share this little ghost story that has been passed through generations of my family. Sweet. It's been passed.

Okay, here it is. So it was smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression in Chicago, and my great-grandpa was struggling, like everyone else, to provide food and shelter for his wife and several small children. One day he heard word that a local bank had a job available. He immediately dropped what he was doing and sprinted to the bank, but already a huge crowd of men had gathered who all wanted the job. And then it says in parentheses, what, I've messed up time.

It really was. Tell me about it. No women? Could work there? Okay. They worked for hours but never made it to the front of the line, and eventually the boss man from the bank announced that the job had been filled and they should all go home.

Totally defeated, my great-grandpa went to the local pub. Sure. And then it says, good for you, grandpa. As he was sitting, drinking a beer, the man sat down next to him at a bar. He ordered a drink and they got to talking. After several minutes of chatting, the man out of the blue goes, you should go back to the bank. They have a job available.

My great-grandpa was like, no, I was just there and they hired someone else. The man was like, nope, they have a job available. And my great-grandpa was like, no, they don't. This continues and I guess my great-grandpa was pretty annoyed with the guy. Eventually he was like, fine, whatever, I'll go back. He thought that the guy was completely bonkers but something in him made him walk back to the bank. Like expected, when he got back, it was bank business as usual.

There was no crowd and the posting for the job had been taken down. He was about to turn around and leave when the bank doors opened and the bank boss man is ushering someone out. Then he pointed to my great-grandpa and said, you here for the job? My great-grandpa was in shock but somehow pulled himself together enough to ace an interview and get hired. Turns out that the guy, the boss man, was ushered outside, was the one they had originally hired but something didn't work out.

As soon as my great-grandpa was done with the paperwork at the bank, he ran back to the pub because he wanted to find the man who sat next to him to thank him for somehow knowing the bank job would be open again. You're crying already. I'm going to cry. But when he got back, the man was gone. He asked the bartender, did you know the man who was sitting next to me, I need to find him.

The bartender said, I don't know what you're talking about. There wasn't been anybody sitting next to you. Sorry. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I thought you were crazy because you were talking to yourself the whole time. No. My great-grandpa was totally confused as he walked home.

My family is convinced that that bank job saved him and his family and so also my mom, my siblings and me. My Irish Catholic family thinks the mysterious man was an angel, but I don't know, friendly ghost seems more likely to me. Stay sexy and always do what your friendly pub ghost tells you to do, Bridget. Can I say, Bridget, what I think it was? Because in the Great Depression and the crash of 1929, all those bankers killed themselves. And I bet you as a fucking banker from that bank, and it's the reason one of the jobs

was open and he fucking went there. It was his job. It was his job or his bank. Because why would he even be in there that bank or no or haunt that bank? I love it. Scary. I love it. I should have said that one for last.

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Uh-oh. Hey Georgia, Karen, Stephen and all animals, multiple L's, huge round of the show and since it's October, I'm re-listening to last year's ghost stories, they put little squiggly lines in the episode. In the event you do something similar this year or a creepy mini-sode sometime, I hope you find this creepy too. I was born and raised in a very small town in New Hampshire, home of good old H.H. Holmes. Back in the early 1900s, our property was a summer camp for boys, already terrifying.

Just the worst idea. The smells everywhere. Our houses, our houses foundation was literally built around the old swimming pool. In our front yard, the concrete from the pool was covered with stones, but as the years passed, they fell off and revealed more paint from the pool. There was also, there's also weird things on our property, like a set of old wooden stairs built into a huge hill on just one side. No.

Creepy. We had a good amount of land. It's over there. I don't know. And in the backyard, my dad cleared it out to create bike trails and jumps for us. Right. Anyways, when I was probably 12, my friend and I were riding our bikes and rode all the way down to where the clearing ended and the woods began.

At the same exact time, we both came to a sudden stop and skidded off our bikes, basically staring at the woods wondering what in the creepy ass hell we were looking at. Right at the tree line, there was a boy staring back at us who looked to be around nine years old. It was very dirty with shaggy brown hair. He was completely naked, except for a shirt made out of fabric. Other than the makeshift shirt, skirt. It says skirt, not shirt.

Okay. Can I? He's naked, but he's wearing a little skirt. Yeah. Okay. Like a wild boy. I like that better than if he was wearing a shirt with no pants like Porky Pig. Yeah.

Like naked from the waist down, little boy. That's bad back. No, no, no, no. That's emergency situation. Skirt. Okay. Skirt. Okay.

That's a grass skirt. Other than a makeshift skirt made out of fabric. Okay. So probably old timey. Still. All he had was a dog that was already running away from us. He started us for a good 30 seconds before gently shaking his head. I don't know if I would call it a nod, and then he ran after his dog.

We both freaked out, ran back home to tell our parents who believed us enough to go and check the woods, but obviously didn't see anything. I never saw him again, but it's always stuck with me. There's always been weird things that have happened at my house. Two of my other friends from childhood have said they thought my house was creepy too. No shit. Yeah. I looked into my house as much as I could.

