It’s Giving Hat Man | Your Urban Legends 105
/What if you got to dream of an urban legends episode that never actually existed? Well, it happened! Also featuring several food superstition follow-ups, two grannies blessing marriages, and an off-the-grid ghost!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of bodily functions, hanging, death, war, PTSD, fire, child death, car accidents, and misogyny.
Housekeeping
- See us LIVE! Buy a ticket to our March 23 live show in Portland at spiritspodcast.com/live. And if you live in or around NYC, RSVP to our free cocktail popup at jointhepartypod.com/popup
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out Attach Your Résumé!
- Submit Your Urban Legends Audio: Call us! 617-420-2344
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- Blueland creates everyday eco-friendly cleaning productions that save you money and space, without any plastic waste. Get up to 15% off when you go to blueland.com/spirits
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Find Us Online
- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com
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- Goodreads: goodreads.com/group/show/205387
Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
Julia: Why is it the minute I hit record, I immediately burp every single time? It's like, it's like, my body is like, don't panic [mimic burps].
Amanda: I get that, Julia, when I sit down. This is Spirit's Podcast, a boozy dive to mythology, legends and folklore. Learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda. That's Julia, and Julia that happens to me whenever I sit down on a plane. Now I'm I'm a plus size person. I'm a bigger than average person. I have a lot of anxiety around, you know, fitting in planes, fitting in seats, going to bathrooms, things like that. I'm even like, a smaller fat person. And so this is definitely like an issue that other people deal with a lot more than me. I pee before I get on a plane every single time, and yet, the moment I sit down, my bladder is like, gotta go again. I think that sucks.
Julia: Amanda, if it's any consolation, the same thing happens to me every time, too, and obviously it's a different situation for me, but yeah, the minute I will pee immediately before getting into line for the boarding process. And then as soon as I sit down, I'm like, how long until they'll let me get back up again? How long?
Amanda: Well, folks, that might be a specter haunting you, but today in your podcast feed, we're here to bring you some hometown urban legends that are haunting your fellow listeners of Spirits Podcast.
Julia: Yes, yes we are, though. Amanda, before we really get into that, I wanted to share a couple of follow ups in regards to the food superstitions that people wrote into us about.
Amanda: Hey, we are firmly into the new year. It feels like 14 years since we recorded our last urban legends episode. It's been a, I don't know, eventful four to five weeks here in the US and consequently the rest of the world. Julia, let's focus on something we can control, which is our food superstitions.
Julia: Yeah, something nice, something light, something that may lead to death, but, you know, doesn't necessarily have to
Amanda: Hmm, yeah. What a nice change.
Julia: What a nice change. My first one here is from Clemence. They write, hi, wonderful people. I love your podcast so much. I'm not that into folklore or cocktails. Let's just say I dabble. But what hooked me was your rapport, your friendship is so pure, honestly. Friendship goals for sure. Awe. Every single one of those rhymed. And I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but here we go anyway. I wanted to share my favorite slash most, what the fuck food superstition in France, when we serve champagne, we say to the person whose glass we finish the bottle into, ''Marié ou pendu avant la fin de l'année'', which means married or hung before the end of the year.
Amanda: Ah!
Julia: And seriously, I've heard it so many times it said almost like it's all one word, like automatically, as you're pouring the glass, you say that nobody ever comments on it or questions it. So I hope you get a kick out of that.
Amanda: Absolutely incredible, Julia. And I totally understand how there is like a phrase you say so routinely and automatically that it becomes just like a noise and not even words. And so I am so grateful that we could hear the the whole thing, because it's like, wow, tell me that this was made in maybe the 1700s without telling this was in the 1700s which is married or dead, both are equal.
Julia: Well, you know, that's how it'd be. Those are your options. It's the only ones.
Amanda: Apparently.
Julia: Chris from Toronto also wrote in about a New Year's Eve food tradition, and she says, I'm a second generation Dutch Canadian, and the Dutch have a tradition of New Year's Eve food called Oliebollen, which literally translates to oily balls!
Amanda: Okay? Is this a fried food?
Julia: Yes, they are deep fried, yeasty dough balls with apple pieces and raisins or currants in them. They're eatin warm with powdered sugar on top.
Amanda: That sounds so good.
Julia: It does. It really does. Any sort of fried dough is always gonna be good. That's just how it be, huh?
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: My parents made these every New Year's Eve for over 50 years, until a few years ago, when my wife and I took them over. Now, my parents reap the delicious rewards while we do all the hard work. I was always told that the reason for the tradition was to use up your cooking oil before the end of the year. Though I do feel like this may be a Calvinist overriding of an older meaning.
Amanda: Julia. We do this during Rosh Hashanah, which takes place a couple weeks before Yom Kippur, where we fast and in part, we make like delicious fried foods so that we use up our oil.
Julia: Incredible. I love that so much. That's awesome. I have another one here,Amanda. This. This is a food superstition with meteorological implications.
Amanda: Do tell.
Julia: From Laura, they write, hello, Amanda and Julia. I just listened to and loved the episode on food superstitions, and had one to send you. I grew up in western Missouri, in a rural area where it is pretty common to find wild persimmon trees. My grandpa always swore by using the seeds of the wild persimmon to forecast the weather each winter, he would go out late in the fall when the persimmons started to ripen and fall, which you always wanted to wait for the persimmons to fall from the trees before eating them because it's very difficult to get a ripe one by picking it off the tree. And trust me, the last thing you want to do is bite into an unripe persimmon. Imagine eating a sleeve of saltine crackers while staring at a renaissance portrait of the Morton's salt girl, and you still won't come close to the dry mouth you'll get from eating an unripe persimmon.
Amanda: Oh my, I can only compare this to eating other under-ripe fruits. But there's little worse. It really just sucks the moisture right out of you.
Julia: Yeah, apparently, apparently. Anyway, back to the prognosticating persimmons. Once he'd gathered a few persimmons, grandpa would bring them home and harvest the seeds, he'd carefully cut open the seeds lengthwise, like splitting open an avocado, which is not an analogy that my silent generation grandfather would have understood.
