Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Body Under The Bed

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

A couple unknowingly spending the night above a dead body stuffed under their bed is a longstanding urban legend. And a true one. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Josh, and this is short stuff.

Like I said, twice now, I'm wasting time. Let's just go. So this is about finding your worst nightmare realized. This is pretty universal worst nightmare stuff. Yes, this is about the idea that if you go to a hotel, and you're sleeping, and you get up in the morning, and you're like, what is that weird smell?

And you check out, you will probably never know this. I doubt if they would follow up and let you know, but there could be a dead body under that bed. Yeah. And what's weird is this is an urban legend, very widespread one, some friend of my cousin who he works with, went to Vegas with his wife once. And got on an elevator with Eddie Murphy.

Right, and he had a dog, and Eddie Murphy said, sit lady, and the wife sat down, and Eddie Murphy said, no, I was talking to my dog, and then paid off their mortgage. That's right. No, different than that, that like, your cousin's friend, coworker, went to Vegas, and this happened to him.

What's weird about this, Chuck, is Snopes is on the case, and God bless Snopes for doing everything they do. They said, not only has this happened, this has happened many times over. This is one of those rare urban legends that is actually true. That's right, in a lot of hotels, there are, it's sort of a platformy box spring situation

where there is a cavernous area under the box spring, but above that platform that turns out is just right for storing a body. Yeah, every criminal knows. You want to store a body? Every motel in America has you covered. Pretty much, should we go through some of these? I think we should, because again,

like this has happened many times. One of the first ones Snopes talks about happened in 2003 at the Capri Motel in downtown Kansas City. And one of the recurring themes that I've seen, Chuck, is management sometimes won't do anything. They'll be like, sorry, nothing can be done. This is the only room we have you have to stay here. And people will stay there, despite the stench

of what turns out to be a decomposing body, like in this case. Yeah, a dead thing is a very specific smell. I would not for one second even unpack my suitcase and give it a shot. Right, well, this guy in Kansas City, not only unpacked his suitcase, after complaining about the room

and being told nothing could be done about it, he stayed there for three nights from July 10th to July 13th and finally checked out because of the smell. And I looked on those dates in 2003 in Kansas City, it got up to around 90. Oh, good Lord. So I'll bet it was pretty smelly. And finally, housekeeping was like,

well, let's figure out what this is. And they lift up the mattress and there was a body in the state of advanced decomposition. July, I'm sorry, June 1999, 64-year-old named Saul Hernandez was discovered inside and under a bed at the Burgundy Motor Inn. I hate calling out these hotels, but I guess it is what it is.

Room 112. Yeah, this gets really specific. Don't stay there in Atlantic City. In fact, it's Atlantic City, so it may not even be there at this point. Yeah, I was wondering that myself. But a German couple, God bless them, they didn't know any better.

They spent the night there sleeping over his body. They complained to the manager about the smell. They said, mind galt, do something about it. And that's when they found the body. Yeah, German tourists are a recurring motif in this urban legend come to life because in 1994 in Florida, there were two cases in Florida in 1994 alone.

And both of them were bodies that were discovered after complaints from German tourists. So they have really bad luck with this kind of stuff. Lovely Pasadena, California, the wonderful Colorado Boulevard Travelodge. In July 1996, a woman was found under a mattress. They discovered her 10 days later after guests had complained for several days

of a foul odor. At this point, I would think if someone says there's a bad smell, I would just immediately assume it's a body and look. Yeah, you'd think it would be like a recurring kind of like a column that pops up in like the hotel times or motel industry news magazine or something like that. But I guess not because it still continues.

The Snopes traced it all the way back to, I think 1982 was the first report that they mentioned. I don't know if it was the first time it's ever happened, but between 1982 and 2010, they found 10 cases. And this is not just a body being discovered in a hotel room. Apparently that happens multiple times a day, every day, everywhere in the world, I guess,

from what this looks like. But what Snopes was saying is like, no, we got to stick to the urban legend where somebody, the body was discovered because somebody slept above it overnight. And at least 10 times between 82 and 2010, that happened. Yeah, and that cut it off, like you said, in 2010. If you just Google a dead body hotel mattress,

that happens a lot still. Yeah, there was one in Austin last year, one the year before somewhere else, I can't remember. But they're kind of all over the place. Yeah, it seems like an annual event, like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade or something. Yeah, one smells way worse than the other, I'll let you guess. Yeah, so do you want to take a break

and come back a little bit? Yeah, we'll come back in a second and talk a little bit about another way that bodies find their way to hotel rooms. We'll be right back. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s,

called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So what we talked about before was specifically, like you said, the urban legend of bodies

under a mattress, under a box spring. My thought was like, how are they getting there? The answer is they're all murder cases, generally. Pretty much murder or say like a couple of people are partying in a hotel and one of them dies and the other one doesn't want to like get questioned. Put them under the mattress, man. Stash the body.

