The Birthplace of Dark Academia | Your Urban Legends 107
/We’ve got a variety of haunted places this month for you - a haunted house (classic), a haunted college (love it), a haunted adult store (?????). Also, we explore the birthplace of Dark Academia. And yes, it’s as haunted as you’d think!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of sex, porn, death, homophobia, true crime-related disappearances and deaths, child endangerment, child death, child disappearance, and abduction.
Housekeeping
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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
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a news story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: Julia, how are you here in the spring, in some ways the opposite of spooky season, right? We're six months out from Halloween. For some people, would be the sort of Nadir, the lowest point of spookiness. For us, it's happening all year round, baby.
JULIA: All the time for us, I have the 12 foot tall skeleton in my yard constantly. That's not true, but I know some people do that, and good for them.
AMANDA: I was in Portland recently as of this recording, as were you for our live show, which was so much fun. There was someone on the block of our Airbnb that had a 12 foot tall Jack Skellington, specifically. And I said, wow, that's tall.
JULIA: Amanda also asked me and said, is yours a Jack Skellington? And I said, no, no, it is not.
AMANDA: Just the regular Home Depot guy.
JULIA: Yeah, yep, just the regular guy.
AMANDA: Julia, just like, I think it's my queer right to eat Chick- fil-A sometimes, I think it's your queer right to shop at Home Depot, when they do sell a 12 foot tall queer icon.
JULIA: You know what, yes, I think so. And I waited a long time for my skeleton, as we all know who I named, Skelly Duvall. And she is my baby, my baby and my child, and I love her very, very much. She's so tall. She's so tall.
AMANDA: Incredible. Folks, if you are listening to this episode right now and you're like, wow, I should really write into Spirits with my hometown urban legend, it's never been a better time.
JULIA: It literally hasn't.
AMANDA: The coffers, they're getting a little bit low. We—we have so many great urban legends from the past, but we're— we're kind of like we're on our third or fourth filter of this chicken broth. Almost all the bits are out, and there's only broth left. And we— we need more bits to fill our broth. And this is the— the weirdest metaphor I'm perhaps, ever used. Send in your emails, send in your voicemails.
JULIA: Amanda, you're describing a real stone soup situation.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Which, as you may recall, is a story in which someone's like, oh, I'm making stone soup, but if you want some of my soup, you gotta add an ingredient to it. And for us, the ingredient is your urban legends.
AMANDA: That's so true. And Julia, I have actually an urban legend experience of my own that I wanted to open this episode with.
JULIA: I'm very excited, tell me about it.
AMANDA: Okay, Julia. So over the weekend, I was finishing a tattoo. It's a pomegranate, which is a very mythological symbol, and I know, you know, I love it.
JULIA: If you are on our Patreon, you could see Amanda's tattoo, because in the middle of the April recording of our bonus urban legends episode—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —she did show it to us.
AMANDA: It is on my upper tum, lower titty. And so if that's the thing that interests you, you're welcome to be a patron of the $16 tier, or above. I am happy to share. But Julia, more specifically, about halfway through the tattoo appointment, I went into the bathroom of this tattoo parlor to use the bathroom because I was there for several hours. And I saw something that I immediately needed your input in.
JULIA: Ohh.
AMANDA: I'm sharing the image here.
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: And so this is a haunted doll.
JULIA: Yeah. So it looks kind of like a like a Kewpie doll, I would say? Maybe like It looks like a very stylized baby with kind of an onion shaped head and fey like ears, but they're very close to the head, rather than being like very pointy off? Scary eyes. And like a wave—like, almost like a baby mohawk happening at the tippy point of the head.
AMANDA: Yes. And Julia, if you'll notice, I think this baby has the, sort of, like the balding pattern of hair, and this is very common when babies are growing hair, it obviously grows in and, like, you know, strange places not—
JULIA: They're like, born with hair, and then they lose that hair, and then other hair grows back, which I didn't know.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And one time I was talking to my friend who had a baby, her husband is quite bald, and she said, oh, you know, like, you know the baby, you know, lost his hair. And I said, is that—is that common? And she's like, oh, yeah. I was like, oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. I don't want to make this awkward, but just— just asking.
AMANDA: Just to check. And so I think this baby's hair is kind of growing in and sort of like a mohawk on top, and then maybe like a ring around the sides and over the ears. But the thing that most interested me is the thing I've never seen before, which is a sign taped above the baby doll, which is about a foot tall. It's— it's— it's probably 18 inches. It's not a small doll.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And it does say, touch me at your own risk, splice, I'm haunted.
JULIA: Uh-huh.
AMANDA: So my question, Julia, is, if I saw this doll out in the wild, I'd probably be like, that's a haunted doll, not gonna touch it. But the sign makes me want to touch it. What do you think? Does the presence of the sign make it more or less likely to be haunted? What could lead someone, apart from a pleasant prank, to put this sign up?
JULIA: I think this is a sort of Team investigate situation, Amanda, because my answer is, you need more information. Now, this is in a tattoo parlor. I would have asked your tattoo artist, hey, who brought that baby in here?
