My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 182

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a death on a plane and a ghost town (on fire).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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The mini-soad. It's mini. It's the sow. Monday. Let's. Grab a sowed. Do it. Did anyone you know ever call beers, road sodas?

No. Take it on your way to a party? That's drinking and driving. Oh. No. That's my special, my special group of alcoholics that you do that. Sounds like a Sacramento thing. It's very flood plain behavior for sure.

Road soda. Road soda. You have to drink on your way places because what if you get caught there in reality? Oh my God. Did you guys do beer funds? Beer funds. What's that? It's when like we're about to go get beer and like everyone needs to put in beer funds.

Beer funds. Everyone throws money in. And then you stand outside a grocery store or liquor store and find an older person willing to buy you liquor or booze. Hell yeah. We did that a lot. Yeah. I told you the story of us walking up.

Plea honestly stopped me and Steven could take this out if I told you this before. But in high school we did this thing one time where it was the Alpha Beta Shopping Center. So it was actually kind of a really big shopping center. Alpha Beta. Alpha Beta was a very 70s, early 80s grocery store with a weird, did you guys have Alpha Beta? We had an Alpha Beta. Yeah.

And it was like, it was a rainbow but it was earth tones. It couldn't have been more like 1978. So we're in the Alpha Beta Shopping Center, me and my friend Christine and like a bunch of other friends, but Christine and I are the ones that are on task and we have like $60 that we've collected for everybody. $60 in beer funds. In beer funds, right. And we, some kid that we didn't know, but was clearly another high school like junior

or senior trying to get liquors, like you should go over there. There's guys over there that'll buy for you. So we walk over to the scousiest looking station wagon that's like, the tires are kind of flat. It's way too low to the ground. And there's two dudes in it that look like they live on a riverbank. Like it was insanely sketchy. And we just immediately lean and we're like, Hey, will you buy liquor for us?

And they're like, totally. We lean in and start listing off all of the different liquors and flavors of wine, but get the peach, the fuzzy peach, not the regular peach. But if they don't have regular peaches, you can get peppermint schnopps, always get peppermint schnopps. Right. We, we gave our order for literally five minutes. The guys looking up like, uh-huh, like after a while, he's just thinks it's funny.

And he goes, sounds good, takes the money. They throw it into reverse and drive away. Yeah, of course they do. Just without even pausing. It was so hilarious and borderline dangerous. They were like, Oh guys, nowadays your parents just buy it for you. No. That's yeah.

Anyways. Are you ready? Yeah. Let's tell stories. The subject line of this is hostile haunting. Hey everyone, I have a ghost story for you. I've had weird experiences with the supernatural throughout my life, starting when I was really little, and things slowed down as I got older.

They always do, but haven't completely stopped. One year in college, I went to Chicago with some of my classmates for spring break. We stayed at a hostel as thrifty college kids do and all was well until I was getting ready for bed the first night. After getting out of the shower, I noticed some small strange dark marks in various places on my legs. They wouldn't wipe off and they didn't hurt, but it unsuccessfully wracked my brain trying to think of what I'd done in previous days that would have caused them.

Nothing came to mind. I just shrugged it off and went to bed. The next morning when I woke up, the marks were a little darker. I thought it was super weird, but I just tried to ignore it and enjoy my trip. By the end of the following day, I had full blown hand prints up and down both legs, concentrated more on my calves and shins. I freaked out and started crying. When I showed my friends, I could tell they were all freaked out too, but didn't want

to scare me more. A friend reassured me by saying that if it was a ghost, they probably would have already hurt me if they actually wanted to. Thanks, friend. Thanks best friend. This is, that's so me, you're clamoring for some words of comfort, so you just say whatever pops into your head and don't really think about it first. This is comfort, I'm sure of it.

I'm not sure if that actually made me feel better or not, but nothing worse happened and the bruises faded after we went back home. I don't remember the name of the hostel we stayed at, so I can't really Google its history, but I'm still curious about what that building could have been before it was a hostel. I think someone said it was a girl's boarding school, which would also explain the smaller than average size of the hand prints, but I can't confirm that. I feel like a hostel is haunted enough, like it doesn't need to be anything else. Anyway, stay sexy and teach social distancing to your ghosts, Shannon.

