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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.
Morbid. Hey, everybody. It is a Listener Tales episode, and this one is brought to you by you, for you, from you, and all about you, as they all are.
And it's amazing, and we love you. The end.
Guys, it's been, I feel like it's been like a minute since we put out a Listener Tales episode, but it really hasn't.
No, I think we just like record a lot of things throughout the week.
I think that's what it is. We just record a lot of things and then I forget that we just had one.
Yeah. Last week, maybe. We record a lot.
What day is it? I don't know. I have a witchy candle going right now and the flame is losing its fucking mind right now.
It's dancing. Well, it's Mabon today. It's Mabon.
We're feeling witchy. We're feeling good.
It's spooky as fuck. It is pouring. It thundered earlier.
It was... The morning. So we like have a little routine.
We go to get our coffee before anything else.
Yeah. And our favorite barista. And our favorite barista whose name we literally don't know.
I know. That's really, that's stupid. We have to fix that tomorrow.
We need to figure out their name. Yeah. Let's do that.
Yeah, let's do that. Note to self. But we didn't get to see them today anyways.
I know. So that wasn't great. Lame. But yeah, we came back from our little coffee run and we closed the door to the house and all of the sudden it was like...
Thunder, lightning, torrential downpour.
And it was like, that's right. So hot. That's right.
It was so hot. So hot. But yeah, it feels just like the weather and the mood and the vibe is right for a listener tale.
Yeah, it's the first day of fall. Let's get it.
Yeah, we didn't really theme these ones out, because we've done a couple themes, so we just figured we'd go rogue.
We'd go rogue a little bit. We'll do some more themes in the future, obviously, but today let's do a classic fucking listener tale.
Let's do a classic one. A classic fucking listener tale.
Classic. It's classic. I won't say it again.
I won't annoy you. Oh, you know what I wanted to say, though?
We'll probably get sued, but like, it feels so classic.
You know that song? Nope. You know that song.
You and me, we're magic. No, I literally don't know that song.
And I know we have it, because it feels, yeah, it feels.
No? I mean, it's not helping. I don't know.
Wow. Who is it? you know that i don't play that game i hate when i like a song and somebody's like who sings it i'm like i'm no fucking i'm sorry i shouldn't have asked that but how dare you All right.
Well, it's time to start Listener Tales very evidently.
Would you like to start or would you like me to start?
I want you to start. Fine. I want you to do it.
I will. It's Listener Tales. My mom's twisted murder.
True story. Whoa. We should probably like chill out a little.
Everybody take it down. Yeah. Guys, calm down.
All right. It says, greetings, weirdos.
I stumbled across your amazing podcast recently when I was on a Dateline lull.
Oh, fucking love Dateline. And looking for something new to listen to.
I'm completely hooked and absolutely love all of your content.
Thank you. You're wonderful. I also love the fact that you drop F-bombs like confetti and this should be normalized.
Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. We've done like shows before where we couldn't swear and it feels so foreign.
Yeah, it's very hard. It also just makes me want to scream fuck.
Yeah. It's true. You know, I have been hooked on all things true crime and murder since 2022 when I became a surviving victim of a violent crime.
2002. 2002. What did I say? 2022. Oh, good.
I'm just at a place of right now. Listener Tales is and also I'm very happy that you survived.
Yeah. Listener Tales is absolutely one of my favorites.
And I learned from my noob mistake and included a double space put a foot for your reading pleasure.
Thank you. Note to add, it took me forever to figure out what the hell you meant by put a pho.
Please forgive my horrible grammar and enjoy my run-on sentences.
Should you read my story, you may use all names.
This was covered in local news outlets and papers.
Thank you, Stephanie, a fellow Gemini. I love a Gemini.
I love a Gemini, too. Oh, my God, you do?
I do. That explains it all. I love a Capricorn.
Aw. All right. Getting this story into written word has been healing and rewarding to finally share out loud.
Oh, I'm so glad. I know. I'd like to start by saying just because your parents make bad lifestyle choices, you still love them and care for them.
It's possible to become an upstanding individual, thrive, be educated, and come from white trash.
I mean, I'm proof of that. Mm-hmm. march 29th 2002 just started as a bad day for me yeah i just started reading things that i was like that does not say that nope it doesn't it's the 2002 i got scared of it march 29th 2002 started as just a bad day for my mom rita she was almost 20 years into a long drawn out crack addiction it was full of binges arrests she even made a cop's appearance oh wow Injuries, sex work, and neglect.
The gentleman's club that she worked at was raided that evening, and she was cited to appear in court for solicitation charges.
She had gotten a ride home with a fellow sex worker friend and decided to have a drink on the way home.
Alcohol was one of her gateways that always led to week-long vendors.
I moved back home a few weeks prior because I was 18, four months pregnant and broke.
I was babysitting for a friend of mine when my mom came in drunk, just staggering in.
She was shit-faced and blabbering about getting cited.
We started arguing because she was cursing and just being belligerent in front of my friend's young girls.
I had my friend come and get her girls to avoid the chaos of her verbal abuse.
I knew my mom was going to take off and sure enough, I saw her leave half attempting to duck down in her friend's car.
This was already so traumatic. I know. I feel really bad.
The next morning I jolted awake to the phone ringing.
I couldn't place it, but I just had a weird feeling.
It was my stepdad, Ricky, my mom's live-in boyfriend on the line.
And he said, get your ass up, get dressed.
I'm on my way to get you. He then says to me, someone hurt your mom last night and she's at Vanderbilt.
I wasn't as shocked initially because she was always into something.
They wouldn't let him go back to see her, only immediate family.
She was in the critical care unit as a no-information patient under the code name Metador.
The term means bullfighter, and she fought so hard for the next 13 days.
My stepdad and I gave our statements to detectives and was told she must have been beaten with a blunt force object.
She had five bleeders on her brain. Wow.
That brought on an emergency. Help me out there.
Craniotomy. To relieve pressure when she got into the ER.
Her brain was swelling. All her oral maxillofacial bones were broken.
Her hand was broken, later determined broken defensively.
Okay. She was placed into a medically induced coma, and all we could do was wait.
However, we couldn't just sit there and do nothing.
After all, I spent most of my childhood searching the streets of Nashville for my mom with my stepdad and my little sister, Rika, who was 15 at the time.
Oh, I'm so sorry you had to do that. I know.
And I'm so, like, she's pregnant as this is happening, too.
Yeah. She said, Because she would go on binges often, we were left looking for her.
We were able to track down and find her movements from the night before.
When my mom came home, of course, her first destination was to find her drug of choice.
She found her dealer set up in a sketchy motel room.
Her friend that drove her had left her there with the dealer and another user and sex worker.
So they did their drugs, and then it was time to pay up.
The dealer named Cadillac had put my mom and the other woman, we'll call her Candy, out on the street and instructed them to go get his money.
Oh, my God. It's just so bleak. Yeah. It's like, these people are humans.
He reached over and slapped my mom for added seriousness.
Candy was reluctant to help me and my stepdad, but would give details each time we found her.
She knew detectives were wanting her story, and that's the only thing we could get from her.
She would not testify or anything to that nature due to her current habits, and let's face it, she was scared as hell it would happen to her as well.
Over the next few days, information was getting stale, and my mom's condition was not really improving.
But it wasn't getting worse, either. The doctors were very transparent and did not give us any kind of hope that she'd recover from this.
And if she did, how would she function? She was already a survivor and had survived a tragic motorcycle accident early in her life when I was just an infant.
My mom was a matador and everything that means.
They decided to slowly pull her from her medically induced state to get her reactions.
Her reactions were slow at first and as one could imagine, surviving not one but two traumatic brain injuries.
She began with easy wiggle your toe commands and squeezing of hands and The incident remained under investigation.
Meanwhile, my mom was making minor improvements with each day that passed.
Each day there was enough progress for us to remain hopeful for another day.
It was the day she opened her eyes that I brought to my knees in full gratitude for all the Jesus and powers that be.
I held her so tight with tears streaming down my face and I hugged her so tight.
I could feel the crunching bones in her face as she made a kissing expression.
It was a miracle. I've never experienced relief like this before or ever again in my life."
She could even hold up three shaky fingers when asked how many children she did have to represent her three girls that she had.
Maybe, just maybe, she was going to make a full recovery.
We began talks of scheduling the unbelievable number of surgeries it was going to take to fix her broken bones.
