This Paranormal Life - #198 Ghost Taxi: The Mystery of Phantom Hitchhikers

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

When paranormal researchers in North Carolina were trying to understand the 100 year old case of a local hitchhiking ghost, little did they know their research was only deepening a global mystery of identical stories - of phantom hitchhikers from Hawaii to England and Japan. Kit and Rory investigate some of the best known cases and decide whether they think it's a real paranormal phenomenon.Patreonhttps://patreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubehttps://youtube.com/thisparanormallifeTwitterhttps://twitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagramhttps://instagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Edited by Kami Tomanhttps://tomanedits.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: https://www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What came first? Numbers or letters? Are sticks, trees, bones? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we investigate a different tale, a different beast, a different claim, and come to the conclusion within the hour as to whether or not it's truly paranormal or not. As always, you're joined by professional paranormal investigators, Kit Grimmelvenna, that's me, this guy across from me, Roy Powers. How are you doing today, Roy? I'm doing fantastic. Fun fact about this paranormal life, it is the only podcast that just by listening to it, you could be involved in a class action lawsuit.

This is some illegal, highly dangerous material that we're spewing out on the internet, folks. Welcome to the jail cell. On this Paranormal Life, we do not like to mess around at the top of the episode. We like to get stuck in to today's investigation. Ready to go? I am 100% ready to go go not a thing in the world that could distract me let's friggin i'm ready to get fired up that's amazing well let's dive right in i don't even want to talk about the fact that this morning my boiler exploded in the house

oh wow yeah that was a shit let's get straight into that i don't explain i mean you are soaked up to your knees oh yeah brother uh just flooded the entire house then. Not that I want to get bogged down, but... No, no, no. Well, I am bogged down, quite literally. My house has become somewhat of a swamp overnight. It was pretty incredible. I awoke at 3 a.m. last night to an earth-shattering explosion. Thinking it was something from my dreams, I went back to sleep. Then I had a series of dreams

later on in the night that i was drowning little did i know that was a reality too you mentioned this is like a swamp and your house was quite a lot like a swamp already you have a pretty substantial amphibian and lizard collection of course so these guys presumably broke free yeah they did break three i'm starting to think they were the ones that f***ed up the boiler to begin with that this was kind of their plan to take over the ecosystem finding nemo jailbreak right but as you said who cares about my boiler who cares about frankly the thousands and thousands of pounds worth of damage that it caused overnight it's time to talk about the paranormal you're damn right rory no one cares about us they only care about the stories we tell. It's Friday night in Leighton Buzzard,

Bedfordshire. The date is 12th of October 1979. Local tradesman Roy Fulton is leaving the pub after a rowdy darts match at around 9 20 pm. He starts up his van and begins to head along the familiar journey home. Leaving the lights of the town behind, soon he's driving on a remote country road called Pedder's Lane. There are houses on that road now, but looking at Google Street View, they look pretty new, so it's safe to say at that time it was the absolute middle of nowhere. Should he be driving home after a rowdy night at the pub? Seems like a euphemism, doesn't it? A rowdy night. Roy notices a man thumbing a lift at the side of the road

he's dressed smartly in dark trousers with a white shirt collar poking out under a knitted jumper he looks to be about 20 or so and at first glance seems pretty harmless personally this is where i lock my door things have changed since 1979 We're scared now as a society. I'm not taking any chances with guys on the side of the road. It doesn't matter how trustworthy they look. Even if it was David Attenborough himself, I'm not stopping. Right. Yeah, 1960s, 1970s.

That was probably maybe peak hitchhiker scene, right? Like that was, 70s was like hippie movement, wasn't it? Or was that 60s? Oh, it was 60s and 70s. 60s and 70s. You know, that was 70s was like hippie movement wasn't it or was that 60s uh 1670s 60 70 you know that's where it's like hey summer of love 69 exactly a stranger's just a friend you never met brother unlock the car let's go for a ride that sounded threatening i didn't mean to come off that stranger stranger is the friend you never met also i need you to hide this acid up your asshole while we go through this police check. What? Is that still David Attenborough?

