Episode 296: Your Urban Legends LXVI - Plumber, Electrician, and Psychic

A renovated haunted house, a transforming cat god, and of course, a creepy kid. We broke out the big spooky stuff for this episode where we’re all in the same room. Ooooooh spooky!

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of mental illness, suicidal thoughts, car accidents, genocide, racism, injury, and war.

Housekeeping

- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends crop tops! Wear ‘em!

- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books

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Transcript

AMANDA:  Welcome to Spirits of boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda. 

JULIA:  And I'm Julia.

ERIC:  And I'm Eric 

AMANDA:  And we are in person reading for Episode 296: Your Urban Legends once again. 

JULIA:  Incredible!

ERIC:  This is the first time I've recorded in the studio. This is the first time I think we've ever recorded a Spirits all together outside of a live show. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Pretty exciting stuff.

JULIA:  Yeah, how does give the people the vibe of the studio now that you're here for the first time.

ERIC:  I mean, immediately what I see is tall lamp.

JULIA:  Tall lamp. 

ERIC:  There's it's a small lamp, but it's up high. He's up high. I like that. 

JULIA:  Like a gargoyle. 

ERIC:  I like just being able to look at you two. That's very nice. I mean, it's a good vibes. It's nice. It's cozy. It's gonna be very easy to edit because all the tracks are automatically synced up from the jump.

AMANDA:  Baby. 

ERIC:  Like, I'm in I like it.

AMANDA:  You were sitting next to the monitor we're looking at Pro Tools on. 

ERIC:  Constantly looking at. 

AMANDA:  And if you wanted to, yeah, these waveforms Eric, they couldn't be crisper.

ERIC:  They're very nice. They got bigger. 

AMANDA:  I made the bigger. Oh, we're zooming in.

ERIC:  Zooming in. 

AMANDA:  Oh, baby. 

JULIA:  It is an inside baseball we're doing here. 

AMANDA:  I mean, it's aw...

ERIC:  I mean it's gonna be so exciting.

AMANDA:  But we're here in person the day of our live show here in the past as we're recording this can't wait. It's gonna be so much fun.

JULIA:  Yeah, and if you didn't come to see the live show or watch it on live stream, hey, the video on demand is available.

AMANDA:  What's that, Julia? People in the future can watch the show from the past? 

JULIA:  Exactly. 

AMANDA:  spiritspodcast.com/live, baby.

JULIA:  Yeah, I felt like Doc Brown a little bit there.  Exactly. 

AMANDA:  Beautiful. Julia, I have some great news for you though specifically. 

JULIA:  Okay.

AMANDA:  I have an email from a listener about why you got locked out of your house. Would you like to hear it?

JULIA:  Oh, yes. I think the answer is ghosts. But I'm all ears. 

AMANDA:  Yeah, this comes from Audrey (she/her) and it's titled, "I know why you were locked out of your house!!!".

JULIA:  Okay. 

ERIC:  Right to the point. 

AMANDA:  Right to the point.

JULIA:  It was, "I locked you out!"

ERIC:  You noticed some of your socks are missing. That was me too. 

AMANDA:  Oh, no. 

JULIA:  I committed a crime. 

AMANDA:  Yeah, that's the kind of haunting we're not about. Alright. Audrey says, "Hello! When Julia told her story about being locked out of her house via bar in the door, I just had to share what it may have been: my cat!"

ERIC:  Okay.

JULIA:  Okay. How did your cat get in my house?

AMANDA:  "Several years back I was not doing well mentally. I was having seizures multiple times a week, lots of suicidal thoughts, and even some hallucinations. One of the hallucinations was this: My adorable black cat, Stormy, turned into a dragon the size of my living room, gently pushed me out onto the back patio, and locked the sliding door behind me by putting the bar in. Now, my wife and I have a sort of mythos around our cat. She knows all, she sees all, and she is everywhere. She is the Lord Of All, and as such she gets to make all the decisions and rules." Eric, is this how the boys are in your home your two brother Boston terriers?

ERIC:  They can be like this recently, they've been waking up a bit earlier. And Herb has been like, Hey, we gotta get out of this crate. And Henry just goes along with it and that hasn't been great. But didn't have to deal with that today because I'm staying in Amanda and Eric's guestroom. So no dogs. 

JULIA:  No dogs, no cats.

AMANDA:  No, none. None at all.

JULIA:  I will say this does feel like a very cat-centric vibe. Like I feel like dogs are like, I would like to do this thing. But I'm going to ask you my own or if that's okay, a cat is like you are my pet human. 

ERIC:  A dog will help you break into your house. A cat will lock you out of your house.

JULIA:  Yes, that makes sense.

AMANDA:  And then like my twin siblings did when they were two or three and locked accidentally themselves inside our suburban on a hot summer's day. 

ERIC:  Classic, a classic. 

AMANDA:  At Catholic school, I made eye contact with my brother and sister and was like, look, okay, you pull up the lock to unlock the door and they just clapped and laughed and shook their heads. 

ERIC:  Yep, that's a classic. Good move. 

JULIA:  Oh, boy. 

AMANDA:  Alright. Well, Audrey continues, "Normally we refer to her as the Lord of all in a way to calm our own anxiety. For example, I say my wife isn't going to die in a horrific car crash because Storm says it isn't allowed." Okay.

JULIA:  Okay, sure. 

AMANDA:  I like that. "On the day that my cat locked me out of the house. She explicitly told me she was trying to keep me safe and away from the knives in our kitchen. My wife wasn't home at the time so we have no other explanation than my cat turning into a living room-sized dragon and doing it to protect me. Since she's everywhere, maybe there was something in your house. She was trying to protect you from. Love Audrey and Storm, Lord of All."

JULIA:  I mean, listen, if Storm can turn into a dragon that means Storm also could have come to my house and locked me out. It's possible. 

AMANDA:  It's possible.

JULIA:  Absolutely possible. 

AMANDA:  Well, there we go. 

JULIA:  Well, since we're like on the subject of talking about haunted houses, would you like to hear an email about why you should never remodel your haunted house?

AMANDA:  You know it. 

