Hey weirdos, before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends.
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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
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Morbid 16. Hey weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash.
And this is Morbid. Hey, it was a show week.
It was a show week. We had such a good time at the show with you. guys.
We really did. That was so much fun. We got super duper decked out.
My gosh, that was so fun. I think... Someone nailed it by saying that we look like fairies from different realms.
And I was like, yes. Whoa, I didn't even know that was the theme, but that was the theme.
We very much do. And then... the like just like the little gifs that people were making of us because we looked so opposite yeah i was done It was really fun.
Somebody put one on Twitter that was like my two different personalities.
Yes, I saw that. That's amazing. But yeah, that was like a lot of fun.
We got to do it at the Black Vale in Salem.
If you haven't been there, you're the worst.
Guys, it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen.
They're all amazing there. Matt and Ryan are like the greatest tattoo artists ever.
Of all time. Literally, I doubt that I will get another tattoo that's not done by one of the two of them.
Oh, no, I know I won't get another tattoo if they don't do it.
Yeah. I just know myself and I know that I'm a little bit like, what's the word?
Impulsive. Yes, very impulsive. I literally will not have another one done unless they do it.
I feel that way as well. They were phenomenal.
Insane. Tell them about your new tat. Yeah, I'm so excited.
I've got my... My David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King tattoo.
It looks... Amazing. And I love it so much.
It literally looks like he's just living inside of my arm.
Because he is now. And I got the quote, it's only forever, not long at all.
Because that's always been a quote that I'm like, really connected with and I think more so lately.
I've connected with it because it feels like so many great things are happening.
Yeah. And it just feels like everything goes by so quick.
So even if it's forever, it's just like boop.
It's not long at all. Goes by in a second.
So I got that on there and it's got my drippy little moon.
I love your drippy little moon. I just love it.
I'm so happy with it. It's gorgeous. It just belongs there.
I got a pinup witch that I've been wanting for a while.
She's riding a little broomstick and she is just a fierce motherfucker.
She is. I did name her Lilith because it felt so right.
I wanted to get a cat named Lilith, but if we got another cat, Franklin and Lux would conspire again. against us yeah they definitely would yeah so lilith lives on my arm forever lilith is beautiful she's so gorgeous i have I forget what this stuff is called.
It's like second skin. Second skin, yeah.
We have that on ours and I'm like dying to get it off there because I just want to parade Lilith around. around town just parade her around town i'm just gonna walk around town like hey this is lilith she's happy to meet you she is But you know, guys, it was so much fun.
We loved it. That was our third Moment House show in that trilogy of shows we were doing.
So much fun. Hopefully we'll do more, but we're just going to take like a little bit of a breather because.
You know, we're going to be starting to do three shows a week now.
So you're going to get three episodes. Wait, not shows.
I shouldn't say that. Like we're not doing like live shows.
No, no, no. week three episodes that was misleading uh three episodes a week and then we've got some like other cool New shows coming out and just a lot of fun stuff coming up.
Yeah, y'all. We're going to be busy with that stuff and we want to be able to concentrate on it.
So we're just going to take like... Tiny little pause button on the virtual shows, but it was super fun.
Hell yeah, it was so much fun. And, you know, maybe we'll put together something for like IRL soon.
Maybe. Like soon meaning months from now.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Not for today. We'll see. There's all kinds of good things happening.
Or another time. So we're very excited.
And today we are going to talk about something that you shouldn't be excited about, which is like, you know, there's some murder.
Yep. Ghosts are pretty exciting, I guess.
That's kind of fun. Depends on the kind of ghost.
There's some ghosts in here. OK. There's some like gnarly pharmacists, which is not great.
No, no, never. There's also like a plague that everyone like just ignored because it was happening during like a couple of other events.
A plague that everybody. he just ignored that sounds weirdly familiar it like right it just kind of like that's weirdly triggering flew under the radar a little bit so imagine that Yeah, I don't know.
Imagine a plague that everyone ignores. This is like a... crazy episode i think because there were so many things that i was interested in in this so i just kind of like threw all of them in this one episode it's a big it's a um It's a smorgasbord.
It is. It's like a casserole. Yeah. Like a really yummy casserole of things.
I'm never going to say no to a casserole.
I love that. Because you know what? I was feeling in the New Orleans mood.
Sometimes I just get in that mood. I get it.
You wrote a whole book about that mood. You know, and I've been looking at stuff to do with that.
Like, stay tuned. But... I have been looking at that and I've been like rereading things.
So I'm like, I was like, you know what? I got to do a New Orleans case.
But I was like, I don't know. I want to do something spooky.
Yeah. So I found it. So you took it to a place of spooky spooky NOLA.
I did, I took it to a place of NOLA. So we're going to talk about that crazy little pandemic that happened that nobody, well, like I say nobody knew about, but like it was highly ignored. okay okay basically yeah people knew about it because they were suffering from it but We're going to start with that just because it interested the hell out of me and scared the hell out of me.
And then we'll go into the ghost stories.
Okay, cool. So during the infamous Spanish flu pandemic, which we talked about on the show before. that was like a pretty infamous event but there was something even more well-known that was happening during that, which was World War I. That was a pretty big event.
It was. There was also a crazy, terrifying hidden plague that was going on and it got buried by all those things.
So this plague was called... lethargic encephalitis lethargic encephalitis or encephalitis lethargica If you're nasty.
If you're nasty, thank you for doing that.
You knew it. You knew it was in there. We've been saying that a lot lately.
We have. I said that to John the other day, and he was like, ugh.
John is always in a place of awe when it comes to the two of us saying dumb things.
So encephalitis lethargica. It honestly seems like something made up in a terrifying horror fantasy novel.
It's really scary. I'm going to be like, I mean, if you ask me, which like you didn't, but I'm here.
I did with the microphones. I telepathically said, why was it so scary?
Why was it so scary? So this plague started somewhere at the end of 1916, possibly early 1917, and it looks like it began in Europe. but then quickly spread all over the world.
The first mention and pseudo diagnosis of this disease came from the Psychiatric Neurological Clinic of the University of Vienna, and it was found by Dr. Constantin von Economo.
I'm sure I butchered that. I'm sorry. I'm American.
You're doing amazing. He noticed a lot of patients coming in with strange symptoms that could possibly be different things like He could fit them in with like meningitis and things like that.
But they weren't lining up clinically like perfect with that.
So he was like, What is this? What's going on?