Amanda: He would have been like, what's an avocado? I'm not from California. What am I a carpet Packer?
Julia: So he would cut them open to see what they said when cut open. Persimmon seeds show different cutlery. If the inside of the seeds looked like a knife, Grandpa knew we were in for a very cold, bitter winter with lots of cutting winds. If it looked like a spoon, it was going to be a winter with a lot of snow that we'd have to shovel. If it looked like a fork, eh, I don't know what to tell you, I don't remember that ever happening.
Amanda: Average, quotidian, oh, my God.
Julia: But maybe perhaps just a warm, rainy winter. Who can say?
Amanda: I- Julia, you could have asked me 100 times what would be inside those seeds. Never in a million years would I have described flatware to you, you know.
Julia: Hey, listen, just like the monkeys at the typewriter, Amanda, I think you would have gotten there eventually.
Amanda: Thank you. You know, my grandma did this with ash trees, where if they bore a lot of berries in the fall, and we were in for a snow late in winter, and if not, then we are not but the inside of the seed is such a more witchy way to forecast the weather, that's amazing.
Julia: You're right. You're right. So to finish this out, growing up, this use of persimmons was very common in our community, and I always took it for granted that everyone did this with persimmon seeds since moving to a large city on the East Coast. However, I can safely say that, no, this is not common knowledge everywhere. I've loved sharing this bit of local folklore with friends over the years. However, I don't know how useful it is. I'm pretty sure a store-bought persimmon imported from hundreds of miles away, isn't going to be much use in predicting the local weather. If you ever find yourself in possession of some locally grown persimmons, don't throw out the seeds before getting your weather report.
Amanda: I'm 100% gonna try this next time I find persimmons at the farmers market.
Julia: There you go, even if it's you know, New York City farmers market might be from upstate or from probably not from Long Island, but probably from upstate. But still, even knowing what the weather is like in the Catskills, you'll probably still be getting a good indication of what your winter is looking like.
Amanda: Yeah, most of our vendors are like, 30 to 100 miles away, so I'll take it.
Julia: Yeah, yeah. All right. Amanda, that was the last one I had. Why don't you get us started now with some real urban legends, some real spooky shit.
Amanda: Thank you so much for gathering that together. I am going to follow that appetizer, wink wink. See what I did there with an urban legend hot and fresh at the kitchen just five days ago, as of our recording from J, patron and friend of the show, titled, I had a dream about an urban legends episode that doesn't exist.
Julia: Oh, okay!
Amanda: A first for Spirits Podcast.
Julia: Interesting.
Amanda: Spirits has appeared in dreams before. People have dreamt that they have started or listened to episodes of Spirits. We have kind of crossed into dreams. We have sort of reminded people that, because they fell asleep while listening or something that like they are actually dreaming. This is a first of its kind. So-
Julia: People do love listening to us to go to bed, and hey, we talk about a lot of spooky stuff, so I'm not telling you you're doing it wrong or anything like that, but if you have spooky dreams, not our fault.
Amanda: Unless you're courting spooky dreams. As a kid, I tried really hard to learn how to do lucid dreaming, because it happened to me once, and it was like the most magical experience of all time.
Julia: Amanda, that's such a you child story that that does not surprise me.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yep. Never happened again, but I highly wish it would. And if, for some reason, people are trying to, I don't know, like, get some artistic inspiration for a project or something, and they want terrify themselves in their dreams. You know, we're available.
Julia: Yeah, I'm I'm so excited.
Amanda: Alright, Julia, here's this email from J. Hello. I'm J, Any/All Pronouns, and I work as a night auditor for a hotel.
Julia: I love night jobs. They're the best ones to write in. Go, go. Hit me with it.
Amanda: I have never heard Julia of the of the role of night auditor, but we're going to learn what that entails for J soon.
Julia: So excited.
Amanda: So because I work at night, I sleep during the day, most nights or days as such, having the sleep schedule that I do, my dreams are gone very suddenly, with no warning most of the time. But as of this writing, I have just woken up from a dream I had that was so vivid and concrete in its detail that I have to write about it.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Julia, Jay woke up and said, I've got to do-cu-ment. Thank you, J.
Julia: What if I make this happen? What if we just release an episode with no number, like, nothing like, just randomly in our in our backlog?
Amanda: Oh, like, retroactively?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Ah!
Julia: That'd be a bad prank. I would feel really bad. I don't want to, I don't want to break anyone's reality.
Amanda: No, no, no. J, we would never mislead you like that, not when you've been such a good conspirator and written in, the dream was completely contained to the listener's end, as in, this was pre-edited, complete with theme music and refill, which I will get to. It goes places.
Julia: Ooh!
Amanda: But all of my dreams, visuals were like I was playing a first person walking simulator style video game. Think less what remains of Edith Finch with its breaks from "reality" and interesting narrative conceits, it was more like Slender: the Eight Pages with an ominous atmosphere and a lack of interactiveness.
Julia: Yeah, that makes sense.
Amanda: To me, Julia, I love this description because I will often have this when listening to podcasts. Like the reason why I love an audio medium so much is because your imagination supplies the visuals. And so when we are telling you, particularly a spooky story, you are probably imagining landscapes familiar to you, things that would scare you yourself in the sort of narrator's perspective. And so I love that in this dream, J was almost like listening with their eyes closed, and then had this incredibly spooky fucking visual.
Julia: Fuck yeah.
Amanda: So the episode started with, of course, the theme music and an overhead shot of the forest that the dream would be taking place in. I don't recall the title of the episode, but I remember that after you said, I'm Amanda and I'm Julia, a guest introduced himself.
Julia: Oh!
Amanda: Now a guest on an urban legends episode in this day and age is already pretty unusual, but introducing himself? Perish the thought.
Julia: Yes, never.
Amanda: This guest's name started with a T and his last name began with an M. But of all the details, I remember clearly that one evaded me.
Julia: Okay, I'm writing it down to create, recreate this. Go on.
