Reply All - #150 The Reply All Halloween Scream-A-Thon

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

We celebrate Halloween by opening up the phone lines for your scary stories: Ghosts, Googling how to Seance, and the Mysterious Sax Man of Berkeley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Alex. Yeah. I've been thinking about how there's like a kind of story that we do. And I like that we get to do it where we'll hear about something surprising or unexplainable that's happened. And we'll go talk to the people that we're there and learn a bunch of stuff and make it make sense. Like we'll explain it. And it's a fun thing to get to do. Mm-hmm.

But there's this other kind of story, which in my real life I enjoy a lot, which are stories that cannot be made to make sense. You know the kinds of stories where it's late at night, you're talking to a friend, and you're like, do you believe in ghosts? And they're like, well, no, but there was a thing that happened one time. Yeah. And I want to do that on the show. Like, I want to do an episode of scary stories. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of iterating on that.

What do you mean a lot of iterating on that? Well, you know that I wanted to do like a soundscapey fiction horror story on our show, right? No. I think I've been protected from this information. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely wanted to do one, which was like, starts out, me in the studio, I'm like recording credits or whatever. Like, that's how the show opens. I found foot choice. Let's just, here, ready? Take one. Just do your idea. Okay. Sitting in the studio, I'm reading the credits. No, read the credits. Oh. Reply all is hosted by PJ Vote and me Alex Goldman.

The show's produced by Shruthy Pittameney, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti. then so then my wife calls and I'm like yeah I'm in the studio by myself everybody you want me to do like a bring bring bring bring yeah go ahead bring bring bring bring hey Sarah what's up yeah it's like I think I'll be home in like 20 minutes everybody else has left the studio are you fighting with me right now I just have to finish recording the credit so it'll take me 10 minutes I just have to cut them together and then bye So then I'm in the studio

I'm reading the credits again And then suddenly I hear like a sound Like a creepy sound in the hallway And like I call that I'm like hello is anybody out there you know And then do it Hello Hello

And then gradually you sound scape it So there's like a monster in the building And then I die And like you could start it with Alex Bloomberg being like Hey we found this computer in the studio Still recording We don't know where Alex is It's really fucked up

And then we play that And I'm dead. A couple weeks ago, we asked listeners for nonfiction scary stories, things that had actually happened to them. We opened up the phone lines. This is what we got. Hello? Oh, my God. Who's this?

This is Max. What's your scary story? Okay, so I have a seance story. Okay, so just before you get into it, are you like a person who's into, like, witchy, Wiccan, like, new moon ceremony type stuff or no? Not at all. In fact, I would say I don't believe in ghosts whatsoever. Okay, so how did you end up in this situation? Okay, so I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, and I had three other roommates in an old

house, and we were sitting around the table, and I don't know, someone had the idea to do a seance. Okay. And almost unanimously, we chose my one roommate to be the medium, and she said something about, like, Oh, she like Googled what you say to say on. Right? So she like did this little bit. So we were like, we had filmed it on my

MacBook. Spirits of the past. Spirits of the past. Move among us. Move among us. Be guided by the light. Be guided by the light. And so we're sitting there.

Eventually after the bit we're like sitting with our hands held. There's like five of us. And we're all just in the dark in the kitchen with candles and crystals. And it's totally quiet. And on the kitchen counter, I had a bag of change that I used to pay for the bus. And at some point, the bag of change just goes, like a group of coins in the bag kind of like just like shifted a little bit. Okay. Which like, could have been gravity. That's a sign. Can you move the change again? Uh, right? Do you come in peace?

can you please out So then like that was too much for us Seance over We just like left the room What do you think happened Okay so here's Can I like elaborate on my relationship to ghosts? Yeah

This is the time Okay so this is that's like the only time I've even slightly been convinced by ghosts But I want them to be real Like I don't believe that they're real But I am open Like whenever there's like a spooky situation I just really hope

a ghost talk to me because I'd be really excited. I think it'd be a wonderful experience to talk or like any kind of turn. Hold on. You say this, but you got to the portal. You got to the doorway.