All I really found was evidence of a wealthy businessman back in the day opening a camp that was for boys to teach them about hunting, archery, etc. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. No. After that, I can't find anything else. I even worked for my town's historical department, but they can't find much more either. My town is small, everyone knows everyone, and whose kids are whose.

There's no missing children at the time, or ever basically. It wasn't any of my neighbors or classmates, and I've never seen that kind of dog before around town. No. I'd like to think it's a boy from the camp that either died there or ran away and died and was a, and then squiggly lines, ghost. Thanks for reading. Stay sexy.

Don't get murdered. It was a ghost. It was a ghost. It was a little boy ghost who, like, is living his best life, like, best ghost life out in the woods. A wild child. He's got his fucking trusty hound with him. But why is he nodding his head?

He's just like, yep, you saw me. Oh, he was yes nodding? He said, it wasn't like a yes. He said, I nodded, nodded his head. I don't know if I would call it a nod. Oh, shaking his head. I don't know if I would call it a nod. Shaking his head is creepy.

Shaking is like, stay away from this for, uh-huh, or something. They're not supposed to be here. Because what if that, you know what that reminds me of is Fox Island, which is in the, um, Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Is that the Michigan Killers? What is it? The Oakland? Uh, Oakland Child Killer, and that was that weird connection to, they started an underprivileged

boys camp on an island where they flew kids in. The kids couldn't get back off the island. Most of the kids were underprivileged in some way, and they fucking were molesting them and making kiddie porn. Kiddie porn, to fucking just have their, oh. Yes. And it, like, wealthy fucking, oh my God, this is like, it's the 40s version, but back when no one would have reported it.

And it goes to the fucking top. It goes to the top. It goes all the way to the top. Oh my God. What if that wealthy businessman who started that fucking camp for boys was named H. H. Holmes. Oh. It was his first pass.

Do you have another one? Also, why would you build, yes, I do, um, why would you build? No. You're a pool. No, no, no. No. There's not all sorts of problems. It's foundationally and, and spiritually.

Earthquakely? Earthquakely? Spiritually? Foundationally? Okay, wait, give me one second, because this one. Yes. Okay. My last one here, the subject line is a ghost saved my life.

Right? Oh, am I going to cry? It might as well say a love letter to Karen, who we are. It's my favorite. I love it. Listen to this shit. That's how it starts. That is how it's done.

Yeah. Listen to this shit. On New Year's Eve, when I was six months old, my parents laid me down for bed one night and went on about their business. About two hours later, my dad heard this loud but beautiful whistling. Huh? It being the eighties, he was forced to get up and turn down the TV as we didn't have a remote in parentheses, which they still tell me to this day is the reason they had

me to change the channel. As the whistling continued, my dad went to their bedroom to see how the hell my mom could whistle like that, but he found she was dead asleep. Oh my God. You said dead and I was like, she was dead. That was a sleep. Yeah. Dramatic warning.

Okay. She woke her up to ask if it was her and upon realizing it wasn't, then rushed to my room. They rushed to my room. Your daughter's an amazing whistler. A baby whistler. A baby whistler. My room was ice cold, but I was drenched in sweat. When they took my temperature, it was 105.4.

Holy shit. Needless to say, I was at the ER in minutes. Once there, they did a spinal tap, ice bath and x-ray of my chest, which they found my lungs filled with pneumonia. The doctors told my parents how lucky they were to have brought me because I could have been dead within hours if not for them checking on me. Fast forward to the fourth of July where our next-door neighbors were throwing a pool party. My dad started talking to the wife who had lived there for 30 years and out of curiosity

asked about the previous tenants of the house. Her eyes lit up when talking about the mother who lived and died next door. According to my dad, her exact words were, quote, she was a beautiful woman with several children. Everyone loved her. You see, back in the day, we didn't have air conditioning. So we would leave the windows open to let the breeze in and you could hear her whistling the most beautiful song to her children at night.

Needless to say, my dad shit his pants at that point and probably had a look of shock and horror on his face. Then she started to smile and said, she's still there, isn't she? Without knowing anything about our situation, she went on to explain that unfortunately she stopped whistling when her newborn daughter passed away from pneumonia. No. No. No.

She didn't let whistling old ladies go save your life, Laura. Oh my God, I have full body chills. I don't care if this is fake. It's great writing and if it's real, even better. Oh my God. Isn't that, I mean, dude, 100 percent. Distant beautiful whistling in and of itself is insanely creepy. Yeah.

Yeah. But. But then. Gorgeous. Also a baby. She's still there, isn't she? A baby having pneumonia and then 30 years later, another baby having pneumonia is like maybe dismantle that side of the house.

There's something in the, there's something in the walls or something. Absolutely. Right. Put your baby to sleep in the kitchen from now on. Please. Yeah. Move that crib over by the microwave. Sorry.

Then the microwave starts going off. Look at you and your whistle. Isn't that the most beautiful pneumonia whistling you've ever heard? That was beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. Touching. Touching.

Feeling. Whistling. Whistling. Loving. Oil. Learning. Tasing. Send us your stories at my favorite murder at Gmail and you know, yeah.

And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. I'll miss you. Want a cookie? Of course.