Creepy. You know what? Tiny hand prints. What I would have said if I was, if I was Shannon's trying to be comforting, but actually very insensitive friend, I would have said, I, it's probably not a ghost, it's probably a really little guy that's coming in and just touching your couch. It's probably a tiny demon, it's fine, don't worry about it. I think it's a, it's a grad student from down the hall that's just got real tiny little

baby hands. It's a ghost baby demon grad student with baby tiny hands, don't worry about it. Calf fetish. Right. For you. So it's fine. It's a compliment. It's a compliment.

You have great calves. Oh, that's a good story. Yeah. You should look it up. Someone tell us. Yeah. What that means. That hostiles.

What hostiles means. Okay. This one's just called hometown story. So, uh, here we go. My uncle has spent his whole life working in the British music industry, mostly working gigs and managing bands. Ooh. Fun.

When are they? I know. One late night in the eighties, my uncle was driving home from work in his van. He was slow getting home. So he stopped by a pay phone to call my grandparents and let them know he'd be home late. That night he woke up to cops ramming down his door. He was promptly arrested on suspicion of extortion and kidnapping. Turns out some rich guy's daughter was kidnapped for ransom and was expected to negotiate at

that exact pay phone around the time my clueless uncle showed up, van and all. After searching my uncle's mini cottage on the edge of my grandparents' property, the police realized they had the wrong guy. My uncle probably could have made some sweet cash out of being falsely arrested and searched without a warrant. But alas, they made an agreement to pretend it never happened due to the massive bag of weed hidden under his bed. Just as well, they didn't search my grandparents.

As my grandpa was in the possession of an unregistered pistol, he'd stolen from under the pillow of a murderous chef working at his restaurant. What? My grandpa had a few shifty restaurants near his sister's brothel. So there were a few wild things going on there. I'll save that for another time. You guys are an integral part of grounding myself when I'm drenched in sweat post PTSD nightmares.

I want to thank you for gently and hilariously reminding me that it could be worse and normalizing getting help. We should all feel safe to discuss therapy and meds. Bless K. Oh, K. K identifies as she, her, also. Okay. I just want to say that whole family should be arrested and put in prison.

Or. Or they are best friends now. Or should they be our best friends? Or. Or they should open a pot store. Right. Here's another idea. A hostel.

Hey. Hey. A hostel with a sketchy restaurant at the bottom and a weed store on the top. And a brothel close by. Amen. Okay. Um, the subject line of this is, well, it gives it all away. I'll just read the introduction as whatever the greeting is, my favorite badass podcasting

babes. I first want to start off by saying thank you for always keeping me sane. I've been listening to your podcast for a few years now and it's gotten me through the hell that is nursing school. Ah, yeah. Good job. We need you. As someone who works in a psychiatric unit, I always love Karen's stories about her badass

nurse mom. Uh, head nurse, by the way. Now enough about me. Let's get to the real reason I'm writing you guys. In the 80s, my dad was in his early 20s and just like Steven, he had a killer mustache. My dad at the time would go out to Colorado to work at my uncle's ranch. My dad was dating my mom at the time who lived in Illinois. So on an off week, my dad boarded what he thought would be a routine late night flight

home. Little did he know it was far from that. My dad boarded greeted his seat neighbor and sat down expecting to sleep the whole flight home. Shortly after my dad fell asleep, he woke up to a commotion in the row in front of him. The flight attendants were surrounding an elderly woman and her family trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly the flight attendants ask, is there a doctor on board?

Turns out the man sitting next to my dad was an ER doctor. He jumped up and took my dad with him. And while the doctor tended to the woman, my dad stood there in shock and became his assistant. According to the family, the woman had many illnesses and was very sick. Unfortunately, she passed. After everything was wrapped up, my dad and the doctor went back to their seats. Neither of them had ever dealt with death on a plane.

