Episode 385: Terrifying HometownTales with Two Girls One Ghost!｜Morbid

Hey, weirdos, before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends.

Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion where the floorboards creak with ad-free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner.

So come join us if you dare. Morbid is available one week early and ad-free only on Wondery Plus.

You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify.

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar.

Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.

Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being.

Audible has an incredible selection of over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals all in one easy app.

Find the genres you love and discover new ones.

Explore bestsellers like my sister's title, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time.

I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.

There's more to imagine when you listen.

Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free.

Visit audible.com slash morbid. I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner, and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.

It's mine, not yours. Just kidding. You can have some too.

This is a cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.

It's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli.

I'm obsessed. It's pillowy. It's satisfying.

I feel indulged. I just love it so much.

I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now.

My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece, which like, hello, that's amazing.

My mochi is gluten-free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.

Do I eat two a night? Yeah, yeah, I do because they're that good.

And guess what? My Mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the U.S. of A. The strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing.

I love, love, love them after dinner. This August, look for the purple box of My Mochi ice cream at your local grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around, My Mochi.

Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna, I'm Ash, I'm Sabrina, and I'm Corinne, and this is Morbid.

🎵 Slash two girls, one ghost. Woo! Part two.

It's a collab. Part two of the collab. You might have come over here from Two Girls, One Ghost, actually.

I hope you did. Welcome. We hope so, too.

Welcome. Welcome. Our lighting has changed, so no one will be able to see it.

It's true. The mood lighting. We're still in a bank vault, but yes, we've got some spooky green lighting, which is awesome.

It feels very Disney, Ursula, evil. Swampy.

I like it. Swampy. I like it. Elena did ask for black, which would have been a whole vibe.

I did. I did. A black light. What color do you want the lights?

Black. I was like, I see a lot of black.

Like my soul. That would actually be so creepy to sit in total darkness where we cannot see each other.

Especially with our stories, too, that we're telling.

Spooky. My brother and I, in our very haunted house in Vermont, we would play this game with each other where we would put a fog machine on in the basement.

And then we would put one of those flashing strobe lights on, but the really slow shutter.

So it would go like, flash! And then a few beats would go and then flash, but we'd walk around.

This makes so much sense. And so sometimes we'd be like right next to each other and we'd be like, and the light comes on.

It was always so spooky. That's amazing.

That's so much fun. That's innovative. Corinne's childhood, every time she talks about it, I just imagine there was like a witch's brew and cauldron on the stove at all times.

I want that to be my childhood. That they had like feathers and abalone and shells and sage everywhere.

They're cleansing the home. It was pretty much like that.

It was cool. It was very close. That's amazing.

And that's so innovative of you guys. Oh, yeah.

Thank you. The things you do to entertain yourself.

Yeah. Me and my friends used to play this thing called Dangerous Hide and Seek.

Wait, what? This sounds way worse. Not as cool as that at all.

And definitely way less high tech than that.

But more dangerous? But way more dangerous.

Somehow. Somehow. We would do dangerous hide and seek where she had like stairs going down to the other part of her house where all the bedrooms were.

And it was like this long hallway where the bedrooms were all lined on one side.

And then on the left side, there was like storage areas, like closets and shelving.

And we would turn off all the lights down there because if you turn them off, there was no windows in the hallway.

Oh, my gosh. Pitch black. And then one person would leave obstacles for the other person and then hide.

Oh. So the other person had to go through in the pitch black, trying to locate where you were.

Booby traps. Literally. No one broke a bone.

That's amazing. Truly iconic. Were any parents present?

Or is this, you know, like the classic 80s?

I was going to say the classic 80s, 90s upbringing.

You just do whatever. Yeah. This was like late 90s, I would say, early 2000s.

But still, that was about that time. Everybody was working.

We were just home playing Dangerous Hide and Seek.

Let's bring that back. Let's do like a podcast retreat where we just have all of our podcast friends come together and we like rent out some spooky stuff. mansions we play that strobe light yeah can i add okay this is the game that we used to play um before princess diaries did it and they also did it like the cool way where you mattress surf with like the slide but we would do it on stairwells and my one friend had like a marble floor at the bottom of the stairwell and the amount of times that i would like jam my jaw into the ground, but then, like, do it again.

Oh, let's go. Yeah. Oh, man. Damn. Man, we were dangerous kids, spooky kids.

Clearly, we were. Very spooky kids. Yeah.

We all survived. We did. I didn't play a lot of games.

I was trying to think of, like, a game to come up with, and I just couldn't think of one.

Ash was just getting into trouble. Getting into trouble?

Yeah, I was. Just being reckless. I mean, yeah.

I did a lot of solo things. My go to was when I was like angry and I were upset and I was upset a lot because I was a very sensitive.

I still am very sensitive human. I would go into my basement and play Guitar Hero by myself and cry.

Oh, my God. Just like pinkies reaching for that far left yellow button.

Yeah. Balling your eyes out. Yeah. I used to write really emotional poems, and then I would leave them in the bathroom for my mom to find.

I'd be like, I'm the saddest. But I tried to be super creative.

But you wanted her to find them? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I was like eight, and I was like, I feel like a bottle about to burst, eruption with emotions.

I mean, you were like the original Katy Perry.

Do you ever feel like a paper bag? Oh, yeah.

No, I was. Yeah, but I often did. And then I was like, yeah, everyone needs to know.

It's because I was born first, right? I need all the attention.

I need everyone to take care of me immediately.

I used to just blast Linkin Park or Simple Plan.

Oh, hell yeah. Hell yes. Those are my go-tos.

I love that. I always knew if I came to mom and papa's house and I heard that, that you had gotten... That was mad.

Something happened. Yeah. And then I would run up there and be like, what's going on?

Tell me everything. It was something truly ridiculous.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's incredible.

But simple plan understood. Oh, of course.

Also, I've been to... I have... eight weddings that i've attended this year but i will say one of the best parts of attending weddings is everyone has that like emo angst kid coming out of them and there's always one or two songs always that yeah mr brightside oh yeah or like that'll get you my life oh my god oh man I'm like yeah air guitar I am yes I am feral at weddings we were at a wedding recently that the DJ took a video of all of us because they were so shocked by how many people got on the dance floor during like emo punk songs I love that oh yeah it gets the crowd going it does yeah you gotta have a little bit of you in there yeah you do Drew wants to play the black parade at our wedding and I was very against it at first and I'm like let's do it you should yeah that's amazing yeah I think we'll do that You really do.

Wait. Oh, my gosh. I have to tell you guys.

So obviously I live in Boston nearby you guys.

But I was in Hub Hall, which is over by TD Garden.

It's this like food hall place. And there's every single area of it, like all the different little restaurants have music and whatnot playing.

So sometimes it's a little overstimulating.

But I was hearing these voices coming from this one stand, and I was like, who are these people?

I know I know them, but it was hard to pick out exactly people's voices against the music.

So I walked up and I said, what podcast are you listening to?

And they said, Morbid. Oh, shit! Thank you, people there.

That's so fun. That's so cool. I love that.

I feel like someone risked their job to be blasting.

100% absolutely. That's loyalty. I'm here for that.

I know these people. What are you listening to?

Morbid, morbid. That's always so wild to me still.

That's a loyal fan. We're like four years in.

I think we're heading toward five. And it's still wild to me.

It's never going to get normal. No. I hope it doesn't.

I feel like that's when you know you're doing it wrong if it gets normal.

I think part of the beauty of being a podcaster too is like you still pretty much get to live your life and like you record from home and stuff so it's not like we're going on red carpets with Zendaya.

Maybe one day podcasts are going to be as popular as TV.

We're going to be the paparazzi taking photos of you guys.

Ashley! And I'll be hiding in my house in my sweatpants.

I know. We recently started doing a YouTube version of our podcast and we're like, oh my gosh, that means we've like put on real clothes.

But now I do the thing where I'm wearing like sweatpants and baggy things and you only see like, oh, the news anchor.

Yeah, the news anchor. Exactly. Like I'm seeing my underwear.

Yeah. Anytime I have an important Zoom, I am newscaster.

Yeah. Like I am always here down. I'm like, yes, I'm just presentable.

Yes, that's all that matters. When I was still working in an office, it was like the height of the pandemic and we had an online virtual holiday party.

And I surprised everybody with a game. And I was like, we're going to play a game where – because everyone was dressed up, you know, like sequins and everything on top.

So I was like, we're going to play a game where everybody guesses what people have on the bottom.

And you have to – stand up expose yourself it was the best time it was everybody was cracking up oh my god that is good actually so at that place that i had worked at i had a co-worker who literally found out that her apartment was haunted by having a zoom call with an external partner that was like oh is someone else like who just peeked into the room and she was like I feel like the meeting is over I am moving out yeah sorry a guy walked by behind her like in the door well and like peek in and they keep going that is so creepy oh my god I would shit myself I feel like are you recording this soon because I need to see that it's so scary I don't know if I'd want to see that no I keep picturing it and I don't like what I'm picturing yeah it's making me think of like signs when the alien walks by the alley one of the scariest scenes ever yes That's all I can think of.

Every time I look at the bottom of a door crack, I always think about the knife going under and seeing the reflection.

Science fucked me up. That was a scary movie.

It was a scary movie. I've never seen it, but I've seen that one scene with the alien.

M. Night Shyamalan. And that was in his prime.

Right? Scarring all of us. Which one is it?

I forget what it's called. Is that the cannibal one?

Is it a cannibal? No, what's the Timothee Chalamet one?

You think it's like this beautiful lesbian love story and then she starts to bite the person's finger off and then you're like, oh, shit, it's about cannibals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that M. Night Shyamalan?

Is it? I don't know. I don't know if it is, but I feel like I watched that.

M. Night, let us know. Yeah, M. Night, right in.

Reach out to us. I know you're listening right now.

They just get weirder and weirder, though.

Like, I heard old was really strange. I watched old, yeah.

Would you like it? I don't want to... Play the M. Night.

Skip ahead. Earmuffs M. Night. Yeah. I liked it, and I think this story, I really loved the story.

The execution, not so much. Okay, fair. I mean, The Village is a classic.

We were just talking about The Village. Split, I loved Split.

Oh, see, Split, I loved right up until the very end.

And then I was like, is this the same movie?

You know what I mean? Because it was a little superhuman-esque superhero stuff.

I'm not a superhero girlie. you're right but you know M. Night what's up he's got it write us a new movie I also love that M. Night like stars or like not stars like has like little roles for himself and I think that's such a cool if I ever make my own show which one day hopefully but I'll do that for us I want to be a dead body my goal like I want to play a dead body in a show and I want to wheel your gurney okay yes there you go you should put yourself in your show I should make a cameo you have to I don't know where I would be in there I don't know.

Just do one of the bars or something. Do like the Stephanie Meyer.

Wasn't she in like the breakfast? Yeah, I think she was sitting on her laptop.

Yeah, do that. Just do that. Like a little Easter egg.

There I am. Yeah. And then your document's titled season two.

Season two, da, da, da. Manifest it. I love that.

That's a good idea. Yeah. People will totally pause and like zoom in.

Yeah. Start a conspiracy. This is a nugget of an idea.

I like it. Just a little nibble. We're here to help.

Just a little crumb. Just a little crumb to nibble on.

There's a tab where you're listening to Two Girls, One Ghost.

Oh, there we go. We brought it full circle.

When Sabrina was working on the show Blindspot, we had our mug need to appear in.

Marlene Garrow, who's the showrunner of Blindspot, was like so nice.

And I was an assistant at the time. And he was like, I truly just got a text from him.

And he was like, hey, like going to put a Two Girls, One Ghost mug on the show.

Just send it over to the set. And I was like, what?

That's awesome. And this was like year one of our podcast.

We're famous. Oh, my God. I love it. I love that.

It was really nice. I love that, yeah. That's so cool.

It was. Yeah. It felt special. It did feel really special.

Oh, yeah. That is special. Our mugs have made it into no other shows.

So that was the one. Not yet. That's a huge show, though.

Yeah, it was a huge show. So many people saw that.

Yeah. That's so cool. We actually had someone email us saying, because the character Rich.com was holding it, and someone emailed us saying that they found our show because they saw the mug that Rich was holding and they had to look up what it was.

Oh, yeah. There you go. Because you hear the name marketing.

Yeah. Two girls, one ghost. What is this?

Although what kind of porn is that? My favorite thing is when people ask the name of the podcast.

I maybe I have a lisp. I don't know. Sometimes I say like it sounds like I say two girls, one goat.

Which is weird. Which is really not what I'm trying to go for.

People are searching that like, should I search this?

Or people do search it and they're like, what did I just find?

What are you guys doing? You're like, that's not us.

Yeah, that's not us. I had told my parents because I wanted them to be on the inside of the joke of our podcast.

I didn't want them to be surprised if someone said something and then not get it.

So I told my parents in the gentlest way possible.

I guess not gentle enough. My dad blocked it out of his memory.

And then a couple years ago when we had a live show here in Boston, my dad, forgetting what the podcast name was an innuendo of basically, puts his arm around both me and Sabrina because he's super proud of us and wants a photo.

And he goes, two girls, one dad. And I go, no, no.

I'm obsessed. Absolutely not. And if you met Bill, it just, it also like makes so much sense.

He's like the most innocent, bleeding heart of the family.

I was like, what? I had to retell him because he blocked it out.

So you were traumatized twice. You were traumatized like thrice in that situation.

Oh my God. I'm like, no child should have to say this to their parent.

No parents should say that to their child.

I can tell you. And he's just so proud. I know.

Poor guy. He'll never make that mistake again.

No, no. That's my favorite. You know what?

