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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
I never want to pause it.
I'm literally like loading the dishwasher listening to it, on the treadmill listening to it constantly.
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You guys, I tried my mochi ice cream the other day and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.
It is a cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.
It's literally like a little sweet ice cream dumpling.
It's pillowy soft, D to the E to the L -I -C -I -O -U -S, and it just feels very indulgent.
I loved it. I tried the cookies and cream flavor and I still have the mango flavor to try.
I'm so excited to try the mango because if it's half as good as the cookies and cream, I'll probably just like fall on the floor and start crying tears of joy.
My Mochi is only around 70 calories per piece.
My Mochi is gluten -free and each box has six perfectly portioned Mochi snacks.
And guess what? My Mochi is the original Mochi ice cream.
The founder of My Mochi invented Mochi ice cream.
That makes My Mochi the Mochi OG.
Feel joyfully chill this summer with every bite of My Mochi ice cream.
Look for the purple box of My Mochi ice cream at Walmart or visit mymochi .com to find a store near you.
Hey, you weirdos. I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is morbid.
It's morbid. It's leopard print morbid.
i we've been on a journey yeah we had the little mini book tour yes went so well it went so well but man we were slap happy for a lot of it oh my god and just to explain the leopard print comment quickly up at the top we were listening to alaska thunderfuck's discography as one does and i showed alina the song leopard print and if you haven't heard it throw that shit on because because it's all banger.
When I tell you it's one of the funniest things I've ever, I don't know why.
It's great. It hit my funny bones and it hit again.
So it wasn't just the slap happy exhaustedness.
Yeah. Cause it hit during the day.
Yeah. It hit during the day too.
The same way I was laughing so hard. It's me.
It's brilliant. It's who I am.
Everything must be leopard print.
And if it's not leopard print, it's irrelevant.
And I too, Alaska Thunderfuck would buy a leopard print elephant.
fancy so there you go there you go yeah the book tour was a lot of fun it was it was great you guys were great it was so cool to see everybody i'm still not quite understanding how it was real it was real i saw you came like that was crazy big crowds big crowds and you were lovely you were great and so engaged and you asked great questions and you gave me good gave me good face face while i was up there like you were serving face you gave me good like i'm intrigued by what you're saying face which makes me feel good and the mugs were i appreciated that yeah it was fun it was a lot of fun i would do
i would do it sometime yeah in the future i would do it sometime i would do it sometime again in the future it's yeah it made me tired though that's the i'm yelling it was literally just yawning i'm a very big uh introvert yeah so i get like super depleted by any kind of outside of my house activity.
So it was an exercise in stamina for me.
I know. So anyone who met me at the Berkshires event, I'm sorry if I was very low energy.
I kept thinking on the way home.
I was like, I hope I was like kind and like good.
But we were just really tired.
Because I was like, when I'm tired, I can't make conversation.
Like I can't. No, I'm terrible at it.
And I just keep saying, oh, I love that.
Yeah. I love that. And I genuinely do love that.
Yeah. yeah but I just it's all my brain knows how to say after a certain point it's true but it was so cool meeting some of you guys and it was awesome it was so much fun you guys rule so hard I can't even begin to tell you you rules you rule so hard that motherfuckers want to find you and I it sounds like you know you guys are digging the second book which is blowing my mind and making me so happy because I really love the second book it's pretty all right yeah you guys are have been awesome I appreciate that I love the second book But yeah, the butcher game, you know Hang on tight Don't go anywhere after Yeah
Maybe there's more, I don't know Alina's got more to say at all times I don't know I don't know But don't be mad at the end, okay That's all I'm saying I'm mad, I'm big mad But technically I'm not Because I've seen some other stuff I've seen the secret whiteboard you have it's true alright well it's spooky season and we have a haunting specifically a haunting in Connecticut which is right over there looking at it this is the Snedeker family haunting I looked up how to say that multiple times so if it's wrong google's wrong so let's talk about it Al and Carmen Snedeker met in Plainville Connecticut
Connecticut oh in 1977 she was working as a server at a local bowling alley and he stopped in for a beer and they immediately thought the other one was a cutie patootie they said who's that hottie they said who's that them but then what what what happened I don't know why I said but then but then nothing nothing big happened oh they there was an undeniable attraction is what happened but then an undeniable attraction came in the room and told you guys i was tired you really led that one in you were like but then and i was like what there was undeniable attraction you're like no they just really
liked each other yeah but there is a but carmen was a a single mother with two small boys at home she was very hesitant to dive back into her relationship again and Al had also just come out of a bitter divorce after a pretty short -lived marriage so they both had similar hesitations about moving too quickly into something that makes sense yeah and it's responsible that is so they took things slow they dated casually but eventually things did become more serious over like two years and they decided to get married oh look look at them so after the wedding the family moved to hurleyville new york
where elle found work at a local stone quarry and carmen was babysitting for local families while raising her own children which included her sons philip and michael from her first marriage and eventually two more children that she and al had together their life in hurleyville was small it was simple but they liked it that way they had a good community carmen was involved in church activities that that kept her busy when she wasn't taking care of all the neighborhood children but in 1986 alan carmen received very unexpected and very awful news that would upend their lives in april of 1986 14 year
old philip developed a dry hacking cough that he just couldn't seem to shake and al mentioned it to carmen he was like what's that about then he was kind of concerned that it could be serious but she was like oh i think it's probably just like a seasonal cold you know, everybody gets them.
But a week later, Philip called his mom's attention to this small lump he found on the left side of his neck.
And that was when she got really concerned.
So they made an appointment with the pediatrician.
Out of an abundance of caution, that doctor recommended that Philip be admitted to the hospital for tests.
And a few days later, Al and Carmen learned that their son had Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Oh, that's awful. Of the lymphatic system.
Oh, damn. At 14 years old.
I was just going to say, so young.
Really sad. Now, as one of the many small towns and villages that make up the Catskills, Hurleyville, New York, didn't have a hospital of its own, and the local medical providers didn't have any of the resources or expertise really needed to provide ongoing cancer treatment.
So Al and Carmen really didn't have any choice but to travel back and forth between Hurleyville and Farmington, Connecticut, so that Philip could receive treatment out there.
so they were making daily trips to john dempsey hospital and these trips were two and a half hours each way so carmen and philip were both usually completely exhausted by the time they got home and he's exhausted anyway yeah fortunately al did have some family in the area so carmen and philip could stay with them on occasion instead of doing the drive back and forth but it became clear pretty quickly that staying with family and driving five hours a day it was just not sustainable.
Yeah. And it's not helping the situation.
You're all stressed.
Yeah. You know, adding lack of sleep and all of that is like probably not great.
Too much. So in the interest of time, money, and most importantly, Philip's health, Al and Carmen decided it was probably in everybody's best interest that the family moved to Connecticut to be closer to the hospital.
So when Philip wasn't going through treatment at John Dempsey Hospital, Carmen spent her days looking for an apartment that could accommodate their now large family.
Yeah, I was going to say, it's a lot of people.
Yeah, it's a lot of kids, the two of them but the problem was that what was available at the time was either too small or like way beyond their budget.
One afternoon she was driving to see an apartment in nearby Southington and she drove by a beautiful three -story home on a quiet street and it had a for rent sign in the front yard so she was like oh.
She was like bitch. Now the apartment that she was supposed to be going to see ended up being too small.
It was not going to work out.
Yeah fuck that apartment.
Fuck that apartment.
Honestly. Fuck that noise.
Yeah. But she had some time to kill before heading back to the hospital, so she decided to stop at the house that she saw earlier that day with the Big Forent sign out in front and inquire about the availability.
So inside, she said when she got there, the house was full of contractors, workmen of all types, all renovating one part or another of the first floor.
She wasn't really sure who she should speak to about renting, so she just went from one workman to the other until she found the foreman.
and the foreman told her that the owners weren't there at the time, but he did let her into the second -floor apartment to give her an idea of what the first -floor apartment was going to look like once it was all done.
Now, the second -floor apartment, it was beautiful.
It was spacious. It could definitely accommodate Carmen, Al, and the four kids.
It was perfect. She loved it.
She didn't want to get too excited, though, because she figured an apartment so large and nice was probably out of their price range.
But she still took the landlord's number and she called him as soon as she got home.
Because you never know.
You never know. She said, shoot your shot.
Yeah. What do you say?
You miss? You miss 100 % of the shots you don't take.
Yes. That's not my quote.
It's the office, right?
Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott.
Yes, of course. You know.
So the landlord, Daryl Kern, he was polite on the phone.
But when Carmen mentioned that they had four children, she said she noticed a change in his tone.
