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Thank you. Hey weirdos, it's Tuesday and you're not supposed to get an episode, but look, You are.
Ding, ding, ding. You win an episode. Yes, you win a special extra ad-free bonus episode just because...
You know what it is? It's spooky season.
It's October. It's like our Christmas, so we feel very giving.
We feel the joy. We want to spread it around.
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. And we figured what better way...
To spread the spook and to spread the joy around.
Then to give you guys... a listener tale that's been highly, highly requested.
And yes, I know it sounds weird when you're like, wait, a listener tale has been requested?
Yeah. Do you guys remember? Do you remember John Allen?
John Allen. You remember that amazing 80s trip back to his neighborhood?
Yes. Yes. Where he just painted this amazing picture that had us all like rolling on the floor laughing and terrified at the same time.
The best writing that I've ever seen. So everyone afterwards, because we mentioned that John himself is a writer.
Like, for his job. Like a straight-up writer.
Yes. And, I mean, as if you couldn't tell from that listener tale.
I know, seriously. Um... But we had a lot of people saying, hey, I want to hear more John Allen.
Give me more John Allen. And you know what John Allen did?
He gave us more. He gave us more John Allen.
John Allen provided us with the John Allen.
So he gave us a really long, really terrifying, but also amazingly written listener tale once again.
And we figured because it's so long and because this is so requested...
And because we think John is great, we decided, you know what?
Let's do an extra episode this week. Let's do a third episode.
Let's make it ad-free. and just have it be John's listener tale.
Here you go. So you know what, everybody?
Sit back, relax, relax, have some like weird... potion-y drink that maybe has some dry ice coming out of it to make it spooky.
It's gotta be green. It's got to be green or orange or orange.
It's got to be orange, guys. I don't know, have some spooky potion drink and just sit back, maybe light some candles.
Only the pumpkin ones. Only the pumpkin fall-flavored ones.
If you've got the autumn leaves like I've got.
Crunch, crunch. Smells so good. So sit back and listen to this tale.
Are you ready? I am because I haven't heard it yet.
So I'm live reacting. There you go. So the year, 1986. alive.
Wow. Here we go. In the Midwest, if someone needs directions, no one uses street names, but rather landmarks.
Take a left at the Dalmatian behind the chain-linked fence, then a right at the gas station, the nice one, not the one with the stoners in the front, that sort of thing.
Memories are similar, and my landmarks are events, music, and even sense of the day.
This is how I remember the entity that would shape and possibly save my life.
Ooh. Nothing is embellished nor scientific, and my conclusion is just my opinion of the event.
I'll say up front that my childhood was fucked, but I've always been able to not get too emotionally affected by it.
At a restaurant where I worked, we always had a burger of the month.
Once during autism awareness month, I suggested the Asperger.
I can tell that joke because I have it, which is a blessing in that it helps me with indifference to wounds of the soul.
I love that. I love you, John. So January 28th of 1986 is where my saga begins.
I looked fresh at school with my gear. Yes, I'm so ready.
Acid wash jeans I'd made by dousing the denim with bleach and throwing in the dryer. knock-off converse high tops that folded at the top to reveal a checkered pattern.
Chuck failures, we called them. Oh my God. a He-Man sweatshirt, and finally a bandaid to cover stitches in my forehead.
The stitches I received because standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I was running late one day and quickly bent over to French cuff my jeans.
Maybe it was the fumes from the Aquanet slash hair mousse melody that made me headbutt the sharp edge of the counter.
I still have that scar today, and I own up to its moronic origins.
That's incredible. Do you know what a French tuck is?
Yeah, it's when you I mean a cuff. Yeah, you tuck it at the bottom, like the bottom of your jeans.
Is it like a regular? You can do it on your shirt too, like a French cuff.
Ask Tan France. He'll tell you all about it.
I know all about the French tuck. There you go.
So I was sitting in Miss Healy's third grade class that morning. drawing instead of book learning because a drawing of me as Hulk Hogan's tag team partner far superseded history.