It all comes around. Like, your parents are the reason that you're haunted.

So, like, they traumatized you a little bit.

And your parents are the reason you're haunted.

Yes, exactly. Sabrina's dad has them. I mean, we've got to know this.

Your childhood. What did your parents do?

We'll tell you a couple ghost stories. Do you want to start, Sabrina?

I feel like I'll share like a nice one from my house.

But yours is like scary. Because you girls are a couple ghosts.

I started listening to your podcast before we even like got off the ground.

No way. I recommended your podcast. I recommended it to everybody.

You were so nice. You're the top of our pyramid.

Our pyramid scheme. Our TGOG triangle. That's me.

You're the top. I'm the tip. I love it. You're the tip.

I'm just the tip. We'll get you a trophy.

It'll just be like, no, I don't know how much I can say.

I was going to say like a golden dildo. You can say whatever you want.

I say wild shit on this podcast. It's a goat.

It's a goat. It's a goat. I love it. A live one.

Yeah. I'm ready for it. Let's go. Some people gift Thanksgiving turkeys.

Other people gift goats. Yeah. The goats.

Part one. Yeah. You want to know what a hush turkey is.

You listen to part one over on Two Girls One Day.

Yes. There we go. Exactly. The nice like callback.

We're connecting them together. Of course.

We're pros here. The bread crumb trail. Yeah.

Just the crumb. The bread crumb. But yeah, bring us some ghost stories.

Okay. What you got? Well, just as like some context.

So my dad is... Very in tune with spirits like has so many encounters.

He was born and grew up in Pakistan and like just has they have a lot of like spooky stuff over there.

My mom likes to say that he battles with a demon because he speaks another language.

They're divorced. This is why she likes to say it.

That he like would speak another language in his sleep.

And he's done past life regression therapy, the hypnosis, and has been told that his past life is like trying to take over his current life.

What? Yeah. Well, and his new partner has also confirmed that this is still happening to him.

So it's still trying to take over. Yeah.

Wow. Yes. So he's kind of like the always growing up.

He was always one experiencing things. But when I was like four years old, we moved into a new house.

And this is I don't live there now, so I can say it.

Branchburg, New Jersey. It was a brand new house, farmland, you know, first people to live in it.

And I started having this reoccurring nightmare.

And my sister was six at the time. So it's just the four of us.

And in my nightmare, I would always wake up the way that I had gone to sleep.

So same pajamas. My room was as it was. And I'd wake up and I'd see this like figure in the doorway.

And I had the feeling that I had to follow it.

So I would follow it down the hallway to my sister's room.

And when I'd get to my sister's room, I'd see these black and white orbs fighting over her, like diving down, fighting into her.

And I would wake up in this moment. But I had it for a couple of years and it would always leave me super unsettled and scared.

And eventually it just stopped. Fast forward to, I'm like, and we had a bunch of hauntings in this house.

Like my brother would wake up crying and tell the little boy I don't want to play.

So we knew the house was haunted. Nightmare.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hate that. But fast forward to like 20 years later, I'm graduating college and I'm telling my family, my dad, my sister, brother about recurring nightmares.

And I mentioned this one. We're about to leave dinner.

My dad looks at me and goes, that didn't that wasn't a nightmare.

It happened in real life. And I was like, excuse me.

Like, what? Like, what? Yeah, like, you have to tell me.

Glass shatter. So he goes on to tell me that when we first moved into that house, so, like, around the time these nightmares started, he had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV and woke up to a really loud noise.

And so he wakes up. He thinks maybe it was just the TV.

He turns it off. Starts locking the doors.

It's late at night. You know, locking doors, make sure windows are closed.

And the second he starts walking up the stairs, he just got that feeling that someone was in the house.

Ugh. Ugh. and he goes up the stairs checks on me i'm asleep my mom was asleep and he starts walking down the hallway and like the closer he got to my sister's room like the more dread filled his like whole body i have chills right now he reaches the door handle and it's ice cold he opens the door and all of the air is sucked out of the room and it is just like he was like every instinct is telling him to run but his daughter is sleeping as a parent Elena, I hope this never happens to you.

I know. I hope not. Oh, my God. I'm never coming over again if it does.

So we're going to need a new podcast room.

So he takes a step towards my sister and she's laying in bed asleep, eyes closed, and her mouth opens.

And out of her mouth comes a deep guttural voice saying, get out.

Oh, stop it. Stop. My whole body just went... It's horrifying.

I am a goosebump. I know. I'm a goosebump.

This lighting... Also, I've never told this story in this lighting.

I know. I'm scared by it, too. Spooky green lights.

Oh, my God. So, he... He was like, no. I'm actually going to come face you.

I'm your dad. He comes up to my sister, shakes her and is like, leave my daughter alone.

My sister wakes up. He picks her up, turns around and I am standing in the doorway.

And he thought I was awake, but apparently it must have been sleepwalking or whatever it was.

Some sort of trance. Yeah. Not possessed me, but I was following this entity, right?

The dream that I was having, I was following it and seeing my dad fighting...

Whatever darkness is in my sister. If your dad hadn't entered, though, I wonder if you were being led into the room.

To help her. Or to just also succumb to this entity and then it would go and get your brother and then all the kids in one room to basically be possessed.

Yeah, because that thing was trying to take over your dad's life.

So maybe he was trying to get rid of you guys.

Oh, that's interesting. This is a thought that I never...

Yeah. Okay. Because so after that, so my dad like brings us all to bed and, you know, the next day gets the house blessed.

And apparently nothing bad happened after that.

And there was like a closet in the house down in the basement that everyone was terrified of.

But I never thought of the possibility that it was like something to do with my dad's past life.

Probably. Yeah. Because just the way you said there was a white orb and a black orb, right?

Is that what you said? Yeah. Like, good and bad.

Yeah. Like, light and dark. Yeah, like this darkness.

And they were battling. Like, I totally feel like it was, like, the dark side.

Maybe even trying to, like, turn you guys against your dad so it could take over, you know?

It's interesting, too, to think of, like, these are possible fragments of his soul, even though he's alive and living.

Yeah. But they're presenting themselves away from him and having this battle of who can... re-enter him i guess or be the thing coming forward freaked out that it just destroyed myself i'm really grateful that i didn't hear the the like reality of it until i was so much older right and you you still haven't had the nightmare again no wow that's so and god and how often did you have it you said years Yeah, for a couple of years.

I mean, you know, it was so long ago, but like I truly I have a lot of repressed memories and don't remember a lot of my childhood.

And that is one that four years old, like that is one that I remember so vividly.

I don't know exactly how long it happened, but it was enough where like it stuck through the gaps of memory.

Wow. Yeah. And now I get to go home to three little kids.

I am not doing TT bedtime tonight, baby.

I'm out. The creepy kids who have all the opportunity for their children to start seeing stuff.

Holy shit. And Corinne was, like, the creepiest kid.

I was. I had some past life stuff bleed through.

Yeah. I'm always amazed when little kids, like, have evidence of it, too.

It's always the scariest, creepiest thing.

But it's always so specific, too. So it's like, there's no way to... And they can't know that.

Yeah. How would they know... A town a thousand miles away in the specifics of it.

We had a listener that emailed us and we actually read a follow up that they had sent.

But their child, it was the wildest and most detailed case of reincarnation that we had ever heard of.

And it was just it's amazing what people can pick up on.

And then when you actually do like the smallest amount of research, too, you're like, that is right.

Yeah. I mean, no three-year-olds are Googling.

I know there's iPad kids now, but they can't read it.

What is this town named in Maine and has a building?

Yeah, they're not looking at the buildings and when they were built and all that stuff.

Different townships. Well, kids that age, too, especially, are so open.

Yeah, they're not scared yet. Just pure.

They just don't even... My now three-year-old used to wake up...

She used to wake up and would tell us that she called him Skelton.

And it was a skeleton in her room. And she would be like, Skelton.

And we were like, who's Skelton? The French skeleton.

Skelton. And I was like, is he? And she was like, he's a nice guy.

And I was like, okay, he's a nice guy. And I was like, what does he do?

And she was like, he's on my bookshelf. and she would always point to the same spot and I was like he's on your bookshelf and I was like is he just like and so I was like is he just sitting on your bookshelf and she goes no he goes like this and then she poses like this he's like laying on her bookshelf like with his like like leaning like his fist and his you know on his chin just looking at it which feels like a very grandfathery like looking at just you know he's not scary he's not scary I like how she tells you no like no she said it question mark literally said it just like because I was like idiot of course he doesn't do that that why would he do that oh my god he's no saying like a centerfold okay like because paint me like one of your french girls but then he would go home to visit his family that's what she would tell me oh my god so cute i'd say scout home here right now and she was like no he's been he's visiting his family that's amazing okay right but then he hasn't been there for a while and i asked i was like is scout all around and she said no no he went back to his family we Morbid is sponsored by Squarespace.

Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

Who doesn't want to stand out and succeed?

Get you a girl who can do both. Every dream needs a domain.

Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all-inclusive price.

No hidden fees or add-ons required. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure that your domain remains online and protected.

Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life, whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service.

Squarespace gives you everything that you need to offer services and get paid, all in one place.

From consultations, events, and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business.

Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

Head to squarespace.com slash morbid for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code morbid to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

They say that time waits for no one, neither should payday.

To keep your money moving in the direction of your dreams, get Earnin'.

What is Earnin', you ask? Honey, Earnin' is an app that lets you access your pay as you earn it up to $150 a day with a max of $750 between paydays.

Earnin' is the app that is helping millions of Americans take charge of their pay and avoid falling into debt traps.

I just feel like earning is good for so many things.

Like, you know, every now and again you get in your car and you say, oh, wow, who knew that I was on empty?

I should have known that, but I didn't. And then you look at your bank account and you're like, oh, crap, I haven't been paid yet.

Well, I don't know. Bye. Bye. Bye. Expedited transfer is available for a fee.

Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service.

Available in select states. Terms and restrictions apply.

Visit earnin.com for full details. Download Earnin now and take control of your pay.

But do you know who is around? The mister.

The mister. I'm just going to let that sink in for a second.

That's a new one that she came up with. The mister.

He doesn't have eyes, but he can find us.

That's what she said. Oh my gosh. She said he doesn't have eyes, but he can find us.

Everything just responded to that. Everything is alert.

High alert. Cut glass right now. That was the biggest chill I've ever had.

He doesn't have eyes, but he can find us.

Because we came downstairs one day. We've been recording all day.

And Alina's husband, John, was like, you guys need to sit down for this shit.

And he starts telling us that he's playing hide and seek with her youngest, I wish I said her name.

And they were hiding under the covers. And he was, she was like, the mister's looking for us and like started freaking him out.

And he was like, no, like he won't find us.

Like, no, he won't. And she goes, oh, he'll find us.

And he was like, I was even like, all right, game over.

The Mr. Nice? We asked if the Mr. is nice.

And she said she didn't give us a full answer, but she said he takes snacks.

He steals the yogurt packs and the cookies.

Are yogurt packs and cookies missing? That's what I'm wondering.

They're not missing. I don't think they've been missing.

Interesting. I think she just eats a lot of yogurt and we tell her that.

Yeah. So she's blaming it on the mister.

Wow. There is something upstairs. Apparently.

Wow. A portal. And the mister. And the mister is just.

Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like that.

That's the scariest name ever. And she was in a certain room when she started talking about mister and skeleton.

Skeleton, excuse me. Skeleton. And like, I slept in that room and I was totally fine.

But for some reason now, whenever she asked me to take it, she goes, will you take me to bed?

Whenever I take her to bed and we walk past that room, I don't like it.

Really? There's an energy in there. Who's in that room now?

Does anyone sleep in there? That's like an extra room.

It's like a little, but it's kind of like a catch-all room right now.

It's like not a formal guest room. So that's where you put the guests?

That's where we will stay guests someday.

But right now it's just kind of like everything is in that room.

I wonder if there's something in the room.

Yeah, I'm wondering if it's connected to some sort of artifact or something.

Yeah, because we have a bunch of stuff in that room.

Well, and that used to be her room, and then she ended up switching, and she never slept in that room.

Yeah, she never slept in there. Like, that was a period of, like, she would scream.

Like, wake up screaming. Oh, no. There's something in that room.

I'm going to stage it for you. Maybe there is.

You're right. You're welcome. Your twins, do they see the mister?

No. They're fine. No, they saw stuff in our old house.

That was, oh, can you tell the scissor story?

Our listeners are like, not the scissor story.

I need to know the scissor story. Then we need a Corinne ghost haunting.

I'll give you a paladin. I've got horrifying ones, but I'll end with a nice one.

I don't even want you to, though. Maybe we need a horrifying one.

I think our listeners will want a horrifying one.

Okay. I'll just do this one quick because they've heard it like a million times.

Yeah, but it's so good. It's still terrifying.

It was when they were first in their like big kid beds and we had put the beds next to each other because they just like always want to be with each other.

So cute. And the beds, the way we oriented them were like the door was on one of their left.

And then it was like they were right here against the wall.

And so they just would not go to sleep the first night.

And we were like, oh, it's just the new bed.

Yeah. So we were kind of going in there being like, it's okay.

And we figured we were like, we'll just be up all night.

Like we were kind of expecting this. And then all of a sudden they were like upset calling us in.

And so we like run in the room and we're like, what's going on?

And one of the twins was like, people keep coming in my room and they have scissors and they're trying to cut my sheets.

And I was like, oh, how fucking terrifying.

And she just lays this out and we both were sitting.

John literally went, He was like, I'm out.

He was like, I don't know how to handle this.

Like, I don't know what to do. And I'm like, okay.

I was like, this is a moment right now. And it's like a core memory moment.