Amanda: Julia, why was my first thought? Tim Minchin.
Julia: I don't hate that. That could be fun.
Amanda: I bet Tim Minchin has a lot of scary ass stories.
Julia: Every once in a while, we'll get like, press emails being like, do you want this person to be on your podcast? I'm like, I can't possibly imagine what we would talk about if we had Jason Isaacs on the podcast, but sure.
Amanda: We'll figure it out.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: The story began as the guest went over his paranormal experience, which in dream I experienced in first person as he narrated it cool as I watched what amounted to spirits the movie, the quote camera of the dream started sneaking its way slowly through a forest with will of the wisps in the distance. The guest said something about a car crash, and how he knew that those quote fires referring not to the fire of a car accident, but the sort of will of the wisp fires burning in the distance. Gotcha would cost 1000s of dollars to maintain.
Julia: Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Amanda: We snuck up a weathered staircase that led up a mountain amidst the trees. As Julia mentions that this guest couldn't possibly be here to tell this tale if there were, quote, so many perils on his way home from the site of the accident.
Julia: I did say that in the mushroom episode, the Creekside mushrooms.
Amanda: Like, we know that our writer is alive, so we can at least not fear that they didn't make it out of this story.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: J also has a guess about this. I think my dream self skipped through some of the episode or something, since there was clearly missing context for this remark, not that I would ever do that in real life, of course.
Julia: I would say, J, excuse me.
Amanda: Now I listen to exclusively recaps of the TV show, Married at First Sight. When falling asleep, it's very relaxing. And so I will occasionally fall asleep and miss context and have to go back, but I'll never go forward.
Julia: Amanda, what?
Amanda: It's very relaxing. Julia.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Asia and Jason have a very, very relaxing recap. It's, we know, reality TV. It's very good.
Julia: Incredible.
Amanda: The guest's narration ended when my visuals got to the top of the stairs, and with that, the refill began. Amanda recommended a book. Oh, then, Wow, If True, then there were ads.
Julia: Okay, yeah.
Amanda: As soon as the refill wrapped up, smash cut out of what. Usually was just a black, abstract field like a Rothko painting straight back into the forest where the guest continued narrating.
Julia: Uh-oh.
Amanda: I love the idea that the mid-roll happens in a void. We are in a textured void where nothing exists except my call to action and the ads.
Julia: Please let us know if there was any good companies that advertised in that episode, because I don't know, we can cold call them and say a listener said that you advertised with a in a dream, and maybe that'll work. Who knows?
Amanda: Julia, I've tried lots of cold emails in the past, might as well try.
Julia: I think that should be in our rotation for our creepier ad potential.
Amanda: The second half of the episode was about how when he returned home, he saw all of his lights on, and now his wife surely couldn't have made it home before him because of a detail that was said prior. But my brain didn't really make note of.
Julia: She was working.
Amanda: Something like that. Yeah, he sneaks around the back of the house, looking in his own windows, and the narration fully cuts out for like five minutes.
Julia: Bren would never do that.
Amanda: Never. No. Out of the corner of one window, a figure is standing very close to the front door, not moving. I can't phrase this any other way, because the narration resumes with Amanda saying the following phrase, "It's giving hat man."
Julia: Amanda, yes, you would you be like his cunty little hat.
Amanda: I would say that, bitch take that hat off! I love it. I love it, bitch I see you with your hat. Nope, nope, not happening. I would say we've peaked, Julia, but I have no intention of stopping the podcast anytime soon.
Julia: This is our second episode we've recorded today too. Just just a little peek behind the curtain, you know, like we're on one today.
Amanda: I'm in it. I sat down to record, and I said, Terrill Nick makes me feel powerful, which is not a quote but could be a quote of me based on how I sort of interact with him.
Julia: Yeah. Okay.
Amanda: That's true. So after I said, "It's giving hat man", J continues. This is, of course, in reference to the archetype of the shadowy hat man that so many hallucinations and paranormal encounters over the years have given us. The guest then continued that he opens the front door. The quote, "hat man" turns out to be a robot that grabs him and pulls him inside.
Julia: Ooh, we usually don't have robots go on.
Amanda: I think we've never had a robot Julia, apart from, like the sort of Furby animatronic, you know, late 90s, early aughts era toys in an urban legend, at least. The episode then proceeds to end with Amanda saying that this was only part one. Oh, that part two would be out next week. Cue, stay creepy, stay cool. Later, satyrs and outro music now, later. Satyrs. Julia, a newer edition. So this, this is very like, Jay is up listening to it. She is listening to our new episodes. Like, I love this so much.
Julia: I love that. That's incredible.
Amanda: So this dream unnerved me for a few obvious reasons, but that bit near the end where the hat man shows up, that really set me off. Did I witness my own hat man? Was he actually a paranormal entity trying to reach me through the dreamscape? Why was he a robot? And did the will of the wisps try to warn me about the impending robot grabbing?
Julia: Okay, here's the thing we've talked about in previous episodes, that the hat man might travel through dreams. That is part of the canon of the hat man.
Amanda: The dreams are connected. The hat man is has a continuous experience throughout our different dreams.
Julia: Also, I don't think he's a robot. Maybe hat man was there and then your dream tried to save you by being like, that's not hat man, it's a robot. You're fine, even though the robot is scary, we're okay.
Amanda: Yeah. Maybe hat man like, disappeared and your dream, how to make up for some continuity, because there are some interesting examples of, like continuity errors and time skips in this dream, which is very normal for a dream, but very odd when you compare it to like a thing with a 45 to 60 minute timeline of a Spirits episode.
Julia: True. That is true. I like that also. It's a real experience of, like, the actual listening to a podcast, where, like, sometimes you're doing something else, and you zone out for a second, and then you come back and you're like, what happened? Hold on, how'd we get here? How'd we get here?
Amanda: And then Amanda saying, it's giving hat, man. You're like, that seems right.
Julia: Yeah. You're like, yeah, no, that makes sense.