But he didn't say that kids weren't allowed. And to her surprise, the rent was actually well within their budget.
So when he offered the downstairs apartment, she didn't hesitate.
She took it. she said hell yeah she said that was a little weird but it's a gorgeous apartment whatever yeah so finding an affordable apartment near the hospital was obviously a relief it meant that they could start saving money again carmen and philip could stop spending half their day driving between new york and connecticut but still carmen was left with this weird feeling in her chest like it was anxiety she couldn't shake it gotta listen to that and she said she figured it was because she hadn't seen the first floor and she was like what if it's not as nice what if it's not as spacious and what if in her
rush to make to find an apartment she made things worse for her family like inadvertently you know she didn't know it at the time but her decision to take the apartment in southington would definitely have serious consequences for their entire family and space and affordability would be the least of their concerns soon oh boy yeah so obviously for most people moving from one state to another is pretty fucking difficult and daunting regardless of their circumstances but for carmen and al this was pretty shitty timing like their son is very sick yeah very shitty and also al put in a transfer request
with his company but it was going to take a while for them to fulfill it so he was going to have to stay back in new york while everybody else moved to connecticut that sucks and philip was too ill to be of much help in the moving process and carmen's second oldest son michael was spending the summer with his grandmother in alabama so pretty much all of the responsibility was on her to get things packed and moved over obviously al could help but like he was also working yeah and the process was made doubly challenging by the fact that you know of course they needed to pack and move as soon as
they could but at the same time philip still was going back and forth for treatments so they were hardly out of the woods yeah now one night a couple weeks before the move they're still in their their place carmen had this dream where she was walking through all this is so fucking creepy she's walking through a hallway lined with caskets and she said each one contained a pale nude body of some unknown deceased person and she wasn't alone in her dream there was another man walking through the halls she said he was quote zigzagging in and out between the caskets carrying one of those old ominous
tools that undertakers once used in the embalming process oh when she woke up she turned to Al and she just blurted out the apartment that house it's a funeral home what the fuck like just she knew what the fuck immediately now no one had said anything to Carmen about the home having ever been a funeral home she said but she said somehow she just knew that it was or at least that it had been one at one point in time so Al was like okay do you want to back out of it like we haven't signed anything yet but the thought of continuing to to drive back and forth every day was just too much to bear.
And she had already looked at a ton of apartments in the towns around the hospital, and they had either been too small or too expensive, so she just felt like she couldn't give up this opportunity.
So on June 30th, 1986, she started unloading the moving truck at the new apartment.
Now, the day they arrived with the truck was the first time that Al and Carmen actually saw the new apartment because, remember, they saw the second floor.
They were working on it.
They were working on it.
So before they unloaded the truck, they went inside just to look around.
And contractors were actually still working on the first floor.
There was like sawdust, wood, just construction mess everywhere.
But the basement was empty, so they went downstairs to see what kind of space they had to work with there.
Like most basements in old New England homes, it was kind of musty.
The air was thick. It was cold down there.
We all know that basement.
I can smell it. Yeah.
But the space was quite a bit more than either of them was expecting.
At the foot of the stairs, there was a pretty large room that opened onto the right and then on the left there was a set of french doors that led to an even larger room and there were three other smaller rooms adjacent to the larger ones but al and carmen were like what would those be used for like why is there so much room for activities down here so they like poked her on the basement and they started to get a sense of what had once gone down in these rooms oh carmen found what she described as a quote gruesome blood -stained wall and a quote chain -powered body lift that looked more medieval
than contemporary what the more they explored the basement the more evidence they found confirming that the residents had definitely been a funeral home at one point in time and it had a blood spattered wall according to them going down there blood it's wily everywhere you're supposed to it clean.
I kind of thought that too.
It's an important part of that job, I would think.
Yeah, I was like, I feel like bloodborne pathogens are a thing.
Yeah, you never want blood spatter on anything.
No, I definitely don't.
You're so right in that statement.
Yeah, you just really don't.
I really don't. You really don't.
Yeah, it happens in that industry for sure.
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
It's going to be there while you're doing your thing.
You clean it up after.
Well, isn't there usually like a sheet or something up?
Like, is there anything up to I can't speak for a funeral home, because I don't know how the—you know, in the embalming process, I would assume there would be precautions to make sure that blood isn't just spattering against a wall.
Also, I'm like, why did that happen?
Like, once it gets to the funeral home, it's like, that shouldn't be happening.
All the blood usually happens in the morgue.
That's kind of what I thought, too, and we clean that shit.
But we'll get there.
But, you know, here we are.
We'll get to the questions at the end, okay?
Like, what kind of shenanigans was going on?
I don't know. But apparently at the end of the hall, there were shelves on the wall that held boxes of old embalming tools.
That's kind of cool.
I thought the same thing.
They didn't have the same reaction.
There was also a box in the corner that contained blank plaques for the coffins that had already been removed from the house.
That's chilling. That I didn't love.
I didn't like the plaques, but the embalming tools might be kind of cool to see.
It would be very fascinating, yeah.
I don't know if I'd want to keep them in my house, though.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's giving you. you it's giving you i don't know i don't know what that i would i'm fascinated by embalming tools yeah and i can understand that definitely but al and carmen uh were not they were shaken as they made their way back upstairs but carmen reiterated that she couldn't bear to look for another apartment while also taking care of philip and the other three kids so they agreed to keep the houses passed to themselves they weren't going to tell the kids they said you know we'll remove all the funeral items before the kids can see them and i'll paint the walls and you know cover all those
disturbing stains. Yeah.
Yeah. That's fine. It'll be fine.
Seems fine. The landlord's special.
I feel like this is not going to end badly at all.
No. Nope. Now, by the time they were back outside, the landlord, Mr. Kern, was said to have arrived to greet them.
Carmen was surprised that he seemed amused when she asked whether the house used to be a funeral home, and she said he told her, oh, don't worry, Ms. Snedeker, the place hasn't been in use full -time for two years or so.
Oh. It'd be like two years.
That's pretty fucking long.
reason cool that's like fresh blood as far as i'm concerned that's pretty fresh he also informed them that he would prefer that the old funeral tools remain in the basement and he said they make great conversation pieces don't you think i mean while i agree with him i would be on your side landlord uh no you can't maybe you should take them then well that's the thing you can't tell me what to keep yeah you can't do that if somebody ran and understand you may find them fascinating.
Other people might not.
Right. And that's okay.
Right. People can be put off by them and that's fine.
Now, it is important to state, of course, that this is the Snedeker's version of events.
Of course. It's not.
It's not, you know, somebody following them with a camera and watching.
No. We don't know that the landlord ever said this.
But according to them, that's what he said.
Then you say, hey, you know, yeah, maybe that's not for you to say.
Now, it took a few days before the renovations were finished.
So Carmen and the kids stayed in a motel room while Al went back to New York to finish out the last few weeks of work.
After all the expenses that they had incurred, the motel was an additional hardship because they didn't have a ton of money.
This family was very hard on cash at this point.
Because, I mean, the illness, the move, that's a big family to take care of.
Yeah, exactly. So Carmen was relieved when a few days later, they were finally able to move into the house.
She and Al managed to move those objects in the basement over to the garage, while the larger items like the body lift they tried to tuck into a corner to kind of obscure it but it's a pretty big thing yeah body lift like a chain powered body lift is not not going to be easy to just like make into a sculpture in the corner yeah probably not and I've never had experience with one so I can't say but yeah it's not not going to be easy to hide yeah but try as she might Carmen realized pretty quickly that the children were bound to find out sooner or later because like we just said it's not uh easy
to hide so after a few days moving in carmen was in the kitchen washing dishes when behind her she heard philip enter the room and she said that he said to her quietly mom we have to leave this house there's something evil here oh surprise she turned around to find that philip actually looked very serious and she was like leave we just got here but he insisted that they needed to go back to new york and get the fuck away from this house he said if we don't leave here, something bad is going to happen to us.
Something really bad.
That's scary. Like, I would be like, all right, pack your shit up.
Let's go. Like, you know what?
Let's go. But they don't really have anywhere to go back to, which is a predicament, if you will.
But so she explained, she was like, houses aren't evil.
Nothing here can hurt us.
But Philip was not persuaded.
Years later, Carmen would say, I didn't believe in ghosts.
I thought they were just a thing of imagination.
But above all, Philip's biggest concern was sleeping in his new room in the basement, which I was like.
I don't blame him on that one.
I don't know if we should put the kid fighting cancer in the musty, dusty basement.
With embalming tools.
With embalming tools.
And just like it's colder down there and like musty.