Like your spooky cell phone rang and you didn't pick up. There was too much to handle. I think that there was some like 200 year old spirit that was like, finally I can like say who killed me or whatever and was like, and you guys were like,

yeah, never mind. Maybe you're right. Thanks, man. have a good one. All right. Bye. Hi, this is PJ and Alex. Hi.

Who's this? Nice to meet you guys. I'm Patrick. Hi, Patrick. How you doing? What's your scary story? Well, one time when I was in freshman year of college, I lived on this very social floor of my building. And we were all just hanging out one night.

It was two or three in the morning when from this other building that faces, it's not part of our college. It's just this other building. we see someone in a baby face mask just looking at us. That's so creepy. And we didn't just see it like we saw it and it was staring at us. And then the light of the room turned out. I presume the guy must have been near the light switch and it was just gone. And for like an hour on and off, this baby face guy would just stare at us.

What kind of building was this? What kind of building was this is your question? No, no. Okay, let me, let me, I'm trying to figure out, like, if there's any reason that a baby face... How thick were the windows? Patrick, can you tell him to stop it? I don't know. I love it. I like it. Oh, damn. Baby face.

What kind of building was it? My co-os needs to know. There was just a regular apartment building across from us, and I can only imagine that they just like messing with college kids. Did baby face ever appear again? No, never after that. You know, I would do that baby face thing. Yeah, I know. When I was a kid, my brother did this thing where, so you know, sometimes people on Halloween,

they'll put out the candy in a bowl and be like, please take one. Yeah. So my brother put out like a scarecrow on the front porch for like weeks before Halloween. And then on Halloween night, replaced the scarecrow with him, with straw stuffed in his shirt,

and put the bowl on his lap and said, please take one. And if anybody took more than one, he would like leap up. and terrify them. God, that's how you make an Alex Goldman. Uh-huh. That's how you make a squirly little nightmare guy.

Anyway, Patrick, thanks so much for telling us your scary story. Take care. You too. Bye-bye. You're really the worst person. I don't know if that's true. Hi, Alex and PJ. Hi.

My name is Katie. Should I tell you if I think I'm an Alex or a PJ? Are we still playing that game? Alex's new thing is he wants to know what kind of building everybody lives in. What kind of building? do you live in? A little bit scary. I live in an apartment building.

Yeah, I'm trying to be spooky by just asking people. No, he's not, he just, every story that he hears, like, we saw Star Wars and he was just screaming what kind of buildings do they live in the whole time. Because apparently you don't see Darth Vader's house. Yeah. I mean, tell us more about it, please. In space, I don't think you have homes. You just have spaces.

No, that's like saying people who drive to work don't have houses. Yeah, but at the end of the day, they go back to their house and they sleep there. Hans Solo sleeps on the Millennium Falcon. Not when he's at home. Where is his home? You haven't seen Star Wars Homes editions? Star Wars Cribs. As a guy who only cares out where people live, I feel like you'd really like it.

Do you have a scary story to tell us? Okay. So last year, my friends, Nicholas and Anna, bought a house, and they flipped it and renovated it and stuff. That's a real Alex story. Could you tell me what was it a tutor? I don't think it's a tutor. Okay. So this house, when they bought it, we,

The original owner of the house was the person who they got it from, but that person died in the house when they were like 97 years old. Okay. So when the family was selling it to my friends, they were like, yeah, this woman, she was so sweet. And every year on Christmas, she would make this huge pancake breakfast for the family. And it was something we always looked forward to with this big pancake breakfast on Christmas. So my friends were like, oh, okay, that's a nice story. So last year it was their first Christmas in the house and they wake up and my friend Nicholas is like, oh, Anna's making pancakes. So he walks out and the entire house smelled like pancakes, but neither of them were cooking.