And I need to handle this correctly. And I can't freak out and like scar her for life and be like, what the fuck are you saying?

The way I would have burned the house down.

Pack up the things and go. Bye. And so I was like, are they here now?

And she was like, no. And I was like, okay.

And she was like, they're right there. And she pointed to the hallway right outside the door.

Like pitch black. Pitch black in that like little space in the hallway.

So I look out there and I'm like. Okay.

And I'm like, they're there right now. And she's like, yeah.

And I was like, okay. I hate thinking that there's like five little people with their scissors.

I'm also imagining us, the movie Us. That's what I was thinking.

That's what I thought of later. I was like, oh my God.

But I was like, okay. So I walked into the hallway where she said they were and I just stood there in the doorway and I was like, are they like near me?

And she was like, yes. And I was like, okay.

You were so brave. I know. She told me this and I was like, you did it.

And I literally go, guys. Yes. You're scaring her.

This is her room. Can you please stop doing that?

And then I was like, did they hear me? And she was like, yeah.

And I was like, okay. And I was like, you're okay.

And then like that night we just stayed up.

You're such a good mom. Oh my gosh. It worked.

They never came back. right they never came my child was like check under my bed i'd be like you check under the bed i'm scared now get rid of the whole kid what do you mean why it's you know what it is it's one of those things like john and i have like an agreement with everything that like if one of us is like this is too much for me to handle everyone has to like step up yeah That was one of those moments that John was like, this is yours.

He can handle the vomit. And he's like, I got that.

You handle the paranormal stuff. And picturing the show ghosts when they go.

The American version when they're down in the basement.

And then there's just all of the spirits around them when they're trying to figure out the hot water heater or whatever.

That's the kind of thing I was picturing.

They're all around you staring at you. Apparently they never came back.

You have to claim your space. And they never had a problem in that room again.

Never. Well, that's good. They slept like champions.

Wow. We ended up moving their bed away from that orientation.

Yeah, yeah. Because I was like, this is a little freaky.

I don't want you looking into that hallway.

If my kids are scared in the night, you're the first call, so you better look over.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, let's establish dominance over this.

Please do. You know what feels like a fix but is actually the opposite to a spooky room?

I always thought like, oh, what if I just have a canopy over my bed?

So then I can't see what's out. But then it makes it so much worse.

Right, because then you're like, what's on the other side of the cloth?

Yeah, I need to see what's going on. Like under the covers isn't for me because I need to be looking around.

I also like I have to keep my bathroom door open and because I'm afraid that someone's going to like be in the hallway.

Like when I shower by the bathroom, I'm a door open.

Oh, I do that too. I can't. Yeah, I'm not a fan of the door closed.

No, I don't like it. I whip it open like.

I'm going to shock you first. Sometimes I keep myself a little wet, you know, so I have the advantage of slipping and sliding past him.

You've got to be slippery. Right? Can't grab me.

You've got to think about these things. I just lock.

I lock myself in there. Yeah. I leave all the doors in my house open all the time, except when I go to sleep, I close the spare bedroom door because it freaks me out.

But every other door is open. Isn't that interesting that we can feel certain parts of our houses that we just don't trust?

That just don't feel right. Where it's like, we shouldn't close the door here.

Or we should keep the store open. There's a reason for that, for sure.

Especially if it's not the same throughout your whole space.

There's something else. You're like a gut feeling me.

Oh, my God. There's another person in the studio.

I was like... oh my god that scared me i scratched myself when i did that and i tried i was like i guess before i turned around just because you were like that to be honest i didn't even hear what you said but you just said like that man and i was like i'm the only one that i saw an actual human being you guys are just wait ash tell the story of the charm right before we were recording this is so embarrassing So we get up after doing our first part, which you should go listen to on Two Girls, One Ghost.

And I'm holding this charm. And so we get up and we go, like, hang out for a second.

And then we come back in the room and I was like, oh, my God, guys, there's a charm on my seat.

And then. And the charm had been a part of the story that you told.

Yeah. The charm had been a part of the story.

So we're all looking at it. Oh, my gosh.

Like, this is it. I have chills. We're like, this is from beyond.

It's a basketball. What? It was when, was it you that said it's a basketball?

I think Sabrina, one of us. It was when whoever said it's a basketball that I was like, oh.

I looked down at my shoes and I'm wearing like Nikes with like cute little charms on them.

So it was not a gift from my spirit guides.

It came off of my shoe. So we solved a mystery.

We did. That wasn't really that much of a mystery.

Yeah. We had a little myth buster. But I love how ready we were.

We were just, yes, it's definitely something.

Confirmation bias at its purest. Oh, yeah.

Honestly, it was brave of you, though, to admit what really happened.

Did you see? You discovered it. The wheels turning.

My face just went like, oh, fuck. I am wearing basketball shoes.

That would be mine. That is mine. Oh, my God.

Well, to give you guys a few stories from my childhood home, we always say that my family's haunted and not the actual home because we built our house.

So we were the first people to live in it.

We know the family who owned the farmland that was then sold to the developer to build this neighborhood.

And they had it in their family for generations.

So to our knowledge, on this specific land, there's absolutely nothing.

But for some reason, our house has been incredibly haunted my entire childhood.

And actually, a few houses down, our neighbors had to have their house exercised.

Holy shit. Because there was so much activity going on.

Something's lurking. We just have a haunted neighborhood.

Apparently my house is really haunted. But, yeah, there's been stuff that's happened my entire life.

And I kind of grew up where my mom was always believing me and my brother when we would say we would see stuff.

But my dad was taking the position of, like, not wanting to scare the kids.

And he thought, like, the parenting choice he would make is saying, like, oh, well, that's just your imagination.

You know, like the classic thing. But it was conflicting with my mom being like, I see them, too.

Like, I don't. and then of course like my personality too like i have a lot of pride and whatever and i was like dad that's super unfortunate that you aren't blessed with the ability to see sorry i know it's there though yeah so we we were all just experiencing so many hauntings and my house itself has has sort of like we call them like the resident ghosts we have the same spirits that a lot of people see but occasionally there will be a spirit that comes through that will only have one or two experiences with and I would like to think that the reason that they are no longer there is because we essentially have to like banish them and do some cleansing practices and whatnot to get them out the witch's cauldron the witch's cauldron You know what's so funny is like some of the stories that I have too, like I've been tucked in multiple times in my bed, like someone going, which is actually really nice, but it feels good and I'm not scared.

And that moment I'm like, oh, that's nice.

That's comforting. Yeah. But I think like the visual of it would be so scary.

Oh, yeah. But I had this one, the scariest experience I had in my house and every one of my family members has a scariest experience and they're all very different from one another.

But the scariest I had was I also slept with my bedroom door open because I felt like I needed to see.

And I always had my mom keep the hall light on and some nightlights throughout the hall as well.

So it was completely lit up so I can see.

And I woke up probably around like 1030, 11 p.m.

And I am hearing something. And the way that my bed was, was I had it pushed into the corner so that I could face out and be protected and then my back would be protected with the wall because I couldn't be exposed on either side.

So I was facing the way that I made myself sleep every night was I was facing the door and the door was facing the top of the stairwell.

So basically like the stairs turn and then I see the like the last five steps, the landing and then the majority of the hallway as it loops back to my bedroom.

And so I start to turn and I see someone's hand on the railing.

And it is very slowly. Like this whole experience took like 30 minutes.

It is like the pace of a snail going slowly up the railing.

And I can start to see the hand and the arm.

And it's this man and he's older. Like his hands are – he's lived a life.

Have I heard this? They're wrinkled. Probably not.

I'm sure I've told you like a piece of it before.

Oh, my gosh. And he gets to the top of the stairs and now I can see what he's wearing.

He's basically wearing like a combat like pants, like cargo, like has a bunch of pockets or whatever and a T-shirt.

And his hair is like a military cut and it's it's super blonde white.

And then he starts to turn and his hand is still on the railing and he's turning.

And now it's like on the banister that is is horizontal and he's coming down the hallway.

His face is filled with scars. His face looks so evil.

And now now he's facing me. He's staring at me.

Oh, my God. And I'm in my bedroom and I sit up in bed so that I can see him continue closer to me as he starts to get out of sight and like my blind spot of my of my doorway.

And so we're staring at each other for probably 20 minutes.

Oh, my God. I was probably 14 or 15. Holy shit.

Yeah. And he's making his way, slowly inching.

And I'm, like, barely breathing because he feels so evil.

And the way he's looking at me is not, like, just this residual haunting or, like, a confused spirit that's just a shock to see me.

Like, he feels horrible. Oh, my God. I would go into cardiac arrest.

Oh, my God. I am right now. So he disappears out of sight for a moment and I'm still standing there or sitting in my bed.

And then eventually he makes his way out of that blind spot into my doorway.

No. Standing in my doorframe. No, no, no.

Staring at me for probably another five minutes.

Oh, my God. I'm so stressed out right now.

How did you not shit yourself? i i was like i did not barely have breath like there was no i couldn't even scream like mom like no no i would have passed away yes yeah i mean they say fight or flight but i feel like freeze is such a real reaction yeah and i think it's terrifying moments like the more often reaction you know yes it is because you also have to like evaluate what's happening yeah and especially when it's something paranormal like what the hell are you supposed to do what are you supposed to evaluate right i'm gonna run through him yeah Come on.

Like, you don't even know. Throw punches.

Right. I don't know what to do. Right. Exactly.

And so, I mean, this whole ordeal has taken like 20, 25, 30 minutes or whatever of him coming around.

So he's slow as molasses. Like, it could not be a slower crawl for this guy to get close to me.

I wonder why. Which is why the next part is so terrifying.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no. A full-on sprint.

What? From the doorway to me on the bed.

I'm sitting up. When he gets to me, I can't see him anymore, but I'm blasted back onto the bed.

My body whips back. I'm now laying down.

I shoot myself back up and I sprint to my parents' room and I get my mom.

What the fuck? He my mom can't believe I don't know that.

Oh, yeah. I don't know why she didn't let me just like sleep in between my mom and my dad.

I mean, I'm 15. Like it's a pretty it's it's a bit it's a small bed for like three adults to be there.

I was terrified. So my mom was like, OK, you'll be OK.

You'll be OK. I'll come back and sleep with you.

So she comes back to my room with me. I don't see the man anywhere, but I'm like super paranoid.

Yeah. So it's it's like, I don't know, 11, 11, 15 at night.

She sleeps. I'm against the wall. She sleeps, so she's looking out at the doorway.

Finally, I fall back to sleep. I wake up again a few hours later because I feel like I sensed something, and I turn around, and he's at the doorway again, staring.

Why is he there? Why is he still there? I hate it.

Yeah, so I stared at him for another five minutes, and then I just lowered myself and just faced him. and didn't sleep the rest of the night and checked a couple more times and he had been gone.

But that was my scariest experience that I ever had.

That is the scariest thing I've ever heard.

He never came back after that? No. What the fuck?

And I just, like, why was he moving so slowly to me that whole time?

And then a full-on sprint, too. It's like he was trying to torture me.

The full-on sprint. The sprint was so scary.

Do you think, like, he had to go up the stairs that slowly to, like, build that energy and knew what he was doing?

He was, like, powering up. My thing is, was he getting energy from the fear you were feeling?

Exactly. And he was taking his time to, like, build it.

Oh, my God. Was he trying to possess me?

I don't know and today we are going to talk to that man now because he's still inside of you that man is mister he lost his eyes he lost his eyes he will find you he lost a few things oh my gosh that's by far the scariest but I'll give you a quick one to end on that's a lot nicer with your mom holy shit I need something nice I'm not well bitch I'm going to talk about the dog oh that's cute too Yeah, the dog one.

Okay, so I had a dog growing up. His name was Wrinkles.

He was completely smooth. Wrinkles was a smooth dog.

That's hilarious. He was wrinkly when he was little.

We thought he... We didn't know when he had all the skin.

He grew out of it. Yeah, very quickly. It was embarrassing.

But he was a black dog. And throughout my childhood, we had multiple people, like multiple of my friends say that they saw a black dog.

And we always were kind of like, oh, it must have been Wrinkles.

And they're like, no, I saw another black dog, like a...

Like a black lab with a red collar. And so we kind of had heard from other people, mostly children, that they were seeing another black dog in our house.

And then my mom, one of her college friends was visiting and his his partner was sitting at the kitchen table and said, oh.

I don't mean to alarm you guys I don't know if you believe in spirits at all but there's a ghost dog here and the ghost dog did like a little drive-by kiss like walked under the table and kissed her leg that's the cutest thing I've ever heard and so we were like oh my gosh like this whole time we thought our dog was like an only child but clearly there's another dog here but we'd never seen the dog The only time anyone in my family saw this dog is this is probably one of my mom's scariest moments.

But she woke up in the middle of the night because what we what she thought at the time was my dog jumping on the bed and cowering. had woken her up.

And my dad was out on traveling for work.

So she wakes up to a black dog that she thought was Wrinkles getting onto the bed and shaking and being right by her.

And she's like, it's okay, it's okay, Wrinkles, like trying to calm him down.

She looks up and there is a black mass, like a mist coming down the hallway of her bedroom towards her.

And she's like, I gotta protect my dog. And she just... goes get out and like yells and points and the mist like dissipates and kind of like disappears in a moment and the dog is cowering to the side of her and then my dog gets out of his crate and my mom like looks down and sees wrinkles and then looks to the dog on the bed and realizes it's not wrinkles and then in that moment he was horrified he's so scared yeah he ran to my mom for protection she was like she'll get me Right, exactly.

So that was the only time we've ever seen the ghost dog.

But yeah, there's a black dog with a red collar that's living.