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: And then I would have been like, oh, okay, well, they had to have carried it in here. First off, where did they get it from? Second off, are they haunted now?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And then you could determine whether or not okay to touch.
AMANDA: That's—
JULIA: Because it might be selective about its hauntings.
AMANDA: That's good. You know, in the moment, I—I decided not to say anything, but I do have to go back for a couple touch ups in a few weeks time, so I will make sure to do that.
JULIA: I need updates.
AMANDA: Okay. Well, this is part one, and you're gonna have to come back next month to find out about part two.
JULIA: Also find out what its name is.
AMANDA: Oh yes, that'll—oh yeah. What's the most haunted possibility?
JULIA: Clarence? Gertrude?
AMANDA: Oh yeah. Boy is worse, boy is worse.
JULIA: Yeah, boy—boy is worse, right?
AMANDA: Alright. Thank you, Julia.
JULIA: Yeah. Can I give you an email that we have here that is kind of the opposite of a haunted baby doll?
AMANDA: I would love that.
JULIA: I have an email here from Brannigan, she/they titled, Adult Store Night Shift Ghost Story.
AMANDA: Oh, my god. Adult store, like, uh, adult store?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Lets go.
JULIA: Alright. So hey, right. In the— it's giving hat, man episode. “You mentioned that you like night shift stories, so here's mine, from when I worked overnight at a 24 hour adult store in the 2010s.”
AMANDA: Let's go. Let's go. Branigan, no one's ever gone harder than you.
JULIA: “Also, as an aside, 9 times out of 10, a night auditor is just the overnight desk clerk at a hotel who may do some basic accounting as well. That's a job that I did after I left the adult store and the audit was just pressing a button and printing some papers.”
AMANDA: Not like counting how many dildos are still available in the back room?
JULIA: I think they're specifically talking about the hotel. I do like auditing the adult store to see—
AMANDA: You still have to do inventory at the adult store.
JULIA: —you need to know if you need to order more flashlights. I get it.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: I get it.
AMANDA: There are different sizes of plugs, and you need different ones, and you need to [7:45]
JULIA: And you have to specify whether or not they're vibrating. I got it. I understand.
AMANDA: Very different.
JULIA: So she continues. “Anyway, so this was late at night, probably between 1 and 4 AM. I was in the back of the store straightening DVDs and generally tidying things. Normally, at that hour, there would be two of us there, but we were short handed, so I was working alone.” I can't think of a worse place to be working al—well, I can think of worse places to be working alone, but this is pretty top tier in my mind.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: “The DVD area was separated into two rooms with a double door frame between them. I'd bent down to straighten some cases on a lower shelf, and as I stood back up, movement in the doorway caught my eye.”
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: “A shadow figure leaned into the doorway as if checking out the room, then leaned out of view again. I could see no distinguishing features other than long hair that swayed as they moved out of view. Considering I was supposed to be alone, this was fucking scary.”
AMANDA: Now, Julia, I know you talked about this before, where something about like the detail on a shadow figure really gets me, because I expect that they're just going to be kind of a void and almost like an absence of light or the environment that you expect. But when there's enough definition to see hair or nails or eyes or teeth, that's when I'm like, oh, I'm doubly noped out of here.
JULIA: Yeah. When we think of shadow figures, I think we just think of a silhouette. However—yeah, the idea of like, it's not just a static thing that's moving, but rather, there are physics to the hair, that is not great. I don't like that actually.
AMANDA: You're right, because it's about the figure, like interacting with the environment and being affected by wind and motion, which makes it more real, and I think, more like grounded in right here and now in the same physical space I am, which also means I'm vulnerable to it.
JULIA: Yeah. And I also think that there's something about the idea of like, you can kind of dismiss something as being a shadow rather than a shadow figure when it is this sort of static thing, but when it is interacting with other things at large, that's particularly scary.
AMANDA: Yeah. You're unlocking a core memory for me of trauma, which is yay—which is in the the Peter Pan movie, where the shadow decouples from the person.
JULIA: Moves on its own.
AMANDA: Yeah. That— that remains like a primal sort of like thing in the back of the mirror, or like your reflection decoupling from you and doing something different than something different in the mirror. It's that and my shadow decoupling from my body that just give me like a visceral no, no, no.
JULIA: Even scarier, in the stage version too.
AMANDA: Very much so.
JULIA: So they continue. “Obviously, my mind immediately went to debunking what had happened. And in this instance, I at least was team investigate. Surely this was just a customer who was a shadow for some reason, and I hadn't heard them come in. I was too far back in the store to have heard the door chime. I ran back up to the front and checked the camera monitors and saw nothing.”
AMANDA: Ahh.
JULIA: “If it had been a person, unless it happened to be Usain Bolt, unlikely, I would have seen them in the parking lot or heard the door chime again as they left, but nothing. I searched the whole store, keeping my back to the wall as best I could, but still came up empty. I had to put my big girl panties on, which we also sold.”