It was in the 60s. Where you headed, lad? Dunstable? Tottenhoe? But the man doesn't reply. Instead, he simply points straight ahead. Roy isn't fazed by this. He figures the kid's probably

shy. He can go a bit further before trying to ask again. They drive in comfortable manly silence for around a mile, at which point Roy needs to know which way to turn in order to get the man where he needs to be. I don't know if you feel like talking yet, lad, but you've got to tell me where you're headed. I've got to turn off home now. He glances over at the passenger seat to ask directions, and his heart stops when he sees there was nobody else in the car. It could only have been a couple of minutes since this guy climbed in. He seemed completely normal to Roy. Sure, a little quiet, but nice and neatly dressed. The interior light even came on when he opened the passenger door to climb in, but he had somehow vanished

into thin air. Roy wasn't sure exactly when the man disappeared, but he sure as hell wasn't there now. Nicely dressed as in like a suit and tie, not like a 19th century peasant's garb. Roy had never seen Tokugawa era samurai armor before but he was amazed to see it glittering in the back of his car what are you doing in this situation rory are you saying you hallucinated after a bad burrito earlier that day or are you telling everyone you know about your paranormal experience oh i don't know i feel like i mean red flags already driving home after a rowdy night at the pub that's already you're already doing things you shouldn't be doing i feel like anyone you tell about this story you'd already have to change the facts you'd have to say i was driving home

from church late night prayer session i was driving home from feeding the poor at the soup kitchen you gotta tweak that story a little bit if you're gonna claim that you witnessed a paranormal event you gotta swing on your way to the police station swing by a garage and get some flowers and claim that you're bringing them home to your wife exactly when you saw the boy uh call me naive but i never garnered that on first read i was like i don't, people who live in the country, that's the only place to hang out is the pub, right? And they all got to drive.

But I didn't put two and two together. This was maybe after a couple tequila slammers and the rounds of darts. If you see a ghost on a regular night, that's pretty spooky and paranormal. If you see a ghost after necking several turbo shandies and then drive home swerving side to side down a dark road i don't know if that's paranormal i'm just imagining him now stopping at the side of the road for a tumbleweed that's rolling along going why hello well-dressed young man. Why don't you jump in? Roy's sitting there like,

you've got to tell me where you want to go, lad. I'm going to go home now. The bartender's like, Roy, you're still on the bar stool. You haven't even, you're not in your car yet. He's pretending to drive. Bloody clutch is about to go on. Oh, well, thanks to Roy, we now know about this because he did tell the local press. The Dunstable Gazette published the piece four days later,

and crucially, they discovered that a few years previously, a young man had been killed by a drunk driver on that very same road. If you're Roy, you must be freaking out when you hear that, right? Yeah. Or does this all feel too much like coincidence to you? Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, at the very least, you shouldn't be drunk driving down the same road a drunk driver killed a dude three years ago. That ghost is probably waiting there, punching his hands, just waiting for a drunk driver to come down.

Yeah, at that point, you're either worried that it's the same ghost or you're thinking that you've somehow traveled back in time and you're the drunk driver. Right. Did I kill the boy? I think most people have heard this kind of story in some form already. Usually, a young woman hitches a ride home in some guy's car and leaves her jumper in the car. When he goes to give it back, the old lady that answers the door tells him that her daughter's been dead for 30 years. But what if this phenomenon is real? That ghosts can manifest and be indistinguishable from humans for a brief moment, only to disappear altogether? Well, it turns out this is a well-known legend for

good reason. There are lots of reports of this happening around the world, and they go back even further in history. Jamestown, North Carolina is home to the legend of Lydia. The ghost of a woman is said to haunt the underpass of a railway bridge. It's said that she waits at the side of the road attempting to flag down passing cars. She wears a white gown and waves her arms in panic to get motorists to stop. She was first sighted in 1924 when a student picked her up and drove her home. Yet, you guessed it, when he got out to open the rear door for her, she'd already gone. So this case actually attracted the attention of two paranormal investigators already, Amy Greer and Michael Reniger.