So they just assumed everything would be handled when they landed. Nope. The plane took an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere, so my dad and the doctor could sign a death certificate. What? They list the dad first. It's like, I think the doctor signed the death certificate and her dad was the witness. Oh my God.

When the plane landed, my dad and the doctor were escorted off by airplane police. And then in parentheses, I don't know their official title. I think an air marshal, right? Sure. To an office to file the paperwork. My dad assumed they would also take the body off the plane when they landed, but he was wrong again. When they boarded back onto the plane, the woman was still sitting in her chair.

This time she was propped up and wrapped in one of those thin airplane blankets. It looked like a weekend at Bernie's situation, according to my dad. The plane took off and landed safely in Illinois, where the woman was finally taken off the plane by the coroner. The best part of this is the coroner used the airplane blanket to cover the body while carrying her out. My dad was safely reunited with my mom, whom he eventually convinced to road trip back with him at the end of the week.

My dad has many crazy dead body stories, but this one is my favorite. Stay sexy and make sure you're not sitting next to a doctor on the plane. Thank you for all you do, Rachel. Can you imagine being like, well, that didn't work. Let's go back to our seats. What the fuck? Yeah. That's so heavy.

That's so heavy. Also, I love that the dad thought they would leave the body. It's like, sorry, she paid that ticket. You have to take her. She needs to go where she needs to go. Can you bring her backstage? Is there a backstage? There's no backstage.

The poor woman is just sitting there while snacks are being served. There's just one spot. Yeah, sorry. Those pretzels aren't going to taste too good this time. You know what? You can have someone you get off the plane. It's so, it's a lot. It's dark.

This one, I'm not going to say the name of it, but this is one of my favorite ill-fated town stories that I've just been obsessed with my whole life. So it starts high all. Since we're all into underground ghost towns these days, I thought I'd give you the opposite, a ghost town that has been on fire for over 50 years. What? I grew up near Centrelia. Centrelia?

I grew up near Centrelia, Pennsylvania, a town that was once a busy town with a booming coal mining industry. It is possible the town itself was doomed from the start when in 1868 its founder, Alexander Ray, was murdered in a routine buggy ride to a nearby town. His death was attributed to a gang of Mollie McGuire's, which is a secret society of Irish immigrant activists. I don't know why I'm pointing at you. You know, like you, Karen.

My people, yes. Yeah. Though they may have been framed by owners of the mines who feared the Mollies would unionize their workers. And then it just says in parentheses, America. Cut to 100 years later in 1962 when the town decided to clean up the local dump ahead of Memorial Day celebrations. In true 1960s fashion, the method for cleaning the landfill was to set it on fire.

No. Unlike in previous years, they were not able to put the fire out. The coal veins under the dump caught fire. It spread underground to other coal veins and eventually to the many abandoned mine tunnels and coal deposits under the entire town. There's fucking video of this online. You can see it. Officials attempted to put out the fire, but it was nearly impossible to determine which

of the many tunnels and veins were feeding the fire. For years, the fire burned on. The temperature of the ground became nearly 900 degrees and smoke and steam would pour from cracks in the ground, sinkholes, and even residents' basements. In 1981, a 12-year-old boy fell into a steaming sinkhole that had suddenly opened in his backyard. This has everything. I mean, this story. But also, they still lived, I mean, it's like, they're like, well, where do we go?

This is our whole town. This is our fucking town. It's not my house is on fire underground. It's the whole fucking place. Earth. Our earth is on fire. Our earth. Our little piece of earth.

Yeah. We're simmering. His cousin pulled him out of the hole, which was billowing hot steam with lethal levels of carbon monoxide. So he survived. Lots of centella were divided on whether the fire posed a true risk, as many did not want to relocate from their hometown. After the sinkhole incident, 1,000 people were relocated, and 500 structures were demolished.

It was very painful chapter for these residents, and even a few stayed behind, and five or so remain today. Whoa. Fucking fire ghost town. I mean, growing up, we would drive through. Their skin looks amazing. The steam is like, open the pores. Growing up, we would drive through Centrilla to see the eerie steam and smoke arising from

the ground at the cemetery. Fuck. Today, it looks like an overgrown field with mysterious cracked and buckling roads paved through the foundations of some homes hinting to a past not forgotten. It is less common now to see the smoke as it is possible the fire is nearly burned out or migrated underground, but the apocalyptic aura remains. Stay sexy and don't burn trash, mo. Or mo.