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: “Finish out my shift without completely freaking out. In the morning, the managers came in and I told them what had happened. I did so in a sort of laughing and joking way, so they didn't think I was out of my fucking mind. As I stood in their office recounting the story to them, their eyes widened, and one pointed to the filing cabinet behind me. I turned around and saw what appeared to be your standard issue, two drawer, metal filing cabinet. A filing cabinet that had been closed when I walked in. The filing cabinet that now had the bottom drawer pulled halfway out with no intervention from any of us. I had to work alone again that night, but fortunately, that was the last ghost activity I experienced there. The first was a random metal screw flying out of nowhere, but that's the whole story there. It wasn't interesting as far as inexplicably flying things go.”
AMANDA: So odd, still. So disconcerting.
JULIA: “Best, Brannigan.”
AMANDA: Brannigan, good God.
JULIA: Good god. What an— what an interesting place to be haunted, I suppose?
AMANDA: You know, we have a few options here. The—you know worst, let's just face it, the shadow person could be haunting Brannigan specifically and came with them to work. But also, Brannigan could have been just sharing a workspace with the shadow person attached to this store. And I don't know if the store was always an adult store and it was purpose built, or if you know, it was something before, but it might be disorienting as a shadow figure, depending on, I guess, your attitudes towards sex when you were alive to sort of like vault into the afterlife or the nether region, or, you know, hell, and then find yourself in a den of vice.
JULIA: Yeah. I was gonna say, as we know, like, I'm also assuming Brannigan is American, I'm not sure. But there is, like, a certain amount of, like, Puritan values that, if this ghost was from, you know, basically anything before the 1960s, would've been, like, oh no.
AMANDA: They would have had to be very unusual in their time to be sex positive. But you know what, Julia, we talk about it all the time. Ghosts are catching up to now. There are more and more modern ghosts. We have millennial ghosts out there. We have ghosts who are used to cell phones. And so, you know, maybe attitudes are shifting, or maybe I'm just not sort of considering the wholeness of the ghostly experience and maybe shadow people have sexual needs too.
JULIA: I think we have talked about the sexual needs of spirits before.
AMANDA: We have.
JULIA: I don't know if we need to go into it again.
AMANDA: We don't.
JULIA: We don't.
AMANDA: Because Julia, we have a voicemail from a conspirator.
JULIA: Yay.
AMANDA: Yay. As always, folks, you can reach us. Our voicemail line is in the episode description of every dang episode, and we would love to hear from you. Let's play the first.
SAM: “Hi conspirators, it's Sam Waring in Austin, and I'm finally getting around to listening to the bonus urban legends video from the 28th and you seem surprised that guano was used in the manufacture of gunpowder. Tell you how that comes to be. Guano contains saltpeter, and saltpeter is one of the three essential ingredients in gunpowder. It's potassium nitrate, if you're a chemist, and you mix potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, and you wind up with something that goes bang. So that's why the Confederate Munitions Factory was near a Batcave. Talk to y'all later. Stay creepy, stay cool.”
JULIA: Oh, thanks, Sam. Now, I did know that saltpeter was important to making gunpowder. Do you know why I know that Amanda?
AMANDA: Is it because of that musical that I can't name right now, which goes saltpeter?
JULIA: It is from 1776, and there is a whole song, which is like, supposed to be representing the letters written between John Adams and Abigail Adams.
AMANDA: Of course, of course.
JULIA: And he's like, oh, can you organize the women so that they can, like, make saltpeter for gunpowder? And she's like, yeah, but also, we need sewing pins. He's like, what? She's like, there's a war on, there's no pins. And he's like, saltpeter is more important. She's like, bitch, I want pins. And he's like, fine. And then the musical, like, basically his, like, big moment song ends with him being interrupted because his wife has sent the salt Peter that he asked for. And he's like, get every pin in Philadelphia and send them to my wife. It's really good, it's really good.
AMANDA: Incredible. Thank you, Sam. That was a wonderful context. And addition to a bonus urban legends episode, you can hear if you join the patreon at patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
JULIA: And as a reminder, you can sign up for a seven day free trial by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
AMANDA: You sure can. You can even gift a membership to someone else. If you are the coolest partner or friend in the world. But Julia, we got another voicemail, hot and fresh out the kitchen.
JULIA: Another one? Damn, Amanda.
AMANDA: Let's go.
LUCILLE: “Hi Spirits Podcast, this is Lucille. I'm actually calling with a maternal dream story. So when my mom was a child, she was woken up in the middle of the night to her grandmother sitting at the foot of her bed, and then her grandmother walked down the hall into her mom's room. That night her grandmother died. She wasn't actually in the house, she just came to say bye for the last time.”
AMANDA: Okay, pause in the voicemail for a second. I know it's kind of a trope, but it—it doesn't fail to move me every time we hear it.
JULIA: Well, you know what, I think this one's particularly interesting Amanda, because oftentimes when we do hear a story like that, of like, oh, they were sitting at the end of my bed and was saying goodbye for the last time, that's kind of the end of the experience. But the fact that she then got up and then went down the hallway to visit a different person, that's a twist that I haven't heard before.
AMANDA: Yes, you're right. Because it's often a sort of like, blink in, blink out situation, and then, you know, later you're like, oh my goodness, that was the final, you know, moment.