Amy Greer, not sure any relation of mine, but I appreciate it. Hopefully we come from a long line of paranormal investigators. They looked into the local records to try and find Lydia, but after filing through countless obituaries, they couldn't find a match. However, they did find one entry in the Greensboro Patriot newspaper about the death of one Annie Jackson in a car accident on the same road only four years earlier miss annie jackson a young lady of this city met almost instant death last night when an automobile in which she was riding turned turtle on the high point road at a point about three miles from high point there's no way that makes sense it's turned turtle three three points from point point

that's not a real sentence it's like a tongue twister at the high point road at a point about three miles from high point i don't know the language was a little more flowery back in the day this feels like a weird math test where it's like you know if a train leaving houston at 60 miles per hour stops to pick up a ghost at high point what point does it turn turtle annie and her gal pal netty lethko were out on a double date that night netty was up front with james hutchison who was driving his dad's chrysler annie was in the back seat with charlie cross slightly scandalous as both the men were married to other women. Suddenly, James lost control of the car on the wet road, and it rolled

over so violently that Annie was thrown from the backseat and landed several meters away on the curb. Oh, jeez. That's not how you want to go, is it? Sinning? Sinning at 80 miles per hour? Yeah. That's the most devilish thing you can do you don't want to be you know you don't want to die in the mcdonald's car park eating a burger like 4 a.m like doing the thing you don't want people to know you're doing exactly yeah oh god that's awful james stumbled away from the crash and went to look at annie's body when he saw how badly she was hurt he was filled with dread. He was out driving late at night with two unmarried women and he had killed one of

them. James snapped out of his daze when he saw the headlights of another car approaching in the distance. Then he panicked and ran for his life, or at least his freedom, like the rat card he is. Wow, what a scumbag. Thankfully the police caught up with him a few days later. Our paranormal investigators, Amy and Michael, were convinced they had found their ghost hitchhiker, the legend of Lydia. Right, right. The woman who passed away in this brutal car crash. And for sure, if you had been Annie and your friend betrayed you that badly, you would definitely hang around and become an angry ghost doomed to haunt this road forever seeking help. Wait, who betrayed who?

The driver. He turtled the car and sent the innocent lady flying. She died and then he ran like a little bitch and got caught by the police. Hard turtled sounds like this is a game of Mario Kart. And they were red shelled around the corner and spun out into a tree. Yeah. Sadly, he shot a green shell into a wall. It bounced straight back and turtled the car.

But I know what you're thinking. How can Annie be our ghost in The Legend of Lydia? Amy and Michael must have had a heart attack when researching Annie's sad story and diving deeper into her past when they realized her middle name was Ludia. Annie

Ludia Jackson. And to be fair, they were so convinced they had this paranormal case solved that they wrote the book Looking for Lydia, the 30 year search for the jamestown hitchhiker and if anyone is actually curious about where this took place uh you can find it on google maps uh it's down as lydia's haunted bridge you gotta love a paranormal investigator that just kind of kind of figures out roughly what might be going on and then pretty much writes the book cashes the check and bounces the out of there

no solutions right no way to resolve the issue no proof lydia looks like ludia that's a hundred grand please yeah all you did was find the woman who could be the ghost you didn't prove the ghost exists or anything well what do you think roy isn't it pretty cool that in both our cases so far we've actually got records of deaths that correspond with the hauntings yeah i guess look that's exactly what you want to find a ghost to have a death linked to the location where the ghost was found that's what you anytime you're looking into a haunting case that's what you need it's Exactly. Yeah, you got to look back in time and try and find someone who was killed around this location that would have a reason to come back in ghost form. Yeah. And you know, you can really find any excuse.

If someone saw a ghost in a subway and then you're like, hey, there was actually a dude who came back here like three years ago. I think he died eventually but i once gave him a footlong sandwich and he wanted mayo and i actually gave him mustard yeah i think he's back and i think he's making footlongs in the middle of the night by himself we're gonna have to leave out a lot of mustard to appease the gods that's all you need little excuses like that and you've pretty much wrapped up your case. And you know, it's a problem we come up against surprisingly often. We go to the Haunted Toys R Us in California and I don't know, they're claiming that there's the ghost of some Native American burial ground folks there. And it's an amazing story and then you

look into it and no one can ever prove there was a Native American burial grant. Yeah. The weird thing with this story is why do they want to lift? Where are they going? Where does a ghost go? Yeah. Well, I think this falls into the camp of ghosts that maybe don't even know they're dead. And they're stuck in a kind of time loop of, you know, Lydia is out there on the road continually looking for that ride home

because she's stuck on this road doomed to haunt it god that's terrifying isn't it it is a bit imagine being a ghost not knowing you're a ghost so you can't even utilize your ghost powers bullshit you're still like trying you're still going to the bathroom and trying to do like your stretches in the morning to keep your body limber you're made of dust you're still going to the bathroom and trying to do like your stretches in the morning to keep your body limber you're made of dust you're a floating ball you don't need to stay limber you don't have to pee you could just transform into a butterfly and yeah go to space if you wanted oh that's brutal and it is pretty fascinating that in these cases these ghosts don't look like ghosts apparently you know right right they're they