Amanda: So J finishes up with, I don't know any of these answers to the questions I've asked, but I do know I woke up with a sense of dread and a nagging feeling to check the locks on my doors.
Julia: Oh no.
Amanda: Stay creepy. Stay cool. J.
Julia: J, that's that'd be wild.
Amanda: J, I have a personal interest in you and your safety now. This is the wildest urban legends email that I think I personally have experienced since the shuttering of Creekside mushrooms. So I am I'm sorry. You're welcome, and please keep me posted.
Julia: I feel like it was very and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but it's always interesting to like read fan fiction about you slash a character that you play.
Amanda: But this is. J's subconscious, writing fan fiction for him and us about what to do.
Julia: Yeah, and I love that for them, and I love that for us.
Amanda: Incredible.
Julia: Oh, god, okay, Amanda, I I need a refill, and I'm worried about Jay and their sanity as we cut to this refill, but J Amanda's probably gonna recommend a book and then one of the other podcasts for Multitude and then do some ads. So don't get too much deja vu.
Amanda: Hang in there. We'll see you in a few minutes.
[theme]
Julia: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. A quick thank you, as always, to our patrons on Patreon, including our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah), as well as our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty, you too could join their ranks by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and getting cool rewards like bonus urban legends episodes every gosh darn month, recipe cards for every single episode and so much more. Check it out. That is patreon.com/spiritspodcast
Julia: And hey also, we are in need of more urban legends. So if you have a story, if you have an experience that happened to you, if you have a story that you used to tell around your high school or your camp, or the cool little girl scout kind of situation, maybe that you had, send it in to US, spiritspodcast@gmail.com or spiritspodcast.com/contact send us in your urban legends. And hey, just as a reminder, you can send us a voicemail urban legend at 617-420-2344, or if you're outside the US, you can email a voice note to spiritspodcast@gmail.com.
Julia: This episode is sponsored by Blueland. And hey, when was the last time you actually checked out the ingredients in your dishwasher pods? I have a little bit of a spoiler alert, they're full of chemicals and microplastics that can stay on your dishes even after they're washed, and studies show that this residue ends up inside of you, which can cause stuff like inflammation and gut damage. But Blueland's dishwasher detergent tablets are 100% plastic free and made with certified clean ingredients that are safe for your whole family. We love Blueland. They are on a mission to eliminate single use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials that are better for you and the planet with the same powerful clean that you are used to. The idea is super simple. They offer refillable cleaning products with a beautiful, cohesive design that looks great on your counter. From cleaning sprays to hand soaps, I love their foaming hand soap, by the way, toilet bowl cleaners, another one that I really love, and laundry tablets, all Blueland products are made with clean ingredients that you can feel good about. Blueland products are effective and affordable with refill tablets, starting at just 225 and you can get even more savings by buying refills in bulk or setting up a subscription. Blueland products are independently tested to perform alongside major brands and are free from dyes, bleach and harsh chemicals, and Blueland is trusted in over 1 million homes, mine included. I love all of their stuff. I love their foaming tablets that go right in the toilet and clean my toilet like a bath bomb. I love their hand soap. I am a big fan of their dishwasher tablets. And hey, I think Blueland makes a great replacement for anything that you're not happy with in your home. So Blueland has a special offer for listeners right now. Get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com/spirits you won't want to miss this blueland.com/spirits for 15% off. That's blueland.com/spirits to get 15% off.
Julia: I also want to tell you about another show here at multitude that is, attach your resume. Attach Your Resume is a brand new show for Multitude that interviews online creators about how their jobs work and how they got there. Can hear the personal stories behind seismic events in digital media and learn what concrete steps we can take to build a sustainable media landscape. Hosted by longtime podcasters and business owners Eric and Amanda. Attach Your Resume proves that the best credential for deciding the future of media is actually making stuff. New episodes every Thursday until they run out of episodes and have to go make some more. Subscribe to attach your resume on your podcast app right now.
Julia: We are also sponsored by Tempo. When you think about fast food, you're probably thinking about unhealthy, thought out patties dripping with grease. But sometimes, when you're on a super tight schedule and you need to save time, you might not have any other option. If this sounds familiar, you need to check out Tempo. Tempo can provide you with protein packed fuel to save time without compromising your health goals. They are a weekly delivery service that delivers chef crafted meals from a dietitian approved menu fresh to your door. They serve up fast, feel good, single serving meals that are crafted to cook in just three minutes so you can eat well without sacrificing taste or convenience. And hey, listen, I love cooking a whole big meal for me and my loved ones, but sometimes I do not have the time for that, and sometimes I just have to feed myself. And that's when Tempo comes in. And I really love all of the dishes that I've gotten from them like they really feels like, you know, there are conscious meals made with real ingredients, and that is something that's really important to me, and taking care of my body, the only one I have with new recipes each week that are made with real ingredients and are nutrient rich. They make it easy to keep up a healthy lifestyle. Tempo's perfectly portion lunches and dinners take the guesswork out of eating well and are fully prepared and can be heated in the microwave in just three minutes. They offer a variety of meals for different dietary and taste preferences, including protein packed, calorie conscious, carb conscious, and fiber rich. And for a limited time, Tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box. Go to tempomeals.com/spirits. That's tempomeals.com/spirits. For 60% off your first box tempomeals.com/spirits, rules and restrictions may apply.
Amanda: If you love all the myths and legends we bring you here on Spirits, you are going to love Scary Stories Told in the Dark, which is a terrifyingly twisted podcast made for horror aficionados, from frightening folklore to mind bending tales of the unexplainable, scary stories told in the dark will be sure to make your skin crawl and your heart race, coupled with haunting, immersive sound design and eerie narration, the master storytellers Otis Jiry and Malcolm Blackwood, share the work of dozens of independent and previously published contributing authors to send chills down your spine. If you enjoy our most scary urban legends, if you enjoy creepy pastas, if you enjoyed the macabre, or you just kind of want to be terrified, be sure to subscribe to Scary Stories Told in the Dark on YouTube or in your podcast app now.