JULIA: Or the person, like, goes back to sleep, and then in the morning they find out that that person has passed. But the—the movement away is very, very interesting to me.
AMANDA: Quite. Alright. Lucille.
LUCILLE: “Okay. So then when my mom had my older sister, my older sister had this dream where she could not find my mom. There was a crowd of people in my mom's room, but she could hear my mom calling out for her. The crowd of people was around her bed. The same night, my mom had a dream that there was a crowd of people around her bed, and she could hear my sister's voice, but she couldn't get to her.”
AMANDA: Lucille, your mom and your sister are too connected. Okay, this is— this is something else.
JULIA: First off, I like, I want to get to the weird connection part there, but the idea that your— your sister is having a dream where, in my interpretation, it is all the ghosts are surrounding your mom, that's very scary.
AMANDA: Like, I don't like, you know that thing where every face in a dream, I don't know if this has been disproven or not, like, every face in a dream is a face you've seen, because your human brain can't, like, composite up a new face, whole cloth. But like, what if it's the—the visages of people that you've either seen before or that you will see in the future? Both of those are very scary.
JULIA: I don't like that. I don't like that at all. One makes sense, the other doesn't.
AMANDA: And also, from— from the— I almost see it more from the parents perspective, of like that must be a fear. Of like, oh my kid, you know, is lost and is calling for me, or I can't get to them like you want to be able to protect them and find them, that's scary. From the kids perspective, that's also so scary to go into your parents room and see anything except your parent or parents there in bed.
JULIA: I mean, I still have, like, vivid memories of, like, quote-unquote, “getting lost in a store” and not being able to find my parents. You know, like that is a very innate child fear?
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And so that makes sense for a child to dream about that. But the connected dream, I wonder if, like, if your sister told your mom about that, and then your mom, kind of like, projected that into her dream, like that is like such a concern that wheedle its way into your mom's thoughts that it then, you know, happened in the dream, but that is like such a coincidence, that's very scary, and I don't like that.
AMANDA: Julia, believe it or not, we still have more stories from Lucille. Here we go.
JULIA: Okay.
LUCILLE: “Okay, you're still with me. Cool. So. So they've always had this sort of weird connection, and everybody's been able to see pure ghosts. When my grandma died, I went to my grandparents house to help clean it up, and I have a bunch of their lovely, probably haunted objects in my home right now.”
JULIA: Excellent.
LUCILLE: “And while I was there, I took three photos of items to send to my wife to be like, hey, do you want this? Should I bring it home from out of state? I never could find those three photos. They weren't in any app, they weren't in any trash can, anything like that. It was super weird. And then the next few hours go by, I'm feeling like that wasn't super weird, because technology is what technology does, right? And then I heard a knocking sound come from the room that my mom was in when she was a little girl. And I was like, whoa. I've been hearing pops from the house settling all day. Totally normal. This was different. It was a little knock, knock. And then, because I was aware of it, I was like, huh, that was so weird. And then I heard it again, knock, knock. And then I went, and I stuck my head down the hallway, and I looked toward the room, nothing. And I pulled my head back into the kitchen, knock, knock. I heard it for three times. So there were three photos and there were three knocks.”
AMANDA: No, Lucille, you know enough to know that this shit is bad, and there are gonna be three sets of three, and get the fuck out before you got caught.
JULIA: Mm, hmm. Yeah. As—as the demonologists love to tell us, that is the demons mocking the Trinity.You laugh, but that's what they say.
AMANDA: I know, I know. And— and yet, um, okay—this is not even the end. Alright, let's finish.
LUCILLE: “My grandfather, before he died, also had a weird experience with three things happening in that house, and my grandma also saw a spirit when she was dying in hospice. So there's that. Anyway, I finally got haunted. I had never been haunted before, and it was by my grandma, who didn't really like me, so it was little weird. Okay, that's it. That's my story. Love you guys so much. Bye.”
JULIA: Lucille, first off, I love your excitement of being like, I finally get haunted.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: It finally happened to me.
AMANDA: [22:09] who didn't really like me.
JULIA: Okay. I mean, that's a good reason to get haunted where your grandma's like, and I don't approve of your choices.
AMANDA: You're like, damn grandma, even after death?
JULIA: Even after death, even after death, she's saying, no, you can't take my stuff and bring it home to your wife.
AMANDA: Oh, boy. The photos really got me, because there are definitely moments where I'm like, Oh, I like, I took this photo, you know, in the text message so it didn't save to my— to my camera reel or, you know, it like, different apps change whether or not they, like, actually save a photo to your device, but especially three specific objects, three different photos that presumably you took at different times in different rooms. It's not like you thought you took a photo and the phone froze and it didn't actually happen like that—that's definitely going to get me, even with all of technology having its own foibles, that's very odd.
JULIA: Yeah. I wonder if Lucille sent the photos to their wife, and maybe the wife had access to them, or if it was like, I'm taking these photos to send later.
AMANDA: Yeah, that what I was assumed. Because then you're like, oh, let me take photos of the various things that she might want and then send it to my wife. But anyway, incredible Lucille, so well told. And thank you for being our inaugural multi part urban legend of voicemail. So folks send them in. We would love to hear it. And great quality, Lucille, good job.