He just drive-by kisses. Drive-by kisses.

He's just a little sweetie. He loves snuggles.

Right, exactly. That's what we need. That is bonkers.

And then when my dog had passed away, the six months after he passed, there was a lot of experiences we had with him.

We have some like a photo proof of a few things too.

But he kicked all the ghosts out for a solid six months.

It was dead quiet in our house. Wow. Wrinkles the protector.

Wrinkles for the win. Yeah. He was like, y'all had the upper hand when I was alive.

Get out. Get out. This is my territory. Yeah.

I mean, it was super peaceful to live there for those six months.

Wrinkles. Yeah. Wow. Those are a few. They come back.

Holy shit. I want more. Yeah. We were recently talking about doing like an episode where we just talk about our personal experiences.

Yeah, like the Sabrina episode. Corinne could have like 10 episodes.

Yeah, Sabrina was like, oh, I could probably do mine in like 30, 45 minutes.

I was like, oh, I think I need like 10 parts.

So three weeks. Right. Yeah. We've had a ton of experiences and all the houses that my parents, like from the time my parents were young too, and all the apartments that they were in, their colleges, like every place has been haunted.

Just bring the ghosties. Yeah, exactly. Every place I've been in has been haunted.

Are we going to bring ghosts home with us because of you?

Oh, man. I will say that Corinne is not petty.

I'll probably come home with your things.

Corinne will collect them. I'll take them away from you.

What if Mr. goes home with Corinne? Yes, go home.

You might get the Mr. Scaleton seems fine.

Scaleton, I'm kind of, I like want him back.

Yeah. I'm like, come on, Scaleton. I like that he went to see his family that he probably announced to your child too and was like, you know what, I'm going to do some traveling.

Like, here are my plans. I might see you in a few months.

Yeah, he just told like a two-year-old that he was like, hey, I'm going to go see my family.

I do wonder. There's some transparency here with this relationship.

Yeah, she was. gone for a little while here's where i'll be if mr came though because skeleton is not there maybe because maybe maybe skeleton is the protector yeah exactly that's why he was just like yeah i'm watching making sure she was okay all right skeleton come back from your vacation yeah we need you we love so creepy oh hell yeah all the way and that's exactly how she would pronounce it too skeleton skeleton yeah skeleton Well, the East Coast itself is just extremely haunted.

I feel like no matter where we are, there's so much history behind every place and so many spirits behind every place, too.

Oh, totally. Which is a beautiful transition.

I was going to say. I was going to say that, too.

Well done. Five years later and I'm like halfway there.

You know what? I loved it. Because today, what we did in the first part of this... was we took some hometown cases.

We did Sabrina's hometown and a Boston case.

Woohoo! Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's for both of you.

You know what I mean. And today, I am going to do something from Corinne's hometown of Chittenden County, Vermont.

Hell yeah! I like that little song. And Corinne's going to do something from Boston.

So we're keeping this going here. I can start it off because this is really fun.

I'm excited to talk about this. This is a very fun one.

I'm excited. I don't know anything about this.

I'm going to talk about Champ. The Wraecaster.

Because why not? Why not? Who doesn't love a cryptid?

And Champ seems awesome. And doesn't get enough recognition.

Everybody's all about Nessie and it's like, we have Champ right here.

That's the thing. My last name is Urquhart.

Nessie is in Loch Ness outside of Urquhart Castle.

So I was like... I'm a Nessie head. Yeah.

And when I saw this and I was like, wait a second.

It's just this right here. It's the American cousin.

Yeah. And I'm like, this doesn't get enough.

Yeah. No. I didn't know nearly enough about it.

I knew the name Champ and I was like, I don't know.

And then when I looked into it, I was like, okay.

Okay. I think Champ exists. I do too. I'm just saying.

I believe in Champ. You're a Champ truther.

I believe in Nessie and I believe in Champ.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is obviously a lake monster from Lake Champlain.

This is the Adirondack's biggest lake at 120 miles long.

That's pretty big. It's a big lake. Pretty big.

It's a freshwater lake. And I had no idea what that meant.

Also, I was like, are there non-freshwater lakes?

Like, I am so geographically. The ocean?

Yes. Literally. I was like, what's a non-freshwater lake?

The biggest lake of them all. I was literally looking it up and it's like, there's an ocean.

Yeah. not fresh. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool.

It's the boundary between New York and Vermont.

It also runs up north to Quebec, so it goes... So you can illegally cross the border if anyone needs to.

Just throwing it out there. Just so you know.

All of a sudden they see like an uptick.

I did hear people would like go across Lake Champlain to drink because the drinking age in Canada is 18.

I actually had a fake 18-year-old ID when I was 17.

Oh my God, that's awesome. Just for Canada?

So I could go party New Year's in Canada.

There you go. I'll go to Montreal, yeah.

That's smart. Fake 18-year-old ID. Yeah, not many people have that.

Just go to another country real quick. I know you're like, I'm 18.

I can vote, so just saying. This was also the sixth Great Lake.

But like Pluto before her, the title was revoked.

After only 18 days. I didn't know that. 18 days.

Wow. Only for 18 days? Yeah, which is wild.

That's also like rude. It's very rude. How did it get through?

Pluto had it for a long time. For a long time.

Decades. I don't know. I guess people still consider it a Great Lake because it's pretty great.

Just like Pluto is still a planet to me.

It is. It's always me too. In my eyes. Yeah.

Yeah. People are bullying Pluto. They are.

And I don't appreciate that. I don't either.

We have to defend her. We do. We'll create shirts that say Team George and Team Pluto.

Hell yeah. Team George is from part one.

There you go. Team George. Another callback.

We're going to keep calling back. You have to listen to both parts.

You have to. There's a string. It connects everything.

If you know, you know. Now, in Lake Champlain, there's always been sightings and rumors about like little creatures, little monsters here and there.

But this is not just like fairy tales. Like there's real sightings here.

There's real stories. There's some real evidence.

And actually has made scholars and scientists take a little second look here.

So this is not just one of those like, yeah, there's a sea monster in the lake.

Right. It's not an old wives' tale. It's current.

I don't think so. I like it. It is current.

And it goes way back because it begins with, like, the Abenaki tribes in the area.

They lived and hunted near Lake Champlain.

It obviously wasn't Lake Champlain always.

But they were there for years and years.

They were known to share tales and reports of huge serpents that lived in that lake.

And it wasn't just Champ. There was, like, several huge serpents and, like, then smaller ones.

Interesting. Like, there was a ton of different little monsters in there.

Wow. Yeah. And they referred to these creatures as Gitteskog.

I hope I said that right. I probably didn't.

I apologize. You did your best. I did. I did my best.

And they said it was found in what is now Lake Champlain.

Wow. Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed?

Can I make my site softer? Can I make my site firmer?

Can we sleep cooler? Sleep Number does that.

Cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side.

Your Sleep Number setting. Get early access to Sleep Number's biggest sale of the year.

25% off the i8 bed. Our most popular. Plus free home delivery.

Limited time. All Sleep Number smart beds offer temperature solutions for your best sleep.

Check it out at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com today.

Why are there ridges on Reese's peanut butter cups?

Probably so they never slip from her hands.

Could you imagine? I'd lose it. Luckily, Reese's thought about that.

Wonder what else they think about. Probably chocolate and peanut butter.

So the Abenakis would actually warn French explorers about keeping out of the lake and respecting the serpent.

And that was for their own safety and the safety of their tribes.

They were like, don't fuck with this. Please and thank you.

They've seen it. They know how to live harmoniously with all the monsters.

Why do I have a fear that they didn't respect it?

Well, they would tell them. Because colonizers.

Because that's history. There was very little respect.

They respected, like, Guseg. Yeah. So they ended up writing, while in the canoes, the men should not make loud noises or fire their muskets without good reason.

Neither should they throw anything in the water.

So they were very specific. Don't throw anything in there.

That's just rude and pollution. Do not make lots of, like, racket when you're oaring away there.

Yeah. You got to be quiet. They were serious about it.

These are like the things you're not supposed to do in shark infested waters, too, which is a little creepy that it's like that.

It's very similar. Right. Yeah. This thing will attack you.

And they need to be quiet. They have learned to live harmoniously with this thing.

So they were like, don't fuck it up for us.

So actually, according to the untold story of Champ, a social history of America's Loch Ness Monster by Robert E. Bartholomew.

It's a really cool book. Check it out. There are alleged pictographs of champ-like animals at Rock Regio or Split Rock, which is in like near the deepest part of the lake.

Wow. There's actual pictographs in there that they were like big serpents.

No way. So it's like. This is amazing. It goes back.

This goes so far back. It does. Now, annoyingly, Samuel de Champlain, who the lake is actually named after, has kind of always been attributed with having seen Champ for the first time.

And that's just not true. Like, the indigenous people were the ones who saw them first.

And it's, like, a very fake story that people spin about him seeing it first.

Like, I think it happened in, like, the 70s that, like, someone wrote in an article that he was the first one.

And we're like, this is what he saw. And it wasn't what he saw.

He did spot some smaller mysterious little monsters and stuff. and spoke about how the indigenous people warned him of bigger ones in the lake.

And he wrote, there is also a great abundance of many species of fish.

Amongst others, there is one called by the natives, and I hope I say this right, Chisaru, I believe it is, which is of various lengths.

But the largest of them, as the tribes have told me, are from 8 to 10 feet long.

I have seen some five feet long, which were as big as my thigh and had a head as large as my two fists, with a snout two feet and a half long and a double row of very sharp, dangerous teeth.

Its body has a good deal of the shape of a pike, but it's protected by scales of silvery gray color and so strong that a dagger could not pierce them.

Holy shit. So when I first read that, I was like, that is a monster. but scientists believe this might have actually been him seeing a garfish or a gar pike alligator gar if you look it up you're probably going to agree it also sounds a little bit like a lamprey too the lampreys are they have these circular mouths with multiple rows of teeth and they usually latch onto the side of fish and eat them like the thing from Nemo that's what I'm picturing those are angler fish You two know so much about fish.

I don't know what is happening. I don't know.

Fish experts. We're lake people, you know?

We're of the sea. We're of the sea. But yeah, these like the garfish are like these long like serpent-y kind of looking things and they are like silvery.

They're not crazy long though. They're not like 25 feet long where we start seeing these things.

But they don't necessarily have the flexibility of what we attribute to monsters.

Yeah, like they're not like slithery. Right.

Okay, great. There was no article. Just like a headline in the end.

They were like, go about your day, everybody.

Don't know what to tell you. Have fun back picking, I guess.

Is the beach closed? I need more information.

Seriously. They were just like, yeah, I guess a monster started making an appearance.

And everybody's like, yeah? Okay. Okie doke.

Don't know what to look out for. So everybody was just kind of like, okay.

Until Saturday, July 24th, 1819, when the Plattsburgh Republican newspaper reported from a man named Captain Crum...

Captain Crumb. I believe him. I'm going to travel the world with him.

I trust him with any of my secrets. I just I believe Captain Crumb.

He just a wholesome. I bet he smells like gingerbread.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. He's just a salty sea captain.

Yeah. Just he's so comforting. I like him.

Well, Captain Crum was on a ship, on his ship.

He had a ship. He's a captain, after all.

Of course. This was around 8 a.m. on that day, and he was going through Bulwaga Bay.

I hope I said that right. Off of Port Henry near New York.

And when he saw what he described as a straight-up sea monster in the lake, he said it was black.

It was about what he said to be, which I love the precision here, he said it was about 187 feet long.

Oh! I love how specific that is. 187 feet long.

I mean, he's a sea captain, so he probably knows measurements and distances.

That's true. That's the thing. He has some good practice.

That's the thing, because a lot of people got mad at this and were like, that's very specific, and I think he made it up.

And I'm like, no. Have you seen below deck?

Captain Crumb is good at measuring. I know it.

I know it. I know he's fine. I get it. There's like those certain people who can draw a circle perfectly.

Yeah. I think he is a perfect measurer. I think so, too.

I think he could tell you your age, like, to the month if he looked at you.

I just feel that about him. Maybe your height.

Maybe your height. Yeah. And I don't even think he would tell anyone their weight.

He knows better. He knows better than that.

I believe that about him. But he said this thing had a head that looked like a seahorse, which sounds adorably terrifying.

Yeah, it does. I love a seahorse. But a seahorse that big is scary.

An enlarged seahorse. Yeah, that would stress me out slightly.

I like it. I like it a lot. But he said when he saw this thing, it did a breach out of the water that was like 15 feet out of the water.

I don't love that. Yeah. He also saw a white star on its forehead.

Ooh, celestial. Adorable. Kissed by the universe.

Yeah. There you go. Kissed by the universe.

I love that. Wow. That was so pleasant. That was great.

That should be a fragrance. You're channeling Mr. Crumb.

There you go. Mr. Crumb is here with us.

Speak to us. And he's like, it's true. And there was also, I guess, a red band around its neck, like a red band of color around its neck.

And honestly, I was imagining like a collar.

Or like a little bandana. There's like a wee little human riding it.

Has a little tiny saddle. Instead of dragon riders, it's like seahorse riders.

This thing also has three teeth. Oh, that's adorable.

That's adorable. Precious. So cute. And I imagine there's like a big gap between all of them.

And I think it was like he said one on the top and then two on the bottom, which is like the cutest thing I've ever heard.

And you know, they're not pointy, you know, they're like little mounds.

Oh, he's a vegetarian for sure. Absolutely.

He's like lamb before time. He's like a giant sea toddler.

I love it. But then it goes into Crumb describing him having eyes the color of a peeled onion.

Oh. And that took me out a little bit. So white?

I was in and then I was like – It's incredibly specific.