Yes. Besides, the text This book was so old that I'm certain there was a chapter outlining the perils of women and some real racist bullshit.
I have a high IQ that's never been used.
And when it came to school, I was lazier than Forest Whitaker's left eye.
Fun fact, I still draw pictures of me as the Hulkster's tag partner today.
His silken mustard hair is life. Then he said, form a line, ladies.
Oh my god. I was laying low because I had received detention the week prior and prior to that and probably for the following week.
Always the smartass. I came into class late and lazily failed to shut the door.
Last week's offense came when the teacher said, the door is ajar.
I asked if that were true. Could I fill it with strawberry jam?
So I was happy when Miss Healy had rolled in a clunky ass 900 pound TV from the AV room.
Less opportunity to get in trouble on movie days.
No VHS tapes, though. Then I remembered hearing about a teacher in space, and we watched the Challenger explode into an airborne nightmare live." a firework display of tragedy, though none of us knew what we were watching at the moment.
That's really horrifying to think of that.
Right? Healy quickly turned the event off and shakily told us to open our Trapper Keepers.
Poor Miss Healy, man. seriously like just snap through that right i had the purple one with the miami vice palm trees which is literally why i moved to florida this year It wasn't until I walked the mile and a half home that I found out what really happened.
I remember not actually getting home until after 6, because the mile and a half walk was littered with pop-up football games, houses with Nintendo, and us boys denting one another's Karate Kid and Gremlins lunchboxes against each other's heads to impress the girls.
Obviously. Spoiler. They were not impressed and we were likely concussed.
The home I arrived to was much different than the home I'd previously described in my last listener tale.
The dire circumstances of my childhood life for this period would make a news scandal today.
And they did occur. It might be alarming to hear.
But I know it's been 34 years and I've never been one to give many fucks.
I literally have a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew tattooed on me, if you need to gauge how serious I take life.
Wow. And yes, I've had therapy since and I'm fine.
Let's not make that the focal point of the story, though it's hugely important to it.
The woman I today call mom married my dad in 87, but in 86 I lived with my birth mom while their divorce was occurring.
In hindsight, my birth mother had obvious mental illness that was not accepted in the 80s.
Maybe even a demonic oppression because she was into the dark arts.
But going forward... with this story, let's just say she was fucking crazy and that her life decisions made about as much sense as a football bat.
That makes so much sense to me. Straight to the point, she partied with high school kids, did drugs, stole, probably shared a bed with the quarterback, and trained me to take the blame if we got caught dining and dashing.
You get the point. Criminal fuckery straight out of the trailer.
On this day, I came home and she was already fucked up.
She had called the high school pretending to be several people's mother that day, giving them a sick pass, and they all got hammered at the house.
I was cool with it because I could do what I want.
I made sure to check in on my three-year-old sister Kelly.
That was a recurring theme, reading Bernstein Bears books to her and playing Cabbage Patch Kids until she fell asleep. while Dear Mother and the Netherworld cast of Glee played quarters and sang Foreigner at the top of their lungs.
The netherworld cast of glee. After Kelly went to sleep, I watched CNN and learned about the shuttle disaster because cable was more important than the mortgage.
Then I went to the kitchen, their main party room, for a sleeve of saltines and butter to put on them.
Oh my god. Wow, that just brought me back.
Yeah, a sleeve of saltines and you put butter on them.
Oh, I never put butter on saltines, but I used to eat sleeves of saltines.
Oh, no. Saltines with butter on them, like...
That is the time. I could see that. So good.
As I was gathering my trash dinner, I overheard these Rhodes scholars suggesting that one, A fellow teenaged partier named Will lived in a haunted farmhouse, and two, a rumor that Bon Jovi had AIDS.
Not very PC, I realized, but this was the Midwest in the 80s.
Not exactly a haven of empathy or progressive thought.
I'm an LGBTQ plus ally and can't believe how acceptable a prejudiced and bigoted outlook is now.
So imagine how it was then. This nuance will continue in the story.