JULIA: That was also a perfect length. So if you want an idea of how long your voicemail should be, that was very good.
AMANDA: Let's go. 2 to 3 minutes. We got you.
JULIA: We love it. We love it.
AMANDA: Alright, Julia, I'm feeling a little bit parched, so, is a good time for a refill?
JULIA: Let's do it.
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JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. Let's start as we always do, by thanking our patrons. Thank you so much to our supporting producer level patrons like, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah). And, of course, our legend level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty.and you too can get cool rewards by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast, and get things like ad free episodes, bonus urban legends episodes. So if you liked this urban legends episode, I bet you're gonna love the bonus urban legends we put out each and every month, and so much more. Check it out. That is patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And hey, you could also sign up for a free trial on our Patreon and check out those urban legends episodes without having to pay. It's a 7 day free trial and listen to as many urban legends as you want. So check it out, patreon.com/spiritspodcast. I also want you to check out Tiny Matters. Dive into things like genes, microbes and other tiny things that have a big impact on the world with Tiny Matters, join scientists Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti as they take apart complex and contentious topics in science and rebuild your understanding from deadly diseases to ancient sewers to forensic toxicology. Sam and Deboki Embrace the messiness of science and its place in the past, present and future. Tiny matters releases new episodes every Wednesday and is brought to you by the American Chemical Society. A nonprofit scientific organization that connects and advances chemistry and the broader scientific community. So subscribe to Tiny Matters today, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored by Blueland. And hey, when was the last time you actually checked the ingredients in your dishwasher pods? Now if you're like me, I am the person who loads up the dishwasher, runs it and then leaves everything in the dishwasher until I'm ready to use it again. I very rarely think about my dishwasher and cleaning it and how things in there are getting clean.But I will say, Blueland has me thinking a lot more about my dishwasher lately. Because, spoiler alert, your dishwasher pods right now are probably full of chemicals and micro plastics that can stay on your dishes even after they're washed. Studies show that this residue ends up inside of you, which causes inflammation and gut damage. But Blueland dishwasher detergent tablets are 100% plastic free and made with certified clean ingredients that are safe for your whole family. Because blue land is on a mission to eliminate single use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials to be better for you and for the planet with the same powerful clean that you're used to. From cleaning sprays to hand soap, toilet bowl cleaner and laundry tablets, all Blueland products are made with clean ingredients that you can feel good about. And Blueland products are effective and affordable with refill tablets, starting at just 225. You can even get more savings by buying refills in bulk, or super easy for me, someone who forgets about stuff easily, setting up a subscription with them. Blueland products are independently tested to perform alongside major brands and free from dyes, bleach and harsh chemicals. And Blueland is trusted in over 1 million homes, mine included. I love my Blueland products. One of my favorite things is their foaming hand soap. It smells amazing. They have so many great scents, and my hands feel really clean after washing my hands like I—I just I feel clean, and I love that about Blueland. And 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. And now let's get back to the show.
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JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And hey, what have you been enjoying cocktail, mocktail wise, lately?
AMANDA: Well, Julia, the late, great Green point Brewing Company has closed here in my neighborhood, which is—which is too bad. So I have been going through a couple of the six packs that I picked up for them— from them before they closed. Happily, that space is turning into a pinball bar. So could be much worse for Amanda specifically, but I am, yes, going through that. And the same week Van Brunt Distilling, which is a whiskey distilling company from Red Hook Brooklyn, closed its doors after more than a decade, and Eric and I have in our house like barrels, whiskey barrels from their distilling company that we bought when they were no longer watertight. So I am looking at those two beautiful barrels with like, even more fondness and love. And you know seeing them as the mementos of this lovely tap room, and you know hometown hero that they are.
JULIA: Oh, that's sad, but lovely, much like most ghost stories.
AMANDA: Thank you. How about you?
JULIA: It's been an interesting couple of weeks, because Jake is currently doing Lent and gave up alcohol for Lent.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: So we have distinctly not been drinking as much. I really only drink if we're like, going out with friends now. So my options have not been like a lot. I have been trying several different non alcoholic spirits and stuff like that. A lot of them are okay, not great. But I did find that there is a non alcoholic whiskey out there that I genuinely enjoy.
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: Jake was like, it's a solid, like, 5 or 6. And I'm like, I like everything about this, actually.
AMANDA: Julia, 10, that's great.
JULIA: It was like a Julia 8, I would say.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: But it's pretty good. It's—and it's a fairly popular brand. It's Ritual. It's what our local beer distributor happens to sell in terms of non alcoholic beverages.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Not bad. You know, it has a very distinct, like almost warm vanilla sugar scent to it when you smell like, if you remember the smell from Bath and Body Works Lotions from our childhood?
AMANDA: Julia, I'll never forget it.
JULIA: It kind of has a little scent like that. So when Jake has a glass of it and he finishes the glass, I'm just like, sniff.
AMANDA: Sniff.
JULIA: It smells really good.
AMANDA: That sounds like it'll be really good in whiskey, or sort of like old fashioned, you know, style of drink, so that's awesome. I'm so glad you guys have those options.