So why not just say white? Very white, I feel like.

It almost makes you think like blind. That's the thing.

It makes me think of like a... Yeah, you're right.

Yeah. Like a dog with a cataract. Like a glaucoma kind of thing.

Which can be cute. Film over the eye kind of thing.

Bubba got a little film on her eye and she was adorable.

She was. She was so cute. But this would also...

That was an experience. Walk home mom. She ended up with both her eyes taken out.

So she was just walking around with no eyes.

But she was still beautiful. I'm sure. She was a beautiful babe.

And she has her eyes now. Alina saw her in a dream.

It's true. She came back after we put her to sleep and she had both her eyes.

Oh, that's so beautiful. She came back on her birthday.

And I saw both her eyes and I was like, you got your eyes back, girl.

Oh my gosh. How precious. Those were really nice experiences.

Yeah. Yeah. I really do. Yeah, you do. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah. It was beautiful.

I was going to say the glaze or the color of the eyes might make sense, too, because Lake Champlain is very deep.

So if these are creatures that spend most of the time in the deep, they don't necessarily need the vision like we do for the surface, right?

Exactly. Like bringing it back to the anglerfish, they have that weird eye because they don't need that because they're on the bottom of the ocean.

Right. So that's probably exactly what it would be.

Right. Because they do think that he lives in the deepest parts of the ocean, of the ocean, of the lake.

And that's how he's able to stay out of sight for so long.

But, you know, that's a little creepy. And he apparently moved very quickly through the water.

And then he just dove under and that was that.

Well, don't we all have places to go? We do.

And so does Champ. Yeah. But Champ likes Mr. Crumb.

He does. Captain Crumb. He was like, I just need to say hi.

You can even check him out. And then went back down.

A little foggy eye wink. I feel like it's very flattering.

If you see a cryptid, they've chosen you.

Depending on the cryptid. Yes, sure. Flattering, depending.

Yeah. But this one, I'd be flattered as fuck.

Oh, yeah. I feel like I'd be flattered no matter what.

Even if it was like the Flatwoods monster, I'd still be like, thanks, girl.

Mothman? I'd be like, yeah. Oh, Mothman.

Let's go on a date. Let's go. We actually asked people when we were doing a meet and greet for the show who they would want to go on a date with if they had to choose any cryptid.

And overwhelmingly so. Oh, Mothman. Always.

Do you guys follow him on Twitter? No. I used to.

He's a great follow. Okay. We'll follow.

New fan. I love that. I love that for everybody.

I never thought of any cryptid as hot, but I love that everybody loves Mothman.

I think he's pretty chiseled. Yeah, I can get that.

And he can take you, like, on flight, you know, if you want to, like, see the city from above.

Hold on tight, Spider-Monkey. Another Twilight callback.

Yeah, you're loving it. Wow, that's good.

We are now in Forks. This is now a Twilight podcast.

We're just going to watch all the movies.

Team Vampire all the way. There you go. A little side tale.

That's what's next. Part two. Part two is Twilight.

Everybody will be like, wow, okay. So this whole thing with Captain Crumb was sent in a letter to the Plattsburgh Republican and it wasn't sent by Captain Crumb.

It was somebody who he had told of this and they decided to relay it.

And this letter was signed horse mackerel.

What does that mean? I mean, once again, I believe Captain Crumb.

And now I think I'm team horse mackerel.

I'm not sure. Captain Crumb may have been on an acid trip.

Ate some bad mushrooms. Maybe that was Captain Crumb and he was like, I'm horse mackerel.

I'm feeling different. I'm feeling different.

I've been changed by this experience. I'm dramatic.

It's like his screen name. Horse mackerel.

Horse mackerel, three, two, three. I like it.

At hotmail.com. But yeah, that was the Captain Crumb.

I believe him. I'm on team this is Champ now.

Yeah. I'm on the ride. That brings us to 1826 when two fishermen got scared to hell by Champ.

They described him as 30 feet long. It's a little smaller than what?

187? You know. It's the baby. Baby Champ.

There you go. Baby Champ. And this one came out of a cave at them.

Oh. This one was also them. Yeah, just at them.

He was coming for them. Which I don't believe Champ would do.

And less provoked. And maybe. Maybe it was like old Greg and he was like, you fishing in my water?

I love old Greg. Maybe that's what he did.

I don't play no love games. I'm playing that at my wedding.

Absolutely. You got to do the dance. That's your first dance.

Do the dance when they're... I mean... We got to choreograph it.

Let's do it. Let's go. Should we do it? Yes.

Let's do it. Somebody's got to get a light under the tutu.

Okay. I'll put it under my dress. Let's go.

Downstairs mix-up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, this was not old Greg, I imagine.

Bummer. He was polka-dotted, though. Oh.

This one had polka-dots. Okay, so we've got stripes and polka-dots.

Yeah. He was red and black. Red and black polka-dots, which is very goth of him, I feel.

Yeah. Very hot topic. So maybe this is like Champ's teenage son.

Yeah. Creeping out of a cage. It's not a phase, dad.

Playing the black parade behind them. Yes.

No, they got out of there. They were like, oh, we don't want to fuck with this goth monster.

So luckily they came back the next day and they saw that there was a huge trail that was left by this serpent.

Like you can see where it had like slid them through.

And apparently it smelled bad. Oh, gosh.

It's of the sea. Yeah. But they said it had a snake-like smell.

What does a snake smell like? Which is where they lose me.

Leather? What the fuck does a snake smell like?

And also, how do you know? Yeah, I don't know.

I'm guessing. Hmm. And why are they expecting us to know?

Right. It's what I want to know. Like, they're like, it was snake-like.

And you're like, why would I know that? Yeah.

I do kind of feel like I know what that smells like, but I can't put, like, a name on it.

I feel like it's a strange measure of, like, pungence.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like, a bit wet. Yeah.

Maybe, like, yeah. That'd be a cool candle line.

Like, what? Like, all the scents that you don't really realize have a scent.

That you can't understand. Yeah. Snake. Snake.

And you're like, what do you think it smells like?

Check it out. Test your sense. Scratch and snatch.

Yeah. Snake. It would be like those gross jelly beans.

You just take your life in your hands. Yeah, you never know what you're going to get.

It's a fun time, though. Because I feel like it would kind of be like wet dog or something.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm picturing like, I feel like I'm smelling wet straw right now.

Wet straw. Yeah, you know, like hay. Oh, I was picturing a straw you drink out of.

Like the one that Champ puts between his three teeth.

He just sticks it right in the middle of the gap right there.

Three toddler teeth. He just sprays it. So there was that one.

And then later in the 1800s, it was a real time for Champ.

In the late 1800s. He was putting on a show.

He was coming out a lot. And he was really revealing himself to like big ships and steamers.

He was like the whole crew, all the passengers would see him all at once and they would all report it.

He's like, I'm real. Yeah, there was like big group sightings of him.

I wish I lived then. Right? You're just standing on a steamer on your way to sea and you see Champ.

Except the War of 1812 and then there's a lot of people that died right there.

There was some stuff going on. Maybe I don't want to live then.

Maybe I just want to plop onto a steamer for like 10 minutes, sea champ, and then be like, and I'm out.

Time's up. Just gun it to 88 and go back.

Back in the DeLorean. Yeah, I'm all set with that.

But in 1871, everyone on the Curlew steamship saw a monster in the water that they described as going railroad speed.

That's fast. So it was like flying through the water.

One might say like 187 miles an hour. You never know.

There you go. Maybe he just confused it.

Perhaps. Maybe he had the right thing. But yeah, so these are big group sightings of this monster.

Yeah, which is more evidence that it's real.

It is. I think he's real. And then in July 1873, there was a story in the Whitehall Times that said a crew working laying down railroad tracks in, I think it was in the town of Dresden in New York, which at the time was super rustic, like very uninhabited, very unpopulated.

It was like pretty treacherous, actually.

There was like... Big nests of, you know, like, what are they called?

Rattlesnakes everywhere. It was like somewhere you just could not just like toot around in.

And this crew was doing this railroad through there to connect two different places so you wouldn't really have to hang out in Dresden.

But this crew was just doing their job when they spotted something moving along the water.

And it was about 20 feet long or possibly longer.

And then this is what they said. This is how they described it.

As he rapidly swam away, portions of his body, which seemed to be covered with bright silver-like scales, glistened in the sun like burnished metal.

From his nostrils, he would occasionally spurt streams of water above his head at an altitude of about 20 feet.

Wow. Cool party trick. Which I love. I know.

Very impressive. He's putting on a show.

Yeah. He's a little whale. He loves it. The appearance of his head was round, which I loved it, round and flat.

Round and flat. Okay. Round on the sides, flat on the top.

If we're thinking like a seahorse head. It's like round and then flat.

Yeah. Kind of thing. Or even snake-like too.

Yeah. There you go. Kind of flattens out at a certain point.

We don't know which direction. Is it long or wide?

Yeah. It depends, I guess. Yeah, you know, I wish I was there.

But he says his eyes were small and piercing.

His mouth bore and provided two rows of teeth, which we keep hearing the multiple rows of teeth.

Right. Or just three. Or three. It's either multiple rows or it is three.

The one with three, like, had a bad accident down under and lost. saw the teeth.

Or it was ancient. It's 187 feet long. It barely has any teeth.

That thing was on its last leg. That's the prehistoric one.

That's true. I think you're right. That is Mother Dragon.

I think so. I think that's like patient zero.

I think you cracked the code. But they also said that he displayed these teeth to his beholders.

As he sprayed shit out of his nose. He's just posing for pictures.

I got teeth. As he moved off at a rate of 10 miles per hour, portions of his body appeared above the surface of the water, while his tail, which resembled that of a fish, was thrown out of the water quite often.

Adorable. I like it. So this came out and then more people working on the railroad and more residents of the area came forward and were like, wait, I saw shit like this, too, like a couple of weeks ago.

But they were like, I just didn't want to sound crazy.

So I didn't come forward with it. Glad these guys were OK with sounding crazy.

That's awesome. So reports came from this guy named C.S.

Leonard who was working – I think he was like a boss at the railroad.

So he was like a pretty smart guy. And he was working in Dresden as well.

And he said he was leading a crew on the property of General David Barrett weeks earlier.

And he was told that his crew had seen a huge snake-like creature.

And he himself saw later, after they had told him this, he saw remains of animals, like large animals, that he believed this thing was eating.

Interesting. So then General David Barrett, whose property they were working on, he actually saw a huge snake with what he said was glittery silver scales.

So again, another common sign. Exactly. And he said he shot at the snake, which is rude.

How dare he? Yeah. Very rude. And he said, but he missed and the thing just like slithered into the water.

Hmm. So there's that. And there was even a period during this time where farm animals from the area around the lake started going missing.

Ooh. So people were thinking that it was like... This is interesting.

I'm curious, is it like slipping out of the water?

That's right. And how is no one seeing it on land?

And there's no trail of it left behind either.

But then you get like the guys who said it came out of the cave and they saw a trail.

Right. Yeah, yes. Anaconda style. Right?

I'm saying. I'm saying. Maybe it's just a giant prehistoric anaconda.

Yeah. It sounds like the Peninsula Python.

Oh, yeah. Right? Good call. Another cryptod.

The other thing, too, is, like, no one can ever say that Champ is not real if we don't know how eels reproduce.

Like, you can't tell me you don't know something from a... from a creature that we see all the time and we can like touch and then say that this, this isn't real.

So that's my PSA to everybody. Deep bodies of water.

I'm like, we don't understand. Oh, you do not know the ocean monsters.

Even on the land, we're still discovering humans living underwater.

Oh, there's like, there's smart. Yeah. Like we will never, we will never know.

Target down there. You know, just a city target.

Yeah. Yeah. You got to get in and get out.

Yeah, you got to. Now, in July 1883 was one of the sightings that was considered the most credible up to this point.

Because it was that of the, it was an observation made by Clinton County Sheriff Nathan H. Mooney.

So the sheriff is now saying he saw him.

He saw the monster at Cumberland Head and he said, And he said he had been on a ship called the Nelly when he saw this thing.

And the pilot of the Nelly confirmed this and said, I also saw it.

So there's that. In August of that same year, a whole steamship and a crew saw Champ.

It was the WBED, and they almost capsized after actually almost running into Champ.

Oh, my gosh. I'm glad they didn't. Yeah.

And the whole crew saw it. So this thing is active, too.

It's not just, like, from a distance. Everyone's like, look at that thing.

He's, like, popping up. Right. Yeah. And they think he came up and, like, didn't realize that the boat was there and kind of, like, tossed it a little bit.

He was like, oops, sorry. But they said he went right under.

My B, my B. And then in the early 1870s, actually, P.T.

Barnum, yes, that P.T. Barnum. The circus guy?

Yeah. Wow. He put an ad in the Whitehall Times that said, I hereby offer $50,000 for the hide of the Great Champlain Serpent to add to my mammoth World's Fair show.

Sad. You are authorized to draw on me for any sum necessary to assist in servicing the monster's remains.

That's rude. Do you need that, sir? So he was actively like, kill this thing and then bring me its skin.

Don't like that. Yeah, that's right. No P.T.

Barnum. No. Now we move on to 1945. Another crew and another ship saw Champ altogether.

Damn. It was the SS Ticonderoga and the...

Passengers? I was literally just reading that.

It was the actual pencil. They made the pencils out of that boat.

After this happened, they were like, we got to go.

They were like, get rid of that. And it was the whole crew, all the passengers, they all saw a chant.

They all had the same observations, all described it the same.

Then that brings us to July 5th, 1977, when the most famous photo of Champ was taken.

This was from Sandra Manzi from Bristol, Connecticut.