That's a super sweet ghost. Yeah. Non-medicine nice ghosts. Yeah, that's what we're all saying. Like if you had to have a ghost haunt your house, that is the best ghost to hunt your house. It also, like, the part of me that believes in ghosts, I feel like the thing that is, you know, makes it easy to believe in them is just as a creature of habit who just does the same thing over and over and over and over again, I feel like my love of routine is strong enough that I could

die, not notice that I died, and keep trying to do my routine. What kind of routine would come back if he died? It would just be like, oh, there's this apartment in Brooklyn where the PlayStation controller mysteriously rattles and like dominoes keeps getting these like haunting spooky folk calls where somebody moaned something about a thin crust pizza. Oh my gosh. Well, yeah, I guess of all things to happen in a haunting, that that's not too bad. Probably frustrating for Domino's, but it's fine. Thank you for your scary pancake call. Thanks, Katie.

Yeah, thanks, guys. Bye. Hello, this is PJ and Alex. This is Mike. I was calling from Columbus, Ohio. What's your scary story? So I live in a house in college with six other guys, and I shared a room with one of them. He was a musician, so he'd always come home at, like, really weird.

hours of the night. And one night I woke up and I thought it was him walking into our room, but it wasn't him. I honestly thought it was him like either packing a bag or like getting ready for bed or something, but he turned the light on and my roommate never turned the light on. So I was like, first of all, that's really strange. So he turned the light on. He like knew you were right there. Yeah. So the way the room is set up, um, So you open the door and you see my roommate's bed first. So his bed was on the other side of the room. And mine was along the wall closest to the door.

So when you open up the door immediately, he saw an empty bed because my roommate wasn't there. But he didn't see me. So I kept my eyes close. So the whole time I had my body facing towards the wall where the door was. And then as soon as I felt him underneath my bed. He was underneath your bed. Oh, my God. Yeah, I fell him underneath there

And this whole time I was not thinking it was somebody else Oh my God So I like turned over really hard To kind of just like Let you know who I thought with my roommate know Like hey I'm awake I don't want you under my bed

Yeah And then the guy just got out from under And stood there And I could feel him standing there Because you know like when you had your eyes closed But you know like somebody's there Uh huh So he was standing here

For probably 30 seconds. And then I felt, or I heard my belt jingles. So he'd like lift it up my belt. And then I didn't hear anything for like two minutes, but the light was still on. And so I opened my eyes and my Xbox is gone. My backpack is gone. My wallet was gone.

And to this day, I still have no idea who it was. The fact that he was standing over your bed jingling the belt, to me that means like he would have restrained you if you'd open your eyes, right? I mean, I don't know if he was trying to beat me with it or like, like, I don't know what was going through his mind at the time. That's such Michael Myers behavior. Yeah. It's also like the brazenness of it and the light and the staying over the bed. It just feels like you were actually really close to a lot of danger.

Yeah. I mean, that was, that was like the most violating thing to me. Like, I was just angry. That's a good scary story. Oh, that's horrifying. So my boyfriend's house has a ghost living in it and follows us around sometimes. Currently living in it? Yes, currently.

And we named her Linda. Why did you name her Linda? I don't know. She was named that when I came into when I first started dating him, so I don't know where it came from. And when you say follows you around, does that mean follows you around the house or outside of the house? That's your question? That's your question. That's just a foundational question.

I'm going to ask more after that. I'm not a fucking idiot. God, you're so annoying. I just give me one second. I hate him. It's not... Alex just needs to know if every story takes place in a house or not. I'm not the weird one here.

You're the fucking weird one. I'm sorry. Well, I don't accept your apology. I'm not apologizing to you. I know. That's why I don't accept it. Anna, can you just tell your story? So there's been a few occasions, actually. The most recent time was out of the house.