Amanda: The Lit Hub Podcast is the new flagship podcast from lithub.com Every Friday host, Drew Broussard, is joined by lit hub staff writers and other special guests to chat about everything interesting, strange and wonderful happening in literary culture. Previous topics include which new books you should check out in 2025, AI companies attempts to disrupt the publishing industry. And of course, Luigi Mangione's is Goodreads page. There is so much more in the Lit Hub Podcast. You should listen now go to lithub.com or subscribe to the Lit Hub Podcast wherever you listen to your pods.
Julia: And now let's get back to our show.
[theme]
Julia: Alright, Amanda, we are back and Hey, what's up? What you been liking latelycocktail, mocktail-wise?
Amanda: Julia, I have been trying to, like, chart a middle path. Recently. I've been trying to, like, find some balance between I am working on a writing project. I know you are as well. My version of that is writing in a place with, like, other people there, but no distractions I want, like background noise, but not a thing I want to pay attention to.
Julia: Right.
Amanda: And so I've been alternating between this coffee shop in my neighborhood that has an incredibly like Nola style chicory spiced cold brew, which I love, and my favorite local dive bar, where, when I'm writing, I have been doing a mix. I've been doing, not just the lime-flavored seltzer with lime juice, but occasionally I'll do a hot toddy, Sam's alcohol, where they sell a hot toddy. But instead, I'll just do hot water, lemon juice, cinnamon stick, star anise, and just sip on that in a lovely, like, ceramic camp mug as I finish my writing.
Julia: That sounds beautiful. I really like that. That's so cozy.
Amanda: Thank you. It's really cute. The mug is, like, red and speckled, you know, like, how camp mugs are. It's perfect. How about you?
Julia: My friend is a bartender, and he made a new cocktail for this season at our now favorite cocktail bar, and it was called the Edmund Fitzgerald, which I think is a reference to a song by Gordon Lightfoot called the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is about the sinking of a ship on, I want to say, one of the Great Lakes, but I'm not entirely sure.
Amanda: Look it up.
Julia: I will. Where did you sink? You bitch.
Amanda: It's giving sunk.
Julia: It sunk on Lake Superior. Anyway, the cocktail is really good. It's a cocktail that's like gin based. It's got passion fruit. It had grapefruit juice and then it also had sesame oil and actual seaweed in it. Like, yeah, yeah. Like, you would pick it up from the beach, kind of ones with, like the little bubbles and stuff like that, not like nori sheets or anything like legit seaweed in it.
Amanda: That's so beautiful.
Julia: It's one of the most beautiful cocktails I've ever seen. And it tasted so like, tart and fresh, but also toasty and, like, I was eating the ocean. It was great.
Amanda: There are few flavors I like more than sesame oil.
Julia: Same.
Amanda: Like, one of my favorite foods is seaweed salad. And, I mean, it's just, like a great food, but also the the common denominator, or every time I use it in cooking, I'm just like, this is, this is my thing. Like, it is so tasty.
Julia: I'm just gonna very quickly show you the picture of the cocktail. Look at that.
Amanda: Oh, that's beautiful.
Julia: Isn't that nice? I took that photo.
Amanda: Really?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Damn girl. It looks like a, like someone came in and professionally did it, but it looks like a glamor shot. Yeah? I mean, not that you're like, you're good at photography, but also, this looks like a glamor shot.
Julia: No, no. It's, it looked like they had paid someone money for that. That's how I know it was good.
Amanda: Alright, Julia, I would pay you money to read me another urban legend, but this is already our job. So do you wanna just like, do that?
Julia: Yeah, I'll do it. I have an email here from Tom (they/them). The title of the email is called The Face In The Tea.
Amanda: Oh! This is ending up kind of food-themed.
Julia: I know I didn't do that on purpose, but here we go. Hey, Team spirits. My name is Tom. They them. First time caller, but long time listener, since 2016, baby!
Amanda: Oh!
Julia: I'm writing in today to share a little story from my wedding on the day of the Summer Solstice last year.
Amanda: What, uh, what an absolute baller move Julia, to get married on a solstice or an equinox. I got married, I guess slightly after the fall equinox. But shout out. I love that.
Julia: Now, Amanda, I think Tom might be a witchy bitch.
Amanda: Ah!
Julia: So you'll see why I think the equinox was the right choice for them.
Amanda: Alright.
Julia: We got my friend who runs our Tarot cup in to be our High Priestess and lead our ceremony. Well, there you go, Julia. As a moment of grounding, before we made our way over to the venue, they led us in a tea ritual for me, my husband and our best people. Our High Priestess, brewed and poured us each a cup of a delicious floral white jasmine tea, and one by one, we shared a word about how we were feeling about the day ahead, our worries and anxieties about the day, and what we hoped the day would bring. At the end, we did a little bit of an intention setting, stirring our intentions and hopes into the tea, and pausing to gaze into the swirling liquid before taking a drink. As it gradually slowed, I saw the image of a face appear in the surface of the tea, an older woman inside profile with a very strong jawline and a sharp nose and the shape of what I imagine would have been thick, wiry hair. I sat with her for a moment, but didn't recognize the face as anyone I knew. I asked my husband and the others around the table if they recognized the face, but no one did. She still felt vaguely familiar to me, and while I wouldn't have said her expression was kind and gentle, it definitely seemed encouraging and approving, which is something you would want to feel on your wedding day, I think.
Amanda: I just want to let you know, Julia, I'm picturing Strega Nona.
Julia: Amanda, I don't think you're wrong. As the final swirls of tea moved around the cup, it looked as if the face made a single curt nod. It's still a bit of a mystery as to who that face was, but I do have one theory: the energy I got from the face felt like a stern British family relationship.
Amanda: Oh!
Julia: Supportive, but focused and not overly emotional.
Amanda: Let's focus on business. You're getting married today.
Julia: My great-grandmother was one such a hearty woman and a strict mother who very much ran her household in the early 20th century UK with her four children and her husband, who were pretty sure came back from the First World War with PTSD.
Amanda: I mean, yeah, that'll do it.