She was out enjoying some time near the lake with her soon-to-be husband.

She had grown up in the area. She knew the legend of Champ.

Yeah. They sat down together on the shores of the lake.

They were going to have a picnic. They were like, this is so nice.

And Champ said, me too, baby. What are you eating?

Champ said, I got three teeth. You got some salad?

And she looks out into the lake and she just sees something.

And she's like, that's, it just looked strange.

And she figured it was some animal or like a big school of fish moving in unison.

And she was like, oh, that's interesting.

And she just kind of pointed at it. So they're both watching.

And then they see this neck come out with a head.

And then it was just slowly coming out. And it kept coming out.

Oh, my gosh. This neck just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

So she's like, what the hell is that? She said it looked like some kind of like primordial. prehistoric dinosaur like a brontosaurus just coming out of here so she snapped a quick photo with her Kodak Instamatic camera and then she just kept it and she didn't tell anyone she said she was terrified when she saw it she felt like she was seeing something she shouldn't have seen that's what she said I literally felt like I was seeing something I shouldn't have seen I would think it'd be exciting because she knew the legend she was but I think she was like now that I'm seeing it before my very eyes I feel like I shouldn't be here and that he didn't want me to see him But this thing she did end up it was because she did end up coming forward I think in like the early 90s to show it.

And it was featured in a ton of stuff notably.

And notably it was in Lake Monster Mysteries exploring the world's most elusive creatures by Benjamin Redford and Joe Nickel.

Joe Nickel who also appeared in my James Maybrick episode.

I was going to say, I thought that name sounded familiar to me.

That's been like drawn. That episode is like the episode that never ends.

Yeah. But they said of this photo, because they're like very into debunking and authenticating things.

Right. So they said, the Manzi photo stands alone as the most credible and important photographic evidence of the existence of lake monsters.

Wow. Straight from Vermont. Straight from Vermont.

It's not happening to Nessie yet. I have faith, but it will.

But by 1992, over 600 people had claimed to see Champ.

Wow. Dang. And it was so aplenty throughout the 80s and 90s that the people around this area actually made sure Champ is respected and protected.

Right. Which I love. In 1981, Port Henry, New York declared that their waters were considered a safe haven for Champ.

Oh, I love this. It's so cute. Get out of here, P.T.

Barnum. And today they actually have a statue of Champ next to the water.

Aww. And in 1982— Oh, I just imagine little Champ looking at his statue like, that's me!

I made it. I made it. He goes down like, Mom!

My great-great-grandfather would be so proud of me right now.

The one with three teeth would love this.

And in 1982, Vermont followed suit, and the state passed a House resolution that protects Champ.

And in 1983, not to be outdone, both the State Assembly and the State Senate of New York also passed resolutions that protect Champ.

Look at that. This is like the most sweet and wholesome.

So wholesome. You got to take care of your lake monster.

You got to. In 2003, after three new sightings that same year, and it was like by June of that year, there were three new sightings in 2003.

Discovery Channel did a show called America's Loch Ness Monster, all about Champ.

So you can go find it, too. It's, like, you can watch it.

It's streaming. I feel like I remember watching that when I was little now that I'm thinking about it.

It's really cool. And for this special, they brought, like, a bunch of experts in and scientists and equipment.

And they went into the lake. And they wanted to really get some, like, real evidence here.

And they were able to pick up some really strange noises in the water.

Like champagne. Champagne. Champlain. We're in France now.

And the noises resembled the sounds of like a whale or like dolphins communicating with each other.

It was like so family. And there are no dolphins or whales.

Yes, there's nothing else in Lake Champlain that would make that noise.

Nothing that they have found that talks through sonar.

Has anyone ever gone... I mean, is there a lake submarine?

Can we go down there? That's what I wonder.

Because you can only go down so deep, though, right?

Because of the pressure. I think they have done some sonar to try.

I mean, in every documentary, it's like, and then the team was sent down and, you know, they found nothing or this weird shadow that we don't know what it is, you know.

But they couldn't explain this, like, sonar type sound.

Wow. They cannot explain it. Because obviously there's no whales or dolphins in a freshwater lake.

It's not happening. But people are still, it's not happening.

It is champ. It is champ. Now, people still see Champ today.

It has not died down. It's like a little less on the reports because I think we don't have like the newspapers like we did back then where that's all you got.

And I think it did uptick slightly during COVID.

Oh, that makes sense. Fewer people in the water.

The border was... locked down so we didn't have all the Canadians coming down in their boats.

It was quiet on the lake. So he was happy.

He was just swimming about. The whole lake to himself.

I like that. I just keep saying that. Nature is healing.

I actually took a picture of this marker because I wanted to read it.

It's so cute. There's just a picture of my family here.

Um... I'm like, why did that come up? So apparently there's a historic marker in Clinton County on the shores that like marks and they call him Champy.

And it says on the marker, it says Champy, legendary lake monster lives here.

Over 300 sightings reported since 1819, up to 200 feet long.

New York's law protects this regional icon.

Oh. And it's like a little icon. This regional icon.

And that's just who has officially reported their sightings.

Exactly. Official reports. So I'm sure there's hundreds and hundreds more.

Absolutely. There's also a Vermont baseball team called the Lake Monsters.

Oh, yeah. With their mascot being Champ.

And it's adorable. Yeah. They're part of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, in case you were wondering.

I kind of was, I guess. Enough to write it down.

Enough to put it out there. Right. There was more sonar captured recently by Katie Elizabeth, who's a champ hunter and author of Water Horse of Lake Champlain, a cryptozoological biography of champ, which we love.

I also want to be a cryptozoologist. That would be so fun.

Such a cool job. Have you been to the— The Cryptozoology Museum up in Portland, Maine?

No. I want to go so bad. There's a lot of castings of Bigfoot.

I love that stuff. Let's go. It would be so fun to just get in a van.

Yes. And for a year, I don't know, visit all the interesting, cool places and museums.

I would love that. A cryptid adventure. A cryptid.

Should we do that, guys? Yes. And our little Scooby-Doo van.

The mystery machine. An RV. If you were bringing the family, an RV.

Get in, kids. We're going to find Bigfoot.

It ends with Corinne and Bigfoot getting married.

Because Corinne wants to marry Bigfoot. It's the big joke that I'll disappear into the woods with Bigfoot.

Honestly, I love it for you. Our trip with Corinne marrying Bigfoot.

Perfect. A little ceremony. In the woods.

Cute. A beautiful little rustic ceremony.

An intimate ceremony. You guys can all officiate.

Yes. Awesome. That's greenlight.com slash wondery.

That's greenlight.com slash wondery. Well, if you want to find Champ.

I do. Which we all do. A lot of the sightings have happened around Balwaga Bay where Crum first spotted him.

Lots more came out of that. So that's a good place.

And the deepest part of the lake could be about 400 feet deep. which makes my toes curl.

Yeah, that's really deep. And my heart stop beating because I hate deep water.

It freaks me out. Yeah, it's just black.

What's down there? Yeah, I'm like, there's definitely prehistoric shit down there.

And target. Yeah. It would make sense for Champ to probably be hiding that deep in the water, so I think so.

Because he, I mean, considering his hold on the title of hide-and-seek champion of the century, I think he's probably down there.

That's why his name is Champ, I bet. Yeah, there you go.

1000%. I mean, that's not why, but it is now.

It is now. This is also where Split Rock is and where the pictographs were found.

So it kind of makes sense that this is where he is.

Yeah. There's also the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vermont.

And it has some Champ stuff. It has history of the lake itself.

It's just, like, interesting. You should go see it.

And then there's also the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont.

And it's also, like, a little bit of an aquarium.

And it has a ton of info and, like, folklore about Champ.

It does. go look at them. And then it has fish because it's a little bit of an aquarium.

Fish that are found in Lake Champlain and they are ugly.

So if you want to go see tanks of brown fish.

Just the ugliest fish. Go there. Go there.

So that is the story of Champ. I love it.

I love that so much. I love Champ. Little sea toddler.

There he is. I love that there's proof of how much people love and respect Champ because that's sort of how it was brought up too.

It's like, yeah, Everybody is brought up with just such warmth in their hearts.

Yeah. And so much pride and whatnot towards.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. We're proud of Champ.

Of course you have to be. And haven't you.

There was a moment where my dad and I think that we may have had an encounter with Champ.

I'll tell you what happened. You buried the lead.

So my parents have a boat and it's in Mallets Bay.

So it's near the... Well, I guess, like, the bays are nice and calm.

And, like, monsters would probably want to hang out there sometimes.

Yeah. But we were tubing behind the boat.

My dad and I were on the tube. And my mom was driving.

Normally, she's not the driver. Normally, my dad pulls us and breaks our legs.

And it's just reckless. Fun. But my dad was taking a turn on the tube with me.

And so my mom is... My brother is just being a horrible scout or spot, and he's not listening to any of the hand signals or the screams that my dad and I are giving to tell them to stop because what we saw beside us as we were tubing was it looked – it was like the width of our thigh.

Yeah. And it was kind of like this brownish black and it was serpentine and it was riding the wave.

So there was a few humps that we could see riding the wave next to us.

And my dad is someone that normally like doesn't really want to believe in all this stuff or will be like, oh, it's I mean, he's he was like imagination.

Yeah, exactly. And he was also raised in like rural New Hampshire, Maine area, like knows a lot of the the wildlife.

He turned to me and he said, whatever you do, do not let go.

Which is the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life.

Because I would immediately let go by accident.

So we're white knuckling. We're screaming, stop, stop.

My mom is thinking, ha ha, they must be having the best time.

My brother's just like staring at us, panicking, not thinking to signal my mom to stop.

Finally, she stops the ride and we get onto the boat and we were absolutely panicked.

But I mean, that experience happened for probably only 15.

20 seconds next to the tube before it disappeared.

But, oh my God, it was so freaking scary.

It is scary, but just knowing the story of Champ, I love to picture Champ like, this is fun!

It was like a little juvenile Champ. I mean, we were only in probably 25... feet of water right there.

So maybe it was just like a baby champ. Baby champ.

A little baby champ. He was playing. He was like, I like the way you're going for it.

And we know some other people that have had champ sayings, but a lot of people don't want to.

It's kind of like the thing you whisper at the party after a few glasses of wine.

A lot of people don't want to. Like officially report a champ.

You have to kind of test the waters and see who you can tell or who you don't.

A lot of people don't outwardly say the things that we say.

Right. I'm not a sea monster or a lake monster.

I'm for them. Let's go. I'm pro-sea. All right, let's go.

We'll go on my boat and we'll go. That's one of the stops.

Lake Champlain. This is what scares me about the ocean, though.

Lake Champlain uses like a hundred and however many miles and there's a monster, a sea monster in it.

But the ocean is, one, so deep we don't even know how deep it goes and so vast that Who knows how many monsters and cryptids that are out there that we just don't know.

I know. There's an unthinkable amount. Yes.

Too many monsters in the ocean. I am sure of it.

At the very bottom, southernmost point of Lake Champlain, there is a town.

It's on the New York side, the town that immediately borders Vermont.

And I can't remember the name of this town.

But they have an annual Sasquatch calling festival where they compete to do Sasquatch calls and someone gets picked as the winner.

I've never been, but I looked it up and watched the YouTube clips of everybody doing the calls.

How do they determine the winner? That's incredible.

I think the crowd just votes. I feel like Sasquatch has the most amount of not a good caller.

He just stands behind everyone who's like, oh.

And then Champ is just like in the water like, what the fuck is this?

Champ is like, this is my lake. This is why I stay in the water.

Every year around June, these people go so weird.

Yes. I love it. Wow. Okay, you guys, I have a tale for you.

Tell us a tale. And we're venturing out of the lake and to the land of Boston, which is where we are right now. currently okay so we're also going to step back 80 years in the past to november 20th 1942 it is a chilly evening 30 degrees fahrenheit it snowed the day before the ground still wet you know like a light dusting of snow beneath your feet so beautiful right you know christmas time is coming it's we love it grab your hot cider exactly yeah so great romantic But as we know from being in Boston, like the wind whips around the corners of the buildings and stuff.

So it's quite chilly. Oh, yeah. And you're walking.

It's night and you're chilly and you're wrapping yourself with these sheets of cloth and I don't know whatever the fuck they wore in 1942 for their jackets.

I'm sure they weren't nearly as insulated as the ones that we have now.

But you're pulling your coat a little bit tighter around you and you briskly make your way to Bay Village.

It's Thanksgiving weekend, the first Thanksgiving since entering World War II.

As well, America entering World War II. And you're looking to blow off some steam.

So you arrive at your destination. Absolutely.

I mean, Thanksgiving. Picture it perfectly.

Let's go. All of your family. It's Saturday night.

It's right now. We're doing this after the airport.

So you arrive at your destination walking up to a large sign that reads Coconut Grove and you push through the revolving doors entering the building.

Coconut Grove is the spot to be. Everybody's there every Saturday, every Friday.

Everybody wants to be there. And tonight, everybody had the exact same thought that you did.

The club is absolutely packed. Unfortunately for many of the club goers at Coconut Grove, this would be their very last time celebrating with their friends.

Coconut Grove was the premier nightclub in Boston.

It was actually based on Los Angeles' club with the same name that was super, super popular.

I would say that makes me think of Lucy.

I love Lucy. Lucille Ball. Didn't they play at the Coconut Grove?

I'm sure. Probably. I think you're right.

Yeah. That sounds so familiar. But I mean, it was like entirely based on the same thing.

So decor wise, everything was decorated to be this tropical oasis.

Very not Boston. Very absolutely not Boston.

Yeah. Yeah. There were multiple rooms in here, too.