There was very intense lethargy associated with the patients that were coming in with these symptoms.
And the symptoms that they had were stranger and stranger as they went on.
So he began writing about it. And he referred to the diagnosis of these patients as being from what he called encephalitis Apparently at the same time, a French doctor was seeing the same kind of things. in the hospital where he was at, and his name was René Cruchet.
And he also was baffled that these patients were obviously not being able to be placed into an existing clinical diagnosis.
So this illness could be found like a lot of illnesses to present as acute and then it would roll into a chronic phase, which is scary.
Both these phases suck ass. Like a lot. Oh.
So I'm going to refer to it probably like a lot as E-L, just so I don't have to keep saying the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. That's a big word. So acute EL would start as a really shitty version of the flu.
You got the gastrointestinal issues, you got fever, chills, vertigo, all kinds of shitty things. freaking me out a little bit.
I know, it's a little scary. But then this would pass into neurological distress.
Now, the one I know the faces that Ash is making right now.
Trust me. This changes drastically from what you think it is.
From a place of cove to a place of lethargy.
To a place of very scary. So the one most would suffer from was hemiplegia, which is when one side of your body just goes into paralysis. while the other is completely fine and working as it did before.
So often when that would start, the person would just go into a deep sleep and wouldn't wake up for sometimes weeks.
Like a straight up coma. Now, even now, we don't have a test to diagnose this.
So it just ends up being something rare that they will have to accidentally stumble upon diagnosing you with.
Like, not for real, like, accidentally stumble upon.
Yeah, yeah. But they just, like... exclude all other clinical diagnoses and just like end up on this and are like, I guess this is it.
What the fuck? Because there's no formal test and there never was because they can't figure this thing out.
That's really terrifying. It is. So the acute form of this had a few initial forms like phases that it went through.
One of these was the somnolent ophthalmoplegic phase.
Oh, just that. Just that. Great job. Thank you.
I had to look up the pronunciation, but you know, we got there.
We did. Sometimes, you know, you look up their pronunciation and you're like, okay, I got it.
And then you go to say it and you're like, Nope, I don't have it.
Sometimes or every time. Every time. Exactly.
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But this was the most common phase. This phase caused severe delirium in the patient and uncontrollable body tics.
Ooh. This is the phase that makes patients feel extreme lethargy.
They would be unable to stay awake and when they would sleep, it would be for days at a time, sometimes weeks.
This is the scariest part to me. This whole thing would then go into the patient experiencing pseudosomnolence. which is when they would fall into the sleep while literally doing anything. in the middle of speaking, eating, using the bathroom, walking, the patient would just drop.
Once this happened, that sleep, like I said before, would be significantly long.
But pseudosomnolence... caused this patient to have their eyes wide open.
What the fuck? fully aware of everything happening around them the entire time they were asleep, quote unquote.
Now, when you have narcolepsy and like you like because you fall asleep if you have narcolepsy like quickly?
There's different types of narcolepsy. I think a lot of people think narcolepsy is just like you fall asleep all the time.
Yeah. But that's not the case. There's like a lot of things with narcolepsy. that have to do with that?
Because my question was going to be if like this plague was causing so many neurological disorders.
Is narcolepsy? Is narcolepsy a neurological disorder?
I believe it is. Fun fact, it is. We just looked it up.
We just looked it up. I figured I knew it was, but I was like, I don't want to say without looking.
So my question was like, is this causing narcolepsy?
But this is not narcolepsy. No, nowhere in any of the things I found were they describing this as narcolepsy.
This is like a very different thing. Okay.
Because in narcolepsy, you're going to sleep, like you're sleeping.
Right, so you're not aware of what's around you.
And in a coma, you're in a coma. But this was just this catatonic state. where you would just lay there with your eyes open, Unable to move and just seeing everything that was going on around you and hearing it.
Like sleep paralysis, but even different than that.
That's exactly it. And these patients would later come out of their like, quote unquote, sleep and tell their loved ones everything they saw and heard while they were asleep. sleep and be like, I heard all of it.
The fuck? And A neurologist named Oliver Sacks in 1973 was studying this, and he said about this, They neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life.
They were insubstantial as ghosts and as passive as zombies.
And that's what's crazy. These patients were literally seen as like zombies. because they were in a state of awake and sleep and appeared to be dead.
And this phase was definitely the one with the highest mortality rates.
Over 50% of patients suffering from this phase would die.
So, like, this would just happen at random times and then eventually they would die?
Yeah, because as we'll talk about, there's a lot more that comes after OK.
So a couple of other forms of this acute EL that you could suffer from. were the hyperkinetic form and the amyostatic-akinetic phase.
So the hyperkinetic phase included patients suffering from myarrhythmia of the ocular and masticatory muscles.
Which is rare and happens when there are involuntary jerks and ticks of the eyes and your jaw at the same time.
Ooh, that sounds very unpleasant. Right?
These movements wouldn't be limited only to the eyes and jaw though.
Like that would happen at the same time.
But it was the whole body as well. Like a series of involuntary movements would plague the patients from every corner of their body.
What the fuck? And these movements would cause involuntary screaming and vocalizations as well.
Stop. And it wasn't over though. All of this happened and then they would slip into a manic phase of the hyperkinetic phase.
This is where patients would start to hallucinate things during the day and at night. in their sleep cycles would reverse completely almost like a narcoleptic kind of thing but pain would set in because of the movements and then extreme lethargy would follow.
And isn't this horrifying? This sounds so, so terrible.
It gets worse. No, like how, though? The amniostatic a kinetic phase was the one that is the scariest one to me.
It sounds. Even its name is scary. It just sounds scary.
It was the rarest phase and it caused patients to suffer from waxy flexibility.
And this is where their limbs would become completely rigid.
And could only be maneuvered by someone else like a doll.
What? Yes. So you became a fucking marionette doll? someone could move their limbs for them and the limbs would stay in that position until someone else moved it again. like literally like a Barbie.
You would literally become a doll. No, that's so scary.
Yeah. And this is for real. This is real.
So how many, like, has this happened like anytime recently again?
So luckily it died out. Okay. But there are very rare times when it can happen.
Oh my God. And I'll talk about how they think it transmits and all that, but not a lot is known about it still.
Okay, I'll wait. So sometimes these patients would just be immobile and rigid, like a dead body for days.
Oh, my God. And it's like somebody with like rigor mortis.
Yeah. Like you're just cracking the rigor mortis and moving into a different position.