As I walk out of the kitchen past the table where the prepubescent choo-choos waited for a ride on the white powdery rail tracks, if that's too flowery to understand, Cocaine.
My mother said goodnight at the exact moment some kid blew weed smoke into my face.
I still remember the exchange like it was yesterday because remember, I thought I was hilarious.
Hi, teenaged boy. Giggles. Are you stoned?
Me and my baby mullet. Do I look like a dead witch, idiot?
Laughter You've probably picked up that even at eight, I knew this situation was, I simply cannot even, and that these people were rubbish.
Yes. I took my crackers and butter to my room, played GoBots because we couldn't afford Transformers.
And blasted the mixtape that I recorded from the radio, commercials and all, until I crashed.
Oh, commercials and all. For anyone wondering, that mixtape had... Thank you for telling us.
I needed to know. For anyone wondering, that mixtape had Madonna's Dress You Up, DeBarge's Rhythm of the Night, An ad for Pepsi Free, crank up the Google machine kids.
A recorded snippet of me singing Uptown Girl.
And my all-time jam, Cruel Summer by Bananarama.
Oh, all good songs. I know, because I still have it.
Would have been nice to save my baseball card collection that's now worth two grand, but instead I saved a 1986 TDK 60 cassette tape.
It's like trading Apple shares for stock in Blockbuster Video.
More nights of child services wet dreams continued.
But it's whatever at that point. Walking in on naked teenagers is normal for eight-year-olds, right?
By the end of February, my chubbable best friend Ray and I were fighting. because he thought my earring was on the quote-unquote gay ear.
Again, 80s Midwestern ignorance. Apparently having the left ear pierced made you straight, the right ear gay.
And then in musical... In musical notes, he wrote, 1980 science.
No, dude, I still remember that because I remember getting my cartilage pierced and everyone was like, don't get it on the wrong side.
And you're like, is it literally, that's not how that works.
And the funniest thing is now that I have the left side of my cartilage pierced and I should have the right, I guess.
So there you go. I mean. So it doesn't check out. in case not in case anyone was like is that real the theory is wrong she debunked it it doesn't work So the thing is, Ray was not too intelligent.
He was mostly as confused as a fart in a fan factory.
Oh my god, yes. My left ear was pierced, but facing me eye to eye, his right hand was parallel with my earring on my left ear.
But his astute rationale was that since his right hand would be touching the pierced ear, it was also touching my right ear. because right touched right, or some pre-printing press homeschooling would maybe declare.
He just couldn't comprehend this. And I wonder if whatever job hired him in adulthood received a tax credit.
My backup best friend. Dude, I fucking love John Allen.
My backup best friend was Andy because Andy lived two doors down from Amy in a court.
Fancy folks called them cul-de-sacs. And Amy and her older sisters were basically the town Kardashians.
She was the... the model one that looks like a young Ali McGraw, Google machine.
Ali McGraw was heaven in a handbasket. I would have given Amy my Huffy at the snap of a finger if she'd asked for it.
What is a Huffy? I knew you were going to ask that.
It's a bike. Oh, okay. I'd still give her my Huffy.
Basically, if any girl smiles at me, I'll co-sign their car loan.
Anywho, brevity is lost on me. Fast forward to Amy's basement, which smelled like Hubba Bubba and watermelon lip gloss.
Ooh. She, I, and unfortunately Andy, who had already served his purpose as a gateway and could have left, were circling a Ouija board.
What could go wrong? Wasn't he eight years old?
I think so. Wow. Disclaimer Ouija boards are as trustworthy as a reincarnated guy that hashtags YOLO.
We played around and I kept asking the board if Andy should fuck off home while pushing the planchette to yes.
I felt like Ryan Reynolds in Just Friends when another dude crashed his date with Jamie Palomino.
Finally, we got serious. Fast forward again, because this is getting longer than Rapunzel's hair during quarantine.
Someone asked the board who we are speaking to.