It's a New England basement.
That's the thing. And it's a New England basement of a former funeral home, I don't really think.
This doesn't seem like a great idea.
Yeah. He didn't want to be there.
um he him and Michael were gonna be sharing the room but remember Michael's away so oh yes he was in he's with his grandmother Alabama with his grandmother which meant that Phillip was gonna have to sleep downstairs alone that's a no for me and he was like uh I'm not gonna do that he told Carmen he would sleep on the living room floor before he slept in that basement alone oh same which retweet yeah no have a great day.
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Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsie?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsie leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, Western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records, and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsy wherever you get your podcasts.
podcasts. So Carmen knew that neither she nor Al had said anything to the kids about the home's past as a funeral home, and Philip hadn't said anything about it either, but he just seemed to have the sense that something was off about this place.
But she also was like, okay, it's fairly common for kids to be unhappy after a move, and Philip also has a lot on his plate right now, like like physical, emotional stress.
Which is true. He's going through daily treatments and the cobalt treatments that he was getting daily had a range of side effects from fatigue and hair loss to nausea and even cognitive impairments.
Okay, so they're thinking of it like this potentially could be that.
Exactly. She chalked up his apprehension and anxiety just to his circumstances.
And she said, you know what, I just thought he would settle in eventually.
But a few days later when Al arrived for the weekend, end, he reassured her that she was probably right.
It was just anxiety.
Philip would forget about it in due time once he got more comfortable, but Philip did not forget about it, and he stayed true to his word, and he spent the first week sleeping on the couch in the living room.
He would not step foot down there.
His fears of the basement were just the beginning of what would eventually become what the family claimed was two years of psychological trauma and paranormal attacks whoa just days after telling his mom that he felt the house was evil philip started hearing disembodied voices saying his name but he couldn't figure out where they were like he would hear them but couldn't pinpoint the origin oh at the same time he felt this growing sense that he was never alone in the house or even in his bedroom it was like he was just being watched all the time i don't like that but whenever he would experience
something he couldn't explain he fought the the urge to run to his parents to tell them what would happen what had happened because i mean they didn't believe him yeah so why are you gonna keep saying it and also he knew that they had moved to connecticut to be closer to the hospital so he kind of felt like he was the reason why everybody's lives got upended so he didn't want to he didn't want to cause further problems what he saw as problems in his mind exactly even though they were everybody was happy to move yeah they were like it's okay like but he's thinking he's like a burden yes exactly so one
morning a A few weeks after moving in, Philip was walking from the kitchen to the living room when he said he heard a man's voice, strong and clear, say his name in a questioning tone, like, Philip.
Ooh. So he turned slowly, looking around for whoever had called out to him, but there was nobody there.
No. In the bathroom down the hall, he could hear the shower running, and he knew his mom was, like, in there.
And he was like, okay, maybe she's talking to herself, but that definitely sounded like a man's voice.
And then he heard it again, and they said, Philip.
he said the voice wasn't loud or gruff but it was clear and whoever it was they sounded irritated and continued come here philip oh now the voice sounded impatient like whoever it was was like expecting a response so he took a few steps toward the bathroom desperately wanting to call out for carmen but instead he took he so he like moved to the bathroom and he's like wanting to call out for his mom but then he walks back to the basement to be like is it coming from down there yeah Then he walks toward the basement stairs and the door's standing open and he said the voice called out again saying,
Philip, come down here.
He was like, okay, it's coming from the basement.
No, thank you. So he took a few more steps toward the basement stairs and the voice called out again, Philip, come down here.
You got to see this.
No. Can you describe it to me?
I don't want to see it.
I have a lot of plans today.
Sorry. Thank you so much. And he said the tone, like when it was like, like, you gotta see this, was almost like joking.
Like, it was like a light tone.
Like a friend would be like, oh my God, you gotta see this.
Yeah. And then the voice said again, come here, Philip.
I want to show you something.
Just fucking terrifying.
I don't like that at all.
I don't like it. He backed away from the basement, he said slowly, and the voice got quieter and quieter with each step until he was in the living room where he just turned on the TV and hoped that it would drown out the man in the basement calling for him.
I'm sorry, if I heard somebody say my name from the basement and tell me to come down and look at this.
That many times. That many times.
There's no way I'm pulling this age -old chestnut of, well, I figured it would just stop and I went to sleep.
I never understand that because I'm sorry if I'm here.
There's certain things.
You see something out of the corner of your eye.
You just move on. You think you're seeing a sleep paralysis demon and nothing's there.
I can get that. You just go to sleep because you're like, that was my wacky mind.
Right. Sorry. If I'm getting full -blown auditory hallucinations where I'm hearing somebody saying my name and telling me to come downstairs and then I move closer and they continue to, I'm out of here.
I'm telling everyone.
I'm getting the whole family and then I'm lighting the place ablaze.
Pretty much. We out.
We out. There's no way I'm turning on the TV and hoping that that man in the basement doesn't come up to show me the thing he wanted to show me.
Yeah, that's not my cup of tea personally.
That's wild. I don't know.
So this time he did tell, he decided, he was like i'm gonna tell my mom about that great idea that was fucking weird but she didn't take him seriously no come on you kids saying there's a person in the basement you gotta do something i think she thought that it was like a side effect of the treatment 100 probably but i'm just looking at this from a totally third party 100 in 2024 the 2024 situation and so he was like no like you gotta listen it was it was and he said it was a man's voice but not a person oh no like she would somehow understand what he was saying but she was like there's no one
downstairs philip she did she didn't even say what does that mean she was just like there's no one downstairs like stop again like kids say wacky shit too it's like that's so hard to like you don't want to feed into every single right thing like that because then you are going to cause issues well and she also didn't want him scaring the younger kids like she was like all right cut it out yeah like don't make them suddenly think they're hearing and also So she's got this anxiety that she's kind of shoving to the side because she didn't love the idea that this place used to be a funeral home.
So she's like, fuck.
Please stop confirming.
And she knows what's in that basement, what they saw in that basement.
So she's probably like, fuck.
Like, no thanks. But all the more reason to be like, shit.
Well, so she decided that she didn't want to be wholly dismissive but wanted to soothe his anxiety.
So she confided in him.
I don't know why she thought this.
I'm sorry, Carmen. I don't know why she thought this was going to soothe his.
Yeah, thank you. I don't know why she thought this was going to make him feel better, but she told him about the house's history as a funeral home.
She said that she didn't say anything before because she didn't want to scare the children.
And also she was like, please don't say anything to them.
But she was like, maybe you're just picking up on our anxieties about the history of the house and that's why you're feeling so uneasy.
I don't know about that.
Yeah, I think she...
I mean, you don't know what to do in that situation, I understand.
It's a route. It's a route you can take.
it is it's one of those paths that you can choose choose your own adventure i don't know if that would have been the one i would have chosen but yeah i don't know but you know desperate times but i haven't been in this situation she's also probably sleep deprived because she's like very true most so very true it's just like i don't know i think you just confirmed his fears yeah anything she said that she hoped her honesty would reassure him there was nothing wrong with the house but um all it really did do was confirm his suspicions that this place was haunted as fuck fuck he's like of course
it is now in the weeks that followed the other kids started reporting strange experiences in the house oh no carmen's youngest daughter stephanie told her mom that she had seen a woman standing in her bedroom with quote her arms open as if she was beckoning her to come no like no thanks no and that would also make me really angry because i was like get out of my kid's room carmen actually figured that despite his promise philip had told the other their kids about the funeral home past and that's what caused stephanie to think that she was seeing ghost but when she confronted him about it like
when carmen went to philip and was like what the fuck you're upsetting all the younger kids now he was like i didn't say anything to him like i swear i wasn't going to yeah so she gave him a lecture about scaring the little kids but she was like i also couldn't help but feel that he was telling the truth like i believed him when he said he didn't say anything so they're just going through it and alan carmen hoped that that Philip's fears and anxiety would subside once everything got settled in the house, like once the move was kind of officially, like everything unpacked, you know, in.
But things really only seemed to get worse.
Philip continued hearing voices in the basement calling out to him, trying to lure him down the stairs.
And a few times he thought that he'd seen something moving in the dark at the bottom of the basement stairs.