JULIA: Yeah, Jake loves an old fashioned. So I specifically was trying to find a nice whiskey. And they also like they add a little spice to it in order to kind of try to mimic the quote-unquote “alcohol burn” that straight spirits have. And it's not quite the same, but as someone who enjoys a spicy liquid, I genuinely like it. Jake thinks that it doesn't quite hit the mark, but I'm like, I like that it kind of has a little like, peppery bite to it, and it's kind of nice.
AMANDA: Awesome. I feel like we're living in a great age for mocktails, for low and no ABV drink options, and I am so into it.
JULIA: Yeah, there's a— there's a restaurant that recently is closing to rebrand by us. And they had a fantastic mocktail that Jake was enjoying quite a lot lately, called the winter solstice. And it had like Liars, which is another non alcoholic brand, their version of, kind of like a Campari or an Aperol, like they call it their Italian bitters.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And then it had a rosemary orange syrup to it, and it was quite good. It's quite good.
AMANDA: As a spring is springing here, I am going to be growing mint and dill on my fire escape this summer, because I— like, there's nothing I like more than a seltzer over pebble ice with a big sprig of mint in it. And I just want to, you know, have that more and more for my little like fancy treat yourself, you know, treat of the day.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I have wild mint growing in my backyard. So if you don't want to buy seed, or, you know, plant from a garden, you could have some for free.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: Hell yeah.
AMANDA: Alright. Julia, what other urban legends have crossed your transom?
JULIA: So I have this email from Abby N they/them titled The Bennington Triangle.
AMANDA: Ohh.
JULIA: “Hello, love the podcast. Not sure if you've covered it, but the cute little Vermont town of Bennington is majorly haunted.”
AMANDA: Now, is Bennington a preppy clothing brand or am I making that up?
JULIA: I don't know. I've never heard of that before. I don't think you're making it up.
AMANDA: United Colors of Benetton.
JULIA: Ahh.
AMANDA: It's different.
JULIA: There you go.
AMANDA: Moving on.
JULIA: “Shirley Jackson and Donna Tartt both wrote spooky stories about this town. People have disappeared and, more tragically, people have passed away and linger. I went to Bennington College and the dark Vermont winter made everything super spooky.”
AMANDA: Now I feel like Bennington is one of the origin sites of the dark academia micro trend [33:12]
JULIA: Oh, we're gonna get to [33;12]
AMANDA: Okay, okay, few.
JULIA: “I went to Bennington College and the dark Vermont winter made everything super spooky. It is darker than your average suburb, because it has very little light pollution. Shirley Jackson wrote the lottery and Haunting of Hill House on campus. The Hill House in question is the College Music Building, Jennings Mansion.”
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: “Late at night in this building, a lot of people, including myself, have heard music coming from completely empty practice rooms. I was there late one night and heard footsteps.”
AMANDA: Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, Julia, if I knew about this legacy when I was applying to colleges, I might have done it. I might have— I might have chucked one in the Bennington email inbox just to see.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I think that especially if you were, you know, going to college in 2018, and on, you might have doubly wanted to go here, because Donna Tartt also wrote a haunting novel called The Secret History.
AMANDA: Oh yes.
JULIA: “About some definitely not Bennington College students that study ancient Greek in a culty class and murder somebody.”
AMANDA: They sure do, and that was the— the sort of like kickoff of dark academia.
JULIA: “She attended Bennington, and every location reminds me of Bennington.”
AMANDA: Oof.
JULIA: “Before I was born, my dad spent the night at an Appalachian Trail shelter in Bennington's woods. He heard wrestling and grunting in the middle of the night, but it turned out to be a porcupine eating poorly secured food trash.”
AMANDA: Oh boy.
JULIA: It's pretty funny. “While I was in college, we talked about the woman in white, who was a disappeared hiker from the 1930s.”
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: “I once—
AMANDA: Sorry. Just the idea of a woman hiker in the 30s just gave me a little like gay flutter.
JULIA: But disappeared little less of the flutter.
AMANDA: Wearing trousers? Maybe she disappeared to live a life of lesbian luxury. We don't know.
JULIA: Maybe. Maybe we don't know. “—I once saw her when I was walking to my dorm late one night, and she was walking away from me towards the woods. She blended into the snow so I only saw her in motion. I had an unsettled feeling, and decided to let her do her thing, and went home. I think most New England universities are haunted. Lot of late night creative students making their own fun, and really old buildings are a perfect recipe for Ghost Stories.” Now I was intrigued because Abby mentions the Bennington Triangle, and I really appreciate that they talked about their own experiences and stuff like that. But I wanted to, like, see a little bit further into the Bennington Mythology and stuff like that. So I did do a tiny bit of research, and I found a article from legendsofamerica.com
AMANDA: Okay. An iconic urban legend repository.
JULIA: And this is all about The Bennington Triangle of Vermont. All direct quotes from this website.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: The Bennington triangle, centered around Glastonbury mountain in Vermont, has long been known for strange events, including UFO activity, Bigfoot sightings, strange lights and sounds, and the location where 5 people disappeared in the 1940s and 50s.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: The area is said to be cursed, according to Native American tradition.