That's what I was thinking. And what's even scarier is during this whole thing, the waxy flexibility phase, their faces would not change or show emotion.
So like, what if you raised their eyebrow?
You could literally just like be and you couldn't like they could not make their muscles make any kind of emotion on their face.
It was just like a doll. This is so scary. and this could last for months months months no Then we'll talk about the chronic phase.
There's another one. Another one. Another one.
Another one. You should see if you can stand in for DJ Khaled.
It sounds so spot on. Nobody knew that that was me.
They thought it was DJ. DJ. DJ Khaled. Uh, so yeah, so there's, there's usually an acute phase and a chronic phase there's, you know, that's happening with COVID even like chronic stuff is happening.
Yay. So the chronic phase of lethargic encephalitis was terrifying.
It could come immediately after the acute phase.
Or sometime years later and would just hit a patient.
Oh, when you had moved on with your life?
Yep. After they thought they had recovered, one patient got it 45 years after having an acute case.
No, no. Patients would develop Parkinson's. and suddenly fall right back into the sleep issues that they were having and the hallucinations but then they would also get respiratory issues and neurological issues on top of it.
I need to know where the fuck this thing came from.
Oh yeah. One of the scariest things to come from chronic lethargic encephalitis was sudden, what is it, oculogyric, there it is, oculogyric crisis, right? which is the sudden involuntary upward deviation of the eyeball.
So your eyes would just roll back in your head without your consent and it would last hours.
And you could not move them back. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't tell me that. No matter what you would do, your movements wouldn't cause those things to come back down.
Eyeball things are literally not for me in any way, shape or form.
It gets worse. You need to stop saying that is the thing though.
It gets worse. Besides these horrifying symptoms, Patients with chronic lethargic encephalitis can sometimes also experience a host of psychological symptoms. ranging from like I said, hallucinations, extreme emotions, and excessive puns.
Is one of the things that is listed. Are you affected by this?
It's called I Do Love a Pun. You love a pun.
But then I looked it up. It's an ad. thing.
How? So what makes that happen? It is called Witzelsucht.
Witzel suit. And it can happen when certain parts of the brain connected to the frontal lobe have been damaged.
Like people will suddenly fall into a thing where like they cannot stop making puns.
What? Like, it's a real thing. And because I can always connect anything to Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the original run.
Always. There was an episode where one of them put on a belt, a magical belt that made it so they had to tell like a million puns before it would come off.
Do you think they were inspired by EO. And I was like, were you talking about Witzelsucht?
They might have been. I think they were inspired by Witzelsucht.
But I was like, but that happens when traumatic brain injuries happen.
That's no fucking joke. So that same thing happens from a TBI?
It can happen. Yeah. Like it can happen.
It has to be like, I think a very specific.
Like region of the brain. Or some very specific connection, which I'm not even sure they... are fully sure which connection needs to be like severed or damaged.
But it's like it can happen. The brain.
The brain. Is a wild bitch. But that can happen.
Witzelsucht can happen because of chronic lethargic encephalitis.
I the thing is, I feel like I hear about these things and then I'm a hypochondriac.
So I think that I'm experiencing them. So I'd like to personally thank you so much for this episode.
You're welcome. Tomorrow, I'm going to be punning out for days well and you know it gets worse so you should literally name this episode it It gets worse.
You know what? I think I might actually subtitle this.
It gets worse. EL, it gets worse. It gets worse.
Some of the scariest cases happen to 30% of chronic lethargic encephalitis. suffers and it puts them into straight up psychosis.
Worse even was the fact that this happens to children. more than adults oh and that's so sad because i mean you don't understand this anyway but kids are probably like what the fuck is happening get ready because it's gonna get gnarly for a second, just a little warning.
Children begin experiencing violent outbursts and harming themselves and others.
Young kids would be would attempt to harm, sexually assault and murder those around them, including their own siblings.
What? Young children too. like eight-year-olds and 10-year-olds and shit.
One documented case happened, and it is in every medical thing about this, where an eight year old girl pulled out her teeth and then calmly gouged out both of her eyes.
Um, no, thank you. Yes, nope, nope, nope.
Because of lethargic encephalitis. Oh my god.
And everyone experiencing these bouts of extreme violent psychosis could describe the events later and said they felt like zombies during it.
So did they feel pain when this would happen?
I don't think they felt... If they felt pain... then they just didn't care.
They knew they hated doing whatever they were doing.
They said, I was repulsed by my behavior.
But I felt compelled to do it. What the fuck?
Isn't that... horrifying that's so sad for that little girl because like did she recover and then And I didn't find anything out about her, like, prognosis after that.
That's so sad. But... At what cost at that point?
She pulled out her teeth and her eyes. Like all of them?
And they said she like calmly just plucked out her eyes.
I need you to stop. Now, a great number of these survivors, especially children, ended up in institutions or ending their own lives just to end the torment.
That's the thing, because that's exactly the perfect word, is torment.
It's truly torment. Yeah. And how did it spread?
Yes. We still don't fucking know. Get out of here. there's evidence of it being highly transmissible, like person to person, a la COVID.
And there's evidence that it doesn't get passed person to person.
To me, it feels very COVID sometimes, like sometimes it's going to knock down every around you.
Yeah. And then sometimes people will just mysteriously avoid it even being in the same house.
And this is a virus. Yeah, this is a virus.
And possibly there was different mutations and strains that they just weren't known about at the time.
And maybe that's why some of those strains were more contagious, some weren't.
More transmissible, yeah. couldn't figure it out because it also didn't last long enough for them to really do as much.
And at the time, they didn't have the technology that we obviously have now.
So one example of this is from 1919. So this is only a few years after it started.
And there was a wild outbreak at the Derby and Derbyshire Rescue and Training Home for Girls.
In a period of two weeks, 12 out of 21 girls came down with lethargic encephalitis.
Six died within two weeks of being diagnosed.
Oh my gosh. Treatments were basically nothing.
Like, they didn't really have anything to treat you with.
They used electroconvulsive therapy, but there was no cure or real... productive treatment that they could find.
Wow. There's legit thunder right now. There's thunder and it was lasting for so long that I was like...
It's also sunny and, like, a million degrees out right now.
So, like, why? Well, yeah. And then tomorrow is supposed to be super cold.
So, like... Cold front meets a warm front, you know?
Just meteorology in here. Meteorology with ash.
But it was like rumbling off in the distance as I was talking.