Julia: I never actually met her, and I've never even seen a photo of her, but I've always felt a strange connection to her, especially as she passed on the day I was born, knowing I was on the way, but not quite able to stick around those extra few hours to see me enter this world.
Amanda: What a special relationship. Oh, my God.
Julia: And if you were visited by her in that moment too, like what, what a moment in a day, I'm sure that was full of moments that were very impactful.
Amanda: Yeah, on another threshold of a day, right? Like you are being you know, you are being birthed into the world. And in many ways, marriage, for a lot of us, is a transformation of our family unit, a passing from the one we grew up into the one we're making for ourselves.
Julia: A little a little tacked on end here, but one bonus little family visit. From my wedding day to share with you later during the ceremony, whilst we were all singing Cyndi Lauper's True Colors, which very few of us made it through without having to pause and cry, I was standing at the front looking out at everyone there, up in the corner by the mezzanine, we'd hung glitter curtains all around the room, and there was a little flurry of wind making the strands dance, and I just knew with absolute clarity that it was my grandmother who'd passed on a decade before. Thanks for taking the time to read this email of my matriarch showing up to wish me well on my wedding day. Much love to all of you at the show, and thanks for keeping me company all these Wednesdays.
Amanda: Oh, Tom, I'm also Tom on the wedding. And thank you so much for sending us in that beautiful set of memories.
Julia: It was so nice. It was so lovely. I loved it so much.
Amanda: Julia, let's take a hard left turn. I'm gonna give you the ghost girl who tried to burn my house down. And once with all the women in white.
Julia: Fuck yeah!
Amanda: From Cheyenne, also, they/them so chic, and they write Hi Amanda and Julia. Love the podcast. Been listening to you for years, and I finally mostly caught up, and figured it was a good time to write in about my own urban legends.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: This is my first personal experience with a creepy ghost girl, and the second is about women in white stories from where I live.
Julia: Let's go.
Amanda: Let me start by saying I don't actually believe in ghosts, but I still can't explain what happened to me.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Perfection. This is the Venn diagram where we live people. I grew up off the grid in the middle of the woods in rural northern Maine. There was no one else around, just me and the trees, I presume also parents, but-
Julia: I hope so.
Amanda: When I was in high school, my parents had taken my brother and dogs to visit a friend, so it was just me at home all day long.
Julia: There we go. We found the parents.
Amanda: We had an inverter connected to a car battery that would run a small TV that was itself connected to a satellite.
Julia: Oh, okay, sorry. I just the ghost of Jake came through me there for a second. He was like, that's probably not safe. You probably shouldn't be doing that.
Amanda: Well, the point is Cheyenne is watching TV.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: At one point I caught movement from the corner of my eye, so I looked away from the screen there in the doorway to the kitchen, I saw a young white girl with stringy black hair wearing a dingy white shift. I was stunned. We only looked at each other for a moment, but it felt like ages, and I felt incredibly, understandably unsettled. Then with a blink, she disappeared in a waft of smoke.
Julia: Ooh, a waft of smoke!
Amanda: That's new. We don't always get the waft of smoke.
Julia: We usually don't get a waft of smoke as you blink and they're gone.
Amanda: I like it. I like it. And it also, to me, is like a reassuring evidence that something was there and I saw a thing that is now there, no longer.
Julia: Well, I mean, that's not reassuring to me, because I think demonic. When I think of that.
Amanda: True waft of smoke. It's the hell fires. This one's for Jay, Julia. It's giving brimstone,
Julia: A country little waft of smoke.
Amanda: I just figured I was losing it, and went back to watching the TV, not thinking much more about it.
Julia: Great. Team ignorance.
Amanda: Julia. A few minutes later, I heard a whoosh sound coming from the kitchen.
Julia: No.
Amanda: From where I was sitting in the living room, I had a clear view of the propane stove in the kitchen.
Julia: Bad.
Amanda: I looked up to see that the stove burner had been turned on.
Julia: Do we think this ghost was warning them that, hey, you left the stove on? Oh, do we think the ghost was like, You're gonna die the same way I did and turned the stove on?
Amanda: I don't know, but the fact that this is like hitting three senses of there is, you know, the visual, there is a smell, there was a sound, I think so interesting. Again, I was the only one home. I'd been the only one home for hours. I jumped up to shut it off before anything dangerous could happen. All I could do was look around and be confused as to how it had apparently just turned itself on. My only theory was that it had to be the ghost girl. Of course, no one believed me when I later tried to tell someone about it.
Julia: Classic.
Amanda: We did live a mile away from an old cemetery with many graves of, sadly, children from the 1800s whose names had worn away over time.
Julia: I like the Cheyennes, like we live off the grid. But also there's a cemetery a mile away.
Amanda: Very close walking distance.
Julia: Cool, cool, and normal.
Amanda: My only thought is maybe she wandered in from there. Like I said, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't even have the excuse of faulty wiring to explain it. My house had no electricity.
Julia: Yep, yep, oh boy. Oh no.
Amanda: Second. The only local urban legends I can remember hearing in my hometown was a woman in white story.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: It was said that if you travel on the Devil's Gulch Road (I know, what a name) at midnight, you might encounter a woman in a white dress asking for a ride. If you let her in your car, she'll sit in the back. Seat and talk about her children, but when you go to look behind you, she's no longer there, but suddenly in front of the car, making it impossible not to hit her.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: This, of course, results in an accident.
Julia: Classic.
Amanda: Is this classic? I feel like this is a new variation for me.
Julia: I think it's a variation on a couple of different classics. We have the classic hitchhiker disappearing hitchhiker, or like the disappearing hitchhiker, that also turns into being the like person in front of the car that you like, think you're gonna hit, but you drive through and you're like, what just happened? Kind of thing, also the kind of classic trope of like persons in the back seat. You look in the the rear view, they're there. You look away and they you look back and they're gone.
Amanda: Yeah. Very much so.
Julia: I love all those.