R.A. haha andy i'm talking to ray hilarious stop moving the planchette leave or die or something C. Oh, never mind.
H. That's where it stopped because Amy's mom told us to leave because the cast of the community production of the Goonies was trying to make time with their daughter.
Oh my god. Want to go to the arcade with us this weekend?
I asked Amy as we were being shooed out into the blustery night.
Nope. Greatest three hour romance ever.
Instead of the arcade that weekend, my sister Kelly and I had to go with our mother to Will's. the teenager with the supposed haunted house, to do laundry because our water was shut off.
I didn't really have to go because I was basically emancipated without protest, but I wasn't leaving my sister and dog with a maniac.
Kelly and myself and our dog Max climbed into the backseat of the red Chevette, the laundry got shotgun, This car had the lap belts only, so rather than flying through the windshield should our drunk mother play chicken with a brick wall, our risk was being sliced in half.
Final Destination style. Oh my god. Out to the woods we drove that night. the same woods that have been settled as far back as the 1700s.
I've extensively researched this because, like the ghosts to come, I have no life.
Old farmhouses still stood everywhere. When we finally slowed down near Will's abode, his father was never home, so it was another party house.
I could feel dread or a sense that something wasn't right.
We took a left onto the driveway, a long downhill slope of rocks that led to a faded white ranch house from another era.
I remember my legs growing numb the closer we got and the ensuing bubble gut.
I squeezed my huge rubber Andre the Giant action figure that was incapable of movement, thus incapable of being played with, until my knuckles turned whiter than this freaky ash ranch.
I have no way of describing the natural smell of this house but I can still taste it today.
For lack of appropriate words, it smelled like burnt red wine.
This scent overwhelmed me immediately and was so thick I could barely breathe.
We entered through the kitchen, the only way in or out, where Will and some other guy were drinking vodka from the bottle because SO EDGY.
I don't know the other guy's name, so I'll call him DB, short for douchebag.
To the right was a living room with a closed door leading to a game room.
Everything else was to the left. Max the doggo would not budge towards the right.
I felt dizzy and took my sister to one of the bedrooms.
It was like walking underwater." The sooner the laundry was done, the better.
Mom stayed in the kitchen to party and pretend she too enjoyed the musical stylings of Quiet Riot with the teens.
The bedroom was not the safe space I'd hoped for.
Since I'm not writing a novel, but kinda am, I won't build suspense, but rather get to the clear memories.
First came an isolated heat. I would hear approaching footsteps from the hallway that seemed to stop at the door.
Yet at the same time, I heard the three voices of our mother and her friends drunk, talking rooms away.
These noises did not match in proximity and the footsteps had no logic behind them.
Typical horror trope bullshit we laugh at until it actually happens.
Max growled in a bass that Barry White would swoon over. not long after came the crashing noise outside after looking out the window i knew it was a huge slab of ice that fell from the roof not demonic but really fucking bad timing.
This did little for my nerves as the footsteps retreated distinct to fate to nothing.
The heat dissolved. I come from a new school of thought based on the second law of thermodynamics, that paranormal energy emits heat.
The traditional cold spot theory is related to the human response to fear, which matches our response to cold.
That's my TED Talk. It's open for debate.
Anyway, Kelly was hungry, but I could only distract her with bonkers candy, Little Debbie Star Crunches, and lame jokes i remember taking kelly and max and crawling into a bed covering us with a I despise fear.
In the past I jumped from my roof onto a bike seat without a thoughts.
So I did not understand why I had sudden fear.
I think I do understand why I don't have children now.
After Kelly and the dog fell asleep, I had enough courage to contend with the inordinate amount of orange Hi-C in my bladder. unable to hold it any longer.
I did my business focusing on my aim because something told me not to look at the mirror.
I hate cliches, but those who have felt like they've been watched before will understand that vibe.
Mm-hmm. I crept back to the bedroom across the hall after five minutes of procrastination because fuck opening doors.
And Mommy Dearest saw me in the hallway and told me to come into the living room.