The reconstruction to her maxillofacial bones was also going to be a lot to endure.
On the day of her first scheduled surgery, she spiked a fever and the surgery had to be rescheduled.
I had an appointment earlier the same morning for my sonogram appointment to determine my baby's gender.
Oh, you're going through all of this. So much.
I was nervous and my wonderful aunt came along and held my hand.
It was so bittersweet trying to be happy, but I was hurting inside for my mother.
The tech was amazing and let me know that I was having a girl.
The first grandchild of the family would be a girl.
I was so happy and I couldn't get upstairs to her quick enough.
The elevator ride up seemed like it lasted forever.
Lots of pink glitter tiaras and baby showers were dancing in my mind.
You're gonna make me cry. I know, I already feel it.
It quickly faded when I approached my mom's room and she wasn't there.
I absolutely freaked out and I couldn't find her.
Where did she go? How did they not tell me?
I'd been pretty much living on the 10th floor of Vanderbilt Hospital and knew most of the staff at this point.
My mom had fallen back into a coma, only it was from the medicine this time.
She had closed her beautiful eyes and I was not ever going to see them again.
Whew. Her brain activity faded and the countless machines were quickly added and she was only being kept alive by machines.
I was absolutely crushed. Any ounce of hope or shred of a future was ripped from me in that moment.
The decision was made and her beautiful light left this world on April 10th, 2002.
Even being the family of a victim of circumstance, you truly never really think it's going to happen to you.
I mean, this only happens on TV and it can't be real, right?
Are the best ways to describe the following days.
I left immediately following her burial and was so lost without her.
Oh, I want to give you a big hug. I do too.
As time went by and court dates for Cadillac were approaching, the biggest shock was still yet to come.
The detectives have been questioning another suspect on other related charges to those like my mom.
When the suspect admits to harming a blonde bitch too.
That was in quotes. See, this guy had been on a so-called mission from God and was beating and killing sex workers.
He'd been arrested for attempted murder on A Lady of the Evening and even threw her into the Cumberland River after attacking her and leaving her there for dead.
My God. If I don't already have to tell you that women like this are tougher than a coffin nail.
She inevitably climbed out of said river and fucking survived.
Holy shit. This chick right here gets all my praise and respect.
The detectives were completely shocked and my mom immediately came into the mind of Detective Abernathy that was conducting this interview.
In true crime CSI fashion, samples were taken from his shoes and his vehicle.
However, in real non-television life, the results took absolutely for fucking ever.
Like, the detectives told me it was going to take time, but I wasn't expecting almost a year.
The DNA was a match, and charges were brought against William Joyce.
That was only 25 years old and a father at the time.
Wow. In happier news, my daughter was born and has totally changed my world for the best.
Oh, I love that. We'll be celebrating her 20th birthday this year on the 20th anniversary of my mother's death.
She is all the good things of my mom and none of the bad, and I am truly blessed to be her mom.
Oh my God. And even happier news, he ended up having to serve 30 years and serve time at TN's Brushy Mountain Prison.
He begged the DA to move him from there because his mental health was deteriorating being there.
He also added that his bunk was next to Paul Reed.
Wow. He said that Paul bothered him so badly that he requested a transfer, which of course was denied.
When I spoke to the DA about it, I was like, hell no, deny that shit, because I wanted him to be tormented by an even more sadistic serial killer than himself.
Wow. You went through so much. Stephanie.
Wow. Oh, my God. I am so sorry you went all through through all of that.
And I'm so sorry that you lost your mom at all.
Never mind the way that you did lose her.
And like while you were bringing your own life into this world.
That's like a terrible, terrible thing to go through.
That's terrible. But it sounds like your like your daughter is like a light and that you guys have this great relationship.
Like that's a great thing. And I bet your mom is watching over you guys.
And I bet she's proud of you being a good mama.
Totally. Wow. That was heavy. Thank you for sending that in.
I'm really glad that that was like cathartic to you too to write down because that makes us feel like it's like easier.
Yeah, exactly. All right. So the next one I'm going to do is a listener tale, 1940 style.
Hello, insert obligatory praise and adoration for the both of you and what you do here.
Thank you. Thank you for fueling my insatiable white female interest in murder and such.
You guys are great storytellers, and I appreciate all the research and thought you put into each case.
Thank you. I've attached a double-spaced putt-a-fub because as an editor, I absolutely hate it when writers send me their work single-spaced, and in a small font, my aging eyes struggle to see.
That's the thing. My eyes are so fucking old right now.
That's the problem. If this gets read on a Listener Tales episode, I will be elated.
Become elated. Be elated. I shall hold on to my butts in great anticipation.
All the best, Anna. I hope it's Anna. Anna, Anna.
Anna. Anna, Anna. I'm sorry if I'm not saying it.
You really just went to a full place of Frozen with that.
I really always go to a full place of Frozen, but if it's Anna, I'm very sorry.
Either way, it's a beautiful name. Ana Ana.
All right, so let's see. This is a long one, so I'll try to cut to the chase.
This may not be your average listener tale.
It's not about a murder case or spoopy, supernational stuffs.
I hope that's okay. Of course it is. I think it technically qualifies as one, however, because it does have to do with mass murder.
Not like Jamestown or Columbine mass murder.
It has to do with a different kind of atrocious shit stain of an event in human history.
Okay. This is about my Polish grandmother's experience during the Holocaust.
Spoiler alert, she survived. So that's a quick little trigger warning to everybody.
Yes. This is about the Holocaust. Totally understand if you want to skip forward, if this could be a little triggering.
Absolutely. But... That's that. Side note.
Bobcia, I hope I said that right, means grandmother in Polish.
And I will often refer to her as such throughout this story.
Oh, thank you for the pronunciation. It's pronounced Bobcha.
Okay, cool. Thank you for that. It boils my blood to hear there are people out there today who don't believe the Holocaust even happened.
Let me tell you. It's a wild thought to me.
No, it doesn't even register as like a real thought process to me.
Like people who say that, I'm like, you don't believe that.
Like there's no way you actually believe that that didn't happen.
You're trying to be different. I don't even know what you're trying to do, but you should stop trying to do whatever it is.
So who don't believe the Holocaust even happened, that it was exaggerated or that the numbers can't be accurate.
It's disturbing beyond belief. And I agree.
Speaking of numbers, my grandmother had a bunch of them forcefully tattooed on her arm.
Whoever is reading this out loud, take a deep breath because here comes an anger-induced run-on sentence.
As if the lifelong trauma of war, torture, and genocide wasn't enough to remind her of the bullshit she and millions of others had to go through because of one German white supremacist with a stupid ink-stained mustache.
Hell yeah. Yup. Before getting too deep into the Holocaust of it all, let me tell you a little about my grandmother.
Or at least how I knew her growing up. We all know at least one person like that.
She had a Miranda Priestly air about her.
I fucking love that. Or like a super unimpressed cat.
Yeah. She might not have been aware that she gave off that vibe, and a lot of it could have been in my overthinking head, but I digress.
Aside from all that, Bob Show was also a hell of a cook, knitter, linguist, dressmaker, and stubborn overachiever with unnaturally high pain tolerance.
If this was visual, you would have seen my head slowly tilting to Elena.
I haven't netted yet. A stubborn overachiever with an unnaturally high pain tolerance, both physically and mentally.
Thanks for that. Yeah. So it says, let me explain.
One summer when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was going to the lake nearby with some friends but forgot to grab a beach towel.
I had to go back inside my grandmother's house to get one and they were stored on the highest shelf in the bathroom.
Now, I was a short kid. Did you guys ever have to line up by height in elementary school for class pictures?
I'm feeling this very hard. My bitch was always in the front.
I was always, always there. I was always the kid at the end of the line.
Here is a picture of me in kindergarten sitting in the front row.
I'm the only kid whose knees don't reach the edge of the chair.
Oh, my God. You were so short. So fucking cute.
What an adorable little mush. Oh my God.
I just want to squeeze you. What a little peanut.
Anywho, I could barely reach the shelf even when standing on the toilet.
I went to ask my mom for help, but she was on a conference call and shooed me away.
Bob's show was in the middle of cooking something, but offered to help.
As she stood on her tiptoes to grab the towel for me, she slipped and fell on the ground.
Hard. The movement caused her to slip a disc and dislocate a part of her spine.
Oh, my. You'd assume after the ambulance arrived, she was taken to the hospital, right?