It just kept going. But it makes sense that it's thundering right now while you're talking about ES. the doom and gloom of it all what the fook so that's the thing it's like that derby sheer that derby and derby sheer like rescue and training home That would showcase that it's highly transmissible person to person because they're all living together.
Yeah. But then there were other, like I found a bunch of other things that said like a whole family would have, like one person would get it, no one else would get it.
Like with COVID. Like with COVID. So I feel like there had to have been mutations and strains of this that they just weren't able to detect at that time.
But they didn't really, like I said, they had nothing to really try.
This might be like a really stupid question, but is there any way that they could study it now?
Like, could they find the virus? Well, I mean, the thing is, this kind of... piece it out.
Like it's so rare now that I don't even think it's like a thing but like don't they want to know so that like what if it happens again well yeah i mean but like how are they really gonna well that was my question i don't really know if they can what um And all this kind of brings me to the notion that medicine and medical treatments for these types of things were not great, even at that time, like in the...
20s you know what i mean i mean it makes sense but before then it was abysmal We thought that was bad.
Medicine was terrifying, and they would just throw willy-nilly things at a wall to see what would fix.
Now, Louisiana and New Orleans in particular was hit pretty hard with lethargic encephalitis.
I wonder what the reason was for that. They weren't hit like particularly hard.
Like they didn't get it above and overall everybody, but they definitely got hit.
They were among the hardest hit. Yeah, they were just among some of the gnarly ones.
And in 1922, doctors were fumbling to try to find a diagnosis or something to diagnose it properly.
Sure. And by then, medicine had at least at 1922, medicine had at least moved past the point of like... do some cocaine about it like that was that that was like a thing way back then oh yeah but Like two years prior to this, I believe in 1920, penicillin was discovered.
Oh, great. Yeah. they were moving in the right direction at this point.
Like, you know, so there was a little more.
Pedicillin cures like everything. And what's crazy is by 1926, the disease just like seemingly.
It just vanished. It just dwindled into nothing.
And by 1930, it was all but forgotten. Wow.
And now it's like nowhere. It's like I couldn't even find a case of it.
You know why it's nowhere? Because she had hers.
She had. It was who? That's insane. So I just had to go through that because that astounded me and fascinated me.
I was like, everybody needs to know about How does this carry into the rest of the episode?
It's very loosely, but you know, we're going to go with it.
I'm glad. It was just really scary. I was like, medical stuff is scary.
We are going to talk about medical stuff and like pharmacies and stuff.
So I figured it was a nice little segue.
I love it. And I found it while I was looking at these things.
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So it basically, it made me think about like Spanish flu and how we were so amazed at all that when we were recording the Axemen of New Orleans episode.
Oh, what a better time. And how we were just like, whoa, they're wearing masks. stores were shut down.
That's insane. That must have been so wild.
Crazy. And then we ate our hats about that.
And now I'm like, well, how were things even before this medically?
Like what was going on? It was bad. So let's travel back in time a bit in New Orleans.
Okay. It wasn't until 1804 that there were any kind of laws or regulations regarding medicine. and pharmacies or pharmacists.
Oh, good. That's great. Before that, it was just like...
You know what? I would love to just do this.
So you just like open a store and be like, well, I can bloodlet you if you'd like to come in.
Woof. Yeah. So in 1804, Governor William Claiborne was like, wait a second.
Maybe we should actually be making sure that people who are diagnosing and treating unknown and deadly diseases know what they're doing.
Like have some kind of credence. Yeah, and that they're not just like poisoning people with reckless abandon.
I feel like this is like a great move to make.
Good for him. Good for him, man, because these new laws went into motion.
And it made it so that if you wanted to open a pharmacy and be a pharmacist, you had to go through a three-hour oral exam and also go to school.
And it had to be given by like trusted doctors.
Like this whole thing had to happen. Good.
If you passed to that, you were in. Before that, nobody had done that.
Wow. So the first person to pass this exam officially was Louis J. DeFillo.
Get it, Louis? Now, after he completed his studies at the College of Pharmacy in Paris, France, He ended up running the first officially regulated and trusted pharmacy in the United States.
Very cool. What a badass. Yeah, so he was like the first licensed pharmacist in the United States.
I wasn't sure if we were rooting for him or not.
We are. We're rooting for him. He's pretty rad.
I didn't know if you were like throwing me for a loop.
I won't do that to you. So he married Emmy Adele Becknell and had, which like, what a flow, right? like now oh it's just like it's pretty i would introduce myself to people constantly my entire name all the time i would never stop introducing myself and i wouldn't take his name I'd be like, my name is Emmy Adele Becknell.
You have a name that cool, get out of here.
Yeah, exactly. Together, they had seven children.
A lot of children. When they opened the pharmacy and townhouse together.
Because remember, they opened the first licensed photography pharmacy together.
There you go. They added a soda fountain, a post office.
I think there was like a hardware store, like a convenience thing to make it like a one stop shop.
They literally opened a strip mall. Because back then, pharmacies were that.
They were like a place to hang out and like...
I remember when we were doing the Leopold and Loeb episode we did for like, one of our live shows, which I think I'll probably, we'll probably rerecord that at some point because like.
Yeah, that's a crazy tale and that was like a long time ago.
And I feel like you could go even more in depth now.
Exactly. I remember part of that was because it was around this time period.
And I remember part of that was like they would go like they talked about how you would go hang out at a pharmacy and I like candy and drinks and blah.
Like it wasn't just like an apothecary. It was an arcade even.
It was like a cool place to hang out, I guess.
So they made it like a really cool place to hang out.
And this pharmacy was at present day 514 Charter Street in New Orleans.
And it's a museum today. Oh, very cool.
You can go there and see the Apothecary Museum, like the pharmacy museum.
In the original building. Yeah. Oh, I love I want to go so bad.
Yeah, let's go. He lived with his family in the pharmacy until 1855.
So the building had been built to have the pharmacy on the bottom floor and then two floors on top where they could live.
Okay. He and his family stayed here working, living, experiencing some traumas.
Like the loss of two of their young children in the home Not at once, but just two at different times Thanks to like the 1800s of it all basically.
And then in 1855, he wanted to bring his family back to France to live because that's where he was from.
So we retired after 30 years of being the first pharmacist in the United States.