Yeah, cause I think there's two things about this, right? There's people, like average people who check into a hotel, people like you and me, we stay in hotels, we stay in motels, right? Sleeping unknowingly above, just inches above a decomposing body, that's part one that's horrible. But I think the second part of it that makes it so horrible is like the indignity of having your body just stuffed

under a mattress in a seedy hotel, you know? So I think those two things combine and the fact that it's actually happens in real life is just, it makes it horrific. Well, one of the other ways a body very sadly can be found in a hotel and not under a mattress is obviously suicide. People apparently check into hotels to do this a lot

for obvious reasons. You don't want your family to have a mess necessarily. Another reason is to avert exposure maybe to the media. And I think it just sort of gets buried in the news if it's just a random hotel suicide kind of thing. Casinos apparently had the highest suicide rate and Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate in the country. I could see that if like you just lost a bunch of money.

That has something to do with it, they said, this is not all of it, but a lot of people show up in Vegas desperate and destitute, you know, trying to gamble their way back to, you know, not necessarily even prosperity. Oh man, that is a sad scene you just painted. Yeah, but you were joking in the thing about it being in the hotel industry, there was an article called

how to properly respond to a guest death in your hotel, published in a journal for hotel managers that I found. And they said a big thing in Vegas is they don't, in most big hotels now, don't let you just open the windows. No. But a lot of them do have balconies still. Vegas, they don't even have balconies because of the suicide problem.

So they said that leads some people to make a final leap like in an atrium style lobby and he says in this article that hotel managers should keep a very large dark colored tarp made of impermeable material on hand and available at all times. Oh my God. Just so you can run out there very quickly and covered that mess up.

So, but not only the mess, it's really dangerous. I mean, people walk through atriums, you know, like that's really irresponsible. Yeah, you could land on someone, obviously. Yeah. I imagine that would probably kill both people. Yes, I would think so too. And, you know, we did an episode on crime scene cleanup,

99 times out of 100, that's what's going on here. If something happens in a hotel room, there's a guy in a San Francisco based company called Crime Scene Cleaners that he said that hotel chains are as big as clients and that suicide cleanups is most of his business. I mean, it definitely makes sense in a very grisly way, like not wanting to put your family through that,

but unfortunately you're putting, you know, some housekeeper through it unnecessarily. The good news is, is that almost everything is thrown away. That they're not just like, pull the sheets and we'll, you know, wash them. They're like, this pillowcase is still mostly good. Yeah, they like, they don't rip up the part of the carpet that's stained.

They kind of gut the place basically. Sometimes even the drywall, they get rid of all the clock radio and everything because they were like, if there's a little tiny piece of brain that you don't notice on something that heats up, like via electricity, that'll stink. Plus it could be haunted now.

It's obviously haunted. But those are in like decent hotels that, you know, even like kind of cruddy hotel chains, I think still do a good job. The scary part is if it happens in a really not great place because there's a Reddit thread called Tales from the Front Desk.

Oh, I've got to get on that. No, don't do it, dude. You'll never tour again. You'll never leave your house because these are all insider stories. And this one guy was like, yeah, a guy died by suicide on my shift. The owner found out how much it costs

for a professional cleanup. And he said to flip the mattress. No. Yes. No. Pretty sad. Do they ever say where they worked? Is it always anonymous?

I think it's probably, this one was anonymous. Man. This is just a hotel house cleaner. And the other thing too is, I guess we can close with is when people decide to do this, oftentimes they pick like the best room, the nicest suite.

Oh yeah. Because they don't have to pay for it. Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, huh. So don't think if you're getting the high roller suite that that room is safe from ghosts. Right. Wow.

That's something else, Chuck. You really brought it. Thank you. Well, since Chuck brought it and we're out of info, that's it for short stuff. So short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

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