Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Mushrooms Drove Him INSANE - The Thomas Chan Story

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Thomas Chan is a Canadian man from Peterborough, Ontario, who was convicted in 2018 for the 2015 stabbing death of his father, Dr. Andrew Chan, and the assault of his father's partner, Lynn Witteveen. The incident occurred after Thomas consumed a large quantity of magic mushrooms and meditated to enhance the hallucinatory effects.

Have you ever heard of someone taking mushrooms and then getting violent? Well, the story starts with this guy, Thomas. And Thomas is a 19-year-old college student living in Canada. And Thomas has a problem. He apparently has a messed up brain. He's a former rugby player and he got a bunch of concussions over the years that supposedly screwed him up. Well, one night in 2015, these brain injuries allegedly finally catch up to him.

because he's back home from college for the winter break, and he ends up reconnecting with some of his former high school buddies. And, you know, they all go out to a local sports bar, and they hang out, and they have a couple of beers, and they watch a hockey game. And so they're there, and they're drinking and watching the game. But eventually, I guess they get bored with that, and the group decides that they want to have a different kind of fun. So one of them comes up with a crazy idea.

And he's like, let's pull our money together and get a bag of mushrooms. and do them in Thomas's basement. And everyone's like, hell yeah, great idea, bro. So they hit up a local dealer that they know and they get the bag of mushrooms and they head over to Thomas' mom's house where he is staying.

Then they go to the basement and they pass around the bag and they each take a dose from the bag and they eat it and then they wait. And around an hour passes. And by this time, the drugs are kicking in and they're all starting to feel the effects and they're laughing and they're vibing

and they're having a real good time and whatnot. Everyone except for Thomas. Thomas isn't feeling anything at all. He's just kind of sitting there watching everyone else have fun. Now, he's a big guy with a bigger body mass. So he starts thinking, oh, maybe that's why I'm not feeling anything. And so he decides he wants to take more. So he reaches into the bag and he eats a handful more.

And after a bit of time, boom, it finally hits him. And now he's laughing and vibe in and having a good. time like the others, which is great because now they're all on the same wavelength and they all go for a walk and they play video games and they just, you know, hang out in the basement and they trip. But around 2 a.m., something changes. Thomas starts acting different. And the theory is that the mushrooms start interacting negatively with Thomas's brain, which had been injured from all those concussions from playing rugby in the past. And so Thomas starts getting agitated and he looks angry and he starts ranting and going off in gibberish that none of his friends understand.

And his friends, they can see that something is clearly wrong with him. Like he's not just dripping hard. He's not making any sense at all. Then Thomas gets paranoid and he tells his friends that he's scared and he leaves the basement and he runs upstairs. Now upstairs is his mom's room and she's home and she's in her bed asleep with her boyfriend. And so Thomas runs into mom's room and he flips on the light and I ask. soon this wakes her and her boyfriend up, and Thomas, he just sits on the floor and chills.

And mom, she's tired. She doesn't want to deal with his shenanigans. So she's like, turn off the light! But Thomas doesn't. So mom gets out of bed really quick to turn off the light and she's naked. I guess she sleeps naked. And Thomas, he doesn't react or respond to her lack of clothing at all. So now she knows something is wrong. Then Thomas, still tripping out, he goes to his room and his mom follows to check on him. And all this commotion wakes Thomas's sister up. And this is when things start to get really wild. Because apparently Thomas starts seeing his mom and sister as demons.

And this makes him go even crazier. And Thomas starts yelling at his mom and calling her Satan and calling her the devil. And she's trying to calm him down. Then he's yelling at the both of them, mom and sister. and he's shining his phone's flashlight on them and calling them the devil. Then Thomas says, I'm going to go to my dad's house. His parents are divorced, but his dad only lives like a block away. So he's going to go there.

And mom and sister, they try to block the door to prevent him from leaving. But boom, Thomas just shoves them out of the way, and he sprints outside into the cold. And he's completely barefoot and shirtless, and it's December in Canada. It's like snowing outside and freezing. And poor mom, she tries running after him. him with a jacket, but he's too fast, and she eventually loses sight of him. Then one of Thomas's friends, who we'll just call friend, I assume friend is like still high on mushrooms, and he jumps into a car along with mom and mom's boyfriend, and they make the one-minute

drive to Thomas's dad's house. And when they pull onto dad's street, they see Thomas standing outside of this random neighbor's house. And so friend, he gets out of the car and he approaches Thomas and he gives him a jacket and he starts talking to him and trying to calm him down. But Thomas is not calm. He starts shouting and at some point during all this madness, he goes into such a psychotic state that he started thinking that he's some kind of God. And he yells, I am God. Nobody can stop me. And he starts cursing friend out and trying to fight him. So friend goes back in the car and Thomas follows him. And Thomas is still mad and he picks up a rock and boom, he smashes it against the driver's side window.

Then boom, he hits it a second time. And again, boom, and the window finally shatters. And everyone in the car is all freaking out, and they're like, we need to call 911. But no one has a phone. It seems like they left the house so fast that none of them grabbed their phones. And so they leave, and they drive back to mom's house. While Thomas, he runs over to his dad's house. And there, he finds a window, and he gets into the house that way.

And he walks through the place up to his dad's bedroom, and pow, he kicks down the bedroom door. And it's 3 a.m. So his dad is asleep next to Dad's girlfriend. And Thomas yells, this is the day of reckoning! And then he starts hallucinating that both of them are the devil, and he freaks out even more. And so he runs away, straight to the kitchen. And Dad is like, what the fuck? And he jumps out of bed, and he follows after him into the kitchen.

And bam, Dad grabs him, and he tries to subdue him. But unfortunately, Dad is no match for Thomas. Like I said, Thomas is a former rugby player, he's a big dude, and he's real strong. And that is when he declares that he's doing his God's will and that this is a house of Satan, and he grabs a kitchen knife, and bam, he stabs Dad. And then he stabs him again and again and again. And unfortunately, this unalives him. Then Thomas turns on dad's girlfriend who's there, and she runs away back to the bedroom,

and Thomas chases after her, and she quickly picks up the phone and she tries to call 911, but boom, he attacks her with the knife too. Meanwhile, mom and sister, they've gotten their phones, and they're in the car speeding back to Dad's house, and Sister keeps calling Dad over and over to warn him that Thomas is flipping out and acting crazy, but of course, Dad isn't picking up. And so they get to his house, and mom and sister try ringing the doorbell like a million times, and they hear a bunch of shouting inside, but no one is coming to the door. So mom and sister call the police.

And so pretty quickly, police arrive, and bam, they arrest Thomas. And I don't have a mug shot, but here's a picture of him in real life. Meanwhile, Dad's girlfriend is rushed to the hospital, and she has to undergo multiple surgeries, and she even loses her right eye, but luckily she survives. And so Thomas, he has this whole trial, and he's ultimately found guilty of manslaughter, and he's sentenced to five years in prison. And then after that, there's like a battle in appeals court for a long while, and anyway, he's out now.