Okay. Okay. We were at a restaurant, and I was in the bathroom alone. And I was washing my hands, and it wasn't a motion sensor sink. It was the one you actually have to turn on. Yeah. And so I'm done washing my hands. I turn around to go. dry my hands with paper towel

and the water just starts running. Oh, like fully running or like dripping? Like, no, fully running. Whoa. Okay. So I was like, oh, that's weird. So I turn around and I go to check to make sure I turn it off. And then it just stops. Oh.

And I was like, ah, I'm out here. This is like, that's like, okay, that's like the first thing that happens in a horror movie. You're like six minutes into your horror movie. Exactly. And there's been a few times where like, you know when you have a death. lamp and it has like that clicking noise. Like when you turn the dial and it has that like kind of click to make sure, like, to tell you that it's like turning on or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. So I woke up one morning and he has a desk lamp clearly and you just hear the noise like clicking, but the light's not turning on. Ten minutes into horror movie. And then she'll respond. So like when I heard the clicking noise, I had just woken up and I said, Linda, knock it off and it stopped. What a respectful ghost?

It was like super spooky. I'm right. Now, PJ is going to get on my case because I do have a question about what kind of building this is. Oh, my God. It's a house. But is it like an old house where there could be like a ghost from the 1800s in it? I think so. Do you guys have theories about who Linda is and what she wants?

No, there is, I mean, her name is Linda, but we do have one theory that it might be my boyfriend's grandfather who passed when they were young. Why? I mean, my boyfriend was like in the fourth grade when he died, and he was just always around. And so it's kind of like, kind of making sure, like, he's still there and he's still watching them. But we just call her Linda. So it feels like a nice thing, like he's like keeping an eye out for him? Yeah. Huh.

But also occasionally annoying. That sounds like... Yes. Oh, sort of a grandfather relationship. Yeah. Huh. Thank you. That's a good ghost.

That is a good ghost. Yeah. Yeah, we like her. So this story is kind of what my friend and I refer to as the invisible man, and it is not going to sound real. But I swear to you, it is real. Okay. So have you ever heard of Sherry's? Sherry's?

Yeah, Sherry's is basically a very typical 24-hour diner. Okay, where is this? In the northwest. And how old are you when this is happening? Oh, geez. This happened maybe three years ago, so I was 18 at the time. Okay. So we're just sitting there talking and I'm faced towards her and not towards the event.

I kind of get a hint she is motioning at me that something's going on behind me. So I look behind me and there's this guy talking to like almost as if he has somehow made these clothes like starched them. And it is propped up right in front of him on the other side of the seat. This outfit has its own cup of steam and coffee and everything. Wait, he's talking to an empty pair of clothes, but the clothes have the full posture of a person? Yes, I swear. And how is he talking? He has the full posture of a person.

He's crying. The man's crying. Yes, he's crying and talking to this, just these clothes. What was the outfit that the invisible man was wearing? What did the clothes look like? All right. So I only got pretty brief of a look. I remember the shirt being black.

I didn't get a good seat, like if there was any pants, but there was definitely like a jacket. So what in your heart, what do you think it was? I don't know. We didn't even know what to make of it. Like, I'm not trying to make this sound more interesting than it is. Like, blatantly, we just saw this guy sitting across from a starched up outfit or jacket. with a whole, just steaming cup of coffee in front of it, and he had his own cup of coffee, so it wasn't his,

and he was just talking to the things very intently and crying. The Google subscriber you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone. Hey, guys, it's Neil. I'm kind of worried, so I was taking care of my best friend during cancer treatment. Long story short, he's okay, and that's great. but we were in the hospital together and it was time to discharge him. And so I was running all around trying to pack up his stuff.

It had just been a really rough go and I was at my wind with them, packed and big surprise and whatnot. And I was in the lobby of the hospital on that day, and I heard somebody playing piano from another room. And it sounded exactly like my dad. My dad just played in a very specific way. And I hadn't ever heard anybody exactly like him. And this was exactly like him.

And I didn't think much of it. You know, apart from that, it was nice. When I got my friend bundled off into the car and we were down the road, that's when I realized it was the day third the day my dad had died. in 2012. And it was just so, hey, I got cut off. It's really spooky. So specific.

I was such a specific. My dad was not back to the dead. I really made a finger on me in a very specific way. Hopefully that's a nice ghost story. Hey, this is Neil. I wanted to call back because I wanted to send you some examples of my dad playing piano. Enjoy. Welcome back to the show.

Hey, guys. Hey, Fia. So in addition to all of the calls that got through to you, we were also getting like a ton of voicemails, a ton of emails from listeners who like had other spooky stories. And the team has been going through all of those. And me and Damiano are going to tell you about a few of our favorites. Okay. So I want to tell you a story.

It's about a woman named Megan. Okay. And growing up, Megan loved like all things horror. The ring, you know. the exorcism of Emily Rose, all the exorcism movies, like, all that stuff. I just, I loved it. And she particularly loved this ghost story section of Cosmo Girl. They had a section that was called Freaky Deaky, and I would always read it, like, scary stories.

Like, oh, come on, give me all the freaky deaky stories. So, Megan is this, like, gigantic horror fan until one night in middle school, when she wakes up, and she has this horrible feeling. She feels like there's like a pressure on her chest and she can't move any of her body. Like the only thing she can do is blink her eyes. I started to panic because I was like, oh my gosh. Like the devil is coming to get me.

Oh, no. Because this sounds crazy. But in freaky-diki, I remember reading about this girl who woke up and couldn't move. and had like pressure on her chest. And she was like, my grandmother told me it's the devil sitting on your chest. Oh, God. The other explanation, by the way, sleep paralysis.

Yes. Just for the record. 13 year old Megan is like, oh my God, the devil is coming to get me. This is what's happening. But also like it goes away and being a middle schooler, she's like, I'm not going to tell anybody that this ever happened. Right. She goes to high school.

she goes to college, freshman year in college, she's sleeping one night, she wakes up, opens her eyes, and there's a man in her room, very skinny leather jacket looking down at her. Not sleep paralysis. Not sleep paralysis. Jesus. What does she do? And she's terrified, and part of what makes it so scary is that he is perfectly in focus, and she has horrible vision. Oh, so normally if she'd wake up in the...

In the middle of the night, she wouldn't be able to see anything clearly, but she can see him as if she's wearing glasses. Yeah. He didn't move. He was just standing there. And, like, my heart is pounding. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, what is going on?

Like, 30 seconds later, he disappears. She can't sleep the rest of the night. I can imagine. When you say disappears, you mean, like, into thin air. Yes. This sort of thing starts happening to her every month. And then twice a month, every week. every night

and eventually it's happening to her every time she lays down. Oh. Even just with like, I've had sleep paralysis and I've had a lot of nightmares and you hit a point where you were like, I don't want to go to sleep.

Like why would I want to subject myself to eight hours of apocalypse? Right. I can't imagine. It's just such a hell. Totally. Like for Megan, she started trying to avoid sleep

like any way she could. She got awfully depressed. And eventually her parents were like, something is really wrong. we're sending you to a sleep study. So they send her to this place and she like sleeps with all the monitors on her. And she wakes up the next day, goes home, like a week later gets the results.

And they're like, yes, you have a form of narcolepsy that includes sleep paralysis and hypnipompic hallucinations. What the heck is a hypnipompic hallucinations? Okay, so hypnipompic hallucinations are hallucinations that you experience as you're waking up. And what was happening to Megan is she was having those hallucinations. And then some of the time she was having sleep paralysis. And what that is is that like when we're all sleeping, our bodies release these chemicals that stop us from enacting everything that we are experiencing in our dreams. If you have a dreamer you're running, your body will release this chemical, so your body won't actually run. Right. And so for her, the chemicals are still, like, at full function after she wakes up.

Right. And then also she's having these hallucinations. It's like the barrier between sleep and wake isn't working. Right. So she wakes up. Her body still thinks that she's supposed to be asleep so she can't move. And, like, the nightmare film is still screening. Right. And so she gets the results and she's like, great. Now what do we do? They're like, oh, well, there's no cure. And I'm like, oh, wonderful.

But they're like, they're like, the only cure is to master your fear. What does that mean? Mastering your fear isn't necessarily like, don't be scared because you're going to be scared. Like last year, my husband was sleeping next to me and I saw this. colonial woman hovering over me and she had like a deformed face and one eyeball that was like really wide open and she's like she took I felt like she took me reeling back like 10 steps and I was like so like upset and that happens sometimes you know um but it's about like training yourself to be like okay you're not you're not there or

you are there, but you don't scare me. Wow. And so does it work? Does it get easier? She seems to not be afraid of going to sleep anymore. If her husband's on a trip, she puts on the office and sleeps to the office the whole night. But she does sleep now. Yeah.

The other thing that I'll just say is that I was like, so when you hear other people's ghost stories now, what do you think? And she's like, oh, they're all hallucinations. there's like tons of people who were like, I was levitating or an alien spaceship flew through my window. And I'm like, you were hallucinating. Because like one time we were at a hotel, like a hundred year old hotel and it was rickety crickety. You know, and I just saw this cowboy in a ski suit and he just walked through the wall. And I was like, that wasn't a ghost. That was just one of my hallucinations.

Domiano. Hi, boys. Hi. Okay. So I talked to a guy named. Isaac. He grew up in Berkeley in the 90s. And one night he and his friends, they drive out, there's like a park, like a big, like park with a forest and stuff in it. So we wrote a couple cars out there and there was a little like building like that like events could be held at.

And we were just going to go hang out there. We hiked in after parking two cars, came back up this road. And then we found the building and proceeded to start. our little teenager party. Isaac brings his, like, big boombox that he loves very much. Because he's a teenager in the 90s. Yeah. And there's, like, sort of a clearing area. And so they're, like, drinking beers and smoking weed and, like, listening to music.

And all of a sudden, one of his friends is, like, do you guys hear, like, a saxophone? Really? Yeah, really. Like, the eululation of a saxophone. The least spooky of instruments. I know. All I can think of as the riff from Careless Whisper, you know, that George Michael song. That was also the saxophone thing in my head.

I don't know what I'm not scary. Then one of his friends turns on is like, look, and like on the hill above them about 20 feet away, it's like a high kind of hill above them. They see like a man in a white sweater playing a saxophone. That's so weird. I'm imagining like a full moon and like this guy just silhouetted at the top of this mountain and I imagine it just so cool just like him with like one leg out front and one leg out back and he's like he's got his back arched and he's just a blow in that horn. So what happened next? Did something happen next?

So they're so they're all like yelling at this guy like, come down, party with us. Like, come hang out with us. Come on, Saxman. Yeah. Saxman doesn't budge. So two of their friends, like, run up the hill and then run back and are like, they're like, guys, guys, we just went up there.

There's a bunch of people up there and they're messing with us. Like, what? Yeah. Come on. We got to go. We all got to go. Everyone, gather up, gather up. And we all gather up.

And we go over this hill and down the hill into this amphitheater space. I get a little nervous because I left my boombox over by the building. I'm like, oh, man, if there's someone messing with us, they're probably going to go after my boombox. So they start to walk back. And the friend in like the back of the pack, like, he sees something or hear something because he starts like motioning everyone sort of like quietly like follow him, follow him. But Isaac, he's, he like gets back to the camp, gets his hands on his boonbox. And he starts to hear like screaming, like bloody murder. And then they're all running down the trail at high speed and their faces are white.

and they're screaming, run, run! And I turn around, and I'm doing my best to run and keep up with this. When I have no idea why everyone is running for their lives, and I've got a boombox jostling, and we're just running down the trail, and then we get pretty close to the gate. I'm trying to ask questions, like, what happened? We just need to go. We just need to go.