But every time he brought it up to his parents, they dismissed his claims. Now, fortunately, he found an ally in his sister, Stephanie, who quite a bit younger than him even though she had seen things in the house and she believed what her brother was saying she was like i think that basement is also haunted as fuck like i'm with you dude now within just a few weeks after moving in the tension in the house was felt by everybody al was finishing out the last days of his job and carmen just couldn't wait to have him home full -time to help with the kids because she was losing her fucking mind especially
when everyone's thinking they're hearing ghosts yeah that's a lot that's tough like they're this family is dealing with the most philip meanwhile was now several months into cancer treatments and it was starting to take a toll on him physically and of course emotionally so the stress was just affecting the entire house and carmen just didn't know what to do one afternoon while the kids were playing outside she was kind of lost in her thoughts just mindlessly mopping the floors and she said she caught the scent of something metallic and unpleasant blood and when she looked down she She saw that the water
in the mop bucket had become a bright red color and had started to stain the strands of the mop.
So she snapped out of her thoughts and realized that whatever was in the bucket, she had smeared it all over the floor because she wasn't paying attention before.
And then the smell made her pay attention.
And when she looked down, everything was like crimson colored.
So not wanting the children to see the mess, she grabbed a roll of paper towels and cleaned up everything the best she could.
and she was like you know something must have been under the linoleum it got into the water i don't know yeah she was like maybe it's a chemical reaction to something but in the back of her mind she couldn't help but think of what philip had said about when they moved in now by summer's end she was starting to feel more optimistic about the move luckily her son michael had come home from alabama and he was he brought like very positive energy to the house oh he He brought good vibes?
He brought good vibes, yeah.
And also, Philip's treatments were almost done, so they had like a waiting period where things would settle a bit more.
And now that his brother was home, Philip had agreed to start sleeping downstairs as long as he and Michael could share a room.
And Michael was like, yeah, no problem.
I bring good vibes.
I bring good vibes.
Let's hang. So a few nights after they settled into their shared basement bedroom, Philip told his brother about the history of the house and of the basement in particular.
And he expected his brother to react with horror, but he had a sibling like Elena.
so michael thought this entire thing was hella exciting i see michael with the good vibe michael with the good vibes he was like this is interesting now his enthusiasm waned slightly when philip told him about the other things i would imagine the voices calling out from the dark yeah that would fuck me up the glimpses of things moving seeing things out of the corner of his eye like he didn't love that now that night as they were getting uh you know ready for bed in their room michael went upstairs to brush his teeth and philip was left alone in the room so he's trying Trying not to panic, he gets
into bed and he says he puts his headphones on, hoping that the music would distract him until Michael got back.
But out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move.
So he froze in bed, not wanting to look up, but at the same time, he couldn't not look.
So he raised his head slowly and he looked toward the French drawers that led into the other room.
And he said then he saw a man's face, pale and young, peering back at him through the crack in the doors.
Which if you picture that, that's fucking horrifying.
No, that, yeah, that's true horror.
One thing about me is that I fucking love French doors.
Yep. And that could even ruin French doors for me.
French doors, get out, you're out of here.
Yeah, throw them out.
But he said the face was one he had never seen before.
It was gaunt, sickly, and had dark black eyes.
And he said the man's lips were moving like he was saying something, but Philip couldn't hear anything.
He just saw that the man was, like, talking but not saying anything.
Oh, why do I hate that more?
I do too, right? Okay, thank you.
Like, why? Like, I hate the idea of a man's face just looking through my French doors at me in the middle of the night.
I hate the idea of a man's face.
I just hate it. And even just if they're sitting there just looking at you, that's fucked up.
The mouth moving would be the end for me.
Because then it almost makes you feel like they're, like, whispering something.
Yeah, I don't want to hear what you have to say, sir.
I don't like it. Like, that's the thing.
I don't want to hear what you have to say.
I don't like it. It's probably some dumbass, like, anecdote that you're going to say that's going to fuck me up for the rest of my life, and I don't need it.
it it's it's also almost worse like not knowing what he's saying because then like your mind fills in the blanks oh it's probably just like a bad opinion a bad opinion you think i don't need your opinion that's my opinion you gross face in the door oh yeah well so philip watched in horror as he saw the man start to slowly reach one hand out like he was gonna open the door don't do that and at that moment philip had finally gathered the courage to kick those sheets off the bed and he took two stairs at a time up the basement steps.
I felt that in my legs.
You know that crazy ass feeling in your legs when you're running up from the basement.
Yes. You just like shut the light off and you're running six stairs at a time but you feel that goopity got burning like blah blah blah up your legs.
Whenever I like run away from something freaky I feel like my back like locks kind of you know what I mean?
Oh and you just feel like there's electricity in your legs that are like tingling up your.
Oh I can feel feel it right now my ears are prickly that made my legs so he burst into the living room and he crashed to his knees when he was finally in the safety of the living room but the commotion drew everybody to the living room as it should of course and everybody gathered around philip as he was just breathlessly trying to explain what he had seen in the basement oh my god now al rushed down the stairs unsure of what he would find he's probably like is there a person in the basement Yeah.
So he rushes down into the basement to check everything out but finds nothing there.
And when he came back up to the living room, he was fucking pissed.
Oh, I don't like that.
So he yelled. Hey. Yeah, he yelled at Philip, demanding that he stop telling childish ghost stories and start acting his age.
Oh, don't do that. Which, like, that's really fucking weird. The kid is clearly upset.
Yeah. From the sounds of it, at least. And then they just sent everyone to bed.
Oh, come on. Parenting in the 80s.
Yeah, I was just going to say, that's some 80s parenting right there.
I wrote my notes here.
not a parenting win.
No, definitely not.
You got to talk through that shit.
Yeah, that's something.
You can't dismiss fears like that.
You got to gentle parent your way through that shit.
Parents in the 80s were so far away from gentle parenting, it's not even...
That's where that I'll give you something to cry about originated, that line.
I'll give you something to fear ghosts about.
Yep. They definitely wasn't going to have like a talk through feelings at that moment.
No, definitely not.
So the weeks passed, the voices and the apparitions became a common part of the boys' lives.
Years later, Later, Michael said, the first time I seen a ghost, it appeared with cat -like eyes glowing up on the ceiling looking down on my bed.
So even he's experiencing it.
You know, my uncle used to tell me that I had cat eyes.
Really? Yeah. You do kind of look like a cat.
Because they're orange -y.
They turn orange sometimes.
I could see that. Yeah.
So maybe that was me.
You're weird. You're so weird. Don't do that.
You're weird. That was such a, like, asshole response.
you're weird you're weird i didn't know what to say to that yeah honestly i probably wouldn't either so but the ghosts moved about the rooms in the basement sometimes michael said they would like study him and philip from the corners of the room just kind of like looking at them and other times they would whisper to each other in hushed tones that sounded rude yeah they would whisper and he said it sounded to them like the hiss of a lizard or a snake like ew no i don't That was my best shot.
It sounded like when you touch the end of like a candle that's gone out if you touch it with your finger.
That just sounds like boom roasted.
It does. You know. But Philip hoped having Michael home would make things better.
But now his parents were just accusing him of filling Michael's head with these scary stories.
Cool. Yeah. Everybody's kind of being a dick to Philip.
Yeah. But yeah. So just face.
I was like, oh, I see that thing.
You know, it's just. Okay, I'll hang tight over here.
Yeah, hang tight. But despite her near certainty that it was nothing more than just silly ghost stories, Carmen still couldn't shake the feeling that something about the stories that her boys were telling about these pale, menacing figures dressed in fucking suits was genuine.
She said the stories just seemed too outrageous to be true, but also too detailed to have been made up on the spot.
So she was like, I fucking hate this.
And you can tell when your kids are really scared.
Yeah. Like, you really can.
You can tell. And I think she saw that in them, especially as like a mama.
Yeah. Like, she saw that in them.
You can tell when it's real fear.
She was like, I don't want to believe any of this.
Yeah, and you might not believe that it's like this ghost down there scaring your kids, but something is upsetting your child.
Yeah, she's worried about them.
Genuinely. Yeah. So the end of summer brought some welcome distractions as three of the four kids returned to school.
That gave Carmen some alone time.
Al finally moved into the house for good.
Like, he got transferred.
suffered but whatever relief the distractions brought was soon overshadowed by a series of undeniable experiences that would forever change the family oh al had only been home about a week or so when his first experience happened he got woken up in the middle of the night from the sound of like movement and hushed voices he said to him it sounded like somebody was in the house but didn't want to be detected so immediately he's like what the fuck yeah i don't like that so he we listened closely for a moment or two and then he heard the faint sound of music playing in the distance and he said it
sounded like 30s music from an old victrola along with the music I could hear three or four older men okay that's like kind of awesome okay so glad you had that reaction so did I yeah you hear like an old victrola let's three old guys just chatting it up let's fucking go girls I'm like what are you guys talking about let's let's do this you want a beer yeah let's go Throw that Victrola on.