Amanda: What's weird about this is that this exact story was told to me again when I moved to the coast a full three hours away from where I grew up.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: They told me then that if you travel on the Blacks Woods Road at midnight you'll encounter Catherine's Ghost. She has a name.
Julia: Catherine? I love Catherine.
Amanda: The stories around her tend to vary depending on who you ask. Sometimes she's wearing a white prom dress.
Julia: The- also a classic one.
Amanda: Yeah, other times a wedding dress. But either way, she asks for a ride, and when you give it to her, she causes an accident. Now the drivers, of course, are usually men. I guess there's something about angry women in white killing men that's pervasive.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: That's it for me. Thanks for all the work you do. Stay creepy. Stay cool. Cheyenne.
Julia: It's almost like the men telling these stories realize that, like their actions should have consequences, but a lot of times they don't, and so they create these stories where their actions do have consequences but are usually fictionalized, so they're like, Yeah, but that won't happen to me.
Amanda: Or there's kind of like, yeah, justification for not aiding somebody who may need your support. So thanks, Cheyenne, and I'm glad your house didn't burn down after that propane stove incident.
Julia: Me too. Me too. Amanda, I have a hot and fresh like just kind of came in additional food witchery thing.
Amanda: Now?
Julia: Right now.
Amanda: Oh, my!
Julia: This is from Christy (she/her), and it said food/booze + superstition + witchery = Strega!
Amanda: Oh, my excellent.
Julia: Hello, Spirits team! I have been wanting to write in about a witchy Italian family tradition. I recently learned about.
Amanda: Julia, if you wrote into our own inbox, you have to tell me.
Julia: I didn't I promise. It's not me. It's Christy.
Amanda: Okay, Christy, your call for food superstitions, seems like the perfect opportunity.
Julia: Meet Strega, an Italian botanical liqueur, which translates to which, or other more derogatory words for ladies originating in Benevento, Italy.
Amanda: Love it.
Julia: Now, my mother's side of the family is Italian, but not particularly Catholic in learning more about my great grandmother, Nonni Stella, who passed away before I was born. My family's penchant for mysticism and love of astrology makes a lot more sense. NNot only did Nonni Stella use the term "strega" to gossip about women she didn't like; she also used the spirit Strega to either bless, or withhold blessings from, relationships.
Amanda: Oh!
Julia: For example, Nonni prepared Strega for my aunt and uncle before their marriage to seal their bond, and cryptically said "it worked" after they were married.
Amanda: I mean, I guess it's better than any other thing you could say but Good God.
Julia: But she didn't approve of my grandpa as a match for her daughter, and only reluctantly served it to grandpa AFTER he married my grandma.
Amanda: Oh no. Did it not take?
Julia: In my mind, Petty Queen Stella couldn't stand the thought of her daughter being cursed in marriage, and relented. My aunt and uncle are still married 32 years later and my grandparents were together for 70 years after their delayed blessing. You can draw your own conclusions!
Amanda: Oh, my God!
Julia: Nonni Stella apparently also read tea leaves and playing cards, and occasionally tried cursing neighbors who slighted her and the family. She was a frequent user of the phrase "Fora malochio" (out with the evil eye). In doing a little cursory research, I wasn't able to find much information about how other Italians use Strega in their family traditions. I would love to know if y'all have ever heard of this tradition or tried the spirit. On its own it has a complex, pungent herbal taste. I'm sure it would make a delicious refill cocktail ingredient! Thank you for keeping me company during my commute and my house chores later, satyrs. Christie, now, Christy, I'm Italian. Of course. I've had Strega before. It's a very good cocktail. I love a complex herbal taste. It's usually good as an apertee or a digestive which means like, have it a little before the meal to open up your palate or after the meal to help digest your your meal. So I love Strega. I'm gonna think of a cocktail for this episode that we can include straggle with,
Amanda: Hey, if you are a patron, you can get a downloadable, printable recipe card with both an alcoholic and nonalcoholic cocktail for every dang episode. That's right, all 430, of them.
Julia: And I think there's only been like a couple of repeats, but only because they were like 300 episodes ago.
Amanda: Julia, I just gotta close us out with a final food related urban legend. Is that cool with you?
Julia: Yes!
Amanda: Alright. This is from M (she/her), and it's titled Ghost in the galley!
Julia: Okay, I'm excited.
Amanda: That's nice, right? It sounds it's give me like a, like a Nancy Drew right? Ghost in the galley. We're, I don't know what's up. Bizarre.
Julia: I don't know what's happening this episode. I simply don't.
Amanda: Well. Julia, importantly, we have shifted from recording spirits on Wednesdays to recording spirits on Mondays. Maybe that was the key. And I think we are, it's Monday. We are hydrated. We just had a weekend. You know, we've we've eaten breakfast, and there's just, it's not a hump day. It's It's the start, it's the pointy end of the wedge. Yeah, someone said to me recently, and I was like, what?
Julia: Oh yeah, damn.
Amanda: Alright, well, we'll see if the vibe shifts in in future episodes for the positive, or if this is an aberration. So M writes, Hey, Amanda and Julia. I love everything you two do. Spirits is one of the first podcast I got into, and I've been with you ever since. So I'm in the Coast Guard, and we have a few different stories from my time underway. But my spookiest experience happened a few years ago when I was working at the base galley in Yorktown, Virginia.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: An important note is that there is only one way on and off this base to get there. You have to spend about 10 minutes driving through literal battlefields. The Battle of Yorktown was fought on at the end of the Revolutionary War.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: These same battlefields also saw action during the Civil War, so they are just inherently extremely haunted. Every morning, when I was driving in, there were little puffs of mist that would drift across the road in a way I have literally never seen anywhere else
Julia: That's too spooky. That's no spooky that happened like kind of recently to me, really, where I was driving to pick up some sushi from the sushi place that famously gives me a banana every time I go there. I love them. I don't think that's on this podcast that we've talked about that, but my sushi place gives me a banana because they look at me and they say that girl needs girl needs some potassium. But I was driving there, and it was like it wasn't a foggy night, but it also like it was kind of stormy out, like we were just about to get rain maybe. And I saw like, as I was driving, there were these wisps of fog that were, like, base, like, only waist high, I would say, if I wasn't in my car, and they would just like, kind of move in front of my car as I was driving, and I kept thinking that I was, like, about to hit something.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: It was very scary. So I'm I'm sure that this is, if not, similar, something as, like, disorienting when you were trying to drive and you're trying to focus on not hitting, you know, the birds.