JULIA:  Alright. So this is from Bethany (she/her) and she writes, "Hi, I'm a longtime fan of the podcast and recently spent 18 hours worth of driving to and from Minnesota listening to y'all. I spent a good chunk of the drive listening to Hometown Urban Legends and I decided I would share some of the experiences I had in my childhood home. I'll try to make the sound as smooth as possible. But these will be little experiences that happened over the 15 years I lived in that house. I'm from a small town in the Ozarks, about 15 miles from a Civil War battlefield and along the Trail of Rears, a perfect place for a haunted house." Absolutely, a lot of bad energy there. Not good. A lot of- 

AMANDA:  Among the worst. 

JULIA:  Yeah, a lot of catastrophes and like real crimes against humanity happening there. "My town has many ghost stories, including an incredibly haunted cemetery. But those are stories for another day. We moved into this house when I was three or four. But I don't remember a whole lot of things happening early on other than feeling like I was constantly being watched. We had this creepy glass door that led from our kitchen to the laundry room and at night, it was almost like an unspoken rule that we just didn't look into the glass as I just knew someone would be watching. You had to pass this door to get to the bathroom. So there was a lot of running at night and keeping our heads down."

AMANDA:  I definitely know that feeling. I feel that way. Like my basement growing up had those stairs with no backs.

ERIC:  Yeah, they did. 

AMANDA:  So you can really picture the hand coming in to grab your ankle. No good.

JULIA:  Yeah. And famously, you grew up in a haunted house, Eric.

ERIC:  I didn't grow up in a haunted house. There-

AMANDA:  You were the haunting. 

ERIC:  No. Well, there was a house and we lived in it. And then when we moved to another house, we all stopped sleepwalking.

JULIA:  Yeah, you didn't grow up in a haunted house at all. Not, not possible.

ERIC:  I mean, I don't I don't think I mean, maybe you know, who knows? 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  It could be. Jake's here. He's right outside the studio. We should ask him if that's just a side effect of bad wiring.

JULIA:  Do you want me to call him in here? 

ERIC:  No, no, no, no. I'll just, I'll let you guys just keep calling the house haunted. 

JULIA:  Alright. Cool. Cool. Cool. "We would also hear what sounded like a ball fall in the attic and roll across the floor as well as footsteps in the attic, which we ended up turning into my sister's room." Okay. That sentence was packed with information. 

ERIC:  Yeah, let's-

AMANDA:  Diagram it out. 

ERIC:  Beat by beat.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  So first thing ball falling. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  So you've got this out of a ball. [ball falling] Yes, that's how a ball sounds when it lands. And then you've got [ball rolls]  as it rolls across the floor. 

JULIA:  I'm really loving this foliage.

AMANDA:  That's just loud sounds [7:14]

ERIC:  That's not that's also bad. Because, you know, like, my office is in my house is right below the attic. And so sometimes just hear a sound up there.

JULIA:  Sure.

ERIC:  It's you know, creaky the house is 100 years, the rolling I'd never heard that. Haven't heard any rolling that I don't like and then definitely no footsteps-

JULIA:  Okay. 

ERIC:  -other than like a bird outside of the window on the on the gutter.

JULIA:  Sure. 

ERIC:  But no, no human footsteps. So that's all just a lot. And then to conclude, you've put a bedroom there.

JULIA:  You've put your sister into that bedroom.

AMANDA:  We thought you know what's a good [7:44]? Having a child sleep there.

ERIC:  But now you've got eyes on the situation. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  That's true. 

ERIC:  So figure out what's actually happening. 

JULIA:  I just feel like if I was hearing creepy, unexplainable sounds in a room that wasn't currently a bedroom, I wouldn't then make it a bedroom. 

AMANDA:  No.

JULIA:  You know what I mean?

AMANDA:  I would not. Storage at most, you know what I mean? 

JULIA:  Yes, of course. So she continues, "My mom had the first haunting experience. In the first year we lived in the house anytime she would take a bath, her towel would fall from the shower rod onto her." Which is scary because you're most vulnerable in the bathroom in the shower, right? 

AMANDA:  Naked, wet? Yeah. 

JULIA:  Having things fall on you while you're not expecting it while naked and wet and like vulnerable, very bad. 

JULIA:  Terrible. 

JULIA:  "My mom said this continued happening until she finally asked the spirit to knock it off as she wanted to take a bath and peace." Sure as we've all know, Spirits usually respond pretty well to saying like, Hey, can you stop maybe?

ERIC:  I'm just trying to take a bath, light some candles, get one of those trays, put my iPad on there.

JULIA:  I love those trays by the way. That's like my favorite thing I miss like being able to, my bath is not currently deep enough where I can really enjoy the tray on the bathtub, but it's really nice when it is

ERIC:  I would like to take a bath. I haven't taken bath in some time. 

JULIA:  Yeah, just try it, man.

ERIC:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  Even if it's a shallow bath, you know sometimes it's just nice to take a bath.

AMANDA:  You can take a bath after the show tonight if you really want to.

ERIC:  I don't think-

AMANDA:  You can't really relax in someone else's bath. 

ERIC:  Yeah, exactly. 

JULIA:  "So I guess I should mention that the woman that owned the house before us died shortly after we moved in." Died shortly after we moved in. Wow. Okay. 

AMANDA:  Maybe they moved out before. 

ERIC:  She moved out and then died. 

JULIA:  Right. 

ERIC:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  "And her husband died at the kitchen table a couple of years before we moved in." 

ERIC:  Great. 

JULIA:  Okay. Alright 

ERIC:  A lot of spooky stuff.

JULIA:  "My mom has always assumed that the ghost messing with her was the previous owner, Betty. For the majority of the time that we lived in the house. Our experiences were just the ones previously mentioned feeling watched and hearing noises, doors and windows would also slam shut but we would brush those occurrences office the house being old and the floors and walls being uneven. With the wind of course the doors would slam shut right. You can't say we didn't have any haunting experiences besides what we mentioned." Also, doors and windows would slam shut all the time come on guys come on. We got to lump the all these in together why mention them? If you know they're not also hauntings. "Now remember when I said that we turned the attic into my sister's bedroom?" 

AMANDA AND ERIC:  We sure do. 

ERIC:  Yep. 