I have no idea why I did, as I'd stopped listening to her crazy ass long ago.
Like, you've lost the privilege to tell me to make my bed when yours is always filled with dudes you found under a bridge who look like Hindenburg survivors.
Oh my god, wow. Wow. Wow. Everything. But for whatever reason I followed her from the living room through the tiny game room door in the rear of the house.
This room was soaked with that burnt red wine smell and hotter than getting throat punched by a sauna.
Will and DB were high and playing pool and blasting a Scorpions album.
Anyway, immediately D.B. started trying to scare me.
According to him, the old country house had served as a brothel at one point in the 1800s.
He'd seen a knife float on its own, plates crashed against the wall in the middle of the night, blah blah.
Back then, VHS cassettes would record up to three movies, and my VCR constantly played horror movies with these same themes.
I swear to God, I would have done the gym helper camera look right then if it was a thing yet.
The only thing that spooked me at that point was Margaret Hamilton riding a bicycle in a tornado in The Wizard of Oz.
So this continues, and DB can't spook me, yet I'm definitely put off by something.
I was just ready to go, ready for my own bed.
DB qualifies his stories by saying death is just a part of life.
No, asshole. Breathing is a part of life.
Then Will spoke with clarity for the first time in our history, like he was orating a fleeting truth between the fumes in his brain.
The old woman who ran the brothel gaming house after her husband died, he told us, truly did still roam around the old country ranch.
She had been murdered in that very game room over a money issue, and he'd seen her all his life.
He was so believable suddenly. Oh, and her name was Rachel.
Oh shit, that's weird. Heart sunk. Remember the Ouija?
R-A-C-H. Why was she there? I told my mother that Kelly was crying and wanted to go home.
She told me we were snowed in and spending the night.
Oh, my God. She brushed a small curtain on the window aside and the mountainous hill outside was blanketed in white.
I remember dizziness like a panic attack brings, then nothing else until waking the next morning.
Daylight makes things less frightening. They say spirits are more active at night due to electronics and some energy vortex.
I don't pretend to understand. Kelly and I and Max woke up and found some sleds while the quote unquote adults slept off their hangovers.
I kept my eye on the one window connected to the supposed murder room at the bottom of the hill, this tiny little nothing of a window. but mostly enjoyed shredding it up and down the peak, even though the natural stopping point was that freaky room at the base of the hill.
In the winter, we take the wheels and trucks off our skateboards and use them as snowboards.
No way I'd come back there, but I couldn't help thinking what a primo spot it was.
Easily the best sledding of my life. At one point, I swore I saw a shadow through the window and the curtain definitely moved.
Probably my mother making sure she didn't lose us because, you know, child support check.
We winded down because three-year-olds don't have the stamina of an eight-year-old and an energetic dog.
At the bottom of the hill close to that window, because I wanted to test my limits, the three of us sat in the snow and rested.
I'm pretty sure the dog was a better conversation than a three-year-old little girl.
But after a little while, she said something that ear fucked me.
That lady is nice. Is she gonna play with us?
Um, what? "'Are you talking about Mom? What lady?'
"'That nice lady who plays dollies with me and Max.'
What are you talking about? What lady? Someone from back home?
No, the lady that lives here. Fuck me. I looked at the small window with nausea.
Is she here right now? I don't know. Probably.
Kelly went on to tell me that she played with someone's grandma in our room last night and I was asleep.
The lady kept looking at me, she said, but she told her to let me sleep because I was tired.'
Welp, getting late, time to bounce like a bad check, no more playing it cool.
I ran into the house where my mother and the two teenagers were passed out, strewn about like litter on a highway.
Not going to think about the window shadow.
Nope. Kelly playing dollies with Lizzie Borden's stepmother.
Hard pass. I screamed at my mother to get the shit up and let's go because I was allowed to curse given my circumstances, but didn't really know how.
Get the shit up. I packed up our toy. That's actually really funny.
I packed up our toys and coloring books and undone laundry and dragged Kelly and Max to the ketchup-painted Chevette.