get into the car as a hitchhiker and people are for all intents and purposes convinced that they've got a real person in there i think these are pretty fascinating stories but admittedly the legend of lydia is almost 100 years old however you may be surprised to hear that some of the most famous cases of phantom hitchhikers are shockingly recent. In 2011, Japan suffered the tragic Tohoku earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. The combination of this magnitude 9 earthquake, tsunami and Chernobyl level nuclear event devastated the region and tragically killed almost 19,000 people. During the year after the tragedy, the taxi drivers of nearby Ishinomaki started having some unusual encounters. One driver described picking up a woman wearing a coat

at the train station downtown. Good evening, sir. Please can you take me to the Minamihama district, she said. The driver was puzzled by this request. That region suffered the worst damage of anywhere in the city. It had completely washed away. The Manamihama district? Are you sure? Don't you know the whole area has been destroyed? The woman fell silent as if she was deep in thought before quietly asking, Have I died? Bwooooah! The driver turned his head in alarm only to see she was gone that's crazy my the hairs in my arm

were standing on end reading that story isn't that horrible that yeah my god that's terrifying so wild i mean just on this topic of like ghosts potentially not knowing they've died that's super scary that's gotta be one of the most terrifying things someone can ask you yeah in any setting ever if you're at like the test the the checkout for your local supermarket and you're like all right can i actually get some help over here and the guy is just standing behind the register not doing anything you're like excuse me sir i'm trying to buy some beer here and i need you need to come see the ids who can approve it And if he just slowly cranes his head towards you and says, have I died?

Yeah, you better hope you're in a dream. You better slap yourself awake. I don't need the beer all of a sudden. I'll just, I'm quite sober as it is. This story legitimately gave me chills when I first read it. It's just so sad. But the reason I bring it up

is because this is a legitimate paranormal phenomenon all of its own. At least eight different taxi drivers from this one city were interviewed by a grad student of Tohoku Gakuin University and had a story just like this. All the passengers were quite young and, crucially, every driver has the incident recorded in their logbook as an unpaid fare. That means they didn't black out or dream this, they actually made those journeys, and then had to account for why no one paid them. Wow, that's really spooky.

I will say there are videos online claiming to have caught these encounters on camera, but from what I can find, these are mostly all debunked as hoaxes. And okay, that might be a little disappointing that the videos aren't real, but I do think it's very fascinating for a modern paranormal legend to evolve before our very eyes. If anything, all our modern technology, like the internet and video cameras, just help spread the paranormal stories even faster. And I think this all shows that this story may appear in different forms, but is actually a pretty old one.

There's even an ancient Roman legend about Romulus dying and his body goes missing. Then one day, Proculus is walking to Rome. And uh-oh, who does he see along the way but Romulus. Oh, man. And no one's believing Proculus that he's seen Romulus. It's too outlandish um what what happened to those kind of names names are so boring now i wish i was called romulus powers that sounds pretty or maximus maximus powers that sounds pretty cool yeah what would you if you

you know you're rory powers and you know you're like an entertainer, video creator, podcaster, all these different things. Entrepreneur. If you were called Romulus, what would you have done differently? I mean, I'd probably be a cage fighter for sure. I was thinking like Wall Street trader or something. No, like higher end, like the guy who crunches the numbers behind the scenes of government and, you know, the guy who's pulling the strings. Oh, 100%. Romulus Powers would be a cage fighter by day.

And at night, I made Bitcoin. I created it. You are. As a side hustle. As a goof, I made Bitcoin. You are the mythical Satoshi. What would Proculus Greer be doing? Yeah, exactly.

what would uh proculus greer be doing yeah exactly i think proculus greer would have summited everest and k2 in record times wow that's pretty impressive you know for sure like a grizzled explorer not kit though kit's a podcaster i wonder how much your name impacts what you have done with your life. I think people have studied that kind of thing. Isn't there a name for the phenomenon where, you know, like, if you have a last name that's a job, you end up more likely to do that job? Really? Yeah. I think that's a thing because there's so many like, you know, Peter Flowers out there and they're florists.