M-O-W. Amazing. Don't burn trash. Oh. God, I would love to see video of that from when it was at its height, because I think that there's a video game. Is it Silent Hill that's based on, they designed the landscape of that video game based on that city?

Whoa. This is definitely like. Yeah, no, they did. They did. Wow. That's right. I just thought, yeah. Woo.

Millennial. So good. That's so great. I think there's like 80s video, like Geraldo Rivera did a special on it or some shit, and I just remember seeing it and being like. I'm totally looking. Fire ghost town. When I was just home in Petaluma, we, one night, because my cousin Stevie and Kim came

over and we all ate dinner, and we all started telling stories about the dump, which is where you, like, because we lived so far out in the country, there was no garbage pickup. You had to take your own garbage to the dump. Amazing. And it was like a thing that we did like once a month. My dad always be like, want to go to the dumps with me? And you always say yes, because it was like a, you know, poor people's amusement park, essentially.

And it was like, that's, that's when I started getting obsessed with like what would eventually be vintage stores. Yeah. But at the time I would stand on the, on the edge of that big pit. Did you go through things? What if there's something down there? Well, no, it was like a 30 foot drop between where you pull, because it was old school dump where you, my dad would back the truck up to the edge of this pit and you just dump

everything out. Like lovely bones. All together. Lovely bone style. Exactly. But I mean. Frigerators and stuff. Well, there was this, it was a city run thing.

So you couldn't dump paint there and there was like a slightly extra area. But in the 70s, it was like, go put whatever you want out there like it's have at. Sometimes it caught on fire. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it would be treasure. Remember? It was like scans. Remember they would have, well, at least where I'm from in Orange County, they would have

a, like at the new year, they'd have a Christmas tree fire. Everyone bought their Christmas trees. I only remember this once. So maybe it really didn't go well, but and we're Jewish. So like we didn't have anything to bring. I think we just went to watch the Christmas tree fire. Sure. Like a bonfire.

Yeah. It sounds like. But like a huge fucking towering thing of Christmas trees. Missus smelled amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Your turn. Your turn? Lasties. Okay. Yeah. I love you, Centralia. Good job, Centralia.

I love you. I mean, what a. Oh, truly. If you ever want to make up a place where you're from, do that. Centralia. It's me. It's me. I'm from Centralia.

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And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people

led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This is the subject line of this is a kid say the darndest thing story lighthearted. So I was listening to the Minnesota about the girl who told her teacher, my dad beat me and I immediately chuckled because there's some because something similar happened to me. My mother parentheses, a badass trauma ICU nurse who worked on the south side of Chicago

while I was growing up, holy shit. Just a warrior props to all Chicago nurses was at work one day when I was very young leaving me at home with my dad. My dad was swinging me around in circles, my dad was swinging me around in circles in our backyard when pop goes my elbow dislocating it. Also known as a nurse maids elbow, a fairly common injury in younger children. We're so they're so pliable little kids. They really are.

My dad told me that I looked at him in horror and screamed, you broke my arm, which was my first full sentence according to my dad. So she's a little enough baby to that's like to yeah, but it's like first sentence area and broke my friends is screaming you broke my arm, which was my dad freaked out and called my mom who told him to simply take me to the ER so they can pop it back into place. I can't she keeps screaming you broke my arm. You're going to think I'm beating her, my dad frantically replied. My mother ended up clocking out for lunch driving home popping my arm back into place

in a matter of seconds and leaving to finish her shift. My mom was always calm in emergency situations like when my dad cut the tip of his finger off in a sausage grinder or when she saved a man from choking to death at a fish fry by performing CPR. She's incredible and the reason both my younger brother and I are now ER nurses. Holy shit, it's a dynasty, except for your dad, but what except for your dad, your dad, he's useless. He runs a business breaking children's arms.