Glancing at the closed game room door gave me super speed.
Dear Mother had not even stirred. I knew how to start the car because she'd often leave us in the Chevy while bar hopping oh my god seriously i want to like punch this lady in the face And I like to listen to music.
Like, I'm so glad that John had, like, another.
John, I'm really glad that you had another.
Yeah. Finally, I told Kelly to cover her ears and Max's ears and leaned on the horn for a solid minute.
My mother groggily came to the front door and cursed at me, feeling like the adults in the relationship and not about to stay at house on Haunted Hill because my birthing device had a headache."
I furiously marched back to the house because I was done.
She dragged me in and shouted some more while my sister and dog were in the car.
I jerked away and Will grabbed me by the collar, tearing the fabric.
I'm going to beat the shit out of Will, too.
Seriously, fuck Will. This could... This was an original Macho Man Randy Savage shirt, so I kicked him as hard as I could. creating a satisfying dull thud that I would relish.
Ensuing was a tsunami of chaos, Then the sound that lives with me for eternity rang out and stopped everything and everyone.
A piercing banshee like scream from the back of the house.
Wow. From the game room. oh i just got a full chill through a now open door Everyone froze and Will's eyes told the story of a kid who had finally pissed off something that cohabitated this house with his disrespect.
Still air and silence permeated the old walls.
Next thing I remember is driving home in silence, the burnt red wine stench clinging to my jean jacket.
It remained unspoken for many years. As summer trickled in, the police, led by our deputy neighbor Steve, evicted my mother and soon thereafter my father was granted custody and the house.
Yeah. I guess we were flea bitten and malnourished and the house was wrecked.
The old man banned my mother from seeing us, good for him, and cleaned us up while rebuilding the house into a home.
Oh, I love that. I know. That makes me so happy.
I'm so glad it ended happy. Later I would learn that he spent his savings trying to get us out of there, and even doubled the child support on his own merit, which unfortunately never saw us.
Oh, my goodness. He pulled through, we pulled through and thrived.
I even forgave my mother after she died.
She was truly sorry and I believe mentally ill.
Wow. This is like such a good turnaround.
And that takes a lot. I give him a lot of credit for forgiving his mom.
She did promise to visit after she died, our paranormal beliefs spawning us in the final years, but I'm still waiting.
Oh my goodness, I just got chills. That's my biggest fear is when my mom dies, she's going to haunt me.
You're like, this is the exact opposite.
I'm not going to make her promise to any of that.
No. Kelly remembers nothing, though I have continued to have experiences with these things.
My youngest sister was born in 1993, and every other photo is of her talking to or staring at an orb.
Our Cincinnati home was built on native burial grounds and was definitely occupied, but the spirits were cool.
My 93-year-old grandma told me about an experience her best friend had in the 1940s.
She died and watched herself on the operating table before turning away from the light.
This was 30 years before out-of-body experience was even a term or published thought.
For years, I've searched for this once terrifying house, but it's the Midwest and we moved away in 89 and I didn't memorize landmarks, let alone the roads.
I've searched local legends, I've looked for Will on social media, Finally, I located a Rachel who lived and died in the same area and timeframe that I'm pursuing.
She would have died or been killed at age 75 in 1866.
I would like to know her real story, and I would like to thank her.
If anyone has ever heard of this house in Clayton, Ohio, please let me know.
I think the ghost of Rachel saw suffering children who didn't know how bad they had it and laid a celestial smackdown on the perps.
After that scream, our lives seemed to become normal.
I think she was good. Lost, stuck in this realm, but a good person who pulled some post-life strings.
Wow. This is like... You know that feeling when you get chills, but then your body kind of like...
That's literally what just happened to me.
I don't know how to... I'm making like a hand movement right now.
Yeah, it's like... It's almost like a vibe.
It's like a wave of vibration. It's a vibration.
It is. I just got that. Whew. Wow. I long for these days of my childhood, ironically, in a small town where nothing happens.
I had one of the greatest adventures of my life.