Seems fair. And he sold the pharmacy for $18,000 to a man named Dr. Joseph Dupas. he's a dick isn't he this guy was an evil fuck i just felt it yeah he's an evil fuck no one liked him and i think he was like a battle medic like from the war okay but he was like oh great awesome he was not shit that's who we want as a pharmacist yeah you don't want that no one liked him and the popularity of the pharmacy really just plummeted oh People didn't trust him, but he was kind of like a necessary evil to them.
So they just kind of used him reluctantly.
And because he sucked and no one wanted to come to his pharmacy, he kind of just... forced them to come to his pharmacy.
So the way he would do it was he would put things like heroin and cocaine in his mixtures of medicine. when they were never necessary or when they were just normally not used in those medicines.
Because remember, those were things that were used before.
So he was making people dependent on the medicine?
He would add them in, exactly, not for the healing properties, but because they were addictive.
And it would make customers keep having to come back again and again.
Imagine that. would add voodoo into his practices, but he was not a professional and he was not careful or respectable about it.
He did it recklessly and sloppily. So he caused a lot of uproar that way.
And he literally used his position... to perform horrific medical experimentation on random people.
Because pharmacists at this time acted as doctors as well.
They would do like minor things. So he would test medications of his own creation, or he would like bloodlet and test how long people would bleed out.
He used scissors and razor blades on small issues when he didn't need to, like, cut people up.
What? The fuck is this guy? He was fucked.
And seemingly he would just love the pain.
And just like he just liked having helpless victims who would come to him for medical help.
So in other words, he was a serial killer.
Yeah, essentially. Most notably, and most often...
Young poor pregnant women are the people he would test on.
No. He would test poisons and force feed the medications that would kill their child or kill child and mother together.
He would literally cause miscarriages. Many of them were killed in the process, like the mother was too.
And he would bring them to the back alley of the pharmacy where he would throw their remains into a waiting carriage and then bring them somewhere to dump them and how did nobody catch on to this well they did so to this day no one knows the amount of victims because a lot of them were poor right a lot of them like just he he used that as to his advantage he preyed upon them But some remains were found after his death, and they were found in the courtyard behind the building.
He had buried them there. I'm so pissed that it was after he died so he didn't have to do it so many times.
He didn't have to face anything. And he was questioned by police before he died because neighbors saw the strange coming and goings of patients or the strange comings and not goings. of patients.
And they were the ones who alerted authorities, but there was no proof to tie him to anything.
He would just because he would just claim these pregnant women moved back to wherever they came from.
And that was that. He was like, oh, he came to me for this medicine.
I gave him to her. She's gone. Wow. And a lot of them didn't have a lot of family or people they were connected to.
Yeah. Yeah. Luckily this fuck died of syphilis in 1897.
Oh, fucking hell yeah. Can I get an amen?
Can I get a hell yeah? Now, remember, this place is still open as a museum now.
Woof. With everything set up like it is, it's like pretty remarkable.
I want to see it. But there's some residual, some energy happening, lingering around. practicing voodoo with no experience and murdering people like hand in hand yeah that that might lead to some hauntings Yeah, I feel like that is... He feels like he was like...
He was a really, really, really bad Dr. Facilier.
Is that the guy from Princess and the Frog?
Because you took that thought from my brain I just want to let you know that that was my thought.
Like he was messing with things he shouldn't have been messing with.
Yeah. I love that movie so much. But like, and at least Dr. Facilier had some kind of like know-how.
This guy did not. He had nothing. He just like, but I think he opened shit up that he shouldn't have opened personally.
I think it already sounds like that and I don't even know what happened.
It does. So apparently people will see an apparition of a man in a brown suit and hat with a mustache, and they're said to be seeing him a lot.
Get away from me. This is thought to be Dr. Dupas because he often dressed like this, like he was always wearing his brown suit.
You have a lab coat over it. Sometimes people see that lab coat.
Of course he dressed like a big old bag of poop.
Of course he did. employees who work at the museum say people will see him and then the alarm will be tripped. and they'll come in to see this and like at night the alarm will trip a lot and they'll come in to see the place like kind of ransacked like but not Nothing stolen, just things thrown around, but with no evidence on the cameras of anyone entering or leaving the building.
But can they see things flying around? But they can like, I don't know if they have that on camera, but they'll come in and they'll see like things scattered.
And like the entrance cameras show that like no one came in, no one came out.
And the doors remain locked. terrifying.
So visitors will also say they feel a heaviness in the museum, like really? really immediately.
Yeah, I bet. Particularly any visitor who is pregnant They say that they'll feel like overcome with emotions in that museum.
And if they traveled to the second floor where he would perform a lot of his heinous medical experimentations that ended in death...
Many say they will experience nausea and lightheadedness, or they'll feel cramping in their stomach.
Ooh, I would not go here. Which is like, holy shit.
I know now I'm like, wait until you had that baby.
Yes, after, what is it, gestation? And people obviously think this is, like, the pregnant victims, like, the spirits of them, like, just reaching out.
Ooh. Yeah. It's like really scary. I gave me the chills.
The chilly willies. That is heavy AF. Now, people also will see a young boy and a young girl running around in period clothing.
Oh, yeah. These are thought to be the spirits of the young children that belong to the original owners, Dr. DeFilo and his wife.
I feel like they should be in France. I know.
The ones who passed away in the home, obviously.
And they're reported to be happy, but very mischievous.
And patrons have seen them and thought they were just like part of some like They were like, oh, they dressed up little kids in period clothing.
They were like, no, we did not do that. Moral of the story is that no one is ever actually dressed in period clothing.
That's a myth. I feel like that happens a lot.
All the lighthouses we've done are people like, I thought it was part of the show.
And it's like, it's never part of the show.
Never. Like it's just, it's never part of the show.
Like if we ever, if we ever go anywhere and I see somebody dressed in period clothing, I'm going to assume that that person is dead in a ghost.
Oh yeah. I'm assuming that's a ghost. I'm not going to ask anybody if anybody's dressed up.
No, what I'm going to do is go straight over to that person and be like, are you a fucking ghost?
Or are you just an actor in period clothing?
We are cool. Yeah, we can vibe. Are you or are you not? bro you you go over to the guy dressed in period clothing you say what the fuck is up kyle And they just go whoosh.
And then they say goodbye. Farewell. Ta-ta.
Ta-ta for now. Whatever their period goodbye was, they say deuces.
Deuces. Why doesn't that ever happen? We talk about this a lot.
Because we haven't seen anybody haunted yet.
No, we haven't. That's why it hasn't happened.
It hasn't happened. Did I say we haven't seen anybody haunted?
But I just let it go. I've seen a lot of haunted people, actually.
Well, yeah, I've also seen some ghosts, so I've seen it all.
I'm seeing it all. I'm seeing some shit.
I'm just going to sign off. Oh my god, we're right on.
I'm just going to sign off. So yeah, so some have also seen a women, a women.
Guys, we are trailing off. it's you know after like it's we've had a lot going on this week we're slappy i'm slap happy So a lot of people will see a woman walking around the courtyard in the back and seeming to be sad or lost in thought.
Aw. When they approach her, she vanishes quickly or she hurries away and then seems to vanish.
She says, Leave me alone. She's like, everyone leave me alone.
Now, that's the crazy pharmacy in New Orleans.
Sure was. Speaking of medical shit in New Orleans, let's end our chat with a doomed affair, a murder in a quarantine hospital.
Us. Let's do that. Okay. Let's do that. Let's do that.
In 1803, a married couple moved to the French Quarter together. and they were gonna build a business together they were like the world is our oyster let's go They were Guillaume Marr and Mary Wheaton.
And they moved from France. Mary Wheaton?
I know. Is that her? Is that her? It isn't her.
Oh. But isn't that funny? That is funny.
Yeah, part of my case was... What's her name?
Mary Eleanor. Oh, we're on a different page.
I was thinking about Wheaton College. Oh, there's that too.
Yeah. Either way, this isn't her. Okay. So Mary Whedon.
And they arrived in New Orleans and bought two buildings on the same block.
So one of them was 508 Toulouse Street and 514 Toulouse Street.
One was set up to be a feed store, which is like food for livestock and shit.
And the other was an oyster shop. Chucking house.
Which I thought you would love. Fucking go.
I can chuck an oyster. You could have worked here.
I would have. You would have loved it. Maybe not.
Probably not. I don't think, I definitely would not.
Stinky. Unfortunately, soon after opening these, Marr, like Guillaume, he died of yellow fever oh because that was like rampant that was really just everywhere Everyone who was dying was dying of yellow fever.
And Mary soon met another man named Joseph Baptan Deere.
And they married in 1806. So she was just like, okay, bye, Guillaume.
And then she just went on to the next. So this was actually Mary's third marriage and she had amassed quite a bit of money from her precious husbands.
By all accounts, there's nothing nefarious when it comes to Mary's marriages.
She's just unlucky in love. just unlucky, but she was getting a lot of money from it.
So, and she was a business boss too. So she kept those businesses running constantly.
Like when a husband would die, she took over and that was her thing.
Respectable. Now, obviously. to everybody, it seemed like this guy, this Joseph Bob 10 deer, um, he seemed like he was kind of after the money a little bit because like one she had a lot of And two, it was soon after her husband died.
Three, he was like, apparently every everywhere I saw describes him as like very unattractive. oh like they were like he was just this like sloppy like balding guy who's just like That's that's where I found the description of him is always like sloppy and like balding.
And I'm like, in a not attractive way, like you can be balding and be fine.
Plenty of bald dudes are just like. like super i'm just saying i'm like sticking up for you guys balding we got you it's okay this guy though no Well, and he's probably a dick anyway.
He's a dick and he was sloppy and gross.
Yeah, get out of here. So they're married in 1806.
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Be sure with the shield. in the field. Um, again, she had a lot of money.
She was running those businesses. She was going for it.
Now he immediately started cheating on her, like immediately having an affair.
I hope he balds even more. Right. And because this is where all horrific ghost stories, I feel like, and bad vibes happen, there's always an affair. always involved.
Both of our cases the other night featured affairs and we actually did not plan that.
Gnarly Affairs. That's always how it is.
It should have been named Gnarly Affairs.
Just going to say that. I don't know why we didn't do that.
Idiots. Hindsight, you know. 2020. He started a very torrid affair with a woman named Angelique Dubois.
I mean, if you're gonna have a torrid affair with anybody, it's gonna be with Angelique Dubois.
Yeah, Angelique Dubois only has torrid affairs.
Yeah, she doesn't have relationships. Nothing else.
She has torrid affairs. She doesn't give her heart to anybody.
Angelique's heart is her own. Angelique.
Dubois. Dubois. And apparently she was described as like...
Beautiful, obviously, because her name is Angelique Dubois.
And she had brown hair down to her waist.
Ooh, girl. And like, was just like very ethereal looking.
Like she's Angelique Dupont. I love it. You know?
So Angelique Dubois, you know shit's going down with her.
She rents. It's like she has space in her head rent free, like the kids say.
Oh, absolutely. Like the youth, because I fucked that up real bad.
She has space in your head rent free. That's good.
She has some rented space. in your head that's free and she doesn't even pay for it yeah that's what the kids are calling it.
That's what the kids say. Well, Angelique actually did pay rent because she actually worked.
He owned with his wife, Wolf, by the way.
She also rented a small room on the third floor of the building.
Oh, so he was up on the third floor a lot.
So he was shitting where he worked. So he's a fucking cad, is what he is.
Oh, a cad. He's a cad? He's a cad. I've never heard of that.
Take off a glove, slap him across the face, and go, you cad.
What, cad is like an ass? Yeah. Cad. Cad.
Oh, I've never heard that. Oh, my God. I think that's in a Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode.
Wow. Who are you even? I think they, oh my God, it is.
It is? Okay, guys, brief break because we're crazy.
It's a fun episode. It's a fun episode. Yep.
There's an episode where Harvey gets put under... Nope, not Harvey.
Her other boyfriend there gets put under a spell.
And he turns into like some gross, like creepy.
Josh. Yes, Josh. Good job. Thank you. And he has that creepy, they give him like a creepy little pencil mustache.
Ew. acts like a creeper okay the way to break the spell is she has to slap him across the face and say, you cad, and then it breaks the spell.
I'm googling cad. Do it. I've never heard this.
I love it. I think it needs to be brought back.
I suppose I have because I've probably seen that episode.
I just think that we should bring it back.
Is all. A cad? I also feel like we should play the clip really quick.
So do it. Hold on. Don't be afraid to swoon.
I'll be here to catch you. Okay, he's under a cat spell.
I hate to do this. You cat! I know. Googled it too.
And it means a man who behaves dishonorably, especially toward a woman.
And then for the similar words, similar words, scoundrel.
Which, I love that word. I honestly... I did not see it in anything.
When I read about him, I was like, what a fucking cad.
It just popped into my brain. You have a phenomenal vocabulary.
Thank you. Ma would be, I mean, she's like around.
She's prepped. I would be probably. She would be so proud of you.
She's like over there. She's over there.
She's fine. Yeah, so he's a fucking cat.
He is. He really is. What a scoundrel. Um, I love being able to prove that I can connect anything to Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Everybody has a talent that just happens to be one of yours.
That is mine. I want to watch that episode.
So do it after. Angelique. Dubois is clearly not going to just step aside.
You know this. Gals like her are at the forefront.
She's a gorgeous, gorgeous girl. She's a gorgeous, gorgeous girl.
Is she kind of a bitch? Yeah, I mean, she's having an affair with a married man.
And it gets worse because, of course, their affair was very intense, but not that long when this happened.
So all of a sudden she's like, you need to leave your wife and marry me.
No. And he's like, no. No. Which I'm not sure why.
Because his wife is rich. And I think it was just the money.
Definitely. But it's like... You're the worst.
Like, you're both the worst. You're both cads.
But she got pissed. And they started to have like a really intense argument.
This thing lasted through the entire, like, it was after hours, obviously.
But it lasted like throughout the entire feed store.
They were just screaming at each other. Chasing each other around.
Literally. Like seeds at each other. Just throwing livestock food at each other.
They ended up at the top floor where she finally screamed...
I'm gonna tell your wife about us. Which she did by screaming it in the place where the wife was.
Well... That was all he needed to hear to fly into a blind state of rage. because he grabbed her by the throat and strangled her, but didn't initially kill her.
She went unconscious, so he just threw her off the side of the three-story building.
Are you shitting me? She hit the pavement in the courtyard below and died on impact.
Oh, yeah. She broke her neck immediately.
Yeah. So he ran down those stairs looking around to make sure no one had seen this happen, because again, it was after hours.
And he quickly decided he had to dispose of this body now.
And so he looks around the courtyard and saw like a sewer hole there.
Stop it. And he threw her into the hole and buried her. thinking he got away with it.
But what he didn't realize was that a young teenage boy had been looking into the courtyard from another building while this occurred.
He saw the entire thing. He heard the entire thing.
Joseph saw him. Saw him looking out that window.
When he saw him, they both looked at each other and the kid ran.
But Joseph panicked. He chased him and lost him.
And at this point, he knew he was caught.
And now... not only was he caught having an affair, but he was caught murdering someone and burying the body.
Like, he just... You don't get out of that.
That's the catch of all cops. And now he knew there was no way. of stopping this kid from spilling the beans of what he had just done.
Also, I'm sure the rage wore off a bit and the full realization of what he had done probably started to hit him, at least I hope it did.
He trudged his way up to the third floor where he had killed Angelique and he hung himself from the balconies. immediately.
Coward. Now, luckily the teen boy did alert the cops.
He ran right to the authorities. They were able to find Angelique's body, but he had obviously taken the coward's way out, like you said, never faced any charges for it.
Now, Mary, his widow there, just kept running the business there.
She was like, I got shit to do. Yeah, she was like, I'm busy.
She was booked and busy, baby. She was busy.
She kept living on the second floor. Good.
Like, whatever. Yeah, she didn't do anything wrong.
Unfortunately, she died at 35 years old.
I'm assuming it was probably yellow fever because I think everybody was dying at that time of that.
But it wasn't long after this that the building changed hands.
Because obviously she's gone, there's no one else to get to.
Right. and it turned into a hospital that you was used to like quarantine yellow fever victims They would literally seal off two floors and quarantine.
So that's going to be even more haunted.
Now, basically it was a place for them to die horrifically.
Yeah. These kind of quarantine hospitals were very common, and unfortunately, people would often be suffering so much that they would just choose to throw themselves out of windows and off of buildings to their deaths rather than continue to die slowly.
Right. So these buildings still exist, though, and they're not quarantine hospitals anymore, although we won't be so shocked at this stuff after the last quarantine. couple of years we've all had.
Yeah. Like I'm like, they're not quarantine hospitals anymore.
And then I'm like, but you know, they might come around again if they weren't.
But what is crazy to see, though, now is that the windows of this building all have metal bars covering them.
And they were put there during the yellow fever epidemic to stop patients from constantly throwing themselves out of the windows to their deaths.
That's how much of a problem it was. And they are still there as a very creepy reminder of that.
Seriously, how spooky to see that in person, I bet.
So spooky. Now, in 1989, the building became an Irish pub.
Which is... Wow, this building has seen some shit.
It's a sharp turn. It was called O'Flaherty's Irish Pub, and it was opened by Daniel O'Flaherty, to be exact.
Of course, immediately sightings of our original two toxic lovers as well as yellow fever victims were...
Oh, I bet. In fact, it quickly became known as one of the most haunted areas in the French Quarter at the time.
Oh, shit. Which is like a very, that's a distinguished title.
I was going to say that is a... That is something because that is one of the spookiest and haunted places ever.
So Daniel, the owner, he played Celtic music.
I always say Celtic. yeah I know I've heard it's hot for debate whether it's It's Celtic or Celtic, but I'm like you.
I say Celtic. We always grew up saying Celtic in my house, so that's what I'm going to say.
Through Ireland heads, let us know. Yeah, please do.
So he would play Celtic music on the balcony often.
I love that. That was like part of the charm.
Yeah, that's very charming. While Mary, our jilted woman, would sometimes appear and listen.
She would do this when he played a specific song, which was Red is the Rose.
Oh. And I was like, ooh, so was I. I got to know the lyrics to this.
So I looked. And I was like, oh, I think that played in our house a lot because we had Irish music playing a lot in our house.
So this one, some of the lyrics are, come over the hills, my bonnie Irish lass. come over the hills to your darling.
You choose the road love and I'll make the vow and I'll be your true love forever.
Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows.
Fair is the lily of the valley. Clear is the water that flows from the boing.
I hope it is. But my love is fairer than any.
And then at one point it says... It's not for the parting that my sister pains.
It's not for the grief of my mother. It's all for the loss of my Bonnie Irish lass that my heart is breaking forever.
That's so sad. And I'm like was she just like feeling it?
She probably was. She was just sad. Yeah.
She was just bummed out. I hate that. But...
You know, people also see her in the second floor window looking into the courtyard.
And she just stares and then walks away.
And remember, the courtyard is where Angelique was thrown to her death.
So I don't know if she's just staring and thinking some thoughts.
But cooks in the kitchen will also see her in the kitchen.
And they say that like it appears like she's like making sure shit's going right because she's a businesswoman and she's like, don't fuck up my shit.
It's so funny. I feel like. I'm like, this happens often.
Here's this one instance of it. But I do feel like this happens often.
With like cooks in a kitchen, because I used to work at an Irish pub and the cooks in the kitchen, I think probably because they work so late into the night, this happens. they would constantly see like spirits and everything.
It does. I think it is because they're working so late and probably because they're just like the lifeblood.
Of a restaurant, you know what I mean? Absolutely.
If there's any spirits in a pub or a restaurant, they're probably going to make themselves known to the people cooking the food.
Makes sense. It's also, there's a bunch of stories that she throws things at women patrons, too.
Well, maybe she's like, stay away from my man.
I'm like, can we really blame her? She hasn't had great experience with it.
I'd let her throw something at me. I'd be like, it's okay, girl.
Now, people also saw Joseph's body swinging from the third floor balcony. oh i don't like they'll look up and think they see it and then they'll look again and it's gone oh that's really spooky but i'm like i don't want to see it even for a second no no Now, sometimes when they were up there, because there's several floors to the pub and everything.
Oh, that's really cool. I know. Well, it's not there anymore.
I shouldn't say there are, but there was.
Okay. Now, the people would be up there and they would feel like they were being pushed and some people would get scratched and have visible scratches.
That always freaks me the fuck out because what energy is, like, is it people that are scratching you? is energy i'm like what's happening freaks me out dude apparently fights often happen up there too and patrons suddenly feel aggressive and belligerent,
It comes on with no provocation, although I imagine alcohol could have something to do with this.
That's just me. I was like, we are at a pub.
I saw it and I was like, I'll pass it along.
I'm pretty sure. I too have seen many fights break out at a pub.
You know what? Let's call this one debunked.
Let's call that one little instance. Like, I think people just fight because they're drunk.
I think so too. But you know what? He was a dunk.
He was a dunk. He was a dick and a punk.
I don't know if I was saying. I don't really know what that was.
Yeah. He's a punk. I like that. A dunk.
You're a dick punk. He was a dunk and he was super aggressive.
It's like a dunce. So maybe his energy is aggressive, like violent energy is just making people Because there are stories where people say like nothing's going on and they just feel like fighting someone.
But I'm also like, you probably just had one too many beers.
Yeah, I feel like. That's what that is.
But, you know, who knows? But many people would also run into Angelique just wandering around the court. and sometimes being on the third floor and crying.
Oh, which is sad. That is sad. But on nights like, cause it's like, you know what?
Everyone may be like, Angelique made a mistake here.
Everybody makes mistakes. Like she did not deserve to die for it.
Everybody has those days. But on nights that the pub was in full-
Swing Angelique came out to play. Because she is Angelique Dubois.
She is not. And shows. She's not sitting in her room. she would flirt with customers she would describe her to a t like the long brown hair to her waist And they would say that she would touch their arms and hands and whisper things to them.
Whisper sweet nothings in their ear. Whispering sweet nothings.
And when they lost track of her. Because she just vanished.
She's a ghost. The employees would tell them that they just got hit on by a ghost.
What a cool fucking story. And they were like, what?
Two truths and a lie. Let's go. Well, this will kind of bring Angelique into a better light, too, because she also really likes children and will sometimes hold their hands cute and like not an aggressive way but like in a comforting way And she really likes men, so she'll hold men's hands as well.
That's a dollar, but... Angelique will also sometimes just join ghost tours of the area.
Stop. People will see her. and then she's gone but her description is always the same and it's always around that place right like she'll just join the ghost tour really quick that's really cool now things also got thrown across the bar and not by rowdy patrons.
At night while the staff would be cleaning, a bottle would just sail across the room.
And they thought originally it was Angelique just getting kind of like spicy because she was a little bit spicy in life.
But I could also see it being Joseph because his temper sounded like he was pretty fucking bad considering it led him to murder someone.
So... Maybe he's just throwing, like, all the bottom shelf liquor.
Like, get the fuck out of here. And maybe he's just being a piece of shit dunk.
Top shelf only. Now, even worse, though, like, that's all fun and games, like, fun, like, you know.
Yeah. But there's stories of hearing the coughing and sniffling and crying of quarantined yellow fever patients.
People will still hear on like the upper floors where they would quarantine them, they'll hear bits of gagging and coughing. and they'll hear people like wailing and crying.
And worse yet, many have reported hearing specifically young children coughing and calling for their mothers.
No, that would ruin my entire fucking life.
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Now it is no longer O'Flaherty's Pub. Now it's like a series of apartments and there's a restaurant on the bottom floor. which is the New Orleans Creole Cookery Restaurant.
Ooh, I bet that food is to die for. All the same sightings and sounds seem to be occurring apparently.
And sometimes it like scares the shit out of people.
People will like run out of there. Well, because now you're in your apartment and you're seeing they're hearing this shit like that's not all right.
Exactly. But I want to visit this place.
If anybody's visited that area, let us know.
I would love to hear it. And I'll feature it on another episode because I'm not done with New Orleans yet.
Never. So these are just a couple of examples of tragedy and the haunting that followed and a lot of like medical shit.
Yeah. New Orleans fascinates me. So that's it.
And New Orleans fascinates me. So here we are.
That's definitely not the last one I'll do.
This might be like a New Orleans-y week for me with cases.
I just feel like I'm like entrenched. in there.
I was working on my case today and I do regret to inform you that it's not from New Orleans, but it is from North Carolina.
Oh, same thing. The letter of the week is N. This is Sesame Street.
But you know, I thought those were like crazy.
They had like a medical thing running through them.
So that's the way I was connecting them.
But I was like, I want to do a few spooky things from New Orleans.
That was super fun. Oh, we could do that with like a bunch of different places.
Yeah, there you go. Very fun. I like it.
Let's do that. Because we've got some episodes now that we're going to be able to fill with cool shit. so yeah brother let's go that was really really cool thank you thank Thank you.
And if you have been to that pharmacy museum or the New Orleans Creole Cookery, please let me know.
And thank you. You in advance for letting us know.
Hell yeah. So punchy. We are. All right.
Well, that was fucking phenomenal. Thanks.
And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird.
But not to worry that you don't write in your stories about your weird New Orleans experiences because we really want to read them and I can't wait to see them.
Yay, bye. Bye. Angelique. Dubois, France.
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The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
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The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, And magic.
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