He runs a child's mafia business. It's pretty adorable actually. It's actually they only borrow quarters from each other precious. You guys are the absolute fucking best. Thank you for being you, Gina. I love that. I love that story. That's a great one.

I love that story. Send us those, you guys. Send us nurse nurse mom stories. Always send nurse mom stories. Also if you send us a story and you talk about your mother, father, grandpa, grandma, please tell us their names. That's right. Please.

Well, speaking of grandpa, I have one and I don't think his name's in this. That's okay. Oh, also, what about if you ever found anything amazing at the dump in the seventies or eighties, I would like to hear that story because that's my dream. Amazing. Or horrible. Yeah. I mean, like absolutely horrible or, you know, creepy or whatever.

But like if you have a good dump, going to the dump story, people who live out in the country, I'm talking to you, let's hear them. If there's like a town dump rumor, we want to hear about that. Yeah. Okay. This one, I'm not going to read the title. It just says, hi, no bullshit. Just hi.

This happened to a friend of mine, I've never been so jealous. His grandfather on his mother's side was getting up in years and developed dementia. He started telling wild stories of exotic countries he'd visited for work and crazy investigations he'd conducted there. Following doctors orders, when he got into these stories, his family had to reorient him by saying, no, grandpa, you worked for the phone company, remember? As an engineer, you traveled a little, but only in this country. So they just completely ruined his hopes and dementia dreams.

They just negated his whole fantasy. Right. Fast forward a few months and grandpa sadly passed away. While cleaning out his house and moving his belongings, his children lifted up the mattress to find all caps, his fucking CIA badge and identification. What? Yep. All those stories were 100% true.

He did work for the Bell Atlantic phone company, but it was unclear to his family whether the CIA had assigned him there to assist with phone tapping or he started there and the CIA hired him because they thought he'd be helpful, a helpful resource. Either way. The phone company is a complete front for the CIA, phones aren't even real. It goes, I don't know where did I go? Phones aren't even real. Oh my God, my head hurts.

Either way, they started putting together weird details that suddenly made sense. For example, that he'd gone for weeks at a time, quote, lecturing, and that one time he'd had a few drinks and hypnotized slash brainwashed a woman in the middle of a party. They couldn't get any details about his work, but it's still the coolest damn thing ever. Stay sexy and don't not believe your grandpa's wild stories. Kate. Kate. Kate.

If that's true and it better be, that's the best thing of all time. Because this was my only, I flinched at the idea, what's a CIA badge? Isn't the whole thing with CIA is that no one knows you work there? Sure. I guess they wouldn't be like. Are you wearing your laminate? They don't have like a sash, like a Miss America sash. It's actually looks like a Cinnabon shirt, but it just says CIA and smell, it was smell

so good. It's one of those like auto insurance things that people stand on the arrows that guys stand on the corner and flip and stuff. But it points to you and says, I'm in the CIA. Me. That's your badge. That's your badge. Your badge is a whole guy that can do sine acrobatics.

You know what? Everyone right now make a fake CIA badge and put it under your mattress just in case something happens to you. Just in case for just to fuck with your family. Let's fucking do it. It makes sense though, because I bet you this is my theory. The way dementia usually works is your, I think your brain goes backwards in time like it erodes.

So your memory has become more and more from before. So maybe it was like he worked in his 20s or 30s or 40s or whatever in the CIA and then just kind of like went into wiretapping, which is much easier and more low key in his later years. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, that's what his brain is remembering. And he's forgotten that he's not supposed to talk about it. So he think, oh my God.

The whole part of his brain that says, X-nay, you have to put that in the vault, like the vault door opened. That's right. And then he was just like, guys, you wouldn't believe the shit I've done. Like, I loved, I'm sorry, but that's a real upside to a terrible disease. It is. Bless his heart. Send us your stories.

There's so many options at this point. If you don't have a story, send it and we'll make it, we'll start making the thing because I bet it's good. We'll throw some nouns and adjectives in and you'll be fine. That's right. Just, just a, yeah, but yeah, thank you. Just thank you and stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye.

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