Nowadays, we have everything at our disposal yet I'm bored.
Maybe I peaked at eight, but the experience taught me that something beyond still exists.
This fear is an ideation that we can dismiss.
With these realizations early in life, I've been able to live freely.
If you're rich and famous, they call you eccentric.
If you're broke and nobody, you're just weird.
Well, I'm a proud weirdo because in hindsight, I, Johnny Castle, baby housemanned this shitstorm and had the time of my life.
And he wrote it in like musical notes. I know my childhood might depress people, but it turned me into a writer and I've only carried the good parts with me.
I actually loved and miss it. To quote the great statesman Andrew Bernard of Dunder Mifflin, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you actually left them.
Thanks for reading. I love you gals. You have a way of making the listener feel like a friend having covfefe in your living room.
As usual, I'll hand off the football bat to Ash.
Stay weird, but not so weird that... Oh, okay.
Not so weird that you're... I need a minute.
Okay, not That's so weird that your birth giver takes you to a farmhouse where some old lady apparently died, but she was in a brothel.
But really, she wasn't in a brothel. Her name was Rachel, and she was the best Rachel and apparently she had a really good banshee scream and she saved you and made your whole life better and like your birth giver and everything and you You've reconnected and that's so great, but don't keep it so weird that you bring your kid to a house party with like teenagers and you smoke weed and stuff in front of them and a ghost person has to take care of them.
Yeah, don't keep it that weird.
Don't do it. John, thank you so much for sending these tales.
Seriously. Thank you for your like. ability your writing ability is a gift seriously I hope to read a book that you have written No, I need to.
Literally, it's a need. And I truly think every one of our listeners also needs to because I'm sure everybody's like, John L.
And can I just say, I have so much respect for the way that he looks at his childhood.
Yeah, and especially you can like... see it from a different perspective than I can.
There was a lot of parallels to my childhood.
There really was. And I have to say, like, I love you, John.
I'm hugging you right now. Yeah, she felt you.
I could see it. She was like, whoa. My throat's getting a little bit...
The way that you look at life and the way that you look at your childhood is like really something to be.
Admired. Admired, and it's inspiring, and I hope that you keep writing.
I know, because you're an amazing writer, and I need you to write a book.
So thank you so much for this. We hope that this was every... gave everybody their dream come true of another John Allen tale.
And we hope it was spooky enough that you felt like it was. appropriate for October.
I had a little brain nugget just now. I almost wish that John could write us like a story of the month and like, I'm sorry, nobody else can enter.
It's just John's story of the month and we read it on the podcast.
It's just, John's story of the month. How great would that be?
I mean, John, if you're a Can we do that with you, John?
If you're up for it, we're up for it. I think that'd be fucking great.
And I think a lot of people would love. I think so too.
A story of the month from John. I'm just saying.
Let us know. Oh, and also just as a quick little update.
John updated me right before we were recording this to tell me that he spoke to his sister Kelly. who's like this amazing like person now who like grew completely from the childhood that they dealt with so like good for both of them.
That makes me even happier. And she said she thought that ghost was a dream, but she remembers it.
I also love that the lady, like, because it was probably when John went downstairs and that's when she played dolls with her.
Like, she took care of her. She said that it was when he was sleeping in the middle of the night.
I guess Kelly woke up and he was like and she was like, oh, I'll play with you.
Did you just hear a noise? I did. I just ignored it.
I don't want to. But I think she saw that, like...
She was in a house that she was unfamiliar with.
She probably woke up scared. Three years old.
That's a baby. I think of my babies at three and I'm like, oh. yeah in an unfamiliar place and she probably just was like let's play oh my god If I ever get the opportunity to be like a ghost lady that gets to like hang out and take care of a neglected child, I think that's my ghost goal.
Right? Wow. So, like, thanks, Rachel. Rachel.
You guys are awesome. Are I the most pee?
Oh, the most pee. Oh. Rachel. Wow, the feels.
Alright, bye everybody. Happy Tuesday. 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.
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