So he got out of bed.
He followed the sounds, assuming that he would find one of the kids in the living room like watching TV or something.
Listening to a Victrola.
Listening to a Victrola, yeah.
And talking like an old man.
Yeah, exactly. But when he got to the hallway, he discovered that the sounds seemed to be coming from the basement.
Oh. At first, he thought that, you know, maybe it was Michael and Phillip.
But also, it didn't sound like just two boys.
It was loud. Like it sounded like a party.
He was like, did they sneak friends into the basement?
Did they find a Victrola?
yeah you know kids and their victrola parties are they're a problem like our parents of the world dave wrote in the notes here he goes if they had why would they be listening to such mournful antiquated music i'm like why so they snuck a bunch of kids in just to listen to a victrola just to listen to quote -unquote mournful antiquated music dave's dave's comments are my actually favorite day for the win so he started down the stairs expecting to find this group of kids listening to antiquated music but when he got when he got about halfway down he stopped because he realized that the basement was completely
dark and he could still hear hushed tones of multiple voices talking but he could also hear the slow steady breathing of his kids like they were asleep sleep.
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Now, when he noticed that, like when he heard them sleeping, that was when the music stopped and the people stopped talking like very abruptly.
Oh, I don't like that.
Yeah. He slowly pushed pushed open the French doors and stepped inside, and he said it was unnaturally and inexplicably freezing in that room.
But for, he was like, I don't know why it was so cold in there.
Because there was like a hundred ghosts in there having a Victrola party.
Having a big old party.
A Victrola party. But, so he just went back to bed.
Didn't say anything to Carmen about what he experienced.
Communication is not key here, I guess.
This is so 80s. But a few hours later, he woke up again, and this time the bed was like vibrating underneath him like shaking so he just lay there staying as he said staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore the fact that his fucking bed is vibrating let's stop ignoring this stuff guys let's definitely at some point he said it got to be too much to ignore so he got up and went into the living room to watch tv and just tried to like put the night's events out of his head valid it's like i'm gonna go watch the telly i'm just you You know what?
Hey, my bed is vibrating, so if you need me, I'll be in the living room watching the television.
What do you turn on?
That's what I was just wondering.
I was going to say, like, I'll just go turn it.
And I was like, what do you turn on?
What would you turn on?
My immediate thought was The Simple Life.
Gilmore Girls. Boom.
Yeah. Comfort. That would be it.
Our different forms of comfort.
So later, once they were out of the house and living elsewhere, Al and Carmen would talk of their experiences.
Like, they kind of started, like, suddenly out of nowhere.
But the truth was, each of them was having their own experiences.
but they just never shared them with each other oh damn so like she had experienced the same thing too both of them also saw things move out of the corner of their eye they heard sounds they heard voices and carmen said more than once she had woken up to the bed vibrating underneath her but she just never told her husband and then there was also philip's behavior he had always been a really well -behaved respectful kid but after moving into the new apartment they said his his personality really started to change.
He was more defiant.
He was challenging.
He was sullen, which you could chalk up to the fact that he's a young kid going through cancer.
He's probably pretty fucking pissed off at life.
I would be. But more disturbing was the fact that he actually had come to enjoy spending time in the basement.
He was so scared, remember, of the basement that he was sleeping in the living room.
And then all of a sudden, they couldn't get him out of the basement.
He loved being down there.
No, I don't like that.
so Carmen she said she tried to ignore everything by focusing on volunteer work with the church and Al turned to alcohol to quiet his mind but soon the horror in the house was unavoidably present one night in the winter Al woke up in the middle of the night by the shaking and at first he thought it was just the vibrating of the bed but soon he realized it was Carmen shaking him out of his sleep like waking him up and she yelled to him that their bed was vibrating celebrating but for the first time since this happened both of them could feel it at the same time and in the weeks that followed carmen
said that she would often hear a mocking laughter coming from behind her when she was at the sink doing dishes oh i don't like that and al could hear sound the sounds of things moving around the house and that they said that there was always the faint sound of music coming from the basement like even when like philip wasn't playing music down there like it was like old weird fucking music troll -a -party music exactly holy shit now in june of 1987 just about a year after the family moved into the house carmen got a call from her sister megan in alabama and megan explained that her she was going
through like a really bad time with her health and on top of that she and her husband were going through a really messy divorce and she was hoping that alan carmen would be willing to take her two daughters 12 year old old Mary and 17 year old Kelly just until she was able to get back on her feet.
Yeah. So Carmen talked it over with Al that afternoon and they agreed that if Megan needed help they wanted to lend a hand.
That's nice of them.
Yeah. Now Carmen knew that you know helping her sister was the right thing to do but she also felt very apprehensive about bringing more people into an already like super chaotic house at this point.
Yeah. The experience that the experiences that she she and al had been having but never talking about ever had continued and philip's behavior and general demeanor was just getting worse over the year like he was spending a lot of his time in his bedroom alone and even more disturbing was the way that he talked about the ghosts he had once been like we just had terrified to be alone in the basement and now they said he preferred the spirits of the dead to the company of his own family and had even started calling the spirits his friends okay which is like i would hate that yeah we're going into
a dark place now yeah so by that fall carmen's nieces settled into the house they didn't really like once they got settled they felt like they were like part of the family they weren't just guests i just want to give a trigger warning here um for like sexual assault oh yes it gets very rough here it's quick but okay it's not awesome so one night in the early fall mary and kelly were asleep in their beds when philip's quote -unquote friends told him that it was quote time to go visiting with his cousins so he went up the stairs from the basement to the main floor as quietly as he could trying not to
wake anybody up and he crept into the girls room where they were deep in sleep and he stood over kelly he put a hand on her shoulder to see if it would wake her and when she didn't wake up he moved his hand down to her chest so he like groped her in her sleep what the fuck later he would claim that the men in the basement forced him to do what he did according to him the voices pointed out that kelly was quote too big and could defend herself because she's the older girl this is so fucked up it's this is very dark and like actually very hard to even talk about but on the other side of the room
he said that the the ghosts were telling him that there was someone much smaller who probably wouldn't resist him so philip turned away from kelly and walked toward mary's bed and did the same thing to her oh my god now two days later kelly told carmen that she had actually walked in on philip attempting to do the same thing to mary again and that she stopped him before he could get very far so kelly did put a stop to this now carmen was stunned like philip had changed his personality had darkened quite a bit but she never thought he was capable of something like this these are his his fucking
cousins and this is disgusting and i don't want to hear about fucking ghosts telling you to go molest your cousins exactly get out of here so i will say it sounds like carmen did the right thing she went and confronted him like and was like what the fuck but he denied everything with a smirk on his face oh i hate that so she was super frustrated and she didn't know what to do with him so she called the police and reported the assault like on her own child that i mean that That must have been the hardest thing for her to ever have to do.
It's obviously the correct thing to do.
Because it's also her nieces, you know, like that's family no matter what.
What a horrible position for her to be in.
And those poor nieces.
I know, especially going through everything that they're already going through.
So that afternoon, Phillip was taken by police to the local precinct and questioned about the accusation of assault.
And he confessed after some questioning that he had been sneaking into their room at night and touching them regularly while they slept.
Oh, my God. He also, trigger warning, this is really horrible, he said he, quote, attempted unsuccessfully to have sex with his 12 -year -old cousin.
What the fuck? Yeah.
So he was taken from the police station immediately to a juvenile detention center.
Bye, Phillip. Bye. He was interviewed at length by a prison psychiatrist who told Alan Carman that, in his opinion, Phillip was experiencing symptoms of early onset schizophrenia.
Oh, god. Yeah. The diagnosis obviously was devastating for his parents, but it also kind of explained his behavior over the previous year, the ghosts, the voices, the depression, and now these assaults.
Yeah. It's making more sense.
It is. So the doctor recommended that Phillip be placed in a psychiatric unit for 60 days of observation, and then from there, they would develop a treatment plan.
But until they could find a bed for him at the hospital, the psychiatrist recommended that he remain Maine in the juvenile detention center because he didn't think it would be safe for the family to have Phillip return home, obviously.
So Phillip's diagnosis, the assaults on their nieces, they were devastating for Carmen, Al, and the kids.
But at the very least, Carmen hoped that with Phillip out of the house for a while, things would finally go back to normal.
She was wrong. In the days and weeks that followed, strange occurrences in the house continued.
There was inexplicable noises, flashes of movement from the corners of the room.
There was always that strange music playing in the middle of the night.
Oh, I hate that. And having been traumatized by the assaults, Mary no longer wanted to stay in the house.
So Carmen had to make arrangements for her to stay with her other sister in Connecticut, that poor girl.