And I'm like, come on, what's going on? We need to get out of here. We need it. And I'm like, okay, okay. And we get to my parents' car. It's an A. Buick at the time. And the doors are wide open. And these two lights start coming up the road from behind them.

Like car lights? Yeah, car lights. And he still doesn't know what had happened. What was going on? The car lights, it's the cops. They must have heard the screaming or something. They came to check it out. They make Isaac and his friends throw out, like, their beer and the weed that they have.

And then they follow them out. When he gets out, he finally asks his friends, like, what the hell happened? And apparently his friends were, like, running through the... the woods and they started to hear children's voices. What? And then these like, orbs of light started to circulate. Like, he,

he, he interviewed them all individually and they all, like, corroborated the same story. And one of them told him that this, like, beam of light, like, shot through the woods, like, pierced him, and he felt chills. That is so cool.

Every element of the story is amazing. It kind of sounds like a weird nightclub. Also, it makes you wonder if the sat down. Sacksman was trying to warn them or lure them. Could have been a force for good. Yeah. You think that a ghostly sax man is like trying to, trying to, to toot them away from danger?

Yeah. Don't be careless with your whispers. Tuit them away from danger. Oh, I hope that there's a man with a sacks trying to do good in the woods. This is the happiest I've ever been. This story makes me happier than anything. So he lives in Humboldt now. And, like, 10 years, I think it's 10 years later,

He says he like finally figured out what it was all about. What was it about? I have a guess. Okay, guess. Weird avant-garde music group practicing in the woods. That's close. What was it? So the woods were, it was a eucalyptus forest.

What's that mean? So eucalyptus is not native to California and they were brought over from Australia at some point. And he says that every tree and every plant, they have like a spirit to them. and he says for sure what the sounds that they were hearing were fairies. That is not at all a helpful. I really thought the explanation was going to be something that was like based in the world of reason and fact. It's so funny when you said, is it an avant-garde band? He was like, close.

Close. And then it turned out it was fairies. Well, that's what he says. It's fairies. And he also told me that it's Jack London's fault, apparently, because when he brought euclyptus trees over, he also brought ferries. I don't think Jack London knew what the hell he was doing when he brought all these eucalyptus trees to North America. It was a really, really crazy mistake, but I think it also brought spirits. And that, like, really the end-all be-all of the universe is that everything has to lean towards being funny.

I like that as a conclusion. It's fair. It's the boy. So obvious now. Not clearly. So that wraps up that case. I want to go to. this for us so badly.

Hi, this is Alex Bloomberg, co-founder of Gimlet Media. This is where the credits would normally play, but the co-host of Reply All Alex Goldman went missing last week. We're really disturbed

and sad here. The only possible clue to his disappearance is the following audio file we found on his laptop. Reply all is hosted by Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shrethi Pinamenei, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi.

Our executive producer is Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Kwan. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Rachel Cohn. Thank you to everyone who reached out with their spooky stories. And special thanks to Moia Spurgeon, Sarah Kanishi, and Susan Brackney. Our theme song is by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Buildings. Hey, babe.

What's going on? How you doing? I'm good. I was just wondering if you knew what time you're getting home tonight. I'm just finishing up the credits. I'm just having just finishing up the credits. I just have to edit them and then I'm going to get on the train. So, I don't know, an hour.

Okay. I'll definitely be home at 9.30, so you don't have to worry about that. Okay. All right. Love you. Okay. Bye. Bye.

Our theme music is by the Mysteries. series breakmaster cylinder and our ad music is by build buildings. The piano music you heard in this episode was written and performed by Neil Cleary's father, William Cleary. Matt Lieber is probably a vampire. You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening and we'll see you in two weeks.

Yeah, I need you to send. I need you to send a police officer. There's something in there. There's something in here. It's like an animal. I don't know what I'm the fucking seven floor. on the fucking seventh floor of building. I have no fucking idea what it is. I need you to come here right now.

I need some overworked.