So there were dining rooms, bars, lounges, all connected through these tight hallways and single doors.

So they kept adding on extra rooms throughout the years.

There was a cocktail and caricature lounge just after the entrance.

You could get a little caricature drawn of yourself.

Super cool. And then a little bit further in was the dining room, a dance floor and a stage where the jazz musicians would play.

And then past the stage, there was this new lounge that had opened just the week before.

So you're there on that Saturday, that Thanksgiving weekend.

And it's really exciting. Everybody wants to see that that new spot.

There's rattan and bamboo paneling lining the walls and there's silk draped along the ceiling.

There's satin canopies, faux leather, heavy drapery.

It just was made to be not only tropical, but like to create the sensual, elegant, sophisticated feel.

You know, you want to feel like a lot of colors, like pinks and yellows.

And too, it was built originally 20 years before during the prohibition era in the 1920s, roaring 20s.

So it has a lot of that feel still. Winding through the building, partygoers could find themselves descending a narrow stairwell into the basement, and that is where you would enter the Melody Lounge.

It was a piano bar, which was dimly lit with twinkling lights and dark blue velvet drapery that decorated the dark ceiling.

It created this illusion, basically, of a starry night.

Yeah. Ambience. I love it. Super ambience.

And then the poles, like the pillars, basically the support beams were decorated to look like palm trees.

And so they had like the base was as thick as any other palm tree trunk.

And then they created with all of this fabric, the palms that would kind of like reach out over all the party goers.

So you literally just feel like you're outside on a starry night.

Absolutely. In a tropical place. Yeah. I won't say it.

I just know where this is going. So there's just like so many things that like as you're describing it.

Yeah. That's all I'm thinking too. I'm like making a mental hazard.

Actually upstairs too. So downstairs they did that false starry night.

But upstairs, I wish Boston still had this.

They had a retractable ceiling in one of the rooms.

So when it was warm out, you literally could party underneath the nice sky.

That's awesome. That's really cool. We lack that now in Boston.

Right. OK, but unsurprisingly to anybody who has ever lived in Boston, the property had mob ties, especially when it was first opened during the Prohibition era, because they quite literally needed those ties and financial backing to bring in all the booze.

It was a lot of bootleggers and mobsters.

Mobby investing. They do. They do. Yeah.

So this was a popular spot for mobsters, for politicians, for celebrities.

The club was really special. It made people feel super special.

Just a super popular scene. But because it was the World War II era, money, resources, everything's a little bit tight.

And so the club was especially focused and like locked down on not letting anyone.

There were no drinks on the house, right?

Like they were like, no one is going to leave without paying for exactly what they need.

So So they did a lot to make sure that that happened.

One of the things they did was the owner hired teenage boys off the street.

So like 15, 16 year olds were working in this club because they could the owner could pay them really low wages and basically have them double as waiters and and bouncers and whatever odd jobs.

Right. Exits were locked or concealed with heavy velvet drapery.

Emergency exits bricked up. Many windows locked or only opening a few inches.

So basically saying there's only one in or out way.

Essentially, yeah. Yeah, because they didn't want anyone to be able to leave.

So you couldn't just get your drinks and then slip out the window in the bathroom or whatever.

Eek. On this particular Saturday night, the club was filled to more than twice its legal capacity with over 1,000 patrons parting inside.

Too many people. It was set to have something like 460 people.

Oh, my gosh. And there's over 1,000 people.

It's like wall to wall. Oh, no. Packed. packed drinks are flowing celebrities are perched on private tables and also romance was in the air at least for this one sailor and his date the two were flirting very heavily uh and you know things are getting a little hot and things are getting a little heavy she was a little shy probably literally hot that's a lot of people yeah totally yeah and like how much velvet can you put in place yeah right The piano player had just begun singing Bill Crosby's White Christmas.

It had just come out that year. Just so romantic, right?

So the sailor reaches up to make his date a little bit more comfortable and unscrews the light bulb from the artificial palm tree arching over them to give them a little extra bit of privacy in the dark basement of the Melody Lounge.

The head bartender down there sees the light go out in the corner and then tells the 16-year-old bar boy, Stanley, let me not butcher his last name, Tomaszewski, to take care of the light.

So Stanley makes his way over there. He approaches this couple.

He explains that it's dangerous to have the light out.

Like, you can't just do whatever you want.

You can't just remove light bulbs. Right, yes.

You pay rent here. Exactly. And he was like, okay, I need to relight it.

So he lights a match because he can't see.

It's super dark. He doesn't have a flashlight.

He lights a match so he can see what he's doing.

He replaces the light bulb, blows out the match, drops it on the floor, steps on it, returns to what he was doing before.

Just moments later, someone screamed that there is a fire on the palm tree. so Stanley and the other employees all run to the tree they have pitchers of water they're dousing the fire with these pitchers of water and for a moment everyone thinks it's kind of funny like it's a little bit silly to like watch everybody scramble it looks like the tree has been put out yeah it's like it's been resolved the very quickly panic ensues and everyone watches the fabric it's velvet yep all of the satin and velvet that's on the ceiling It starts to smoke and then it ignites.

And a giant ball of fire explodes in this corner and very quickly starts spreading onto the rest of the fabric on the ceiling and making its way across the floor to the staircase.

I mean, as you were describing it, I'm just immediately thinking everything in this place makes a fire.

It's flammable. Oh, yeah. Like, travel so much faster.

This is a craft store. Yeah. Literally. Like...

I'm picturing it in my head. Yes. Instantly.

Yeah. Yeah. And also just to add a little bit of information, like when they first opened this place, they did put some like fire retardant spray on all of the fabric, but had never done it again.

So like it wears off. Yes. So desperate people are running for this tiny little staircase and other people are jumping up on chairs trying to cut down the fabric from the ceiling to prevent the fire from making its way through the whole room.

That is really brave of those people to do that.

But it only takes a few moments for the fire to overtake the entire room, the satin fabric burning and falling while still lit onto the panicked 400-some patrons below in the Melody Lounge.

The air conditioning or an air conditioning unit had actually just been recently put in upstairs.

And because of World War II, they switched the gas because it was too expensive to use whatever they were using before and switched it to one that was much more flammable.

So basically... It's believed that this helped ignite the fire and also create the suction for the fire to travel across them very quickly and up the stairs to the first floor.

It's like the perfect storm. It really is.

It's awful. So the narrow staircase became jammed with people, the fire now taking on the fabric in the stairwell.

There was a couple, Ruth and Hyman Stragoff, who...

They first made their way to the exit as soon as they saw the palm tree ignite.

So they were kind of like, oh, we don't want to take any risks and made their way over to the exit.

So they're the very first people basically to be at the stairwell.

But this all happened so quickly that by the time they got to the stairwell, other people were already running for them, grabbing them, pulling them back, ripping them away from each other.

Ruth tries to grab Hyman as he's pinned down on the ground from other people trying to go over him.

He's crawled over. This is so devastating.

It is. I mean, I cried. I woke up this morning and was like, why did I choose to research this?

Should I really quickly find something else?

It's harrowing. It really is. So many people lost their lives in this moment in really awful ways.

But basically, Hymen was crushed beneath their feet, and she was pushed forward, her hat and jacket now on fire from the embers that floated down from above her.

The fiery air was now burning people's skin and their lungs, and they were all suffocating.

Yeah, because it's one exit. Yeah. There's only one way out of this place.

And the tiniest. I mean, like, think of, like, your grandparents' stairwell.

Yeah. Like, it was, like... Half of that.

And you don't think about that air, too.

No. That air is just as dangerous as the smell.

So moments after Ruth got out, others were already dead from being crushed by the crowd, burned, or inhaling too much smoke.

It happened so quickly that some people didn't even have time to react.

They were found later by the firefighters who entered the space, still seated at their tables.

Oh, my God. Those in the back of the crowd were still pushing forward, trying to climb over now a pile of bodies beneath them.

Ugh. And many, many people had to make the impossible choices to leave the loved ones behind.

So many friends, lovers, spouses separated forever.

Bartender Daniel Weiss and singer slash pianist Goody Goodell were two of the last people to make it out of the Melody Lounge alive.

And they did so because they ended up grabbing napkins and dumping them in pitchers of water and holding that over their mouths so that they didn't succumb to the smoke.

Wow. Imagine having the wherewithal to do that.

Five other people found a walk-in refrigerator and locked themselves in there until the fire department rescued them.

So they survived that way. The remaining patrons ran around this complex.

Remember, there's a bunch of different rooms with tiny little stairwells.

I'm trying to find the exit. I also imagine there's no exit signs like there are today.

And two, if you did end up peeling back the fabric and finding a door more likely than not I believe six of the nine doors were locked and the majority of the windows were inescapable so like and you said somewhere like bricked up too somewhere bricked up yeah so even if you find something it doesn't mean that you can get out yes So everybody's scrambling.

They're running onto the first floor. The people on the first floor of the club are hearing people below them screaming and then finally realize like once the plume of smoke and fire comes into their rooms, like what is happening?

And now it's just a sea of people, over a thousand people trying to get out basically out of one door, the front door.

Oh, my gosh. And because of the mob's political ties, a lot of the expansions in the buildings – basically, it's kind of like a tough situation because some people were like, oh, it was the mob basically taking advantage of their position and making illegal moves to expand and to make more money and whatever.

But then at the same time, there were – It was new.

Like clubs were new. There weren't a lot of regulations.

The fire department had actually come and recently inspected like two weeks before or something and said everything was fine.

Like it literally like quote unquote like passed code.

Things were different. Things were totally different.

Yeah. But but basically like it was so tightly packed.

People had to turn sideways to even step around where they were supposed to be.

And then there's a sea of people rushing towards them.

Those that made it to the front door experienced the same terror as they did in the basement.

The revolving door filling with people burned, scarred, shoving each other forward.

The door jams. No. Can't get through it.

Oh, my gosh. But everybody's climbing over each other now, like pushing, pushing forward.

So what happened was it basically, even though it jammed, it like removed itself, I guess, like with the weight and the pressure, it came undone from the building structure and it fell forward.

And so now you would think like everybody gets to escape and collapse forward onto the sidewalk.

Are they stuck in there still? Yeah. What happens is the fire reacts to the new oxygen and basically it gets sucked out.

And so there's like a fireball that goes through and basically like pretty much kills a lot of the people that for a split second thought that they'd made it to freedom.

Oh, my God. My God. Another horrible thing to add.

I mean, I'm so sorry I chose this. This is like wild.

Yeah, it is. Another sad thing to add to this is right next to the revolving door, there actually was another exit, but they had built a coat rack around it and put a coat hanger and some like velvet in front of it to hide it.

So if anyone knew that it was there, so many people could have escaped through that exit.

Wow. So the hot gases, the extreme heat, their ankle thing, every hallway, every stairwell, every room, it burned people past recognition.

The entire club was up in flames within 15 minutes of the initial spark.

And firefighters were actually, yeah, they were only three blocks away because they were actually responding to a different fire at the time.

So they got onto the scene super, super quickly.

But at this point, it was basically like a body recovery mission and to extinguish the fire.

Right. The entrance, now blocked by people who didn't make it out, sadly, it was stacked five feet high with people.

So they had a lot of trouble getting into the building.

It just all happened so quickly. So 30 minutes after the initial spark, the fire is extinguished.

And the removal of these bodies, extremely graphic and disturbing for those who had to do it and those who witnessed it.

I can't fathom that. I know, right? That would change you forever.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, actually, so some of the people are still alive today who did escape this incident.

It's here in Boston. I mean, they're older now.

It's like the people that were like 14, 15 years old going out in the club.

Oh, wow. A lot of them, too, said that they, like, can't enter restaurants, will never go to a theater.

Oh, my gosh. That's so traumatic. Yeah. Yeah.

It does. I don't think I would ever be able to.

No. And even if you did, you would have to be, like, next to an exit.

Exactly. You would have to be so aware. Yeah.

You would need to know, like, every possible way out.

1,000%. You couldn't enjoy yourself. You would just be thinking about it the whole time.

Yeah. So some of the people that were pulled from the building were still alive, but firefighters, police officers, and volunteer military didn't have time to examine or sort out who was still alive.

So basically, they were just piling everybody into these vans and transporting them to local hospitals.

And then upon retrieval, the hospitals had to sort out who had already passed and who was alive.

So you might be alive in a van with a whole stack of dead people.

Oh, my gosh. And you're just sitting there.

Yeah. 114 people are sent to Massachusetts General Hospital.

75 of them had passed away. 300 people are sent to Boston City Hospital.

168 of them had already passed away. 36 others didn't make it through the night.

For many people, the horror did not end when they got outside.

People still alive and piled on the sidewalks before transport were attacked by these atrocious human beings.

What? These people that were like opportunistic, stripped naked, robbed.

What? What the fuck? Are you kidding me?

Doesn't this make you like- And it's November, so it's cold.

Oh my gosh. They're like barely alive waiting to be saved.

And these people are like, oh, let me go steal that pocket watch.

It's so fucked up. The whole thing is so disturbing, but that is like disgusting.

It makes you sick. That's almost the most disturbing.

It makes you sick. Because that is just like, wow.

That's human being. Humans are the worst.

That's an act to be awful. Yeah. Yes. Humans are the worst kind.

Yeah. Also, some victims, although most people are transported to the hospitals that are alive, some victims are loaded into vehicles and brought to temporary morgues first, only then to be... recognized as still alive once they're at the morgue and then more transportation has to be arranged for them to make it on to the hospital.

And then you think like you could be in one van and you're separated from whoever you went there with and you're wondering if they're dead or alive.

And there's a lot of people too. I'm sure there was additional deaths that happened after because some people who didn't appear to have as many injuries just went home.