And a few days after her sister moved out of the house, Kelly started having her own horrific experiences in the middle of the night.
She had heard everybody else in the house talk about the ghosts, but she was like, Maybe I heard a few weird noises, but I never knew what to make of anything.
I never saw anything.
But then, one night as she was trying to fall asleep, she felt something touching her leg.
She said later, I couldn't see it, but it was freezing cold.
So she said she threw back the sheets and she kicked out whatever was touching her, but it only crept closer and moved up her calf.
So she didn't know what to do, so she grabbed her rosary that she kept next to her bed and she started saying the Lord's Prayer over and over, but the cross in her hand suddenly bent she said like somebody was trying to rip it from her hands violently what the so she screamed for her aunt and uncle and from their bed carmen heard her niece screaming for help in a way that by then was familiar from all the times that philip and michael had claimed to see ghosts carmen said i grabbed my bible from the nightstand and i'm just saying to myself i've got to find something to put all these ghost stories
to rest i've had it up to hear with the ghost stories but when she so she entered kelly's room and she doesn't see anything but she listened she listened as kelly explained what she felt and later carmen said i didn't believe her i thought the older boys had gotten her excited about the stories in the funeral home but the scene repeated itself the next night and carmen approached it with the same skepticism as she had the night before but on the third night she just could not deny what was was happening to Kelly and trigger warning for sexual assault here this is really awful that evening when Kelly
yelled for help Carmen went into the room expecting to find nothing but she said she found her niece struggling on the bed and when she went closer she saw a hand or she felt a hand sorry push her back violently and she caught a glimpse of what was attacking her niece she said I saw an arm the knuckles and joints go up under her nightshirt up over her breast and back through the wall at that point i realized something was going on what the fuck is going on here it only gets worse what so much worse oh my after that night the attacks on the entire family escalated to the point that one or more
of the family members were being attacked or harassed like daily holy shit at first kelly seemed to be the main target and she was assaulted several more times by this unseen entity.
She said the covers would be pulling off the bed.
There would be voices and lots of scratches.
And she said it seemed as though with Philip out of the house, the ghost had shifted the attention to the other members of the family and nobody was spared.
One evening after Carmen had fallen asleep in the bed next to her husband, the entity turned its attention toward Al.
Raphael. He, I have like a quote here of his experience and it's triggering, I would say.
Oh boy. So he told Sally Jessie Raphael, I felt a strange sensation coming over my body.
It started at my feet and was climbing up through my body.
Before I had a chance to reach over to tell Carmen to tell her something was wrong, I was frozen and couldn't move.
Then I felt a stinging penetration in my anal area and I was trying to scream, to cry out for Carmen to help me somehow, but I couldn't move.
After a while, I don't know how long, it had gone away and there was no more sensation.
I woke Carmen up and I said, Carmen, I think I was just sodomized by this demon. Yikes.
I have no words. I have so many feelings.
feelings do carry on okay so he said when he tried to explain to carmen what happened uh he struggled to find the right words he said and this is sad he said it wasn't like a normal reap not like a person to person type like he felt like this was like an entity this is horrific no it really is it reminds me of the um we covered it smurl the smurl family yes i thought of them too so a few nights later carmen had her own experience with the entity in the middle of of the night she said when it would take me sexually assault me it would laugh with such pleasure it enjoyed what it was doing to me
and i just couldn't move it was the most terrifying thing i've ever experienced so this started with like voices seeing things out of the corner of their eyes and then it turned to full -blown like sexual assault demon style this is uh uh this is so much. This is not just a regular haunting.
This isn't a run -of -the -mill uh haunt.
It's not. This isn't uh one of those fun ones.
No it's definitely not.
Nope. So after more than two years at this point, the family knew that they couldn't just you know continue living like this, being attacked nightly.
But they didn't really know what to do or how they should even proceed.
Their first instinct was to call the police but uh you can't.
What are you going to say what are you gonna say and they didn't think anybody anybody would believe them so instead carmen turned to their church for comfort and hoped that their priest father wheatley would have some idea about what to do he did not i'm shocked he had like one idea but it didn't really work he had one idea he had like one idea he had a crumb of an idea to really pan out though a few days later father wheatley came over he was sitting in the living room and he listened as carmen told him about what had been happening and you know he was patient he was of supportive but as carmen
suspected he was he was skeptical to say the least he said your entire family has been through a great deal but then he rattled off a list of the traumas that they had experienced since philip had been diagnosed with cancer and then you know everything else they had gone through yeah so he was essentially being like you've gone through a lot and i think it's manifesting uh this way yeah but he still offered to bless the house and he assured carmen that he in the congregation would continue to be a source of support for them.
But whatever relief Carmen felt after Father Wheatley blessed the house was very short -lived because apparently hours after the priest left the house, she was violently assaulted in her bedroom.
And that experience only ended when Kelly burst into the bedroom and saved her.
So after all that had happened in the house, nobody felt comfortable living there anymore.
But Al and Carmen didn't have any money to move.
They were stuck there.
That's usually the worst thing in these scenarios.
those. You're like, I wouldn't stay there.
And then you're like, but where are you going to go?
Exactly. They hoped that the blessing would get rid of whatever was attacking them, but it actually only seemed to make whatever this was, this entity, angrier and more aggressive.
So as she sat thinking about what they should do, she remembered a magazine that her friend had given her a week or so earlier.
And in there was an article about this Connecticut husband and wife team.
They were like paranormal experts who specialized in demon cases.
I've never really heard of anybody like that.
No, me either. Yeah, Carmen went into the living room.
She found the magazine and she flipped the pages until she came to this article about Ed and Lorraine Warren.
You said Ed and Lorraine?
Yeah, it doesn't really.
I'm interested to hear about these folks, these newcomers on the scene.
Good old Ed and Lorraine.
The article said that the Warrens lived in Monroe, which was just less than an hour away.
So Carmen called information and was able to get their number.
Oh boy. She called and Lorraine picked up on the first ring.
she said hello she said hello it's Lorraine it's me Lorraine Warren demon demon demon exorcist at your service that's literally how she answered the phone I know it me too so then Carmen immediately launched into her story so fast and with so much intensity that Lorraine had to ask her to slow down several times and she was like you need to take a breath you got to start over when Carmen finally got through the story Lorraine told her to keep her rosary handy and to use it that evening if there were any attacks but that she and her husband would be Hell yeah, they are.
And just as they promised, Ed and Lorraine Warren showed up at the house a little after 9 a .m. that very next morning.
Ed and Lorraine. And they interviewed Al and Carmen in the living room.
Carmen had worried about how she sounded on the phone the previous afternoon and couldn't help that the Warrens probably wouldn't believe her.
But before she could say anything more, Ed said, We'd like you to know that if we sound as if we doubt what you're saying, that's not the case at all.
We just have to be sure in every way we possibly can be that the things you tell us about have been brought on by supernatural forces.
Okay. So his words were a relief to Alan Carmen.
They felt like somebody was finally going to help them.
Somebody was finally listening.
And in late July of 1988, Ed and Lorraine Warren started their investigation into this family's haunting.
Here we go. It would ultimately last several months, and it actually involved the Warrens living in the house with the family for nine weeks.
That is so Ed and Lorraine coded.
They just said Wiste and Fadena for nine weeks straight.
They said, roomies?
Company? Roomies? I like the little finger gun you did.
Both of them did finger guns and said roomies.
And Ed said, I'm literally so random.
I'm literally so random.
You were watching a haunting.
Moving into your house.
We were watching a haunting the other night with Mikey and Dave and there was there was like another case Mikey snorting it was like another case and this like person got uh possessed at a table with Ed and like shoved him back in his chair but he's like making this face like the actor that plays him is making this face like and Mikey goes I'm literally so random and we were crying so now whenever I picture Ed Warren it's all I think about yep he's literally so random them literally so random but according to random ed warren whatever was in the house was demonic in nature of course he said it's
very old very cunning and absolutely without a doubt very very evil mean you know yeah not nice just overall a bad time lorraine explained that demonic infestations like the one that the family was experiencing quote always occur in a five -step progression encroachment infestation oppression possession and finally death oh and she said that somebody probably philip had either knowingly or unknowingly let the demon into the house and ever since then it had been working to drive the family apart and destroy them damn real nice whoever let the demon in I know but Lorraine was quick to add that things
weren't as dire as they seemed she told Alan Carmen we can fight it but only with the help of God will we win okay let's get Like, I would think that God's, like, really busy.
Yeah, I mean, he's got a lot to worry about.
So that's a little nerve -wracking.