AMANDA: Okay, let's— let's learn more about that.
JULIA: Yeah, it goes on to say an Algonquin legend warned of a malevolent stone in the mountains that would open up and devour anyone unlucky enough to step on it. Again, not sure what the source is on this, but just sharing a little bit more about that. The phrase Bennington Triangle was coined by New England author Joseph A Citro in 1992 who said the area shares characteristics with the Bridgewater Triangle in neighboring Massachusetts. Which I believe we've talked about in previous episodes, but I'm not entirely sure.
AMANDA: I assumed it was named after the Bermuda Triangle, which maybe both ultimately are inspired by.
JULIA: The stretch of woodlands around Glastonbury mountain include the towns of Bennington, Woodford and Shaftesbury, as well as the ghost towns of Somerset and Glastonbury.
AMANDA: Wow, this is really giving we came from England and settled in Vermont, in modern day Vermont
JULIA: For more than two centuries, there have been numerous sightings of a Bigfoot like creature on the Glastonbury mountain area that has been known as the Bennington monster. One of the first reported sightings occurred in the early 1800s when a stagecoach full of passengers was forced to stop on a washed out road. The stage driver first noticed huge footprints in the mud that were too large to be human. Then the coach was attacked by a giant creature who knocked the vehicle on its side. The frightened passengers could only see a pair of eyes before the monster roared and ran into the forest.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Later sightings describe the creature as a large, hairy, black thing standing over six feet tall, which is very funny, because I feel like that describes a lot of modern people.
AMANDA: It could just be an unusually tall person, of course, wearing a skin, right? Wearing a fur. And I love the idea, because it's, you know, obviously highway robbery that we get that phrase, because there were people who would lurk on the side of highways and then rob the rich people who could afford stagecoaches.
JULIA: Highwaymen.
AMANDA: Exactly. Great romance novel trope, by the way. I love the idea that it's a local being like, hey, you can afford a stagecoach. Fuck you. I'm gonna rob you.
JULIA: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. This one's a great one, Amanda. There have long been stories of people going missing in the area, including a man named Carol Herrick in 1943.
AMANDA: Don't you miss the male Carol, Julia?
JULIA: I do miss a male Carol. Big fan of male Carol.
AMANDA: Shout out, male Leslie, male, Carol, we love you.
JULIA: Herrick went missing during a hunting trip about 10 miles north of the ghost town of Glastonbury. His body was discovered three days later, surrounded by giant mysterious footprints. He had been squeezed to death.
AMANDA: I didn't know that was possible?
JULIA: Apparently.
AMANDA: Oh no.
JULIA: During a five year span, beginning in 1945 people began to disappear regularly. How regular is regularly, I need to know.
AMANDA: I never want to hear the phrase squeezed next to the phrase to death, and I never want to hear the word disappearing next to the word regularly. No.
JULIA: Pretty bad.
AMANDA: They should repel like ends of a magnet.
JULIA: The first to go missing was a 74 year old hunting guy named Midi Rivers. That's a great NPC name for your next D&D group just a heads up.
AMANDA: Writing that down.
JULIA: On November 12, 1945 Rivers, who knew the area well was. Leading a party of four hunters in the area of hell hollow in the Southwest Woods of Glastonbury.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: As he led the group back to their camp, he got ahead of them and never returned to camp. Initially, the other hunters weren't concerned, as their guide was a skilled woodsman. However, when Rivers didn't resurface, an extensive search was conducted by 300 concerned locals and US Army soldiers dispatched from Massachusetts, Fort Devens. Though they combed through the vast wilderness for 8 days, the only thing found was a rifle cartridge of the same type that Rivers used. There was no evidence of an animal attack, and his body wasn't found. Even after this exhaustive search, many locals believed that the knowledgeable woodsmen would be able to survive and would soon resurface in town, but he never did.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Rivers disappeared along the long trail Road area in Vermont, route 9.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: A year later, 18 year old college student Paula Weldon went hiking on the long trail on Sunday, December 1, 1946. I think this might be our woman in white.
AMANDA: Oh, yes.
JULIA: However, the next line is wearing a bright red jacket. Several people had seen her go, including a store employee in Bennington who had given her directions, and an elderly couple who were hiking about 100 yards behind her for a time. There was no concern, until the college sophomore failed to attend her classes at Bennington College the next morning. Afterwards, an extensive search was conducted, including more than a thousands people searching. Aircraft surveillance, posting a $5,000 reward and help from the FBI.
AMANDA: Oh my god.
JULIA: The elderly couple who had seen her on the trail said that she seemingly disappeared after she turned a corner on the trail during the massive search, no clues to her fate were ever discovered.
AMANDA: Oh god.
JULIA: Exactly three years after Paula Weldon had disappeared—
AMANDA: No, no.
JULIA: James Tedford went missing on December 1, 1949.
AMANDA: Why? Why? Why do we have the post Thanksgiving Sunday hike. Don't do that, don't do that.
JULIA: Why does it keep having on December 1st?