Right. Or like, you know, Doug Smith and he and they're florists right or like you know um doug smith and he ends up becoming a blacksmith i get well that was the origins of the names wasn't it like yes where they came from baker was baker it's that sort of thing but apparently it flips around in itself you know wow that's great so you we should really be calling our kids really badass names to make sure they have badass futures. Yeah. So I'm going to call my son Brad Maxi Muscle.

Maxi Muscle. Brad Maxi Muscle Beast Fist. I'm pretty sure Maxi Muscle is a copyrighted trademark, by the way. He's going to be called Max Michelin Monster Energy. He's going to be called Jack Creatine Powers. And he's actually going to be pretty cool. I'll have you know. I mean, we were, me and my wife, we were, you know, watching YouTube.

And this vlogger she sometimes watches came up. And the vlogger just had a baby. And they called the baby Birdie Blue. That's what happens when you get a baby to name itself imagine if you were going in for elective surgery and they go uh here um we must introduce you to your um anesthetist uh dr birdie blue you'd be like no absolutely not i'll go under the knife with no anesthetic thanks i'd rather do this shit myself than have dr birdie blue cut

me open imagine you needed like a heart replacement and they were like okay we finally got a good heart uh who's next on the list uh birdie blue that's just a dud name so it must have been a hoax move past it smith roberts yeah give that son of a bitch the heart but if your surgeon is called maxi muscle creating powers you'll at least give him a chance but rory i told you about romulus and proculus but if you don't trust them on this one how about the word of god that's right luke chapter 24 that's right the biggest most badass man of all and his brother roculus he was a f***ing literal stone. Why do I sound like we're talking about f***ing Transformers?

Rockulus Prime? Optimus. That's right, Luke chapter 24, verse 13 in the Bible. Two guys are walking to Emmaus when they meet a stranger in the road. They talk to him

about all the latest news and how Jesus of Nazareth had just been crucified. He seemed like a nice guy, so they talk to him about all the latest news now jesus of nazareth had just been crucified he seemed like a nice guy so they invite him to stay for dinner they think he looks familiar but they're not really sure but when he sits down at the table takes the bread and breaks it they're like we've seen that shit before you're jesus of nazareth and then he instantly vanishes we kind of rushed into that really fast and went through it really fast who's jesus what the what just happened all throughout history from the romans to ancient bible stories right to 2011 and the fukushima event in japan the same

story happens over and over and over. One guy found this sufficiently interesting that he kind of looked into it in the 80s. A guy, Jan Brunvand, wrote a book called The Vanishing Hitchhiker. So he wanted to document basically every time this story has ever been told. He said this story transcends Korea, Tsarist Russia, Chinese Americans, Mormons, Ozark mountaineers. There's a Hawaiian legend where the goddess Pele hitchhikes incognito and rewards kind travelers she encounters before disappearing. In some stories, the hitchhiker turns up to warn people of impending doom or something that's about to happen before they fade out, a bit like the Mothman. Yeah, that's why you always give the Mothman a ride, folks folks when you see him on the

side of the road he's obviously tired of flying always give him a lift because he's gonna remember your number plate and he's gonna run it and he's gonna find out your details he's gonna hunt you down so roy like i said we've had phantom hitchhikers ranging from 2 000 years ago right through to 10 years ago and countless witnesses to these paranormal events clearly something is going on but is it truly paranormal what are you thinking today i feel like i know so much and so little about these cases aside from the fact that it's hitchhikers as ghosts getting into cars i mean is that all this really is? Is like a sub-genre of ghosts?

There's not really much more to it than that. It's like, instead of, you know, a ghost haunting a castle where they died and are full of regrets, it's kind of just a person on the road who has regrets at that specific point that then gets into cars. Yeah.

I would say the only thing that maybe characterizes this as different is that you don't know it's a ghost until it's gone. Yeah. I would say the only thing that maybe characterizes this as different is that you don't know it's a ghost until it's gone. Right. In normal ghost stories people see like a f***ing Victorian woman whose half the opacity on her is 50% she's see-through and you instantly know it's a ghost maybe she's even going whoa got it full ghost mode whereas these phantom hitchhikers are like i say seem like normal hitchhikers they get into the car maybe they say hey i need to go here i need to do this or that and then it's only at the last minute you turn around you go hey uh where exactly are you going whoa and they're gone that's annoying that's

annoying imagine like going out on a date and you're like you know you know meet up have a nice time chat during dinner you're really you're really clicking having off you're like hey you know what before we go home why don't we just like go to this bar i know nearby let's like have a couple drinks we seem to be getting on pretty well it's like yeah let's do it have a couple drinks you know she puts her arm on your shoulder when you're laughing you're having a great time. There's connections here. You run to the bathroom and you come back and she's like, am I dead? You know, I don't know.