Yeah. But for more than two years, Carmen and Al had struggled to understand what was happening in their house, and now they were finally getting some answers, so they were happy.
Yeah. In a 1988 interview, Carmen said, you always think, am I going crazy?
Did I imagine all this?
But the Warrens gave them both perspective and reminded them that they weren't alone.
And Carmen said the big problem is whether or not so many people could be crazy.
This isn't happening to one person.
That's true. She was like, this happens all the time.
And there you go. You know.
I mean, there's a little thing called hysteria, but.
There is that. We'll put that to the side.
I'm just here to say that I believe in hauntings.
I do too. I very much believe in ghosts.
Not sure about this one.
But just, you know, just laying it all out.
Just, you know, this is the story.
We look at it from all angles.
It's a crazy story, no matter what.
It's a nut bag story.
This is a nut bag story.
Hey, weirdos, you know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's going to blow your minds because this one is happening right now.
and guess this it's hosted by our friends Hannah and Saruti from Red Handed meet Travis he falls head over heels for Lily Rose she's gorgeous she's understanding and she's literally perfect and she's not human that's right Lily Rose is an AI companion a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman and at first it seems like a perfect relationship but when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming Follow Flesh and Code on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes early and ad -free by joining Wondery Plus.
But in the months slash weeks of their investigation, the Warrens, along with their assistants, they always have assistants.
Oh, yeah. Who is Ed and Lorraine Warren's assistant?
Not now, obviously, but like, who is that person?
There's multiple. multiple yeah that's what i'm like who is the person who are you in your life like who who goes for that job i don't know i'm not saying it's a bad person i'm just saying like who are you yeah if you were one of ed and lorraine warren's assistants i just want to know hit us up what was it like just be like what yeah tell me i don't know anything i'm just i'm here yeah well they had like all different kinds of people work for them like even the episode we were watching the other night the one the girl that got possessed was their assistant yeah and she was clairvoyant oh yeah
you're right so they always had people with like different gifts who are sensitive to the yeah like empath the other side this time their assistants were john zafis and chris mckennell and they claimed to have experienced a variety of unpleasant and assaultive experiences in the house that's scary on the first night in the house zafis excuse me and mckennell claimed to quote have suffered burning sensations when they tried to corner this their supernatural foe oh i love that and yeah i love supernatural foe we are supernatural foe that that's a great one that fucking slaps that's a banger of a band name
supernatural oh yeah listen to their supernatural flow oh boom just being like hey have you heard the new supernatural foe album what would it wow i love i love so much oh it would be the first the first album would be be called ectoplasm whoa you should be a tour manager yeah i like this a lot but that night every when they were you know facing off their supernatural foe not the band the actual foe the actual everybody in the house heard heavy footsteps banging noises they were flickering lights a ton of shit in one instance al had just fallen asleep and he was awoken by a noise and a bright
flashing light and he said from within the light emerged the dead decaying face of jesus christ that mocked him until and told him there was nothing he could do to help this is when we really need to start filming these because i just took the most judgmental sip of water i'm just gonna say had you seen the sip of water i said I said I said clangity cling cling raise eyebrows sip because like what what a bitch move like him just be like nothing you can do about a loser it was like the demon it was the demon that was not Jesus no it's not Christ like I just picture this like a decaying face of Christ
just being like nobody likes you you whore you're dumb I wish the decaying face of Jesus looked at Alan and said, boo you whore.
Boo you whore. That's funny.
I don't actually wish that.
I don't. Moving forward. That's just, there's some wily sentences being spoke during this.
I think that's where I am.
There are some wily sentences indeed.
Like the sentences spoken during this are off the charts.
Imagine having to speak them in a storytelling voice.
I love it. Well, as the Warrens and their assistants continued their investigation, the demonic forces in the house were just growing stronger, Longer.
Bolder. At one point they even tried to possess Carmen.
And it was at that point that Ed concluded the only way to confidently get rid of the entities in this house was to have a...
Catholic priest perform an exorcism!
Brought to you by Catholic priests performing exorcisms. Let's go!
After the attack on Carmen, Ed made a few calls, allegedly, in order to get...
Allegedly? Yeah. Very allegedly.
Oh, man. In order to get permission from the Catholic Arch archdiocese of Hartford oh shit got real according to Ed and Lorraine Warren on September 6 1988 two Roman Catholic priests and a deacon arrived at the house and performed the exorcism which successfully drove the demons out of the home the vibes so anti -climactic oh that was just it they just came and they were like well we did it yes oh all right thanks priest yeah and deacon It's unclear how it happened, but within a week or two, word of the exorcism reached the press.
As it always does. Exorcisms are always going to reach the press.
You can't ever sweep an exorcism under the rug.
Yeah. What are the things you can count on in life?
Death, taxes, and word of the exorcism reaching the press.
Three things you can count on in life.
Truth. So this family and the Warrens were flooded with calls from reporters seeking a comment on the story.
ed told a reporter an exorcism has been performed in the house and it's been very successful but someone going into that house and performing a seance or some type of ritual could bring it back there's something in that house that is intangible it's invisible it has the power to inflict physical pain it is something that is very evil oh yeah sounds like a movie it sure does in his initial statement to the press ed warren insisted quote the ritual was sanctioned by the archdiocese of Hartford. But I smelled a butt.
I smelled when they were contacted for comment, a spokesperson for the diocese refuted those claims. Reverend John Gatzek, I believe it is said, from what I can gather, there was an exorcism performed and supposedly it was with the archbishop's permission.
But according to Gatzek, the diocese never received any formal request for an exorcism.
And as far as he knew, none had been performed by any of his people.
I'm pretty sure that Ed and Lorraine have a couple of those under their belt where they say they contact the Archdiocese of goop -a -doop -a -doop, and then they don't, and then something happens, and then the church is like, we didn't do that.
That's happened in at least one of our other stories.
I feel like that's kind of like, that's like their thing.
Yeah, like we all have our things.
Did we contact the Archdiocese or not?
Like, you know, like Ash loves leopard print.
Yeah. I love ghost. I love Ghost. And Ed and Lorraine Warren love to not contact the Archdiocese of blah, blah, blah to get permission.
Precisely. And this guy, this reverend said, no permission has been given, nor is there any intention in the near future to have an exorcism performed.
Because I'm pretty sure the church is like, I mean, at least like the Catholic church. I don't know about like all churches, but I'm pretty sure they're like not interested in exorcisms anymore.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's, yeah.
Like I think it got them a bad rep at one point.
I think it's bad press for them.
I don't think they love an exorcism.
I don't think so either.
But in late, I was going to say in late exorcism.
In the late exorcism.
In late September, rather, just a week after the exorcism of the home, the family moved out of the house.
Although the house was supposedly clear of any demonic activity after the exorcism, the trauma that they claimed to have endured while living there made it very difficult to stay.
Carmen told a reporter, the memories and things that have happened will never feel comfortable in that house again my children are frightened to the point where they don't want to go to the bathroom alone that's so sad which is sad that's really sad so they they moved back to new york and their experiences with the paranormal seemed to come to an end but interest in their story only grew in the years that followed the move between 1988 and 1992 several members of the family gave interviews to the press and they came on they appeared on popular national talk shows there was Sally Jesse Raphael
Larry King Live My personal favorite The Maury Povich Show Oh Maury Do you remember when you would stay home from school and watch the Maury Povich Show and like change the channel when your mom would come in?
Yes The best Absolutely And Sally Jesse Raphael is like a blast from the past She's the one with the glasses Right?
Big red glasses I never watched her show because I think it was like before my time Yeah But Maury Povich honey Maury Povich Wasn't Maury like the governor of somewhere at one point?
Was he? I'm pretty sure he was the governor of somewhere He just looked at me like like I don't know.
I mean you could absolutely be right but I don't remember that.
Governor. There's like Maury and then there's another guy.
There's one guy that was like the governor or something or like the mayor.
Was he like another talk show host?
Yes. You mean like Jerry Springer?
Yeah. Jerry Springer.
It is Jerry Springer.
Oh. He served as one year for mayor.
There you go. For Jerry Springer did.
Cincinnati. Jerry Springer.
Wow. I didn't know that.