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: A veteran resident of the Bennington soldiers home Tedford had been in St Albans visiting relatives and returned home on a bus when he vanished. According to witnesses, Weldon was one of 14 passengers on the bus at the last stop before arriving in Bennington. However, when the bus arrived in Bennington, he had seemingly vanished.
AMANDA: How you— how you get lost on a bus? How do you get lost from a bus between one stop and the other stop?
JULIA: I don't know. I don't know. Bennington Triangle.
AMANDA: Are you a convicted felon who escaped out the toilet. If so good, I'm glad for you. But what—
JULIA: His belongings were still in the luggage rack and an open bus timetable on his vacant seat.
AMANDA: Noo.
JULIA: No had seen him get off the bus and he didn't disembark in Bennington. Though, the disappearance was investigated, no one had seen anything, nor did they report any suspicious incidents.
AMANDA: This whole thing is a suspicious incident.
JULIA: We have, I think two more still.
AMANDA: I'm sweating. Okay. Let's go.
JULIA: On October 12, 1950 an 8 year old boy named Paul Jepson went missing in the area.
AMANDA: Oh, oh god.
JULIA: Jepsen was playing in Bennington in the cab of a pickup truck when his mother left him briefly to tend to her pigs. When she returned, the boy was gone. After looking for the boy in the immediate area, he was reported missing, and hundreds of people assembled in a search party. Remember when you could just like, report someone missing, and it hasn't been 24 hours? Cool. Bloodhounds were also brought in search of the boy, which picked up his scent and followed it toward Glastonbury Mountain, but it was lost at a nearby crossroad, suggesting a possible abduction by a motorist. The boy's father said that Paul had been talking about visiting the mountains for several days. Though the area was searched for several days, no clues or remains of the boy were ever found.
AMANDA: Oh, my God. How do people who do True Crime do it? That's so sad.
JULIA: I don't. I know it's too sad. Just 16 days later, Frida Langer went missing on October 28, 1950. She and several other family members were camping in the woods near Glastonbury Mountain. The 53 year old Langer, alongside her cousin Herbert Elsner left their family campsite near the Somerset Reservoir to go on a hike. However, when they were just a few 100 yards from their campsite, Langer slipped and fell into a stream, soaking her clothes and shoes. She then asked her cousin to wait as she ran back to camp to change her clothes. After Elsner waited a while and Frieda did not return, he also returned to the camp to see if everything was all right. It wasn't. Frieda hadn't returned to the camp. Instead, she had seemingly disappeared in broad daylight in the short distance. In the next few weeks, several search parties, including some 400 people, comprised of police, volunteers, firefighter, soldiers and aircraft searched for her and turned up nothing. The search was finally called off. Then several months later on, May 12, 1951 her body was found near Somerset Reservoir, in an area that had previously been extensively searched. Due to the body's decomposition, no cause of death could be determined. The case remains unsolved.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: So she was the only body they found.
AMANDA: And all these disappearances happened between October and December, you notice that?
JULIA: Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, that is not a great time to be hiking in Vermont.
AMANDA: Yes. And also, days are probably shorter, like days are obviously getting shorter. So you may not be used to nightfall, which is certainly a, you know, a risk factor, but, oh, my goodness, this is so much deeper than I thought.
JULIA: Yeah. Langer was the last person to disappear, and the only one whose body was found. Though, no direct connections have been found that tie these cases together other than geographic area and time period. Some claim that these disappearance were the work of a serial killer. Others blame the curse or the paranormal, stating that the place is a quote-unquote "window into the unexplained." Some say that the area is unstable due to wind patterns that are unusually chaotic and confusing, so people can easily get lost. Whatever the reason the area is famous for, its strange phenomena. In addition to the Bigfoot sightings and disappearances, others have reported seeing strange floating lights, other mysterious woodland creatures and UFO activity.
AMANDA: Well, sounds like a new Wikipedia rabbit hole for me to go down tonight [46;38] I'm trying to fall asleep.
JULIA: Oh yeah.
AMANDA: And folks, if anybody has uh, experience with Bennington College or Bennington Vermont or just that uh, strange triangle, we would love to hear it.
JULIA: I would. I would like to hear more about that. And especially like you know, this is one of the birthplaces of dark academia as a genre. So I'm sure there are some spooky, spooky tales to come out of there.
AMANDA: Love to hear it. Well, as usual, folks, you can reach us, spiritspodcast@gmail.com and if you're outside the US and can't dial our phone number, don't worry about it. Just send us a little voice memo. You can do that spiritspodcast@gmail.com or go to spiritspodcast.com/contact with a lovely form that you can fill out.
JULIA: Yes. If you want to send the voice memo, you have to do it through our email and not the contact because we don't allow attachments to the contact page, I believe?
AMANDA: That's right.
JULIA: But yeah.
AMANDA: Lots of people, though, do choose to email us directly and include photos of their pets and plants, which we always welcome.
JULIA: We love that. Big fans of that.
AMANDA: Well, Julia, I am thoroughly chilled on this warm afternoon, and I'm gonna go ahead and stare off into the distance for a while. But in the meantime, folks, next time you contemplate hiking in Vermont in November, Don't. End.
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.