You tell me. Seems like it. Not again. I need to stop meeting girls at the graveyard. It's just a waste of time. Imagine you drove for like 20 miles trying to drop this person home. And it's like, yeah, where do you want to go? The nuclear power plant?

Weird. All right, let's go there. It's like two hours out of my way. But you said you were good for it. You said you were going to pay up. And then they just disappear. You have a romantic dinner and you go, hey, why do we end the night here? Why don't we?

I know this cute bar on the corner. They say nothing. They simply point straight ahead. Not much of a talker are you but you are cute so i'll keep this thing going i just realized there's a cool crossover here why is it in millennial speak that when someone stops texting you back or blocks you on social media after a date it's called ghosting yeah i mean it makes they just disappear it kind of makes sense lots of similarities pretty spooky for this case um i i take your point you know we are talking generally speaking about ghost sightings something we've talked about many times before i just thought this was cool this is uh a a clear

meme throughout history of the Phantom Hitchhiker. It's quite specific. Is it still ghosting if you do it after like 35 years? Like if you get like married, have kids, buy a house, and then one day just stop, just disappear, stop replying and you're like, yeah, it's not working out. I heard. Well, I think if you say it's not working out,

whoa, I don't think that's ghosting. You've already given away too much of the information. You've said it's over. Yeah. You've announced the ending. Ghosts can't file divorce papers. No, no. They don't have hands.

So anything like that. You know what? Ghosts don't need expensive alimony payments. I heard this is a big thing in japan you know in the movies you got your jason bourne's of the world and whenever they need to disappear they call a shady guy who comes around and goes okay we're gonna have to make this quick you're gonna be ready at 3 a.m i'm gonna have your new passport your new identity all right you don't tell anyone where you're going you don't contact nobody and you start your new life over it's gonna be you

know 65 000 and uh yeah you're sorted and if you want to bring your dog it's gonna be another 60 g's i always thought this was a fake thing apparently this is a big business in japan really you pay it's called there's a name for it i'll look pay. There's a name for it. I'll look it up. There's a name for this type of service that they can disappear you. And they get you a new identity and move you across the country and get you all new papers. You got to be real careful when you're hiring a man to make you disappear. There's a huge gray area within that request. If he shows up right on time at seven with a sawed-off shotgun,

you best start running because you just paid that guy 75 grand to murder you. It could be anything. It could be a guy with a silenced pistol. You could have accidentally hired a wizard from a guild who's showing up with a spell and an eye of newt to make you disappear you're like i wanted to stay in this dimension i like this dimension it's just my life i hate all right rory we're getting distracted what's it gonna be today the end of every episode we have to decide whether the case is paranormal or not so what are you saying i need more evidence you said i don't have any to give i'll be honest you said that these cases were ongoing even today.

Taxi cams have been around for a very long time, folks. In Ubers, in black cabs, in yellow cabs in New York City. If this was such a common phenomenon, how has this not been captured yet on camera? And this is frustrating because there are videos i just believe the ones that are most popular are fake yeah but you make a great point if this if this is happening all the time i don't know yeah taxi drivers as well similar to like truck drivers lorry drivers it's a tough job man it can be a lot of hours a lot of late nights who knows maybe you're not in the clearest mindset when you're driving around at night, picking up strangers. That could be quite a weird experience.

I've dipped my toes in the pool of sleep deprivation and I saw some pretty weird stuff when I was really at the peak of staying up. So I know how it can mess with your mind. So yeah, I don't know i think i need a little bit more convincing evidence for today's case i think that's more than fair rory i think what we're edging towards here today is a double no it is i pretty much agree i think this is a really unbelievably fascinating case but i do think that until we have more evidence this is more of an insight into human behavior the human mind human culture history our myths that this is like a myth that's been around for thousands of

years the phantom hitchhiker yeah and i don't know what it says exactly about you know what it means to be human but it clearly we're getting something from it and i know a lot of commentators have looked at the tohoku earthquake and the taxi drivers who have seen the ghosts after this earthquake i'm not saying they're right but a lot of people have said look these stories are a way of the people processing what happened to them and it's become a local myth something that binds people something that everyone can talk about and makes you know the loss of everyone seem a little less permanent that's beautiful man but it is a double no double no folks what a waste of time i can't believe i what's the point reading about other cultures and histories which leads to a double no. Thanks for that, Kit. Bringing a double no to the studio today.