JULIA:  "Yeah, that's when things started getting really spooky. My sister's name is Tia and she's three years older than me. Growing up, I never knew my sister to be afraid of anything. So when she would come downstairs, spooked we knew something in the house was with us. Tia's room was directly above mine and I would hear footsteps every night which I would always just attribute to her walking around late at night because she was an insomniac. And that excuse worked great for me until she moved away to go to college and the footsteps continued. Anyway, one of Tia's experiences that always scared young me was when she was telling us that she had felt someone get into bed with her lay right next to her and she could feel them breathe on the back of her neck. I would say that she was probably 14 or 15 when this happened in the months that followed our ghost got even more active. The staircase that led to my sister's room was very steep and was in the closet right next to my room." Oh, wait the staircase to your sister's room was in your closet? That's that seems bad. 

AMANDA:  Yeah, 

JULIA:  I don't like that.

ERIC:  I mean the staircase to my attic is in the office. And like it's like a closet door but I wouldn't say it's a closet. 

JULIA:  Right. 

ERIC:  So I mean yeah.

JULIA:  It also just seems like bad privacy for the person who has to like have someone walk through their room.

ERIC:  That's how my the house where we used to sleepwalk in my sister's rooms were connect you had to walk through one to get to the other. 

JULIA:  Haunted. 

ERIC:  That does not mean it's haunted.

JULIA:  So haunted. 

ERIC:  That's just bad. That's just bad architecture.

JULIA:  Bad architecture is haunted! 

ERIC:  Bad architecture is not how it's just bad architecture sometimes.

JULIA:  Okay. Fine. "I remember one night when four of our cousins stayed over the two oldest stayed upstairs with my sister and the two youngest with me. This night my cousins and sister came running down the stairs yelling at us and telling us to knock it off. Well, we were asleep in my room so we had no idea what was going on. When they realized that we had been asleep, they looked terrified. They said that they heard what sounded like a person being dragged up the stairs and assumed that we were trying to scare them by dragging my cousin up the stairs. We were not."

ERIC:  Also, an elaborate prank if you were doing that.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  Extremely so.

ERIC:  Pulling something up the stairs one, very hard to do, I assume. Second, would be painful for the person being dragged.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Not fun. 

AMANDA:  Or finding a way to make that noise yourself.

ERIC:  Yeah, yeah. 

AMANDA:  You gotta practice that. That's like a pretty high-level prank. 

JULIA:  Yeah, yeah.

AMANDA:  Dang.

JULIA:  "These stairs always scared me and most of us had at least at one point felt like someone was trying to push us down them. Luckily, no one ever got seriously injured falling down those stairs. Now, none of these experiences can compare to what happened to me between the time I was 12 and 14." 

AMANDA:  The most haunted time!

JULIA:  The puberty!

ERIC:  Also like, a full two years.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  Like long period were about to enter.

JULIA:  That's a long period of time. Like it begs the question how frequently whatever we're about to talk about happened. Like, was it every week?

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  Was it every day was it like a couple months? So they continue, "My dad is a construction worker and decided that it would be a good time to completely remodel our bathroom and extend it into an unused room. Which as you can guess was right next to mine and the haunted staircase. After the remodel started, my parents went and spent their anniversary in a haunted hotel in Arkansas." Oh boy.

ERIC:  A haunted hotel in Arkansas.

JULIA:  "My dad swears up and down something followed them from there and started messing with us." 

AMANDA:  Oh, no. 

JULIA:  "The remodel was well underway. And that is when we started seeing things and getting pictures. Sadly, all the pictures have since been destroyed when my dad smashed our computer trying to get rid of everything ghosts related, but we were able-"

AMANDA:  Ooooh!

ERIC:  Ghost in the machine. Ghost in the machine.

JULIA:  "But we were able to identify faces of people we had known in the past as well as having a picture of a woman in a bonnet looking outside of my parents' window. Every picture we had taken had orbs in them, and some of the orbs had a red tint to them, which according to Google searches meant that it was an evil spirit." Okay, I don't trust Google searches for that. 

AMANDA:  Or, let's pause at a hometown logical answer. 

ERIC:  Yes. 

JULIA:  Okay. 

AMANDA:  Was your camera busted? Did something happen to your digital camera? Right.

ERIC:  Yeah. I mean, we're talking about old cameras.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  Early digital cameras.

AMANDA:  Oh, man. 

ERIC:  They were absolutely terrible. I remember the first digital camera my dad brought home from work. It was big. It was like it looked like a giant Polaroid camera. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  I probably could take seven pictures and then it would explode. 

AMANDA:  Yeah, yeah. 

ERIC:  So like I mean, those things just weren't good.

AMANDA:  No. 

ERIC:  So like, I mean, who knows?

JULIA:  "So my dad claims that he started to see old friends of his that had died as well as people he had never seen before. And one of the pictures we had taken in our backyard two of the faces looked very clearly like my dad's old friend who had died on my sister's first birthday, as well as my poppa who had died a few years prior. I think they were trying to protect us from the bad spirits that had started messing with us. The remodel was mostly complete when my dad finally called in a psychic to see if they could tell us why our ghosts had all of a sudden become malicious."

ERIC:  I just real quick I do like the idea of calling in a psychic.

AMANDA:  Right. 

ERIC:  As if they're like the National Guard. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  I called in the psychic. It's sort of like-

JULIA:  Our last line of defense. 

ERIC:  I invited a psychic over.

JULIA:  Yes. 

ERIC:  I called in the psychic.

AMANDA:  You see, Eric when they said that I thought like oh, yeah, I mean, you can handle most parts of a remodel on your own but like he had to call in a plumber. 

ERIC:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  You can't fuck with the electrics like you gotta have someone do that.

JULIA:  As everyone knows when you're remodeling a haunted house, you need a plumber, an electrician, and a psychic.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  It's the three things. Contractor will get all three of those.

AMANDA:  You can't skimp on in, guys. Like you're really setting yourself up for so much more trouble if you do it wrong.

JULIA:  Alright, so Shark Tank I'm now pitching my new business model for Jake which is he comes in, he inspects your home and also tells you, "Hey, this place is haunted or your electrical work is just messed up." I would like 70% of my company for a $50,000-

ERIC:  70%?!

JULIA:  Like I want to keep 70%.

ERIC:  Oh, okay.

AMANDA:  Better, but I think still underpricing yourself.

JULIA:  Okay, okay.

AMANDA:  Julia, people on Long Island would hire Jake to do that today.

JULIA:  That's true. 

ERIC:  Yeah, that is true. 

JULIA:  That is 100% true. So they called in the psychic and she writes, "Let's just say the psychic said you pissed something off and need a priest over here and she never came back."