End of side story? No. No. My mom was still on a call in the other room when they got there.
When she was done, here's the scene she walked into.
Babsha, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall... giving orders to the three to four emergency personnel in the kitchen.
An 80-something-year-old woman with a broken vertebra who should be wincing in unthinkable pain has turned EMTs into sous chefs.
Stop it! Telling one to keep stirring the pot and setting the burner to low while the other preheats the oven to 375 degrees.
Never tell a Polish woman who survived the Holocaust to just leave her cooking mid-preparation, even if it's to go to the hospital.
I hope to possess that energy someday. Now for the main story.
Let me preface this by telling you she was not Jewish.
A surprising amount of people don't realize there were also hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
In Babsha's case, she was a spy for the Polish Underground, the largest underground resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Wow. Can she get any more impressive? Her assignments included guiding refugees from the Tatra Mountains and delivering intelligence documents to allies as a courier.
She was arrested by a Nazi doing the latter.
Oh, God. Couriers were not told what was in these documents because if they were captured, they couldn't give key information to the enemy.
The assignment was to take it from point A to point B only.
During my grandmother's particular mission, she was to deliver a briefcase of documents to someone at a train station.
She sat on a bench at the train station and placed the briefcase on the ground by her feet.
As she waited and minded her own business, a Nazi soldier, perhaps on a prayer trip, walked up to her, accused her of being a sex worker just because, and arrested her.
She was able to kick the briefcase under the bench before being hauled off.
Had the Nazi discovered it, well, I wouldn't be here writing you this listener tale right now.
Wow. Oh my God, the next fucking sentence.
Oh, my whole body just got chills. And that's how she wound up in Auschwitz.
Oh, my God. She told me stories of a lot of close calls with death there, including an instance where a Nazi prison guard set a pack of German shepherds on her.
When the dogs were instructed to charge at her, they stopped short when they reached her and began whimpering.
Maybe they sensed her non-threatening energy.
I'm not sure. But yay for dogs being the best, for real.
The fact that a group of humans just, like, first of all, put people in camps, but then, I mean, they did things even more terrible than this, but to turn a pack of dogs on a human, like, okay, Ramsey Bolton, are you fucked in the head?
I'm, it's horrifying on every single level that something can be horrifying.
Like, How collectively was there a group of humans that fucked in the head?
I don't know. You see these kind of things start to form even today, like nothing of that magnitude, of course.
But you see how these ideas suddenly just like people don't listen to facts.
They don't listen to science or reality or anything logical in its entirety.
Once it happens, it's really hard to flip the other way.
And it's so really scary. Like, really scary.
Remember how I said Babcia was an overachiever?
The woman knew six languages. Oh, my God.
Polish, English, German, Russian, Czech, and Swedish.
Is that how you say it? Czech? I don't know if it's Czech or Czech.
It's probably Czech. I think it's Czech.
I think you're right. We can look it up.
Yeah, let's look it up. And it's Czech. Yeah.
I knew Ash was right. As soon as that came out of my mouth, I was like, that's not right.
But also Swedish. And I think it saved her life.
When the Nazi guards learned this, they used her as a translator so they could dole out orders to non-German speaking prisoners in their own language.
Fast forward towards the end of the year.
As the Nazis learned the Soviets were getting closer in January 1945, they evacuated prisoners to other camps.
These were called death marches because they were moved on foot and in windowless vehicles in the dead of winter.
So many died during the journey, either from the cold, starvation, or because they were shot by Nazis who deemed them too weak or injured to work, like they were racehorses with broken legs.
My grandmother was in a group being sent to a concentration camp called Ravensbruck. the largest camp for women in the German Reich.
One day in the spring of that year, Ravensbrück prisoners were told to pile into buses.
Babsha recognized these buses. They looked exactly like the ones used at the camps to shuttle prisoners to the gas chambers.
She thought this was it. After surviving countless near-death experiences during the war, it was now her time to be killed.
Ugh. No one had told them otherwise. They weren't told a thing except to get on the bus.
It was unusually long drive, but when the vehicles stopped and the doors opened, they were greeted in Swedish, not German.
They had been rescued by the Swedish Red Cross.
Oh, can you imagine? I can't. I'm not even going to ask.
Can you imagine? Because we can't. Just like that feeling must have been.
Oh, the fear must have been indescribable.
And then the feeling of realizing that you were rescued must have been euphoric.
Oh, yeah. Babsha did not return to Poland after that.
It wasn't safe yet since Roosevelt and Churchill basically gave the country to Stalin and the Soviets.
She remained in Sweden and met my grandfather shortly after.
My grandfather was in a concentration camp during the war as well, but I don't know any details.
Neither do his kids. He died before I was born, but my aunt tells me he never spoke of it. after my grandmother was liberated from Ravensbruck by the Swedish Red Cross.
She worked as a nurse and social worker for other survivors, my grandfather being one of them.
What a badass. They married, had my mom and aunt, and then immigrated to the United States when my mom was four.
My mom says that the day they arrived in America is her earliest memory.
It was quite serendipitous, as that day was also the 4th of July.
Wow. Isn't that one of the most American things you've ever heard?
So the 4th means a lot to my mom's side of the family, and every Independence Day we celebrate the anniversary of their coming to America.
That's my listener tale. Here's a picture of my dog Jack.
He's an 8-year-old American bully rescue.
Keep it weird. Look! Look at Jack in his scarf.
I want to smooch him on his widow nose. Oh my God.
We need to ask if we can share this picture because he's too beautiful not to share with the world.
That's a perfect dog. Oh my God. There's two.
Keep scrolling. Oh my God. I love him. Oh my God, guys.
I want, I want to give him a treat. I want this baby.
Oh, Jack is beautiful. Wow. That was wild.
Anna or Anna. Bobcha is incredible. I'm sorry that I don't have the like, if I don't know which one is right.
Either way, Bobcha, what an amazing lady.
Literally. And I just love that she was like, yeah, keep stirring that.
No, that is literally my favorite thing ever.
And she was a nurse, a social worker, a spy.
She spoke multiple languages. She spoke six languages.
And then broke a vertebrae and was like, yeah, can you stir that?
Yeah, like I'm cooking something. I can't just leave it.
Who do you think we are? She's sitting by a wall, just like sitting with her back on the wall being like, all right, stir that.
She's like, I've been through worse. What a badass.
Wow. Thank you for that tale. Even though that wasn't like a typical true crime tale, the Holocaust is one of the biggest true crimes to ever have been committed on this earth.
Yeah. Man, thank you for that. Thank you.
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Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.
Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.
Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.
All right. Our next one is Listener Tale from the wife of the Michael Molloy book author.
Hey. Hey, look at that. Your husband's book was phenom.
I love that. All right. It says, hey, ladies, so excited to send this your way.
You profiled my husband's book many episodes ago, which is how I stumbled upon you.
And I've been a loyal listener ever since.
I love that. We love Simon. Read his book.
Hell yes. And that's so cool. FYI, all names have been changed except mine and Tripod the dogs.
Totally fine with me to read my name. But if you need to conceal names for legal reasons or whatevs, let me know and I can cut that out.
You don't have to. Don't even worry. It's cool.
It's all good. All right. Hi. Hello, ladies.
It's high time we meet since we have been bestie Mc... Bestie McBesterson's for like a year now and you don't even know it.
I have a true bestie claim to stake because you profiled my husband's book on your show.
I loved his book. I will put it in the show notes for this again because that is a good book.
That's a great book and he's awesome. Also, just a wild case.
Yeah. Yep. It's true. I'm married to Simon Reid of episode 235 fame.
Yes. Wow. That feels like it was like not that long ago.
I know. And that's like over a hundred episodes ago.
I know. That's wild. That's crazy. You profiled his book on the house for your Michael Malloy episode.
Thanks for that, by the way. You're welcome.
It's great. I couldn't let my husband be the only cool one in the family and I'm a full weirdo crew.
Yes. So I'm sending you a listener tale.
If you read it, my credibility around the dinner table will rise immensely.
P.S. Elena read your book in a day and loved it.
Oh, my God. Thank you. That's so cool. That's really cool.
So insert gushing here about how great you guys are.
Also, insert me, a therapist, wanting to do a little mental health check on the both of you to see how you're handling the fame, the pressure, and the constant immersion in the worst of humanity, all of it.
It gets rough out in these streets. Take care of yourselves, adorable people.
Oh, my God. I love you. Wow. A few people lately have, like, checked in on us.
I know. And they're like... Take care of yourself.
Yeah, like take care of yourselves. Like if you need a break, take a break.
That's really kind of you to say. That's so sweet.
It really is. We're doing okay. Yeah, we're pretty good.
We're okay. We've had a few stress moments, but we've dealt with it.
I mean, I'm always like, I'm always going through a mentee bee.
A mentee bee. That's what the kids are calling mental breakdowns now.
I love that. It sounds a lot nicer. It's like so hot.
Like, oh, I'm in a mentee bee right now.
I'm in a mentee bee right now. I'm always in a state of mentee bee.
Yeah, I'm just basically what we've realized is helping with the mentee bees is just like trying to like look at the gratefulness of it all.
Like it's helping me at least when I get super, super stressed about it.
Yeah. I'm like, I'm very grateful that anyone wants to listen to me talk, that anyone wants to read my book, that I get to do this for my job, like that I have healthy kiddos, that like I'm married to this six foot three tall glass of water.
Look at that. Look at all of that. Look at all that.
I love it. I was just laughing when you were like, that anybody even wants to read my book.
It's true. Shut up. Your book is good. It's wild.
Your book is great. Thank you. You're great.
And there's so much fun. There's so much fun coming.
Also, the reads are great. Yes. I was like, what?
You like the reeds? Yes. I have a very bad memory.
So let's set the scene. In my vagabond 20s, I basically lived all over the western U.S. trying to figure out who I was and what the hell I should do with my life.
For two glorious years, I ended up in the beautiful mountain town of, I paused to look it up, and it's Taos.
Taos, New Mexico. Taos is a tiny little hippie artist community.
I'm on my fucking way. And the most absurdly breathtaking place on earth.
It's also haunted as fuck. So it literally meets all of the requirements of a place I'd like to go.
I heard more ghost stories and bizarre happening stories and creepy encounter stories there than I could even remember.
Everybody had one. That's not even true.
Everyone had like seven. Supposedly, according to the Native American tribe there, Taos was the longest continuously inhabited place in North America.
I don't know how many Google feels about that little factoid, but given the crazy numbers of ghost stories there, my money is on the tribal legend.
I wanted to tell you two, I wanted to tell the two of you my personal ghosty encounters while I lived there.
Oh, I'm excited. Very stoked. Let's go. So at one point, I completely lucked out and got a month's long house sitting gig at a house called the Famous Soft Drink Mansion.
That's what she called it. Ah, yep. Yep.
I can't read. At a house I called the famous soft drink mansion.
I didn't actually call it that. I called it by the soft drinks real name, but I'm afraid that if I write it down, you won't be allowed to read it on the air.
So let's just call it famous soft drink you definitely had before mansion.
I love that. That's hilarious. Could we?
We could probably say it, right? Like if we knew it.
Yeah. Yeah. In the future, we could say it.
To be clear, it was totally not a mansion, just a super nice house, but it sure as hell seemed like a mansion to my broke 23-year-old self, who had spent the last couple of years going from shitty dorm rooms to shittier apartments.
And why famous soft drink? Because the lady I was house-sitting for was legit a famous soft drink heiress.
Not even kidding. Can you squeeze in an episode about how wrong it is that we were all not born into vast family fortunes?
K-thing. Yeah. That is a true crime. So anyway, the heiress collected weird antiques.
Oh, hell yeah. Let's fucking go. My girl.
Probably every heiress needs some sort of bizarre money dumping hobby.
Probably. Like maybe when you go down to pick up your fortune from the inheritance place, you get a report.
At least one eccentric thing. Oh, you have to report.
At least one eccentric thing you're going to start doing.
That sounds great. I want to do that. I don't have an inheritance, though.
I don't know. Every couple days, some random box would arrive at the door filled with creepy crap, busts of warriors, ancient weapons, artwork that looked like it took a wrong turn on the way to the museum, that kind of stuff.
I love it. I'm in. I know. That sounds right up your alley.
Yeah. Hilariously, I wasn't allowed to touch anything because she didn't trust my janky self one bit.
Instead, I had a literal housekeeper who came once a week and was trained to deal with the antiques.
Can you imagine? Broke-ass me living alone in a giant house with a weekly housekeeper?
Times was good, I tell ya. I'm obsessed with you.
So the mansion had two whole... I'm dying.
So the mansion had a whole two-bedroom apartment on the basement level.
This apartment had a sordid relationship with the fire code, as there was just one long, steep stairway down to the apartment and no other entrance or exit.
But whatevs. Fire codes don't apply to rich people.
I'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution.
You're, like, really funny. You are. This was all in the golden days of the late 1900s.
In turn of the century 2000s, an internet out in the mountains was rare and a precious dial-up treat.
Famous soft drink heiress kept her big honking computer in one bedroom of that basement apartment.
So late one night, I went down to check my email as usual.
Now, the basement was creepy, not going to lie.
Once some friends had come to stay, and my big strapping Italian friend from high school said he could sleep down there, no problem.
The vibe didn't scare him one bit. I bet it did.
Where did we find our big strapping Italian friend the next morning?
Curled upstairs on the green and gold...
Brocade? Brocade. Brocade living room couch.
Why? I love it. Because in the middle of the night, he woke up to the distinct feeling that a man was sitting on his chest and trying to choke him.
That's all. Just that. Oh, okay. So anyway.
All right, so anyway. So anyway, I walked down the long, steep stairs one night, as I did most nights, hoping the dial-up would go through and that I'd get just enough internet to check my poppin' AOL box.
Hell yeah. To get to the computer, you walk down the stairs on one side of the apartment, then across the living room area, then into the bedrooms on the far side.
In the middle of the living room couch was, excuse me, in the middle of the living room was a couch, some chairs, and a coffee table with a bunch of newspapers that lay untouched on top.
So I got into the computer room, which is next door to the chest-crushing murder ghost bedroom.
Oh, good. Now, just to be clear, the famous soft drink mansion was out in the middle of nowhere, in all directions with sagebrush and nothingness.
So when you're living out there and you're in the furthest corner of an illegal basement apartment, there's a level of silence that you just don't experience in modern life.
Oh, I hate that. Yeah, the sound of silence creeps me out.
So, the dial-up works, and I'm sitting in this deep silence in the corner of my bedroom, checking my email when I heard it.
I can hear that silence. I can hear the silence, and then I can hear signing into old-ass computers where it's like... It's like too much sound.
Like, too much. You know who also hates silence and doesn't like loud sounds?
John. Tobias Forge. Tobias Forge. Yep, he does.
Yeah. He told us that. He did tell us that.
I think I stated before that I do not have a memory.
Yeah, you don't. It's fine. It's okay. I was just excited to put that in there really is all that was.
I love it. Anytime I could just throw that conversation into another conversation, I'm going to do it.
Yeah, I'll bring up Forrest in a minute.
Yeah, it's fine. All right. Clear as day.
That's when she heard it. Clear as day. A sound I had heard every day growing up in the 80s.
I distinctly heard a man clear his throat, then loudly flip open one of the newspapers.
My whole body just went... For the youngins, in olden times, you had to do this flip move every time you turned a newspaper page, and the sound is uniquely only unto itself.
Oh my god, I can hear it. I can too. I can hear that.
Yep. I used to live with a lady that fucking loved the newspaper, and she would just...
Yep. Like it's got like that kind of vibe to it.
It's a flick. I grew up with two parents who read the paper every day and I knew that sound in my bones.
Every part of my body was adrenaline fire in an instant.
I fully thought a murderer was sitting there on that couch taunting me.
He'd snuck in, snuck down the stairs. And now here he was relishing the fact that my only escape was to somehow run directly past him up a long ass flight of stairs and out into the nothingness of a snowy Mesa at night.
Wow. And to be clear, even at 23, I was no athlete.
I feel that. My heroic sprint to safety was unlikely at best.
I would have thought that same thing. Same.
But I had to try. You did. I crept to the bedroom door.
Silence. The air was buzzing. He was waiting.
It was my move. It was. Summoning all my courage, I bolted out at a full run, probably my first gym class.
And as you've already guessed, because I fully told you this was a ghost story, there was no one there.
No one. I hate... The clearing the throat is the thing that gets me.
Yeah. Because I've heard that before when it shouldn't happen.
When? I've heard like, oh, did I just hear a throat clear?
And it's a very distinct sound and it's so human.
That's the thing. It's such a human sound.
It's like even scarier that like... I hate it.
Which was somehow even scarier. I booked it up the stairs full throttle and the newspaper flipping throat clearing old friend choking murder ghost was left to eat my dust.
And I never let anyone down there at night again.
The mansion has a lot of had a lot of other stories, including a real prowler one night doing everything in his power to get in while I was there alone.
But back to the ghosties. Hell yeah. The next story happened way on the other side of town and many months later.
A few of us were hanging out one night and my friend Joe got a call that his mom was very ill and he needed to drive the couple hours home.
Like now. The problem? Joe was pet sitting for his friend Rob's little three-legged rescue dog, Tripod.
Oh, I'm so obsessed with that name. I love it.
No problem, I said. I can take over the pet sit.
Also, do you get why he's named Tripod? Yeah, he's got three legs.
That's so hilarious. Adobe. Adobe. Adobe.
Thank you. Okay. Finally, around midnight, I got into bed.
Rob's bed was against one wall and the room had one window next to the bed down by the feet.
I hate that. He had no window coverings because I mean, bachelor guy.
I was just going to say he's a guy. I'm surprised he didn't have a plaid sheet taped up.
And because honestly, there was nothing way out there to need privacy from.
So I climbed into bed and tripod settled beside me on the floor for all of maybe 12 seconds.
Because as soon as we laid down, we both heard from the absolute nothingness beyond the window.
A sound that was clear and loud and gleeful and somehow freaking menacing all at the same time.
We heard a man whistle. Oh. Not just once and not like a dog whistle.
A full tune. Oh. A happy little tune. Oh.
A tune that was 100% intended, I absolutely know, to let me know that he was there and he was watching.
Oh, I hate this. I fucking hate whistling.
Whistling. No, no, no, no, no. Nope. I don't like it.
It actually makes me angry. I used to have a boss that would whistle for me.
Like there was like the whistle. I hope he's listening right now.
I hated that. I hated it. He's probably not listening, but it made me so angry.
But also to this day, if Drew whistles, I'm like, cut the shit.
Whoa. I don't like it. My best friend growing up when I was little, she lived right next door to me.
I know her. And every time that her dad would call her in, because those were the days when you could be out until it got dark.
Until the streetlights came on. And the parents didn't really know where you were outside.
You were just outside. And my mom would just call me in, or my dad would, because he had more of a booming voice.
But her dad would do this loud-ass whistle that you could hear.
Anytime he needed her, he would just do that, like...
But it was like this crazy loud whistle.
Did he do it with his pinkies? Yep. He would do the, but it was with the two fingers.
Oh, okay. And it was, every time I think of a whistle, I think of that.
I want to learn how to do that one with like the fingers.
Cause I don't like a whistle, but that would be a fun whistle.
That would be a fun whistle. I don't, I don't like people that whistle a jaunty little tune.
Okay. Don't do that. I'm going to do it.
It makes, no, it makes me like actually angry.
You know how you get irrationally angry at mouth noises?
Oh yeah. I get irrationally angry at whistles and many other things.
All right. Okay, so... That's terrifying, though.
I hate this. I hate it so much. Thinking of hearing this outside in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with no one around is not for me.
No, thank you. Not for me, dog. Not for me, tripod.
Immediately, sweet little tripod went full Rambo on all three legs, staring full attention at the window and growling like Kuja.
We love a dog. This wasn't my imagination.
Even tripod knew bad news was outside. Freaking out.
The whistler kept whistling his jaunty little tune, playing with my nerves like a cat with a mouse.
Tripod barked and growled louder and louder, but the whistler was unfazed.
Katie, you have no choice, I thought. There's nowhere to go.
You just need to face him and see who you're dealing with.
Wow, you're a bad bitch, Katie. You are.
And so I did. As fast as I could, I flung myself forward.
So in an... So... So that in an instant, I went from beside the window to fully in the window looking out.
The exact split second that I did that, the whistling stopped.
The exact second. And who was standing framed in the window?
Who? A whole lot of no one. My eyes started everywhere around the open land behind the house.
There was no way a person could have run or hidden that quickly.
There was nothing to even hide behind. He was nowhere.
When the whistling stopped, Tripard had stopped growling, and now he sat there looking at me, head cocked in confusion.
What that was? Concerned little eyes seemed to ask.
I didn't honestly know what to do or think.
I sure as hell wasn't going outside to investigate.
So what to do? I laid back down on the bed, heart still racing.
The split second my head hit the pillow, the whistler.
Back and loud as ever with that menacingly happy tune.
Tripod resumed losing his mind, growling and barking.
I want to know what the tune was. I wish you could tell what song it was.
I am just hearing like the Flo Rida song where it's like, can you blow my whistle, baby?
I love that you went there. Here I am thinking of some like old timey tunes that I could bring out and you're like, I think it might be Flo Rida.
I mean, I don't think it's Flo Rida, but like that's what happened in my head.
I love that. Okay, you bastard, I thought.
This time you're mine. I went through the whole ritual again, creeping up to the window pane, staying out of sight.
I crouched on my feet so I could launch myself even faster into the moonlit window frame.
And again, I hurried myself forward and immediate silence.
And again, I laid back down and immediate whistling.
What? I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I think I repeated this process three or four more times before I finally gave into the fact that I wasn't going to catch this thing, whatever it was, and it definitely wasn't human.
I eventually gave up and just laid in bed, still at full alert, listening to the whistler and watching Tripod bark and gristle.
That poor baby must have been exhausted trying to protect me, a girl he had just met an hour before.
Oh, Tripod. I love him. The real hero. And eventually the whistling just stopped.
I have no real sense of how long it went on.
And as I laid there scared in the dark, an hour?
Or did it just feel that long in my fear?
No idea. But finally the night grew quiet.
Tripod laid down and went to sleep, which was my cue that the whistler, whatever it was, was really gone.
As a postscript, it wasn't until 20 years later, listening to your podcast, that I heard about, I say that part, right?
Yeah. Flush pedestrians. I couldn't remember if that was the real name or the actual word.
And suddenly everything about that night made sense.
The puzzle pieces all went click, click, click in my brain as I started voraciously reading just how many stories of ghostly whistlers there are.
And holy crap, am I glad I did not go outside.
That's all I was thinking about this whole time and I didn't want to say it.
I was like, this sounds like A flash pedestrian.
I hate that so much. I never want that experience.
Oh, if you, and I'm not telling you to do this because I know a lot of people like this really scares them.
If you see videos and stuff that people have posted on like TikTok and stuff where they'll like speak and stuff like it's no stop.
Like my whole body is just like, oh my God, I'm picturing the one that you showed me like the other day with like a woman screaming.
Yep. And the man was like, and the horse knew he was like, I mean, yeah, he was like, yeah, no, I'm so creeped out.
I hate it. Okay. Thank you for keeping it so weird and providing so much weekly entertainment.
And if you just finished reading this on air, thank you for giving equal bragging rights to my husband.
Wow. The Reed household dinner table tonight.
I can't. I need to know about it. Katie and Simon for life.
Katie and Simon. You guys have a great like couple name.
I love it. You do. Kyman. Kyman. Kyman or Sadie.
I like Kyman. You girls truly rock and I hope you keep podcasting for as long as you love it and it feeds your fabulous souls.
You're a wonderful human. The fact that you said that instead of like forever, it's just really nice.
Like you're a thoughtful therapist and I love you.
And also you're beautiful. I was going to say that.
You also have like incredible teeth and really good hair.
Also, can I hire you? You're amazing. Right?
I'm like, therapist me. Therapist me. No, Katie, that was amazing.
That was so great. And so fucking scary.
So well written. Obviously, you are a creative and amazing household.
And I appreciate that. Your husband's book was great.
He was wonderful afterwards, like sharing the episode and everything.
And he's just been, I've been like keeping in touch, like with everything that's been going on.
So it's really cool to have this happen.
And I think actually he had messaged and said like, My wife is going to be putting in a tale.
Oh, shit. And I didn't even know that it was in this.
So Debbie chose this organically. Who's Debbie?
Deb Deb. Thank you. Deb Deb chose this organically without even knowing that.
Look at that. That's like kismet right there.
That is some kismet shit. Because I meant to say it to Deb.
I meant to be like, oh, hey, look out for this.
But I just hadn't done it yet. Oh, shit.
And you picked this episode. Yeah, I picked these episodes.
That's wild. Well, Deb picked these. I just picked which episode.
But holy shit, that's crazy. Katie, that was amazing.
We love you guys. So good to hear from you.
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Hey, weirdos. We need to tell you about something that has completely blown our minds collectively.
There's a new show called Lawless Planet that's uncovering true crime stories so massive, they're affecting the entire planet.
Post-Zach Goldbaum is investigating real cases where environmental destruction meets murder, conspiracy, and cover-ups.
We're talking about activists who disappear in the Amazon rainforest, whistleblowers who risk everything to expose deadly corporate secrets, and communities being silently poisoned while powerful people profit.
What makes these stories truly terrifying?
They're happening right now. This isn't history.
It's a massive criminal conspiracy unfolding in real time, with consequences that affect us all.
Each episode feels like opening a case file into the darkest corners of corporate and government power.
Trust us, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop thinking about these stories.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
All right. The next one I'm going to read is Listener Tales, The Closet Man.
You know, this is the entire reason I picked this batch.
Really? Just that name? Yeah, because it reminded me of, I can't say it.
It's Elena's next book, perhaps. It is. Based on real events.
My youngest gave me an idea. So this says, Hey, fam, resubmitting this tale.
It is double spaced, a PDF, and there's a picture of my puppy.
You can use my name also. All the pictures of the dogs.
And your name is Lydia. Yeah. That's my stepmom's name.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Hey, friends.
I'm resubmitting this listener tale in the proper format.
I love you guys. Love the podcast. Love you.
I'm seeing Ghost live on September 20th, by the way, and I feel like you guys will be there in spirit.
That was two days ago. Lydia. You don't even know.
You don't know. You don't know. Alina's, like, so sad.
I'm so sad that I can't see ghosts every single night.
It's how I feel after Harry's House, but, like, very different shows.
It's very different, but, like... I get it.
I'm just, I can't. And you know what? I looked at the September 21, and I think that was like in Ohio.
And we're going to be in Ohio for Obsessed Fest in like a week.
And I was like, oh, we just missed it. I know.
If it makes you feel better, Lizzo is going to be in Boston the night we leave for Obsessed Fest.
That made me, it made me start sobbing. It's really sad.
That was like one of the, I'm so glad that, so you must have seen them, what was that, last night?
The night before. So I'm sure it was an amazing show because our show or ritual was phenomenal.
Good. Phenomenal. The fire. Oh, the fire.
My kids are so sad. My six-year-olds are so sad that they couldn't go to that show.
But Tobias did say hi to them. He did. We got it.
It wasn't in the episode. We cut it out.
But at the end, because, yeah, it said their names.
But I asked Tobias to say hi to them and said their names.
And he also said, I hope you're having a great day.
And I was like, you're adorable. Such a dad move.
It was. It was such a dad move. He was very sweet.
And they were very excited when I told them.
They were like, wait, what? They also thought it was Caleb at first.
For a second thought. And we were like, do you know who that is?
And one of them was like, yeah, it's Caleb.
Is that Caleb? That's not Caleb. I was like, that is not.
I was like, they don't sound anything alike.
All right. But yeah, that was a really cool moment.
But Ghost, you can use my name. It's Lydia.
Good, because I think we've used it 68 times.
Lydia. My dog is also important in the story, and she would be pissed if her name was not used.
Her name is Winnie. I love that name. Winnie.
And she is a giant Rottweiler, which is important for this story.
Hold on to your butts, because I'm about to tell you about the time I made the mistake of moving to Indiana.
Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no. After I graduated from college in my hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, I got into graduate school in Indiana.
Just to give you some idea of how big this was, I'm an, oh, you gave me the correct pronunciation, Appalachian, first generation college student, meaning I was the first in my family to go to college and first to move out of our little slice of the world.
Good for you. What a badass. Go Lydia. Originally, I was going to tell you about my home invasion story, but then I realized my entire stint in Indiana was chock full of crime.
Oh, good. Also, tell us about the home invasion.
We'll always take double listener tips. If you want to even put them in the same one, feel free.
Yeah, you can do double parts. Seriously, the day my family drove up to Indiana with me, I was groped by a strange man at McDonald's when we stopped for breakfast.
Fuck that. Ew, fuck that guy. I'll... I'll punch him in the knees.
How are you going to grope somebody at McDonald's?
What is wrong with you? My mom had seen the guy eyeing me, but decided it was probably nothing.
It wasn't. I decided not to say anything, though, because I needed to be moved in that evening.
And if my dad, who is a huge stereotypical Appalachian working man, probably would have gone to jail if he knew.
So I scarfed down some hotcakes and didn't tell dad until much later.
I'm so sorry. That's fucked up. I know. Also, what are hotcakes again?
Hotcakes? Are those pancakes? Are they? I don't know.
I think, yeah, I think it's like a different name for pancakes.
Maybe. Or like some... Yeah. It made me think of hash browns and I love... No, you know what?
I actually thought of that too at one point.
The McDonald's hash browns are so good. Maybe they are hash browns.
Let us know. No, I think you're right. I think it's pancakes.
Who knows? The first year was relatively harmless besides the McDonald's incident, but things really started to take a turn in the fall of 2019.
At that time, I had gotten a dog, my very first adult dog, all mine, and her name is Winnie.
Winnie! By the time we returned from summer break, I had moved into a bigger apartment with a yard.
I didn't know anyone in the entire state of Indiana prior to moving in there, and by the fall of 2019, I only knew the people I was in school with.
Therefore, no one knew to tell me that my apartment was positioned very close to a gas station, infamous, infamously known as the scare-a-thon.
Oh, no. Think marathon station where bad things happen on the regular.
Ah, scare-a-thon instead of marathon. Oh, oh, oh.
I found out about this when a maintenance man came to fix my furnace.
He said, honey, do not go outside at night and don't go anywhere without that dog.
Oh, good. Thank you, maintenance man. What a nice man.
Hopefully. I know. Suddenly, I was very grateful for being raised by two country folk who owned a bunch of Rottweilers when I was a baby.
Winnie proved to be a great companion. Sure, she has to eat anything I eat, and if I don't give it to her, she will take it.
Oh, that was Bailey, too. Sure, she's as big as I am, but immediately, I mean the first week of school that year, someone broke into my car.
This happened twice. The first time they left the doors open and I was terrified.
The second time they stole a brand new pack of gum, the little Apple thing that let me listen to my phone in the car, I remember that, and a tiny coin purse full of pennies.
I was most upset about the gum, but rejoiced in the fact that they robbed a grad student and got a pound of pennies for the trouble.
Yeah. The big event happened over Christmas break in 2019.
In short, I went back home for the holidays and to have my wisdom teeth removed.
Having the bad luck I have, my wisdom teeth were severely impacted, ooh, and my recovery was longer than expected.
Fate or whatever magic is responsible for life had my back.
I ended up staying a couple days longer than I expected, and my mother, at the very last minute, decided to come back with me and visit for a while.
Me, being an absolute idiot, joked, well, I hope no one has been living in the apartment while I've been gone.
I thought I was so funny. This might be a little long, and I'm so sorry if it is.
Who cares? This is amazing. We get in and immediately I notice some things are off.
Oh no. My mom runs in ahead of me to use the bathroom and I walk in to find garbage everywhere.
Empty donut boxes and cups from the scare-a-thon.
Oh no. I'm a stress cleaner and I knew I left my kitchen both spotless and smelling like lemons.
It started to register that something was wrong.
So I walked through the apartment to find that someone had broken in and ransacked the place.
They stole my television set, my Xbox, etc.
I mean, my house looked like a frat party had gone off like a bomb.
My mom came out of the bathroom and said, so why is there a cigarette in the toilet?
I thought maybe you were smoking now and just didn't want to tell me.
Oh, she was saying, and that's why there's a cigarette in the toilet.
I was like, wait. Then I started finding random shit that didn't belong to me.
A backpack full of things, cigarette filters, ashes from lit cigarettes, and even a beard trimmer with trimming all over my bathroom.
What the fuck? I ran upstairs to find a pile of clothes that didn't belong to me on my bed.
I noticed, too, that the crawl space next to my bed had been left open and my closet door was shut.
No. I gotta go. No. I gotta go. I'm so stressed.
You should know that being a young woman and living alone, I leave my closet door open at all times and go to great lengths to keep that crawlspace door shut.
I mean, I would jam tissue paper in the cracks of this thing.
That way, if someone got in there, I would know about it.
I was on my home alone shit. As if things weren't already terrible, I discovered that whoever had been in my house left wet towels in my bed.
Still damp, wet ass towels. Ew. Just thrown into the bed all willy nilly.
What the fuck? I'm so stressed out by the thought of this.
Who just lives in someone's home while they're not there and showers and leaves a cigarette?
These are all just such random things. I'm just, I have, I can't.
What is wrong with people? I cannot. Why are people so fooked?
The fact that they're wet and damp. It means they were just there.
Yeah. I was in tears but called 911 and waited for the cops.
The maintenance man showed up to start changing locks, too.
45 minutes went by and no one had shown up.
I called a second time, but this time I mentioned that I hadn't checked the crawl space or the closet.
I love that they let 45 minutes go by anyways.
What? What? The officer gathered all the possible evidence he could, which included a Ziploc baggie full of cocaine.
Oh. I'm so stressed out for you right now.
Me too. The officer actually picked up the coke and said, I suppose this isn't yours?
To which I said politely, I politely said no, and he informed me that he was just trying to make me laugh.
I assured him I would not be laughing until the closet door was opening.
Yeah. We had two piles going of stuff that wasn't mine for the officer to take as evidence.
Two. Two piles. This is terrifying. While we waited for the maintenance man to come help with the closet door, we sat and talked at length about my dog and how she was now a little over 100 pounds and very protective of me.
I'm pretty sure I even said, as we waited for the door to be opened, I said, that's where all the good shit must be.
They must have hidden stuff in there. Oh, I'm so scared.
The maintenance man had to pry the doorknob off the closet and he kept saying something wasn't right.
Keep in mind, I was a foot away from the door sitting on the edge of my bed with the cop next to me.
Suddenly, we all heard something drop in the closet and the officer reached for his gun.
My heart sank and I thought, fucking great, bullets are about to fly.
The dog started barking. My mother was standing on the foot of the stairs and kept asking, what's wrong?
That's when the door shot open and there was a whole ass man in my closet.
Oh my God. I could see a pair of dirty boots peeking out from under my clothes.
What the fuck? At first he resisted and wouldn't come out.
I immediately thought he probably had a weapon and I thought, this is it.
Killed by this gross ass wet towel loving man.
My mom is downstairs shouting when the maintenance man cuts her off on the stairs and says, do not come up here.
When the officer finally got the man out, he threw him to the ground and told me not to move.
The officer was handcuffing him as he lay at my feet.
The man said, can I please explain? And my sarcastic, traumatized ass said, you can explain anything you want to the dog who's about to eat your fucking face.
They rushed him out to the squad car and I leapt over the railing and dropped almost 10 feet to get my mother.
While my mom and I were trying to call my dad, who was several states away, the very nice officer took the guy off and informed me that a lot of people, mostly homeless, had been drifting through my house while I'd been gone.
What the fuck? He's just like, hey, by the way, you can just break in here.
This guy's at your house, but like so many other people were too.
So many other. Someone had been tipped off that I wasn't home over break.
What? To this day, no one knows who did the tipping and how many people were in there.
It was the longest day of my life. And at the very end of it. we still had to flip my mattress over because wet towels.
How did you continue staying there? It took weeks to get the smell out of the house.
I bought loads of false scented candles, bleach, and a new vacuum cleaner.
I never got my deposit back because of all the cigarette burns in the carpets and holes in the wall.
That's not fair. That's not fair at all.
I would have been like, hi, check out the part where the fucking police officer took a man out of my apartment.
The man did go to jail and did have possession of things that belonged to me.
Weeks later, $60 in cash magically appeared in my mailbox.
The same cop that worked the break-in came back to make a report.
According to him, either the guy felt bad or my mailbox had been a drop spot for drug deals.
I'm gonna say it's probably the latter. I am so stressed out by all of this.
I was about to leave for dinner with a friend, but before I could leave, I handed the officer the money.
He said, I don't want that. I replied, but it's evidence.
Him, I still don't want it. Keep it. In the end, my waitress that night got a $60 tip.
Nice. For months, right up until the pandemic hit, I ended up going back home to West Virginia.
I would find out more things were just gone.
Jewelry that belonged to my great aunt before she died.
The only expensive jacket I owned. I also discovered things that were not mine.
For example, I discovered a pair of men's wool socks that were so big they went up and over my knees.
Girl, why did you put those on? During that winter, I wore those socks a lot.
And each time I put them on, I'd say, thanks for the sock, closet man.
Girlfriend, no. No. No. No. Foot fungus is a thing, and I know you wash them, I hope.
Lydia. Lydia. Thanks for the socks closet, man.
No. Fucking Lydia, I love you. During the final days in the apartment, my car was almost broken into one more time.
However, Winnie was outside and met them at the fence.
The men ran down the alley and one screamed, that's a big fucking dog.
I love that. You're like, yeah, the fuck it is.
There was also a shooting. Oh, someone's child stole a handgun and let off five or six rounds in the street outside of my house.
Oh, my God. This happened only days after the break in.
Picture it. Me, a tiny 20-something wearing only a very large shirt, army crawling down the stairs to get to my mom and the dog.
It's comical, really. People always say it's amazing how nonchalantly I tell this story.
But to be fair, everyone I've ever even kind of known has asked me about this story.
I still run into people two years later who will be talking to me and then drop everything and go, so that man in your closet.
If I ever meet you, know that that's what I'm going to say and I'm going to follow it up by.
That man in your closet. The socks, Lydia.
The socks, Lydia. Let's talk about the socks.
The most important thing I learned from this is that it is so much better to be paranoid and live to talk about it.
Yes. My mom raised me on true crime and share.
Needless to say, when the officer told me he couldn't believe how well I carried myself and how I knew to make him check the closet first, I simply said, my mama didn't raise a bitch.
Also, I know way too much about murder to ever fall for the old hide in the closet gimmick.
I love that. Mm-hmm. While my mother did not raise a bitch, she did raise a young woman who goes to therapy regularly.
Smart. I'm so thankful for your podcast, my mother, Cher, and all the survivors I've met who have treated me so kindly.
I mean, I don't know Cher, but I feel like I know her in the same way I feel like I know you two.
Whether you even ever know me or not, you were with me and made a profound impact.
Oh, we love you. We love you, Lydia. I'm attaching a photo of Winnie because I feel like I must.
Let's see it. She's still a hero for me.
I adopted her because my therapist told me I both needed a companion and deserved one.
Oh, you do? She's been the greatest dog of my life.
I'm attaching a photo of her wearing her Stranger Things Scoops Ahoy hat because I feel like you need to see that.
I do. Oh my god. Love you dudes. Keep it weird, but not so weird that you live next to Scarathon in Indiana.
I love your dog so fucking much. That's a big fucking dog.
Look at that What a beautiful baby face, though.
Is that the bed where the wet towels were?
Oh, my goodness. I just... Can we post all of these dogs?
We're going to have to see if we can get permission to post all of them.
I hope we can. Because, my goodness, they're going to make everybody's day.
Cutie butts. Winnie. Oh, I love her. I love her so much.
And I love that she very much would have eaten that man's face.
I would travel the world with Winnie. I would too.
I love her. And I love you, Lydia. That was hilarious.
And I'm so glad that you're okay. Thank God.
That was great. You're a smarty pants for going to therapy.
You're just a badass. You're the bestest.
Damn. All right. The next one scares me.
And it says an imaginary friend from hell.
And I see a bloody palm. I was just gonna say, what's that?
Potentially. I'm not sure if that's blood.
Hey, weirdos. Eek. Totally geeking. I got to say that.
Anyways, my name is Laken. That's a really fucking cool name.
And yes, you can use my name and any name used in this story.
I'm from the sunny state of Florida. This is a pretty long story, but I will try to keep it organized and fluid.
In order for me to do that, though, I have to give you a small amount of what happened before the shit show starts.
Shit show. That's hard to say. Wow. Bye.
So here we go. I've attached a PDF below.
Let me find the PDF. Hang on. My eye is so itchy.
Okay. My eye is itchy. It was so itchy. Okay.
I feel that. I feel that. I lived in an apartment where my bed used to shake when I was younger and it was scary.
It was not great. It was not well, bitch.
Then my sister, who's six years younger than me, began having an imaginary friend with this guy named Eric.
I would scream if my kid was like, me and Eric are going to hang out.
I'd be like, what's that? My imaginary friend, Eric?
Eric? Just Eric? Just gives me Boy Meets World vibes.
Mine was Martha, so I really can't say anything.
Mine was Luke fucking Skywalker. There you go.
So let's go. He would constantly get her into trouble.
Kind of like naughty Martha. It's Martha.
And would tell her to hurt me. So she was forbidden to play with Eric.
Anyway, my mom remarried 10 years ago and we moved into what I called my dream home.
My whole life we've constantly moved from house to house.
So it felt nice to finally have a home. I was 14 at this time and I'd finally got my own bedroom.
We also had this beautiful fireplace with the shiny gold trim.
That's all important. I promise. Being so unexplainably fearful of ghosts would always cause me to pray to God something along the lines of God.
If you want them to be here, they can be.
Please just don't let me see them. Kids.
Yeah. So while enjoying my treat-yourself time, I started to get this strange feeling.
This feeling of not being alone. This feeling of being watched.
I then started seeing things out of the corner of my eye in the reflection of the shiny gold fireplace trim.
I told you it would be important. It is.
That went on for a few years, but I convinced myself that I was crazy.
Then any mirrors I put on my walls would fly off and shatter.
Ooh. On carpet. Mm-hmm. Then my best friend and I were walking into the living room, and I turned and looked at her, and there was a little boy, all black figure, walking right behind us, but instantly disappeared.
Now, I'm a pretty pale human being. Same.
But I turned so pale, I looked like I was the ghost.
We have a fur baby that wouldn't stop going off.
A furby. Oh, I thought you were saying you had a dog that wouldn't stop barking.
We have a fur baby. We had a Furby that wouldn't stop going off.
Those things are cursed. A little red handprint that was drug down a page in my Twilight book.
Oh, that just happened? A voodoo witch doctor who would stand at the edge of my bed.
Did I mention I'm originally from Louisiana?
No, you didn't. And this beautiful lady in white who I literally saw her eyes, but she disappeared as fast as I looked at her.
But I'll never forget what she looked like.
That led for the first time we had a paranormal team come out and they told us I had been blessed or cursed with the gift of being a medium and that there's over 20 ghosts in my house all trying to get to me because I'm a beacon for them and they need my help.
What? I just got chills. That's crazy. Remember how I said I would pray that I just didn't want to see the ghosts?
But this is my gift. I also need to mention here that in 2010, I lost my eldest sister to a terrible accident.
Oh my goodness. So my lovely weirdos, this is where the story begins.
In June of 2021, my amazing boyfriend and I went on a road trip, not a road trip, went on a trip to celebrate our two year anniversary.
He proposed and we had the most incredible, amazing and peaceful trip.
I was the happiest that I'd ever been. And then when I went home, I couldn't help but fall into a deep, dark depression.
I couldn't understand why because my life was just beginning and I was supposed to be the happiest and it was supposed to be the happiest time in my life.
I couldn't even find the mental strength to even straighten up my room.
That's when I was woken up at 1.32 a.m. to my door violently shaking without explanation, breaking my door handle.
Some short time goes on without anything else really happening, but I can't get out of this weird daze.
One day, I'm staying at my fiancé's house, and I get out of the shower, and I'm getting dressed, and my fiancé points out that I have three very long razor-like claw marks across my bum.
I checked my jeans to see if I could have possibly been anything from work that ripped my jeans and I didn't notice, but nothing.
So then I instantly became horrified at every move.
My fiance started sleeping at my house with me.
God bless his soul. He's a real one. He sounds it.
Here's just a few things that happened while he was staying with me.
I woke up in a panic to what sounded like a bunch of pencils falling all over the ground.
There was nothing. That's so specific. I know.
And I can hear that sound. I can, too. My fiance and I both heard what sounded like a coin being thrown from my closet and bouncing along the floor next to my feet.
But there was nothing. I woke up with my arm in a tremendous amount of pain.
And when I looked at it, I had bruises that looked like fingerprints.
Oh, my God. Noises all throughout the night would happen and keep me up.
The last night before the paranormal team came for the second time, I was trying my hardest to keep my eyes closed and sleep.
I felt my pinky finger begin thumping without my control.
So I opened my eyes and right in front of my TV, I...
I see a woman with ratty dark hair standing in front of my TV.
So I did what anybody would do. I don't know why that would freak me out so much.
It's a lot. So I did what anyone would do and I screamed and I reached over for my fiance to wake the fuck up and save me from this nightmare.
The lady vanished as soon as I touched him, but I couldn't help but shake and cry from fear.
When the paranormal team came to the house, they consisted of the small team and two mediums.
I told them what's been going on and they go to my room.
When in there, the medium says there's someone living in my closet.
What the fuck? What the fuck? We didn't mean to theme it closets.
No. What the fuck? Someone's been living in my closet?
They say something seems to be holding her in there.
They find out it's my sister who's been trying to keep her in my closet to protect me.
What? My sister comes through to one of the mediums and tells her that she was the one that bruised my arm and she felt really bad.
Oh, my God. She was trying to wake me up to protect me from what evil was trying to get me.
Oh, my God. I'm getting like full chills.
I am, too. The mediums then start talking to the evil spirit and asked, what did it want from me and why me?
And they said it told them because it wanted to torture me.
Oh, my God. I'm not kidding you. I'm getting full chills.
You know it's Eric, right? This is fucking Eric.
It's epic. It's Eric. So without any thought, I packed my bags and went to stay at my fiance's family's house.
While I was in the room with the team, my fiance got the amazing call that we got accepted for our first home.
That's great. So that was my saving grace within this whole situation.
So time goes on. And every time I visited the house, I got better at knowing when I was in danger and when I wasn't.
I never stepped foot in my old bedroom. My husband and I moved into our new house and got married.
Yay. Then my mom and sister find a new house and move out.
So we are there helping them pack and move when my husband shares with me this image of a woman he keeps seeing in his head by drawing it.
She has ratty dark hair and her mouth is all messed up.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He shows me and my little sister.
She's 18 at this time. I can't. No, I'm so stressed.
I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't.
And she goes, that's Eric. I knew it. And I go, that's who's living in my closet.
I have show bumps going up my entire fucking body right now.
I gotta go. I gotta go. Oh, my God. I hate it.
Katie, my sister, then explains that her name wasn't actually Eric.
She just couldn't pronounce their real name.
So she just called them Eric. Oh, my God.
So this whole time from when I was nine, Eric would have my sister hit me with things and hurt me in some way.
And he or she hated me so much that he followed me into my adult life and literally told the mediums I just like to torture her.
Oh, my God. I'm so stressed out. What the fuck?
My new house is safe, and I don't feel any spirits here.
I've really done everything I can to ensure that nothing evil comes through that front door, and I'm finally living the most peaceful life.
Thank goodness. I've attached pictures of some of my experiences, and to lighten the mood, my beautiful family, including our chinchilla, Stella, puppy, Kylo, and kitty, Remy.
I have a puppy. Thank you, lovely ladies, for all that you do.
And as always, keep it weird, but not so weird.
Take it away, Ash. Not so weird that a fucking scary woman named Eric lives in your closet and enjoys torturing you.
And is your little sister's imaginary friend from when you were like nine.
XOXO Lakin. Lakin. What the fuck? What a fucking tale.
Did she stop coming into your... fucking your uh fiance or your husband's like mind my god oh my god your little bum with all the scratch marks that's terrible also you two are beautiful oh my god okay what a beautiful couple oh my god your wedding shoes are so fierce do you see the shoes i do it won't let me zoom into just the shoes i'm fixed those are great oh they look amazing you guys are so cute i love your cat you We're just, like, looking at these.
Oh, my God, your dog! You know what? And you have beautiful pups and animals.
And we should just ask if all of them. We're going to send emails and see if we can get you guys to say that we can post these.
All of them. Because we should post them all.
Holy shit, Lakin. Oh, my. That stressed me out to the maximum degree.
My goodness. Should we end on Laken? I think so.
Yeah, I think Laken really took the cake on that one.
Guys, what a listener tale installment. Yeah, it was just like a variety pack.
Oh, Eric was so creepy. That Eric. Oh, I feel like I can see Eric.
I gotta stop saying it. Okay, well, we love you guys so much and we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But it's weird that any of these things happen to you because, wow, this was so scary.
Yeah, none of it. Love you. Bye. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic.
Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery+.
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