Thank you. After, what was it last week? My double yes? Yeah, okay. My perfectly presented double yes. My next case, it's a guaranteed yes. Oh, yeah? Yeah, 100%?

Absolutely. What is it? I'll put money on it. Well, no, I won't put money on it because I haven't found it yet, but it gonna be so you don't even you don't even know it i have a good idea okay but it's right it's all in my head it's not on a google doc just yet so you haven't written it down you haven't researched it yet haven't even thought about it no you're convinced it's gonna be all up here all right do you have any idea what it's going to be about at all granted every single case i've ever investigated was a double yes in my mind until i put it on the

page okay but right now it's perfectly formed up here right okay every nook and cranny and piece of evidence is crystallized right well you just said you had i could get the nobel prize for the shit that's in my head it's whenever i type it out it becomes a child's creative writing project right okay so you seem to have a pretty clear idea of what it is inside your head. So I'm going to count down from three and right as I count down, you're going to tell me what the case is about. I'm going to try my best. I mean, could Einstein just sum it all up in like one sentence?

I don't think so. I think that was more or less E equals MC squared. But he could give it a go. Right. Let's do the little countdown. Three, two, one. Do ghosts have poop for brains this is just a question and it's a poor one at that two ghosts have poop for brains and they do well that's the f***ing twist that's the double yes brother well i look forward to that one in uh

in two weeks time because luckily i am hosting next week's episode and i'm going to be serving up a little double yes of my own you host to ghost you're like i steal your episodes i wrote 5 000 words on ghost having poop for brains yeah and it's like it's our best episode yet it's three hours long as you can see folks through the evidence i've presented for you today ghosts do in fact have poop for brains i win awards cuts to the ted talk the view count on youtube just going nuts i'm getting interviewed on the bbc and how did that question pop into your head rory such a such a big groundbreaking question do ghosts have poop for brains i'm beside you like yes rory how did it pop into well david that's a good question you know brains like this

they come around once in a million years and these sort of ideas just just form just form in there in they've cut my mic the security are dragging me out it was me it was me it was me the crowd no one can hear you over the crowd chanting rory rory rory guys i hope you enjoyed this week's double no that's what this show has become hasn't it um but i i do have faith in rory that we will come back next week even stronger bigger and better just like maximus proculus creating himself and knock it out of the park with a double yes. Oh, yeah. If you just can't get enough This Paranormal Life, why not head on over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life,

where from just $5 a month, you get access to a back catalog of full length bonus episodes where we tackle the most incredible, unbelievable cases that are, are well other than the ghosts having poop for brains which you know do ghosts have pee for blood those are the kind of big questions that make it all the way to the bonus episodes that's right and five dollars a month gets you access to over 35 full-length investigations if you want to get crazy twenty dollars gets you this paranormal life commune t-shirt whoa Whoa! So you can fit in with the other commune members. Patreon is a fantastic way of supporting this Paranormal Life,

but if you do not want to support us financially today, a great way of supporting the show is by leaving us a little review over on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere that you listen to this Paranormal Life.

It actually goes quite a long way in getting us into the charts and helping more people discover the show. If you do want to check out Patreon, if you want to check out our social media, everything is in the description of this podcast. So swipe up on your player of choice and all the links should be there. Just head on over to iTunes, hit that five star button and say, Rory is a 10 out of 10. He's great.

Kit's fine. Kit's good at two, I guess guess if you give us five stars you can call me a dickhead i don't care five stars kit's an asshole rory's great all right let's not get too carried away because i'm still i'm seeing that this could actually happen all the big podcast companies are like i'm hearing good stuff about this rory guy from this paranormal life if you could just ditch this anchor that's weighing him down this kit fella he could finally make it to the big leagues next week i am on joe rogan just me talking about the new pod talking about poop and ghost brains bullshit thank you for tuning

in this week if you have ever suggested ghost hitchhikers to us thank you for suggesting that there's i think too many of you to name today but thank you all so much thank you so much to cammy toman for editing and amy grisdale for research on this week's episode we'll be back next tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale. See you then. Bye-bye.