ERIC:  No no. You know what not good enough. If you're a psychic you can't just like you can't just be like I'm gonna subcontract this to a priest 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Unacceptable. 

JULIA:  "We did not have a priest come over, our ghost went back to just rolling a ball across the floor and shutting doors. I don't know if it was because I was more aware or just because I was older and started staying up later. But around 16, I started seeing things. It was around 2 AM one morning and my dog was laying next to me while I was at my computer playing games. Something caught her attention and she started growling towards the dark house outside my door. I saw something out of the corner of my eye but decided to ignore it and go back to bed." Team ignorant. "Now a couple of days later, I saw a person clear as day that I couldn't ignore. It was the same situation. My dog laying next to me starts growling and barking but then I see a man start walking towards me. My uncle was living with us at the time. So I kept telling myself that it was him until it got right outside of my bedroom door and I realized that the person had blond hair and was wearing a button-up shirt. My uncle has black hair and only ever wears T shirts. So I quickly turned my head thinking someone's broke in and no one was there. My dog stopped barking and I was terrified. I got in bed and I pulled my covers over my head until I finally fell asleep. That was pretty much my last experience in that house. We moved out when I was 17 and it has since been torn down and is now a gas station on the property with only minimal ghostly activity from what I've been told." That's incredible. I want to know what haunted gas station look like.

AMANDA:  I know.

ERIC:  Haunted gas station feels right though. Like I feel like a haunted, gas stations should be more haunted. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Hot take. 

AMANDA:  [in a spooky voice] The prices keep rising!

ERIC:  It sure do.

JULIA:  I would like ghost of the prices from like 20 years ago, that would be nice. 

AMANDA:  Oh, yeah.

ERIC:  I want to start printing stickers for our listeners to vandalize gas pumps with a ghost that says, I did this and it's pointing at the prices.

JULIA:  That's extremely funny. That's good, "Someday I'll write back telling you about some of the other hauntings in my town. But for now, I hope you enjoyed some of the things that happened in my childhood home."

ERIC:  That's a lot. 

JULIA:  That was a lot.

ERIC:  Lots of stuff.

AMANDA:  Thank you for spending 18 hours with us.

JULIA:  Incredible. I'm so glad and I'm glad now you get to spend 15 minutes hearing us react to your story.

ERIC:  Before we go for our refill, I just want to talk about the haunted house I grew up.

JULIA:  Okay.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  Which is not haunted.

JULIA:  It's 100% haunted. 

ERIC:  I don't think I've ever revealed this detail. I don't know why it has not come to me. But I'm realized now that my grandfather built the house. It was not an old house. It was built in like the post war era. 

JULIA:  Okay.

ERIC:  So it was new construction. It was built by my grandparents my mother and her three siblings grew up in it as far as I know, nothing violent or terrible ever happened to the house so the likelihood of it being haunted very low. 

JULIA:  You don't know what happened on that land before your grandfather built that house.

ERIC:  I mean, something could have happened on the land but the house itself I don't believe anything malicious happened in the house.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  So I'm just saying that's just a point on my side.

JULIA:  Also sometimes it's not the house sometimes it's an item within the house maybe you had a weird like-

ERIC:  Oh, yes. 

JULIA:  -haunted dresser or mirror.

ERIC:  My grandmother did have a lot of books and a lot of like war memorabilia stuff. Oh the war memorabilia.

JULIA:  Oh yeah. See, you can't say there was nothing a haunted in the house and then say my, grandpa liked war memorabilia.

ERIC:  That might be it.

AMANDA:  That could, that sounds like it. 

ERIC AND JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Well, there we go. But it wasn't there when I was there. Just, anyway, you know what? Let's get a refill.

JULIA:  [19:50] with the energy.

AMANDA:  Maybe the button fell off a uniform or a coin slip in the floorboard. And it was not enough to have a manifestation. It just enough to disturb the vibes enough that you and your siblings sleepwalked.

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Couldn't have been a coin he had those very nicely [20:06]

JULIA:  He had those on wrap. Yeah. 

ERIC:  Very. But it could have been a button.

AMANDA:  Mysterious. 

ERIC:  It could have been a haunted button in the floorboards.

AMANDA:  Haunted button.

JULIA:  Someone draw a picture of that haunted button for Eric.

AMANDA:  We [20:16] 

ERIC:  The house was yellow. If that helps. 

AMANDA:  Well, folks, shall we to camp out into the kitchen and grab a refill? 

ERIC:  We shall. 

AMANDA:  Let's do it.

JULIA:  Oh, no, I found a button.

[theme]

AMANDA:  Hey, everybody, it's Amanda, and welcome to the refill. We want first and foremost to say that we have a lot of Hometown Urban Legends episodes coming up, we may or may not be bringing you more spooky stories than ever before, for the spookiest month of the year. So hey, if you have been meaning to write in about something you experienced or that a family member told you or just a wild story that you know we'd enjoy it is a great time to do it. Go to spiritspodcast.com and click on contact or email us directly at spiritspodcast@gmail.com. Welcome to our newest patrons, Schmitty, Grey, and Grace, you all sound like three kind of front people of a band I just you know consider becoming friends. Thank you so much for pledging your support to us on Patreon. We have some new and exciting stuff coming down the pipeline for our patrons so it is a fabulous time to get on board. Thanks to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Little Vomit Spiders Running Around, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi and of course those legend level patrons, can't forget about them. Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Iron Havoc, Morgan, Mother of Vikings, Sarah, & Bea Me Up Scotty. To join the Patreon and get your name read on the show go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Now normally, at this point of the intro Julia and I take turns recommending like books and podcasts and music and stuff that we're enjoying recently. And you know what I'm enjoying crop tops. If for whatever reason society has told you that you are not the right gender or body type or body size to wear crop tops. Fuck them. And you should wear crop tops, it is so hot right now. And I can't believe I spent the first 20 years of my life not showing my upper arms, much less my tummy because I thought that society would find that bad but you know what society wants you to be hotter than you have to be like, temperature-wise, not hotness-wise because you know what's hot crop tops, you look hot and a crop top everyone looks hot and a crop top and you're gonna be feeling cool. So wear a crop top. That's my recommendation for this week. And when you're wearing your crop top when you're striding down the street when you're taking the bus or the subway or your car to go meet your friends outdoors and frolic in the sun. Hey, consider listening to Exolore this is another podcast in the Multitude Collective and it's so good if you enjoy the advice from folklore episodes with Dr. Moiya McTier. And you want to hear her talk even more, great news.!She has had an every other week podcast with Multitude for years. If you've ever wondered what life would be like on a planet different from our own, or how writers create those fictional worlds and how fiction in fact intersect you gotta check out Exolore. Subscribe today by searching Exolore, E X O L O R E in your podcast app or go to exolorepod.com And now it is time to thank our sponsors and I have genuinely started cleaning my sink every night because I love the smell of my Blueland all-purpose cleaner so much. This is not copy they wrote for me this is a goddamn fact. I love that lemony scent so much that every night before I go to bed, I clean my sink and I have never been happier my toilets never smelled fresher. My laundry has never been more convenient to do because I have those cute little tablets I can bring with me instead of liquid detergent. God it's so good. Blueland is on a mission to eliminate single use plastics by reinventing Home Essentials. They have adorable glass forever bottles, which you fill with warm water drop in the tablets that they send to you in really nice paper packaging, and get cleaning. The refill start at just $2, so you're not buying and for me hauling home from the grocery store of several blocks to my apartment new plastic bottles every time I run out of cleaner. You can even set up a subscription so you don't ever have to think about it, which is what I do. It's so so good. You got to check it out. Right now, you can get 15% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/spirits. That's 15% off your first order of any Blueland product at blueland.com/spirits. Blueland.com/spirits. We are also sponsored this week by Magic Spoon and if you are an adult and you want to recapture some of the glory of childhood but your tastes or your nutritional needs have changed since you were a kid you should try Magic Spoon. Their variety pack has four flavors cocoa fruity frosted and peanut butter. The pack has zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only four net grams of carbs, and only 140 calories per serving. It's keto-friendly, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, and low-carb. So this could be a great pick for going on a group trip or sending something to a friend's house or trying yourself. Go to magicspoon.com/spirits to grab a variety pack and try it today. Make sure to use our promo code Spirits at checkout to save $5 off your order and Magic Spoon is so confident in their product. It's backed with 100% happiness guarantee. If you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to get your next delicious bowl of cereal at magicspoon.com/spirits use the code Spirits to save $5 off. Thank you magic spoon for sponsoring this episode. And finally now word from our sponsor, BetterHelp. There are lots of ways to take care of your mind. And one that I use is therapy. I meet with my therapist every week via BetterHelp, where we can use phone, video or even text chat to talk to each other. And listen guys, it took a few tries for me to find a therapist that I felt comfortable with and that I felt really fit my needs right now we can just talk to and feel like one of the things I'm doing for myself is taking that time to check in on how I'm feeling to talk about the thoughts that I might not be proud of, but still exist anyway and just have somebody be on my side and helping me navigate life and thinking about what I can do to make my life better. BetterHelp is a great way to do that if you can't find affordable therapy near you. Or you can find someone who's taking new patients or you just want to try it in a way that will not penalize you for trying different therapists you'll be matched with a therapist and under 48 hours, so our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/spirits. That's better H E L P.com/spirits and now let's get back to the show. 

AMANDA:  So we today we're recording this at 1 PM. So I gotta tell you, we're not drinking right now.

JULIA:  [26:39] 

AMANDA:  But we're gonna drink at the show tonight. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  For sure.

AMANDA:  But yesterday when Schneider landed and came to stay in my apartment, I gave you a Lake Placid Brewery Ubu Ale.

ERIC:  Now, this was gonna be my pick so [26:51]

AMANDA:  Well, I, yeah, which you know, I won, you won, they're delicious.

ERIC:  Yeah. 

AMANDA:  I think my desert island beer like it's the one that I wouldn't really never get tired of. Yeah, it's a it's like a dark lager kind of English style beer and I just think it's perfect like exactly what I want.

ERIC:  It did have very nice notes that like came through as I drank it that was like oh, this is it's surprising the depth that the flavor this thing had. So it was quite good beer. I don't know. I've only had one. So I don't know if I'm willing to say-

JULIA:  Of course.

ERIC:  -that it was my desert island beer but it was quite good. So, yes.

AMANDA:  I'm glad you enjoyed. 

ERIC:  Thank you for it. 

AMANDA:  My pleasure.

JULIA:  My recommendation is not a desert island beer but it is a like summer beer which is shout-out to my favorite B, Bluepoint Brewery. I went recently and they had a-

ERIC:  Julia, are you secretly getting paid by Bluepoint Brewery?

JULIA:  They should pay me.

AMANDA:  Yeah, they should. 

JULIA:  They should

ERIC:  I'm just noticing a trend lately.

AMANDA:  Listeners, you are free to tweet or comment on Instagram of your favorite local breweries and distilleries and say you should sponsor us, Spirits Podcast.

JULIA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Yeah. 

AMANDA:  The contact info is on our website they can get in touch.

JULIA:  I will tell you guys a secret because it'll be done by the time this episode comes out. I'm hosting a surprise party for Jake at Bluepoint Brewery. It's so exciting.

AMANDA:  Jake can't hear us, he's outside reading a newspaper like a Victorian grandfather. It's adorable.

JULIA:  That's true.

ERIC:  I can't see him, is he literally reading a newspaper?

JULIA:  He's reading Newsday. 

AMANDA:  With his glasses on the tip of his nose. 

JULIA:  Yep.

AMANDA:  Couldn't be cuter. 

JULIA:  Couldn't be cuter. 

ERIC:  That is classic, Jake. 

JULIA:  So anyway, the Bluepoint Brewery had a rainbow Italian ice sour that I really enjoyed last time I was there. 

AMANDA:  Yes, I tried that it was really good. But um, Eric I noticed here that in your visit to the studio I tried to gather you know some gifts that listeners have sent you stuff for you to open one of which was a handwritten letter. 

JULIA:  Another one? Oh my goodness.

ERIC:  Yes. This isn't the excellent foley that I was doing before this is actual physical paper.

AMANDA:  And it's just like hand-pressed paper. 

ERIC:  It's I don't know if it's hand-pressed paper but it is kind of like there's a little bit of collaging done on it like some nice arty paper has been pasted on. It's very lovely.

AMANDA:  Like a tickled edge.

ERIC:  Very nice. Yes. Some nice torn edges I did when I opened it up the top letter was on top and then all the other pages were backwards. And I tried reading and I was like all of these. Am I gonna have to like read a line-

AMANDA:  [29:00] structure. 

ERIC:  -extremely confusing, but that I realized if I just flipped the entire second stack around it made a lot more sense. So I will read this right now this has three stories in it. We're going to read two of them today and one of them in an episode in a couple months I think because it might be themed a little bit.

AMANDA:  Oh, maybe during the spooky time of year? 

ERIC:  Maybe. 

JULIA:  Spookiest time of the year. 

AMANDA:  We can see, we can see. 

ERIC:  "Hey, Spirits gang. I hope this gets to you okay." It did, "As I'm posting this from Swansea Wales on the 30th of May 2022."

JULIA:  When did it arrive?

AMANDA:  I was really impressed it arrived like two weeks ago.

JULIA:  Oh, pretty good. 

AMANDA:  At the beginning of July.

ERIC:  Very nice, "This is just not to say I think you are all amazing humans and I love your podcast I've included a few stories for you which you can read on an urban legends episode and I hope you enjoy reading these stories. Stay creepy and cool and keep being amazing humans. Courtney." (she/her) 

JULIA:  Thanks, Courtney. 

ERIC:  Story one. Alternate timelines. [Julia gasps] "This really isn't an urban legend." I've read it, it's kind of an urban legend. "But it's more inspired by something Julia was talking about on a past urban legends episode." got to read Roman numerals real quick, a 61. 41? LXI. That- 61. Yeah, "The episode where you were talking about alternate timelines, I want to tell you about an alternate timeline I think I experienced."

JULIA:  Okay. 

ERIC:  "For a bit of context/scene setting, I share a house with four other people and two of them are my best friends. So it wouldn't be strange for one of us to walk into each other's rooms only after knocking, of course."

JULIA:  I feel bad for the other two people living in that house. Where do you live? I live with four people, two of them are my best friends.

ERIC:  Two of them I really like and the other two are, you know.

AMANDA:  Just there.

ERIC:  "Anyways, because of this, I didn't think the event which had happened was strange. So the event in question, I was laying on my bed catching up on some podcasts." Now it doesn't say Multitude Podcast, but I have we assume. 

JULIA:  We know what they mean.

ERIC:  Yeah, "And just enjoying some chill weekend vibes. As I was chilling, I remember my friend then knocking on my door coming into my room, and then poking my feet. This is a very strange detail to remember. But it becomes significant later. She didn't say anything else and left."

JULIA:  I don't, nothing should be touching your feet. I don't care if it's your best friend.

ERIC:  Yeah.  

JULIA:  I don't care if [31:17]

ERIC:  If you two were living together and one of you walked into the other after knocking and getting permission, and then just poked the other foot and left. What would your reaction be?

AMANDA:  I would laugh.

ERIC:  You would laugh. 

JULIA:  I'd be like, "What?" 

AMANDA:  What's happening?

ERIC:  Alright, that sounds about what happened here.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  "I didn't really think anything of it at the time. It was when I mentioned it to her later that things got weird." 

AMANDA:  Oh, no. 

ERIC:  "I casually mentioned the thing that had happened to her and was very surprised by her response. "I never did that." Not what you want to hear whether you've confronted a friend about jokingly touching your feet. "It was a very strange response, as I was convinced that she had done it. But she was absolutely certain she hadn't. It wasn't possible that she was lying either as she is one of-" [page turning]

JULIA:  Look at that foley. 

AMANDA:  I love that paper noise. 

ERIC:  "Those people who can't lie." 

JULIA:  Can't lie or like is really bad at lying? So you can always tell if you're lying.

ERIC:  Yeah. Who knows maybe there's one version of this person that always lies and then there's an alternate version.

AMANDA:  One of them says I'm lying then, uhhh doctor was the mother.

ERIC:  I said you've got two feet and it was an ice cube on the gas [32:26], "This has puzzled me since and when Julia mentioned alternate timelines, it made me think about that as a possibility. Maybe that day somewhere in alternate timeline, my friend went to walk into my room, but through some strange events in the universe ended up in this version of our lives instead." 

JULIA:  Oh. 

AMANDA:  Wow. 

ERIC:  "But who can really say what happened? It may have just been one of those events, which we will never know the answer to. Although part of me hopes there is a world where my friend went into my room expecting to see me but didn't thank you for letting me share my theory of alternate timelines." 

JULIA:  So I like this theory of alternate timelines because I love alternate timelines. I would also like to posit doppelganger as a potential answer. Yep. Yeah. Especially if she didn't say anything because like doppelgangers usually can't mimic voices. They just like look like the person. And so if she like came in, didn't say anything tickles your feet. And that would be a weird doppleganger.

ERIC:  It was just a touch, it was just a touch of the feet. 

JULIA:  I don't know. 

ERIC:  I'm just saying, just saying.

JULIA:  Why?

AMANDA:  Like boop your big toe? It's adorable.

ERIC:  Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying, if someone is tickling my foot is a much worse experience that someone just touching my food.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  I don't want either generally, but-

JULIA:  I'm just like trying to think a person walks into a room boops your foot and then leaves and knocks too.

ERIC:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Like it's not like she just walked in and- 

ERIC:  She got permission to do it.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

ERIC:  Who knows you're lost in the multiverse. Maybe you just gotta touch something physically. Isn't that something you do when you lucid dreaming? You gotta like find something you know. 

JULIA:  Oh, yeah. 

AMANDA:  That's true.

ERIC:  Make a light switch work.

AMANDA:  That's true. 

ERIC:  Alternate timeline. They're like, is this real? I'll just touch a foot.

AMANDA:  Well, now what you have to do to kind of interrogate the differences between these timelines is like quiz your friend on every detail of her and your life as you're like, where'd you go to college? What your boyfriend's name? Where'd you grow up? Like all of these little details that could be different? 

JULIA:  Where did the timelines converge?

AMANDA:  Right 

JULIA:  I realized I've been wearing headphones this entire time. 

ERIC:  I've been wondering.

AMANDA:  You don't have to.

ERIC:  I was like maybe Julia. Maybe Julia wants to be wearing headphones, I've never recorded the studio. I don't know how this works. Maybe you wear the headphones Julia and Amanda doesn't wear the headphones.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  I don't know the rules here.

JULIA:  Who knows? 

ERIC:  There's no rules here. That's right. 

AMANDA:  Well, you guys know I like to wear earbuds because I have cartilage piercings glasses, and earrings and whenever I have over-ear headphones it all smooshes and I don't enjoy it. Any misunderstanding is a haunting if you yourself are creepy cool enough, you know?

JULIA:  That's true. 

ERIC:  Yeah.

JULIA:  That's true. If you are creepy cool kid. It's a haunting.

ERIC:  This is story 2, it is titled, Ghost Villages and then in parentheses, (Expanding on a previous logic). The expansion pack. 

AMANDA:  Yes, please.

ERIC:  "This is a little bit more information of an old urban legend episode but it was one where Eric was talking about the Old English village of Dunwich and Suffolk. Feel like that was around the time we first like invented heck puppers or something."

JULIA:  Yeah, feels right.

AMANDA:  That was pretty classic, pretty early.

ERIC:  "I can't remember how much context was given in the episode. So here is my quick highlights of Dunwich's history."

JULIA:  Hit us. 

ERIC:  "Historically, it was a fishing village from about the dawn of time. Seriously, it is a very historic village."

JULIA:  Wow. 

ERIC:  "The population at its peak in about 1250 when it was thought to have a population of 5000 people."

JULIA:  That's pretty cool.

AMANDA:  Rustling bustling village.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

AMANDA:  That's [35:34] for these days. 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  "Just enough people to farm the fish ethically." 

JULIA:  Just enough to make things Super haunted. 

AMANDA:  Sustainable and haunted. 

JULIA:  Sustainable but also haunted.

ERIC:  "The decline began in 1286 following a coastal storm sometime between 1286 and the 1300s. There were several massive storms which eroded the coast significantly. Now that I've given you some backstory, I can share the story that I was told." 

AMANDA:  Yes. 

ERIC:  "As I grew up about 30 to 40 minutes away from there were frequent visits to the cliffs and coastal camping holidays there." 

JULIA:  Coastal camping sounds so much fun.

ERIC:  It does, it really does. 

JULIA:  More coastal camping forever. 

AMANDA:  I would love that, yeah. 

JULIA:  I don't have to go to the woods. I want to go to the beach.

AMANDA:  My sister who lives in Hawaii constantly just like sleeps in a pop up tent in the bed of a pickup truck on the beach 

JULIA:  It's a dream. 

AMANDA:  I'm like, fuck you, Bailey. I love you.

JULIA:  Fucking Bailey.

ERIC:  "My granddad would often tell my mom the stories who then told these stories to me and my sister. The story was told that there was a massive storm all along the coast. It caused lots of damage to many of the villages. Somehow the people of Dunwich were warned about this either through some kind of beacon, or they were just lucky enough to see it was never important how they knew just that they did." I'd like to point out I've now noticed that the paper that has been collaged onto here is the thematic. This paper on this is kind of a sandy brown paper. So that's very nice.

AMANDA:  Damn. 

ERIC:  This is literally the coast right on the paper. 

AMANDA:  We'll use this for the Instapost this episode, so you can all follow @SpiritsPodcast and check it out.

ERIC:  "As they were warned about the danger, they decided they could actually do something. Cue bells ringing from the churches in the area between 8 to 10. Obviously, this amount of church bells ringing is never a good sign. So most of the villagers managed to either escape the village or get far enough away from the cliff so that most of the damage was 400 homes being lost."

JULIA:  Wow. 

ERIC:  Which is significant, but in a small village of 5000 not the worst thing

AMANDA:  Better than 400 people.

ERIC:  Exactly, that's true.

AMANDA:  Yeah, can I just say the other day I was walking through the park and heard a church bell tolling incessantly and some you know animal part of my brain was like something's badly wrong. And then Eric was like Amanda, Eid just ended and I was like, ah!

JULIA:  That makes sense. 

AMANDA:  They're ringing it for I think the neighboring mosque or like they had like some kind of congregation sharing and I was like, ah, that's much better. Enjoy eating everybody. 

JULIA:  Enjoy the food. 

AMANDA:  It's sundown, congrats!

ERIC:  "Along with a home several churches were lost and some unfortunate farm animals. This so far has been a pretty standard story. So here is where things get a little spooky. As the churches fell into the sea, their bells were still ringing."

AMANDA AND JULIA:  NO! 

ERIC:  "It is said that if you stand on the Dunwich beach and listen on a clear day or night, you will be able to hear the bells ringing to warn the villagers of the impending danger. I can actually confirm this as an event that will happen as I have been lucky or unlucky depending on your views to have actually heard these bells ringing. It is hard to ascribe what it sounds like exactly. But the moment I was absolutely certain I had heard the old Dunwich bells. That's about it for the history of Dunwich. But it has been referenced multiple times in pop culture. One last thing done, which is still a popular tourist village but only has a population of 183 now." 

JULIA:  That's so small!

AMANDA:  That's much less.

ERIC:  Much less. Significantly.

AMANDA:  It's about 2% of what it used to be.

JULIA:  Pretty good Math.

ERIC:  Pretty tidy.  Everyone just lives in London as far as I understand there, "I hope you guys enjoyed my collection of urban legends and spooky stories. Thank you for creating such an amazing podcast. Stay creepy. Stay cool, Courtney." 

AMANDA AND JULIA:  Thanks, Courtney. 

ERIC:  Thank you.

JULIA:  Thank you for sending it over the pond.

ERIC:  And perfect timing for me to be able to read it right here in the studio. 

JULIA:  Yay.

AMANDA:  I would love to close out guys with an email from Dominique who titled the email, "Is my kid a creepy kid? Or is a ghost? or a shapeshifter? or WHAT!?" 

JULIA:  Whoa-oh.

ERIC:  Well, your kid probably isn't a ghost.

AMANDA:  That's true. 

ERIC:  I'm sure, you'll be able to tell if your kids are ghosts or not just by- We'll get into it.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

ERIC:  I don't want to prejudge. 

AMANDA:  I- sometimes we read urban legends and we simply marvel at them like this, this previous one. Sometimes we critique you or your haunting. And sometimes you write into us with problems to solve and I love those kinds of stories.

ERIC:  Yeah. 

AMANDA:  So here we go. 

JULIA:  Listen, none of us are parents, but I can't confirm or deny whether or not you would know your child is a ghost. 

AMANDA:  Alright, Dominique writes, "Hello, I love you and your wonderful podcast. My husband and I applied for academic fellowships in the UK recently and got accepted. We moved to London at the end of 2021. And since things are so expensive here, we rented a two bedroom and bathroom in a Victorian house owned by two retirees." 

JULIA:  Incredible. 

AMANDA:  I mean, it sounds great. 

JULIA:  Already haunted. Go on. 

AMANDA:  "The house was massive. I don't know if it's the norm here or if it's similar in the US, but being in a house that had a semi-basement, five bathrooms, two living rooms, several bedrooms and a backyard with hens was a very new thing for us." 

JULIA:  This is a rich person's home. 

AMANDA:  It's a big house. Yeah, "The house was built in 1840 and their owners bought the house in their early 30s. Remember their retirees now so been in the same family for a long time. Now about our four-year-old son. He keeps waking up in the middle of the night looking for me. And with a massive change in our lives. I moved from Chile to London and our kid did not speak any English when we got here. He felt very disoriented of course trying to adapt to it all at the beginning. Plus he has the bad habit of just standing next to me until I feel his presence there waiting for me to wake up."

ERIC:  Just like just a child standing looking at a parent. Julia, you did this right?

JULIA:  Yes, as I've mentioned on the podcast, I used to kneel next to my parents' bed and just stare at my mom until she woke up.

ERIC:  The kneeling, the kneeling makes it somehow so much more.

JULIA:  So, we're eye to eye! 

ERIC:  No, I understand the logic.

AMANDA:  I understand. 

ERIC:  It just makes it creepy-

AMANDA:  I know.

ERIC:  -than a child standing for some reason

AMANDA:  My sister did that to me several times in order to scare me when I was a teenager and she was a toddler you know and like wanted to interrupt my sleep but-

ERIC:  It feels more like a religious thing to be kneeling a little bit. Like, there's just something extra spooky about a child kneeling to me that a child just said I under I perfectly understand why you would do it. I'm just saying, there's something about it that feels like extra spooky.

JULIA:  Sit too low, stand too high, kneel perfect height.

ERIC:  I get it, no arguments for me about the logic.

AMANDA:  Dominique says, "Needless to say he scared me lots of times doing that. A few months passed by and one night I woke up with the sensation that my son was standing there waiting for me to wake up. I opened my eyes and saw his silhouette standing there not moving. I couldn't see his face because it was very dark and the only light was coming from the bathroom window behind him which meant his face was obscured. As usual, I saw the time on my phone before going to check how well he was sleeping. The moment I saw again at the spot he was standing before he wasn't there." So Dominique looked at her son looked at her phone and then look back and her son wasn't there. She was like, Oh, he must have saw that I woke up and he's walking back toward his bedroom set with their normal routine. "I followed him into my surprise he was soundly asleep snoring in his bed, and importantly, all tucked in from bedtime. Not even his bed sheets were messed up something that with him happens a lot since he moves around in his sleep very often. Besides not even two minutes had passed by since I saw him waiting for me and followed him to his bed. So there wasn't enough time for him to have gone back to bed lay down tuck himself in and be so asleep he was snoring. I thought to myself shit either. That was a ghost. a shapeshifter or my son's been swapped with another creature with the freaking fuck has happened here. I was anxious all night and was beside him until he woke up against my instinct, by the way, to go back to bed and ignore everything. I don't know I just felt I needed to be there for him to protect him somehow with no clue what to do. I strongly felt nonetheless that I had to be there. Next morning, he woke up as per usual and nothing seemed amiss. I haven't told my husband about it and I probably will say that I was just half asleep and the light was playing tricks on me but what do you guys think? Any theories around it sorry for long post and perhaps bad grammar as English isn't my first language keep on with your amazing work. Abrazos gigantes! Domi" 

JULIA:  Okay.

ERIC:  Wait, I've got the solution before you say your thing. I've got the solution. I've got this one solved.

AMANDA:  Looks like you've solved this one.

ERIC:  I've solved this one. 

JULIA:  Okay.

ERIC:  It's the first listener’s cat.

JULIA:  There it is. You solved it. First off tell your husband about this.

[Brandon and Amanda agrreing] 

JULIA:  Don't keep ghost secrets that's like the number one thing that leads to hauntings in any haunted house movie, is like-

AMANDA:  That's true. 

JULIA:  "Oh, I was just seeing something I don't need to bother him about it." 

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  And then you get possessed. Don't do that not a good time. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Do we want logical answer or do we want a fun Spirits answer?

ERIC:  Let's get both. 

JULIA:  Okay. 

AMANDA:  Let's get both. 

JULIA:  Logical answer is probably that this has happened so many times that maybe you dreamed waking up and seeing him and then when you actually woke up and checked your phone he wasn't there because he was never there in the first place fun Spirits answer is astral projection. 

AMANDA:  Julia!

JULIA:  He was sleeping so soundly that he like dream projected himself into your dream or like physically manifested in front of you.

AMANDA:  Yes. 

ERIC:  That may, I mean that I think that actually makes the most sense out of the three solutions we come up with.

JULIA:  I know.

ERIC:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Not the ghost cat.

AMANDA:  I can't improve on that. Perfect. 

ERIC:  Pretty good. Yeah. Solved. 

AMANDA:  Yeah, Dominique.

ERIC:  Case closed!

JULIA:  And answered.

AMANDA:  Case closed. Well, folks, I hope that no ghost haunt our live stream tonight or more, or our microphones or our lights. But if they do, you know, it'll be like the hauntings of the Lower East Side are welcoming us back to the stage. You know? 

JULIA:  Yeah, that's true. As we've talked about before. A lot of buildings in New York City are haunted, but no one cares because real estate is so expensive. So you're like, I'll just deal with ghosts. I don't have a parking space either. It's fine.

AMANDA:  I'll take the discount, however, I can get it. 

JULIA:  And remember listeners as you try to figure out if your child is just a creepy child or ghost- 

JULIA:  Stay creepy.

AMANDA:  Stay cool.

[outro]

AMANDA:  Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.

JULIA:  Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.

AMANDA:  Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.

JULIA:  We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.

AMANDA:  Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.

JULIA:  Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.

AMANDA:  Bye!

Transcriptionist: KM