Amanda: Ideally, anything.
Julia: Anything, but also, like, you know, squirrels and birds and whatnot.
Amanda: Sometimes it would make me feel like I'd entered a liminal space while driving through the trees, causing that 10-minute drive to feel much, much longer the inherent spookiness of the battlefields absolutely bled over into the base itself. So once you get on base, the galley is one of the buildings closest to the gate, and has been in service since probably around 1945. As cooks, my coworkers and I were some of the first people on base in the mornings, as we all had to be in by five o'clock to have breakfast ready by 6:30. As the supervisor, I had to be there even earlier, around 4:45 to open the galley before my guys started showing up.
Julia: Too early.
Amanda: Also M notes. Everyone had keys, but I just felt bad and like I wasn't doing my job if I wasn't the first one there.
Julia: Oh, that's really nice.
Amanda: It wasn't uncommon when I was opening up for the light in the women's bathroom to be on, despite being on a motion sensor and me being the only one there, there were other weird little things that were hard to explain away, like oven timers going off when no one had touched them, and burners turning themselves on and burning the soup.
Julia: I don't like that.
Amanda: The timers on the ovens we had were electric and wouldn't work if the oven was off. So sometimes, if they weren't at zero when the ovens were shut off the night before, they would go off with that carryover time after they'd been started the next day. Seems like a bad feature.
Julia: This is bad equipment. Is what I'm gonna go ahead and say.
Amanda: I know. I know. This at least made sense to me, but the oven timers could only be set for an hour, so when they started going off more than an hour after the oven was turned on in the morning, it was very unsettling, and I had no explanation for it.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: As for the soup, one time, one of the other cooks had made a giant pot of soup, probably like six gallons. We were regular. Really serving five to 700 people a day, so it was a lot of food, but they'd finished it turned off the burner so the soup didn't scorch when they went to set up the serving line or do whatever else they needed to do, and while they were away doing other tasks, I smelled burning, so I went to investigate, as you do.
Julia: There's nothing worse than burning soup.
Amanda: Julia, hold that sentiment, because this was a huge pot of clam chowder sitting on a burner, cranked up to whoop ass, smelling burnt as fuck.
Julia: Even worse, that's like the worst soup you can burn, too.
Amanda: If I had to think of the worst soup to burn, I think it's clam chowder.
Julia: Both like burnt clam and also burnt cream.
Amanda: Bad, bad.
Julia: Worst combination.
Amanda: I turned off the burner, yelled for the person who'd made it ready to rip into them for leaving it unattended like that. Dangerous. They came running, smelt the burning, and I saw the genuine confusion on their face as they swore up and down that the burner had been off when they left it. This all went on for several years and got to the point where all of us who worked there just accepted that there was some kind of ghost, we guessed, maybe a soldier that had died nearby, that liked to hang out in the galley and mess with the equipment. None of us ever saw an apparition, until one day I did.
Julia: Ah! Congratulations.
Amanda: It had been a long week. Dinner on the last day of our shift was shepherd's pie. I didn't have a lunch product. So I spent the time everyone was making lunch prepping out the shepherd's pie for dinner.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Once lunch was cleaned up, I sent everyone else home and stayed to do dinner all by myself. Since I'd done the prep already, I had some time to kill before service, so I decided to make rolls or biscuits or just something to go with the shepherd's pie. I had music playing, was vibing making my biscuits or whatever, when all of a sudden I saw a dark something out of the corner of my eye over by one of the walk ins. I knew in my soul that that corner of the galley was empty, but I tried to reason it away, thinking to myself, maybe someone moved something there before leaving, and I had ignored it, but was now just noticing it. Now I always thought I was team investigate, but when tested, I guess team ignorant won out. Once I finished prepping whatever it was that I was working on, I had to walk directly past that corner to go put them in the oven. And as I did, I saw the dark something again, but this time a little more clearly. It was shaped roughly like a man, more corporeal than shadowy, but not quite smoke. As I saw it, I knew this was the ghost who liked to play with all the knobs, setting timers and burning soup. I tried to get a better look, but as I turned and looked into the corner, head on. The shape was gone. I finished out the night quite unsettled, but I knew in my bones he didn't mean me any harm. We had all coexisted pretty well after that, he kept messing with the timers, but didn't burn anything else, which we appreciated.
Julia: Thank you.
Amanda: There is the one time he kept the sink in the women's room running for a day straight. It too was motion activated, but otherwise that was that.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: I transferred out of the space a year and a half ago, so I don't have to deal with that particular spirit anymore. While this was, for sure, my most comprehensive encounter with the supernatural, I have had a few other experiences while at sea that I'd be happy to share, if you want.
Julia: Yeah, I want some sea ghosts.
Amanda: Stay creepy, M
Julia: Oh, M, that's some good shit,
Amanda: Good shit.
Julia: Muah Chef's kiss. Haha. See what I did there?
Amanda: Julia, we went on a journey on today's episode. I did. I feel pretty good about this one.
Julia: I do. I do feel I feel good. I feel good.
Amanda: I think it's because it's a Monday, I surprised you into a cold open revealing something you did not plan to be recorded, and because I'm wearing a turtleneck, so I'm going to do my best to recreate all of these circumstances next time.
Julia: Yes, more turtle, more black turtlenecks for Amanda, so she could be channeling the chaotic energy of any tech bro you can think of.
Amanda: You're right. It's me. Elizabeth Thanos, from you know, Theranos and all the ghosts in our dreams, and I love that for us, it's giving Theranos. Stay creepy,
Julia: Stay cool. Later, satyrs. Alright, that was great.
[theme]
Transcriptionist: KM Transcripts