Yeah fun fact. I wasn't allowed to watch jerry springer oh honey i wasn't allowed to watch any of this but i was watching it i was my wasn't super crazy about like maury but she wasn't like forbidden but jerry springer was forbidden in our house uh my friend shout out to taran once skipped school and i think it was jerry springer she went to go see the jerry springer show but her mom saw her in the audience and knew that she skipped school to go to the jerry springer show what an experience love you be t but uh so yeah they were doing like all these talk show appearances and according to carmen
their appearances in the press and on television on television we're getting to the on the television television she said they were motivated by a quote desire to help others with similar problems and discourage people from dabbling in the supernatural that's entirely possible but critics and skeptics of this story couldn't help but notice that the media attention tension culminated in a book about the haunting that was written by ed warren and horror author ray garden with the help of the family and those critics may have had a good point because in a dark place the true story of a haunting was released
in 1992 and all the media attention that the story had received up to that point only helped to promote the book look at that in a statement to the reporters the owner of the house daryl kern our guy dismissed the family's claims and he said he had never received any complaints about the house not even from that particular family wow he said they're just trying to make a buck on a book as far as i'm concerned it's a dead issue oh among the more vocal of the snedeker's critics were the tenants on the second floor because remember this was an apartment yeah yvonne and jim safford and yvonne's brother
richard were their neighbors on the second floor and yvonne told a reporter i've been here for two years and i haven't seen or heard anything wow that's that'll tell you a little you know yeah in october of 1992 the saffords actually appeared alongside the snedekers on sally jesse rafael for an episode titled i was raped by a ghost early 90s talk shows went crazy they went absolutely crazy they went off they went bonkers you could never get away with the shit they used to get get away with now.
Never. In the episode, the Snedekers talked about their experiences focusing mostly on the sexual assaults that they said happened, after which the Saffords were brought on stage to refute their claims. Jim Safford said, the most obvious thing for me is the inconsistencies in their story.
I researched it with my wife and a close relative of the Snedekers told me there was nothing to it, that they were making it up just for the money.
Wow. And in fact, Yvonne claimed that the entire story was made up after the Snedekers started having really bad financial troubles.
I wondered if that was part of it.
Yvonne told Sally Jessie Raphael they never had a problem until they got behind on the rent.
Ooh. I'm just like, that's mean.
You don't need to air their dirty laundry.
Damn. Other neighbors soon joined the chorus of those who believed that the Snedekers were lying.
A friend of Philip's, Jeff Pooler, told Sally Jessie Raphael that Philip had a history of using hallucinogenic drugs.
Oh. And that went a long way to explaining the change in his behavior.
Yes, absolutely. He said, I personally don't think there was anything going on there.
He was a storyteller.
He always had to be center of attention.
Similarly, the Snedeker's neighbor across the street, Catherine Altimus, kept a journal of all the disruptive events and claimed that many of the loud noises and other claims that the Snedekers made could just be explained by traffic sounds and cars with loud mufflers.
oh it was her opinion that they had planned this from the moment that they moved in and even those who had been once supportive of the Snedeker's like next door neighbor Joan Mirabel started to get suspicious after the story started to spread she said I don't believe they made the whole thing up but every time I've seen Carmen on TV the story became more and more involved and it just got bigger yeah and that's when you know yeah among the more suspicious claims of the story at least as far as locals were concerned, was that they had no idea the house had been the former location of a funeral home.
Like, they thought that was malarkey.
Yeah. According to Daryl Kern, who was the landlord, the Snedekers were told of the house's history before they rented.
The funeral home had only shut down two years before they moved in, and at the time that Carmen went to look at the apartment, the old sign for the business was still standing in the front yard. Oh, come on.
And could easily be seen from the ground.
There you go. Yeah.
Now, while the criticism from skeptical neighbors was a prominent feature of the book's publicity, there were perhaps none more skeptical of the Snedekers than members of Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP.
You know, that's kind of their job.
That's actually their entire job.
Yeah, skepticism is their job.
For those who don't know, they're a national group of scientists and industry experts, and it's their mission to promote critical thinking in America.
I mean, I love that.
Yeah. Beginning in the mid -1970s, CSI cop, I don't know if that's actually what they're called, but it's very fun to call them that.
It sounds hilarious, though.
They were very vocal critics of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
As they should be. And they saw this particular case, the Snedeker case, as part of a pattern where the Warrens were just kind of promoting their own agenda.
Yeah. The Warrens had done something very similarly a decade earlier with the story of George and Kathy Lutz, the family who inspired the Amityville Horror.
And we all know how that one went.
Which we will be covering this spooky season.
We will because that is attached to a very real and very tragic true crime story.
Very tragic. CSI cop member Joe Nickel wrote, Already having helped promote the Amityville horror and similar West Pits in Pennsylvania nightmare, the Warrens continued their modus operandi of arriving at a quote -unquote haunted house and transforming the case into a quote -unquote demonic one.
And, you know, claiming that they contact the archdiocese of a place and not doing it.
also that's a pattern of behavior nickel don't fucking forget that yeah don't forget it that's their thing yeah joe was one of the many skeptics who spoke out publicly against the family including appearing alongside them on sally jesse rafael and the maury povich show that's that's awesome i love that everybody was like just beefing on television even on daytime television just beefing while everybody's at work yeah but like several other critics he pointed out the many inconsistencies in the family's story, including the fact that contrary to how it had been presented in the press, the family
did not actually move from the house voluntarily.
Nickel wrote, long before the Sally show, the Snedeker's landlady had served them with an eviction notice for failing to pay their rent, which is very sad.
He also pointed to several other facts about the family that were not mentioned in the book or in their many television and media appearances including the sexual assault allegations al's history of alcoholism and a very long history of just dysfunction in general yeah it sounds like it and he noted that perhaps most telling was that many years after its publication ed warren's co -author on in a dark place ray garden he repudiated the book and the warrens which is not great yeah i'm like Like, join the long line of people.
Yeah. Not a great thing for the story.
No, definitely not.
He quoted the Garten as, not the Garten, he quoted Garten as saying, The family involved, which was going through some serious problems like alcoholism and drug addiction, could not keep their story straight.
And I became very frustrated.
It's hard writing a non -fiction book when all the people involved are telling you different stories.
Oh. Very sad. That is sad.
It's kind of sad all the way through and then it gets, like, realistically sad in the end.
Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah.
In 1993, after the release of In a Dark Place had made them very controversial stars.
Yeah. Alan Carmen moved to move their family to Tennessee to kind of like quiet down a little bit.
Carmen's family lived out there.
But despite the controversy surrounding the story and the large number of skeptics and critics, the book actually sold really well for the first couple years.
And in the mid 2000s, members of the family appeared in a feature length docudrama for the Discovery Channel entitled A Haunting in Connecticut.
Oh, I remember that.
The family, they told their story.
It was dramatized with interviews and paid actors.
And then in 2009, the story would surface again, this time as the source material for The Haunting in Connecticut, which is a mostly fictionalized version of what they say actually happened.
Artistic license. Yes, yes.
Since the release of The Haunting in Connecticut, members of the Snedeker family have tried to stay out of the spotlight and in the decades that followed um Philip's cancer remained in remission but in late 2011 his cancer returned and he passed away on January 9th 2012 at the age of 38 oh damn yeah and that is the end of the Snedeker family haunting aka the haunting in Connecticut wow it's a wily story that's a truly wily story and anytime time it involves ed and lorraine i say sign me up because it's you know it's gonna be cuckoo nuts bananas it's gonna take you into another realm yeah and aren't
we all just looking for that we're always looking for that ed and lorraine are such like fascinating creatures like they're such a fascinating case study they are on like you know scammers that i think also believe some of the stuff that they peddle that's the thing because i don't believe i definitely believe that they were like scamming people yeah but i don't believe that i i think that i think they believed some of their shit i think they believe some of like i don't believe they were 100 scammers yeah i i really do believe that they they at least believed some of it yeah and i think i think
it got bigger than them and they were just like i think they just rolled with it and they saw what was working for them and they saw the dollar signs and they yeah they turned it into Just what it shouldn't have been.
Yeah. But that's why I think they're fascinating people.
I agree. Fascinating creatures, Ed and Lorene LeBourne.
They really are. And also so random.
Literally so random.
With such a serious pattern of behavior.
Truly. The archdiocese of it all, you know?
The archdiocese of it all is just a great way to wrap up there.
It really is. It is.
It's a great like two truths and a lie for them.
Yes. Like that one of their truths or lies can be like, I always say I call the archdiocese, but I never do.
Or I always call the archdiocese and maybe that's the truth or maybe it's the lie.
Who knows? Who can tell?
It's Lorraine Ed Warren, you know?
Wile E. Bitches. They're crazy.
Well, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don't actually call the archdiocese if you say you're going to call the archdiocese.
Because if you call the archdiocese and then you lie about it, they'll get mad.
Yeah, just do it if you say you're going to do it.
I just kind of like to say Archdiocese.
Call them. Hello? It's us, the Archdiocese.
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