And if you know about smoke inhalation and stuff that can get you later.

Yeah. And just thinking about being like separated, like a husband and wife or like, you know, just spouses of any kind or people that you love and like you get separated in the chaos.

Like that's the most horrifying thought to me because when something happens, if I'm with John, I like claim.

Yeah, you need to. It's your safety. God forbid someone's in the bathroom or going and getting a drink and you can't find them.

You have no idea. Like what are you supposed to do?

I can't even imagine that like feeling of panic.

Yeah. No. And you don't even have a split second to think about it.

You just have to. You got to act. Right.

Somehow. So in the end, 492 people lost their lives that night.

116 more were injured. And it is the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.

The youngest victim, Eleanor Champa, was just 15 years old.

Oh. so amazingly everybody who did pass away was identified and so we know everybody's names and you can read a lot about the victims online about their stories the lives that they led the people who lived on past them the people and their legacies that that yeah were left behind and so there's amazing survivor survival stories mixed in with this as well but it's really really sad like this is when I was crying because I was reading about there's so many examples where like people just got in married and they were out with their entire wedding party to celebrate their first night of marriage there were soldiers who came home and for the night their friends and their family took them out to celebrate for their like first night yes entire families are are killed all in just an instant it's just it's so painful to read about awful So, I mean, yeah, it's awful.

The owner of Coconut Grove, Barney Walansky, he had actually had a heart attack and was being treated in mass gen that night.

So he wasn't there. Oh, separately. Separately.

He had a heart attack the same night. How weird is that?

Yeah. So then all of the victims are being wielded.

Past him, basically. So he's sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for negligent homicide and is convicted of 19 counts of manslaughter.

Wow. Only 19, though? I was going to say.

That's wild. He was pardoned three years into his sentence after being diagnosed with lung cancer and died just a few weeks later.

Whoa. Other people involved in the design of the building and the upkeep received various charges as well.

And this was kind of tricky sentencing because, like I said before, it was like, OK, like we want to blame Walensky, but there's a lot of other people that were involved.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not just him like. Right.

Running. Exactly. Naturally, the politicians and city inspectors, they want to pass blame around.

They're excusing themselves of any guilt.

And poor 16 year old Stanley, who lit that initial fire. oh yeah flame everybody is so like he came forward and was like here's what happened like he survived and he tried to tell everyone like i think that this might have been the cause of the fire and he is i mean everybody is like on top of him he's vilified by so many people exactly he was just doing what he thought he was supposed to be doing that's the thing yeah yes so the poor guy he actually had to be kept under protective watch in the hotel for many months Because it was easier for people to blame the 16-year-old than to recognize that they were just partying in a death trap.

And he didn't lay out the club and like break up all the exits, you know?

Exactly. Okay. So this event, though extremely tragic, it did some good as well because despite the number of deaths at the hospital, the hospitals were actually pretty equipped for the amount of people coming in because they had been prepping for the war.

Wow. And so they had a lot of people on call and had a lot of protocols already set to take on this number of people.

Victims with burned wounds were losing a large amount of water and plasma and going into shock.

And blood donations were a very new thing.

They had only been around for four years.

And so they didn't really know how much plasma was needed, like how much blood to give someone to replenish people's bodies.

But based on the treatment of 19 Coconut Grove survivors, a paper was published establishing the formula for fluid replenishment.

Wow. It kind of gave me chills. Right? Yeah.

That's huge. Yeah. And despite the initial guesswork and experimental protocols, no one died of burned wounds at MGH, MassGen.

But a third of the people treated at Boston City Hospital unfortunately did pass away.

Oh, jeez. This was also the first time in Boston that they used penicillin.

So they were rushing it up from New Jersey to help the burn victims who were receiving another new treatment, which was skin grafts.

So it was like all of this stuff was being experimented and happening all at once.

Everything they had learned they were using.

Yes, yes. And on top of this, psychological treatment for grief and trauma broke new ground, creating a foundation for providing psychological care after disasters because of this event.

Wow. Geez, I didn't know any of this. Me neither.

It's like wild. I'm like, wow, this is awful what happened, but this is a little hub of so many of the things that now we have as normal practices today.

This event also led to new laws and fire safety bills enacted surrounding emergency exits, occupancy numbers, fire code violations, and flammable decorations.

And though hundreds of people died, it's thought that...

What was learned both medically, psychologically and structurally from this one event saved hundreds of thousands of other people through the codes and regulations that came of it.

Wow. And then to get to the ghost stories, as Sabrina and I have learned through now five years of podcast research, is that unfortunately, when there are these traumatic events happening, There usually is a bit of paranormal activity that comes after that.

A lot of unrest. Right. The energy is stained from this event.

And sometimes there are darker entities that kind of feed on the trauma that exists in this space.

So the area that this happened at has since been reconfigured.

And the primary site for Coconut Grove is now actually...

The Revere Hotel. Oh, it's just two blocks from the theater district.

So if you guys play a show in Boston, I'm sure you'll probably be at one of the theater districts.

And yeah. So if anyone for future reference, it's like a three minute walking tour.

All right. Yes. There's a memorial plaque there as well.

So you can read about it and read like basically right where it had happened.

But employees and guests of the Revere Hotel report strange ghostly phenomena inside this hotel.

The bar and kitchen experience the most activity with strange noises, loud popping sounds, and flashes of light happening suddenly and seemingly without a source.

Yeah, that feels like very. That's probably like the lower grounds of the hotel anyway, right?

Bar and kitchen. I mean, yeah. We can all go get a drink and see what we see.

And just sleep. Faucets in the bathrooms will turn on and off on their own.

And one time this is so this makes me just like this feels like something that must have happened when the fire was occurring.

But a seat in an auditorium became suddenly and inexplicably drenched with water.

So I'm just like, I just feel like it's some sort of like residual haunting where someone's trying to douse their seat, right?

It's like what they were doing. Maybe that's where the palm tree was.

They were trying to douse it. Yes. People also hear their names being called out only to find themselves alone in the room.

And many employees have actually spotted a shadowy figure of a man walking down the hallway and past doorways.

And when the employees approach him, he begins to fade away until he's no longer there.

Wow. Both employees and guests have witnessed people materialize out of thin air, appearing to be confused, wandering around the hotel for a few moments before disappearing.

I know. And they look lost. Like, they look like they're looking for someone.

I want to help them. Right? I know. Next door, the Jacques Cabaret.

Jacques Cabaret? It's where my bachelorette was.

Really? Yeah. You had no idea. You were right next door.

Did you have any haunted memories? No, I did meet Katya, the drag queen.

Oh, it was when she was in her Jacques days.

No way. Wow. That is amazing. OK, well, I mean, if you have a connection to Katya, you should ask if she's ever experienced anything when working there.

I think she used to live above it. So she probably does.

I mean, that building, where that is, was the temporary morgue for the Coconut Grove.

I think it was either Katya that lived above or Jujubee that lived above it.

I feel like it was Katia. I think, yeah.

I'm pretty sure. But I'm not positive. Oh, my gosh.

That was my bachelorette party. Wow. Look at this.

Look at this connection. We just knew. We just knew.

Oh, damn. But so people here. Wait, where am I?

Wait a second. Oh, okay. So people experience hauntings in this building, too, because it was used as a temporary morgue.

And they do experience some more disturbing spectral images.

So at the Revere Hotel, you'll mostly get like glimpses of shadows and confused people and like odds and ends with fire and water and those things being manipulated.

But a bartender walked into the dark bar here at Jacques Cabaret and saw, this is really disturbing, but saw a pile of bodies.

Quickly turns on the light and the image disappeared.

The room was back to normal. I just got full chills.

Yes. My body just did that thing where it goes, whoa.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And so, obviously, it's just so, so sad what happened to these people and this fire.

And I know a lot of good came of the advancements, like, medically and code-wise, but it's still absolutely tragic.

But to put, like, a hopeful, positive spin on what's otherwise the saddest story ever told in history with, like, these spirits still wandering...

Sabrina and I recently learned about or or had some theories presented to us where the hauntings were when people say like, oh, there's a residual haunting or like I see these people wandering the hotel.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's like them consciously haunting that.

But when a traumatic event happens, it's possible that a piece of your soul splinters off and relives that trauma.

So like technically, yeah. By that regard, like you could be haunting someplace, even though you're you're alive right now.

If something traumatic happened to you, a piece of your soul could splinter off and start haunting this one place.

Which I'm haunting somewhere. You could be haunting yourself and not necessarily know it.

Like haunting a pill house. And so I do hope. for the sake of these people, that their spirits did move on and that what is seen is just unfortunately a splinter of that, a small piece of them left behind.

It's just like the heavy energy that was left behind.

Yeah. I've never heard of that. That's like fascinating.

Super fascinating. I actually, one of my old coworkers does, she's super spiritual, super in tune, like can read people, is extremely experienced psychically and within the astral realm.

And she actually works with a therapist to, help people who experience trauma to go into the astral realm, basically, and find these splintered pieces of people and reattach them back to their soul so that they can kind of like do this healing.

And so I do hope that the people here that lost their lives in Coconut Grove or just have splinters of themselves still existing here eventually get that for themselves and are returned and made whole again.

Yeah. Wow. holy yeah wow such a tragic story that is i've heard of that story i've just never heard like the actual details of it oh my gosh of it like i knew and you can read so much about the victims too so i'm glad you can write about them yeah yeah i know that's what they are there's so many of them and the fact that they were able to identify everybody that is like a miracle yeah i mean that's almost 500 people yeah yeah i didn't think you were gonna say that And go mass gen.

Right? Go mass gen. I mean, yeah. I feel bad for everyone that was at Boston City Hospital, but you know.

Yeah, mass gen. Wow. Wow. This place is haunted.

Yeah. Yeah. Damn. You brought it. Pretty rough.

You brought the damn thing. You brought it.

Right next to that plaque, you can go see where Edgar Allan Poe was born.

There you go. It's all historic. Everything's right there.

Yeah. Then you can go to Jacques Cabaret.

Yeah. Then Jacques Cabaret, and then maybe a more epic live show in the future.

Yeah, there you go. Pretty much anywhere you go in Boston, you're bound to find something that's haunted.

I'm actually staying at the Omni Parker Hotel, which is haunted.

And last night, Nick and I were in the elevator and someone got off or got onto the elevator from the third floor and was like, this is supposed to be that most haunted floor.

And then someone else in the elevator goes, actually, the 10th floor is supposed to be the most haunted.

And I look at Nick and we're like, we're staying on the 10th floor.

I love that hotel, isn't it? It's beautiful.

It's insane. There's a ton of stories about that hotel.

So far... No experiences, but knock on wood.

Yeah, it's her husband Nick's first time in Boston.

And basically, like, my tour for them on foot yesterday was like, this is where this murder happened.

This is where this, like, it was all haunting and crime.

It was, like, very little historical. Welcome to Boston.

Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Damn. I should have had you go second.

I was such a load. Maybe we should have ended on champ.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, me and Ash had the darker.

You did. It was funny. I was thinking, I was like, is this like a little too dark?

And then we tied. But it's also these are important stories to tell.

Oh, for sure. Because, you know, your story was a cold case.

You know, it's important to tell those stories.

And then also all these people who lost their lives.

Yeah. It's awful, but it's also an important story.

And to show the advances that came from it.

Right. And I love how you ended it. Like, I never would have known that.

So I'm glad that you picked this story. Yeah.

So that's really interesting. You're welcome.

Well, this was so fun. I know. We should do this again.

We have to do this again. Yeah. Absolutely.

Next time, we will get in the RV. Yes. And we will do a podcast on her cryptid hunt.

There you go. I was saying at the end of the last one that we recorded, I was like, finally, because we all live so close to each other.

I'm like, how did this take so long? Why is this not happening?

I'll fly out to Boston anytime. Amazing.

We're making it happen again. Yeah. Absolutely.

We'll just bring you back here. Yeah. Well, Corinne, this whole trip has been like trying to make me move here.

Yes. That's like how we are with Caleb. I was going to say, we're going to start bringing you over.

Yeah. Right. Because that's what we're doing with Caleb, our co-host on Scream.

We got him from California. We got him a little closer.

Oh. We got him to Indiana. Yep. Okay. And now we're just pulling him closer.

We're in the same time zone. Oh my gosh.

It's like... Indiana, another very haunted.

At that point, just move to Boston. Just keep coming to Massachusetts.

We'll do the same with you. Next stop, Indiana.

Just do what Corinne does, like text me real estate listings all the time.

I love that. And then we'll just keep getting closer and closer and closer to you.

I'll move out of Boston into your spooky spare bedroom.

Yes. Perfect. Collect, mister. Me and mister.

You'll find out that he can always find you.

Oh, God, no. Oh, gosh. I'm such a chicken.

I would never be able to do that. Oh, he'll find us.

He'll find us. I was like, girl, you are three.

Who gave you permission? Oh, my God. Don't be a little spooky kid.

She's not scared at all. Wow. Nope. No, but thank you guys so much.

We're going to do this again. Thank you.

We should. Definitely. And you guys listening, we hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird. But not to worry that we don't all end up in Boston together.

Woo! Yay! The end. 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+.

Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the Wondery app.

[공포와 미스터리: 유령의 기억, 코코넛 그로브 화재, 그리고 샴프(Champ)의 전설]-[Episode 385: Terrifying HometownTales with Two Girls One Ghost!]

📋 Summary

어린 시절의 기억과 초자연적 현상

호수의 괴물 '샴프(Champ)'와 미스터리

코코넛 그로브(Coconut Grove) 화재 사건의 비극

결론: 트라우마와 영혼의 파편

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript