Werewolves Love Airports | Your Urban Legends 112 w/ Mayanna Berrin
/We’re starting off spooky season strong with an urban legends episode and a fantastic guest! Julia goes down the rabbit hole of geocaching. Amanda’s urban legend is people who want to kiss at parties. Mayanna has no theories, only questions.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, drowning, sexual content, kidnapping, murder, pregnancy, gun violence, child death, bodily functions, and animal death.
Guest
Mayanna Berrin is a writer for animation and games, voice actor, comedian, and performer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the co-host of Simple and Clean: A Kingdom Hearts Podcast.
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
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And we are joined today by our guest, who is not just a writer for animation and games, not just a voice actor, not just a comedian, not just a performer, not just a podcaster, but our sibling here in the Multitude Podcast Collective, it's Mayanna Berin.
MAYANNA: Yes. Hang on, this is my Spirits, wooh.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: We might have to start asking guests to do their best ghost impressions at the beginning of episodes. That might be a thing that we have to start doing.
AMANDA: Why haven't we done that, Julia? We fucked up. What's wrong with us?
JULIA: Wrong with us? We need to contact every guest we've had on the show and say, "Hey, sorry, we're going back and editing all of the episodes. Can you just make a ghost noise for when we introduce you?"
AMANDA: Maybe that's episode 500, it's just a montage of all of them.
JULIA: Whoa. So little work for me personally, I love that.
AMANDA: Bren, I am going to send you an email because this might be something that you have to put into your schedule.
JULIA: Uh-oh.
MAYANNA: I love pretending to be a ghost.
JULIA: Big same. It's Halloween time, too, so—
MAYANNA: Oh, yeah, it's spooky season.
JULIA: It is officially, officially now.
MAYANNA: I know. And according to the internet, it was last month, but I don't believe that.
JULIA: I'm a big fan of the Labor Day happens and then spooky season is now officially a go.
MAYANNA: That's a good rule to have for life.
JULIA: So for my anniversary, which is usually the weekend after Labor Day weekend, we do our big, haunted house trip down to Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights.
MAYANNA: Ooh, did you survive? I saw the lines were crazy.
JULIA: We do fast pass, baby. Like we're—
MAYANNA: Hey.
JULIA: We know, we know.
MAYANNA: Professionals.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. So that is the official start of spooky season once we enter the fog, as they like to put it.
MAYANNA: Heck yeah. Did you see they have now the, "I'm scared, don't talk to me necklace"?
JULIA: Yeah. I don't need that, necessarily. I don't need to pay $20 to tell a scare actor, "Hey, don't scare me." But if that's your cup of tea and you're spending hundreds of dollars to go to Halloween Horror Nights, sure. Why not?
MAYANNA: They just want everything to be sleep no more.
JULIA: They really do.
MAYANNA: They're like, "I want to observe, but I don't want to be talked to."
JULIA: Well, so, the— again, you don't have to go to Halloween Horror Nights. They didn't pay me to go, so I'm not going to tell you to go, audience members. But a unofficial rule, I've noticed, is if you're going through a scare zone that has, like, benches in the area or sidewalks in the area, the scare actors won't go up there, so you can just kind of sit and watch them—
MAYANNA: Oh.
JULIA: —scare all the people in the street, and they won't come and bother you.
MAYANNA: That's pretty cool.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I would 100% do that.
JULIA: It's like an unofficial rule.
MAYANNA: I dated a scare actor very briefly. Yeah.
AMANDA: What was that like?
MAYANNA: Well, so, we dated before he became a scare actor.
JULIA: Damn.
MAYANNA: And then, yeah, we met in the midst of— ooh, spooky. No, but he was— I forgot what year it was. I think it was the year when they were doing the big Blumhouse, like—
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
MAYANNA: —exhibition, where it was, like, a bunch of different Blumhouse movies.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: But specifically, he's, like, six-foot-four. He's, like, very, very tall, and he has, like, very gangly features. So they were just like, "That guy."
JULIA: That guy.
MAYANNA: "We want that guy." And now sometimes he works the haunted hay ride.
JULIA: Oh, look at that.
AMANDA: Oh.
MAYANNA: Professional spooky guy.
AMANDA: Now, Mayanna, would you say anything about your relationship or breakup sort of led him down that career path?
JULIA: Amanda, I was thinking the same thing.
MAYANNA: Probably. Sorry to this man.
JULIA: These things happen.
AMANDA: We don't apologize to men on Spirits.
MAYANNA: You're right, you're right.
AMANDA: But I would love to hear, Mayanna, as a child, were you creepy? Did you engage in creepy behaviors? Did you go to sleepovers and engage in any ritual storytelling with fellow children?
MAYANNA: Good question.
JULIA: And we say creepy in a loving, respectful way. We love a creepy child on this podcast.
MAYANNA: Hmm.
JULIA: I was a creepy child.
MAYANNA: I think the best way to describe this would be a morbid curiosity child, where I'm actually very scared of stuff, but I like to know what happened.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MAYANNA: And so I was a big Wikipedia page summaries person. And even that would scare me, or I would do the dumb thing where I'm like, "Okay. Well, let me just, like, watch the clip that's scary." And then go to my mom's room and be like, "Mom, I'm scared."
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: "It was too scary. I made a mistake."
MAYANNA: The big one was I had a babysitter who liked to adapt movies she had seen into stories she would tell us at bedtime. I actually had two babysitters that did this.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: That's wild.
AMANDA: Great idea.
MAYANNA: Yeah. One of whom adapted for bedtime stories, Willow and the Princess Bride, which sent me on a lifelong obsession, and a different babysitter who adapted for us, I— like a loose retelling of Friday the 13th. She did a little remixing at the end. I'd be like, "Oh, man, that's so scary. I need to know what happens, But also, now I have nightmares, and I don't know what to do." It was a lot of that.
JULIA: See, the Princess Bride makes sense to me.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Friday the 13th, not so much.
AMANDA: Wild.
JULIA: Not so much.
MAYANNA: Yeah. They were like, "There was a kid who drowned in a lake."
AMANDA: Okay. Damn.
JULIA: What?
MAYANNA: "And then he comes back." She cut out all the sex scenes, obviously.
AMANDA: I was gonna say—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —it's very centered around teens having sex, yeah?
MAYANNA: Yeah. It was just like, "And then one of the teens goes outside," and you're like, "No. Does he get killed?" It's like, "He does."
JULIA: "He does. I'm not gonna describe it to you, but—"
AMANDA: He does.
MAYANNA: "He does get killed." And I'd be like, "No, that's so scary."
AMANDA: For unknown reasons, he was both outside and vulnerable.
MAYANNA: He was so not wearing clothes, maybe. "Ooh, where did his clothes go? They stole them. Ooh." Yeah.
JULIA: That's extremely funny. The minute you said, "I had a babysitter." I said, "Ooh, lock in. It's gonna be a wild time."
AMANDA: Buckle up. I— looking back, I am amazed at how confidently my parents let children watch their children. Like, my babysitters were, you know, max 17.
MAYANNA: Yeah, a 100%.
AMANDA: Like, all of them were in high school. Maybe, like, the neighbor kid when she first went to college, babysat us, like, once her first year of college, so, like, maximum 19. And there was— some of them brought their boyfriends over, like, there was—
MAYANNA: Oh, man.
AMANDA: There was just, like, a lot happening. And we were four kids, and there would be one babysitter, who's also a teen. And at some point, I'm just like, "I'm amazed nothing bad happened."
MAYANNA: Yeah, but I will say, as a child, did you not see that 17-year-old as an authority figure?
AMANDA: Oh. The oldest person to ever grace the earth, like the oldest and coolest, yeah, at anything.
MAYANNA: And they know the TV shows I like, uh-hmm.
AMANDA: So Mayanna, were there any, like, creepy spots or legends that high schoolers did to scare themselves, or to, like, have an excuse to hold hands with a date in your hometown?
MAYANNA: My mom was very concerned that I was going to be kidnapped and murdered. So it was just a lot of like, "Don't stand outside the front door, because you'll get scooped up in a van and kidnapped and murdered." And so it was a lot of like—
AMANDA: True.
MAYANNA: Yeah, it was a lot of coming from my mom, where it's like, "And if you walk back from school home alone—"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: "—you'll get kidnapped and murdered and put in a fridge."
JULIA: Oh, the '90s.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MAYANNA: I know. "And they found him in a fridge." But the big, spooky, like, thing that I was very, very scared of was Bloody Mary.
JULIA: Yes. We just did a Bloody Mary episode, Mayanna.
AMANDA: Yes.
MAYANNA: Yep. Yep. It was— and I remember I was like, "She's in the mirror." And my dad was like, "I'm gonna go in there, and I'm gonna prove to you that Bloody Mary is not real." It was like, "No, dad, it's too dangerous."
JULIA: I thought you said your dad was gonna say, "I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna fight her."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "I'll get rid of her."
AMANDA: That's what your dad would have done, Julia. He would have been like, "Get behind me. We got this."
JULIA: Yeah, my dad would have been like, "I went into the bathroom and I beat her up. It's fine now."
MAYANNA: "She put up a good fight." He was like, "I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna do it." And I was like, "Don't do it. You're gonna die." And then he did it. And I was like, "Oh, my God. How did you survive? I thought this was real."
AMANDA: So cute.
MAYANNA: I think, like, the high schools that I went to, it was less like spooky stories, and more just like, "Oh, well, we were all at this party, so obviously, we all made out." And I'm like, "What is going on at these parties?"
JULIA: The urban legends were parties where people made out for you, I like that.
MAYANNA: That— I was like, "Did you guys know that people were kissing?" Because I was very late bloomer energy. So I was just like, "How did that even— how does that even happen?"
AMANDA: Me, too, man. Like, I'm the person, like, staring at myself in the mirror, saying Bloody Mary a thousand times until the words make no sense anymore. But my version of that is being like, "Doesn't someone want to kiss? Like anyone wants to kiss?"
JULIA: A single person, a single person.
AMANDA: "Does this single person want to kiss?" Yeah.
MAYANNA: But, yeah, I definitely— I think I also grew up in, like, the peak, like found footage Renaissance again—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
MAYANNA: —where, like Cloverfield and, like, all those kinds of shaky cams. So I think it was a lot of just like, "What do we do? We're trapped in the garage." Like, I don't know. It's just a lot of, like, that kind of vibe. But, yeah, I don't—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: I was a big Tim Burton kid, but I don't think I was necessarily a creepy child. I think I was like—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: —the kid in the horror movie who was so sheltered that you obviously picked them off first, because they just don't know anything that's going on.
JULIA: The Nerd. You're talking about the nerd, and that's okay. I love that for you.
MAYANNA: Thanks, friends. Thank you. Appreciate it.
JULIA: To be fair, though, you are also most likely to survive horror movie because you're not out there going to those kissing parties and drinking underage.
AMANDA: That's very true.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: It is true. My mom would just keep telling me I'm gonna get kidnapped and murdered, so I was like, "All right. Well, murder town U.S.A. out there.
AMANDA: Yeah. I wasn't certain that tongue kissing wouldn't get you pregnant until I was probably 12. So—
MAYANNA: Oh.
AMANDA: —you know, I was also like, "I don't know about any of this."
JULIA: Yeah.
MAYANNA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: There shouldn't be tongue kissing—
MAYANNA: Smart.
JULIA: —before 12, anyway, so—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: —you're right, Amanda.
AMANDA: Julia, it took me to, like, 19. Okay? So it—
JULIA: Same.
AMANDA: —we had a long runway.
MAYANNA: There you go.
JULIA: Would you like to hear an urban legend?
MAYANNA: Yes, please.
JULIA: This one is from Tasha, [10:08] she/her, titled The Time I Got Chased by a Werewolf."
MAYANNA: Hell yeah, not clickbait.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: So she goes, "Hi, Spirits team. I've been a listener for about a year at this point. Anyway, I lived throughout North Carolina over the last 15 years, and I wanted to tell a story about a time I was almost definitely chased by a werewolf outside Fayetteville."
MAYANNA: Okay.
JULIA: "Some friends and I had a phase of being very into geocaching. If you're not familiar, it's basically a treasure and/or scavenger hunt organized by various internet communities, wherein cashiers will set up caches all around the country and post clues and coordinates about how to find the caches. Typically, there is a little treasure box when you find the cache, so you can take a trinket that someone has left in the past and/or leave something of your own for others to find and claim. Degrees of difficulty can vary, and there are often themes related to the time of year, location, pop culture phenomenon, et cetera. The locations can range from public areas to technically not so public areas. Disclaimer, I believe generally they're supposed to be in public areas or only used with permission if a private space. However, it's also not uncommon for people looking for caches to stray off course in their searches."
MAYANNA: Okay.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, have you ever geocached? Because this seems like a thing to be right up your alley.
JULIA: No. I really like the idea of it, but also I think it requires me to go down a certain rabbit hole on the internet that I'm not sure I can dig myself back out of if I fall down it.
AMANDA: That's fair. It's like a whole personality. Yeah.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. I have to, like, give myself the grace to be like, "You'll probably get too into that if you try to do it."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: That's so funny.
JULIA: "So enter night caching, which meets all of these criteria, but at night, so it's spooky."
MAYANNA: No. Already no.
AMANDA: Oh, I'm out. I'm out.
MAYANNA: That's a no from me, dog. Uh-uh.
JULIA: "And often involves remote or purportedly haunted or abandoned locations."
MAYANNA: Yeah, I'm out of here. That's— no.
AMANDA: This feels like a real way to get yourself murdered. I don't like this.
MAYANNA: That's what my mom was warning me about. This is it.
AMANDA: It is.
JULIA: "In my experience, night caching was particularly likely to lead us to… accidentally encroach on some properties we technically were not supposed to be on."
MAYANNA: Uh-huh. That brings myself and my friends, Grace and Nicole, [12:30] to the border of Fayetteville's International Airport at around 3:00 in the morning."
AMANDA: Not an airport. We don't fuck with an airport.
MAYANNA: Come on, brother.
AMANDA: Come on.
MAYANNA: This is not okay. You're gonna get run over by a 747.
AMANDA: Or shot by the TSA.
MAYANNA: Oh, my God. They have guns.
AMANDA: Do they have guns? I don't know.
MAYANNA: I don't— I think they have tasers. I don't know.
AMANDA: Someone has a gun in the airport.
JULIA: "Out past the edge of town, off a highway that didn't see much traffic in the night hours and within sight of the airport's border fence, we went searching for a cache."
MAYANNA: Come on, brother.
JULIA: "I— the clues we found had set us searching for some sort of reflector that would illuminate the way to the cache. The coordinates took us to a patch of highway surrounded by woods on either side. To the right of the highway, from where we parked, there was a small, sloped embankment of trees, which led to a large field, which led to the airport's border fence, which enclosed the tarmac."
MAYANNA: Large field.
JULIA: "The fence and the tarmac, of course, were lit up like midday sun. The field was large enough that the copse of trees we were exploring was easily navigable without flashlights, as it wasn't very dense in that patch, but it wasn't exactly high visibility either. Now, this cache had us struggling, despite our track record of having solved everyone that we did up until that point, and we were getting frustrated."
MAYANNA: The twist, there was no cache.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
MAYANNA: This was just a way to get you murdered.
JULIA: Some terrible Redditor on the internet decided to just put locations—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: —on and clues that lead to nothing. Who can say?
AMANDA: This is a bit of an old internet phenomenon where there was a lot more, like, community and trust.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: Yeah, no kidding.
JULIA: "So we could not find any reflector that somehow illuminated the cache or the way to the cache, so we fanned out a little to search."
MAYANNA: Oh, now they're splitting up? Great. Okay. This is really smart.
JULIA: "Just to ease your misgivings, we were close enough to each other to not need to yell. We made many jokes about not straying so far from each other that we could get serial killed by whatever masked boogeyman might be prowling the area."
MAYANNA: Uh-huh.
AMANDA: Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Wouldn't that be so funny? And the person's voice cuts off.
JULIA: "At this point, Nicole is shining a flashlight around the trees, hoping to catch a reflection somewhere, and Grace and I are standing at the bottom of the embankment on the edge of the field. We thought we might find the clue by changing our perspective and looking back towards the road. It didn't work, so we turned around wondering whether the reflector was actually much stronger than we initially assumed and was posted across the field, ready to shine a beacon all the way back to the highway. Also, not the case."
MAYANNA: Everybody's— everything about this is telling you to give up, queen. Come on.
AMANDA: Not outside the airport, where, famously, they need lights to land the plane.
JULIA: "While Grace and I stood scratching our heads, and Nicole was puttering around in the trees behind us, I noticed something move out near the fence. Immediately, my insides constricted, and I grabbed Grace and frantically whisper asked what the hell that thing was. She was trying to follow the direction I was pointing, and could see the obscure, shadowy shape I was talking about. But as we started, nothing was happening with it. I insisted it was noticeably shorter when we first got there, and that I had seen it get taller, but it was, once again, completely immobile."
MAYANNA: That's the Slender man right there. That's just the Slender man coming to get you.
JULIA: "I had started to worry. It may have been security patrol, and we were about to get into some shit for being so close to the airport's property in the middle of the night, and Grace was trying to supply suggestions as to whether it could be something utility-related or some sort of outpost setup, right?"
MAYANNA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: "This whole exchange took less than a minute, and while we were racking our brains and trying to not freak each other out, Grace and I noticed at the same moment that it was moving again, and this time it was coming toward us."
MAYANNA: And it was personal.
JULIA: It was very clearly not human-shaped, just kind of a blob. But it wasn't slow. Fortunately. for us, that field was quite large, so we scrambled back up the hill, yelling at Nicole to, 'Get in the fucking car.' We threw ourselves in, and before we could even get to the point of locking the doors and buckling up, Grace was accelerating out of there."
MAYANNA: Cool.
AMANDA: uh-hmm.
JULIA: "Now, we've talked about this over the years, and we've come up with a few theories, but none of us have really struck a chord of an obvious answer. For example, while bears are not common in the area, there was a bear sighting reported a couple of towns over not long after that. According to my husband, it could have been three kids standing on top of each other inside a trench coat."
MAYANNA: Are you— okay. Sorry, that is—
JULIA: Get out of here, husband.
MAYANNA: Get out of here. The adults are speaking. The adults are speaking. What is—
JULIA: Now, we also floated the possibility of weirdos dressing as killer clowns and terrorizing the populace, which was a thing around that time. You might remember that period of time where people were dressing up as killer clowns."
MAYANNA: I do.
AMANDA: I forgot those Arkansas, yep. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "But I was the only one who saw it suddenly get taller, and it sure didn't look like any of those things to me. After that night, our interest in night caching waned for some—"
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: "—inexplicable reason."
MAYANNA: Shocker.
JULIA: "So we never had an opportunity to recreate the experiment. It's for the best, though, whether it was airport security, a bear, or a werewolf, the outcome probably wouldn't have been great for us."
MAYANNA: Oh, my God. Okay. There's a lot to unpack here.
JULIA: So do we have some theories?
MAYANNA: Theory— no, I have no theories.
JULIA: No? No theories?
MAYANNA: No. I— no, my theory is, why were you out there in the middle of the night? Where are your parents? How old were you? How did you— like— okay, fine. I have one theory.
JULIA: Okay.
MAYANNA: It's probably just like a guy.
JULIA: But then why did it get taller, Mayanna?
MAYANNA: Because he was crouching.
JULIA: Oh, but then what was he doing there? Was he doing serial killing?
MAYANNA: Maybe he was also geocaching.
JULIA: Oh.
MAYANNA: Like—
JULIA: Maybe, maybe.
MAYANNA: Like if other people are going here, the— presumably there are other people looking for this geocaching.
JULIA: I like this idea that, like, this other guy, this other potential person, was like, I'm also gonna go at 3:00 am. I think that's a good idea for me personally."
MAYANNA: Well, that was the— that— was that not the request, or was it just the thing—
JULIA: I think it was just that's when they happen to get to this one at this time. So, like, the night caching can happen at any time of night, but the 3:00 am was, like— for some reason, that's what they chose to do it.
MAYANNA: That's— there's a lot— I— okay. I just— I want to give them, like, a grade, and the grade is bad.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: It's like a D-minus. It's like good props for teamwork. Glad you weren't too far away from each other that you didn't have to yell.
JULIA: Yes.
MAYANNA: I feel like it was probably just another person who was also doing the geocaching, if I'm being rational. But if I'm being irrational, yeah, probably a werewolf queen.
JULIA: Yeah. Love that. Love that for us.
MAYANNA: Yeah, they love the airport famously.
JULIA: Famous airport werewolves.
MAYANNA: They love howling when the planes take off, they go, "A-woo."
JULIA: Because it's a werewolf, they have to scale up. So instead of chasing cars, they chase airplanes.
MAYANNA: Yeah, They, "Rarr." Yeah, that's nice. I like that. I'm glad you didn't die. I'm glad you didn't die. Also, bad night geocaching, that's just— it's like when Pokémon Go was a thing and people were just finding dead bodies everywhere. Just—
AMANDA: Mayanna, I am Pokémon Go-ing to the polls every single day, to this day. I am level 45.
MAYANNA: Oh, my God. Incredible. My partner is also a big Pokémon Go freak.
AMANDA: And the, "I am completely a freak," and the app reminds you stringently, "Do not trespass." And yet, here we are.
MAYANNA: Ah. Wow.
AMANDA: I did just ask my friend, Leslie, friend of the show, who is a big geocacher, if she has heard of night caching. And she said that she went exactly one time because she and her now husband, Chuck, went on a vacation, specifically chosen because it was near a state park with a lot of geocaches.
JULIA: That's wild.
AMANDA: And so they were, like, staying there, went to one at night. And there are caches that, like, for a challenge, you need to access at night. Like it's specifically for the nighttime. But I think it was like 9:00 pm, you know?
MAYANNA: That makes sense, but it's still—
JULIA: It's not 3 AM.
MAYANNA: The big— I also have a big question, is it not illegal to trespass at the airport? I feel like—
JULIA: I guess technically— so they were outside the fenced area of the airport.
MAYANNA: Okay. Okay.
JULIA: So that's like being like, "No one's allowed to go on the sidewalk outside my lawn, but the airport."
MAYANNA: There's not a rule that says a dog can't play basketball. Yeah, it's— I'm touching the air. I'm not touching the— I'm touching the air.
JULIA: Yeah, I'm not touching you.
AMANDA: I'm getting more color from Leslie's husband currently, who says that when they went out, he had a headlamp and a moth the size of his face landed on his face as soon as he turned on the headlamp.
JULIA: Cool.
MAYANNA: And ultimately, the cache was in like a crevice of a rock. And Leslie was like, "Yeah, I don't want to do that." And so Chuck says, quote, "I was so in love with this woman, I stuck my hand in a pitch-black hole to find that cache in the middle of the fucking woods in West Virginia."
JULIA: Hell yeah, dog, that's love.
AMANDA: They're in love.
MAYANNA: That is love.
AMANDA: Good God, not my idea of a date.
MAYANNA: Yeah, I can't— I— no, you would not— no.
JULIA: Listen, Amanda, if I fall down this rabbit hole, I won't take you to a night caching, but I will take you to a regular one maybe.
AMANDA: Julia, I'm with you. I'll be your driver, and I'll bring my grandma's little grippy stick that she uses to pick up packages, and I'll stick them in the hole.
MAYANNA: That's really smart.
AMANDA: I am a little bit parched after that nighttime adventure, so why don't we pop into the kitchen and grab a quick refill?
JULIA: Incredible.
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JULIA: Hey, it's Julia, and welcome to the refill. Let's start as we always do, by thanking our patrons who get awesome rewards by going to patreon.com/spirits podcast and signing up today, including bonus urban legends episodes every single month. So if you love our urban legends episodes, you definitely want to check out and get our bonus urban legends episodes. We're going to be dropping one today. And if you sign up, you can get access to that and every single other bonus urban legend episode we have released. And we've been doing them for literally years at this point, so it would take you a long time to listen to all of those bonus urban legends. I think it's worth it. Check it out. Go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast today. And thank you to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Rikoelike, Lily, and Wil. 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 hey, we want your urban legends. If you enjoyed this, if you've been enjoying listening to other people's urban legends, and it makes you think, "Oh, I have a story that I want to share," Or, "Oh, I think this would be fun to hear the take that these Spirits hosts have on my story." Send it in. You can send it to us via our website, by going to spiritspodcast.com/contact or you can email us at spiritspodcast@gmail.com, or, hey, you can even leave a voicemail. It's 617-420-2344, and you can leave us a little voice memo. I would love to hear it. We want something that's between, like, 30 seconds to three to four minutes. We would love to hear your stories and include them in the spookiest month of the year, October. That would be great. I also want to tell you about another show here at Multitude, and that's Join the Party, a show that I'm also a part of. Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. GM, Eric and emphatic players, Amanda, like our Amanda, Brandon, and Julia, me, welcome everyone to the table, from longtime tabletop RPG players to folks who have never touched a role-playing game before. I think you would really like our current campaign. It is a high school setting, but it's a superhero high school. It makes me feel like fall-y. I love the, like, back to school season. So if you want to hear what shenanigans our teenagers are getting up to with their superpowers back in high school, you should check out Join the Party. And we're also using Masks, which is a really fun system to play in. And if you've never played in before, we teach you how to play, which is really fun and exciting. You can also marathon through our completed stories. Campaign Three was a pirate story set in a world of plant and bug folk. We have the Camp-Paign, which was a Monster of the Week game that was set at a weird summer camp. I think Spirits listeners would really like that one, too. Campaign Two was a modern superhero setting, and then Campaign One was a high fantasy setting. So what are you waiting for? Pull up chair and join the party. Search for Join the Party in your podcast app, or go to jointhepartypod.com. This episode is sponsored by Blueland. And hey, you might be secretly cleaning with microplastics. That's a concern that I have, certainly. If you use something like detergent pods, your clean might not be as clean as you think. That's why I've made the switch to Blueland across all of the cleaning products around my house. Their products meet the highest standards of clean. They're effective, yet gentle for my family and also the planet. 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Like, I like cleaning my toilet now, which is not something I ever thought I would say on a podcast, but there you go. 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 our show.
[theme]
JULIA: We are back. And Mayanna, something we love to ask our guests here on spirits is, what you've been drinking lately? Whether that's cocktails, mocktails, coffee creations, what has been your drink of choice?
MAYANNA: Great question. So I don't drink alcohol often. I am a— current— my new drinking problem is the canned teas from Trader Joe's.
JULIA: Hmm.
MAYANNA: Specifically the pomegranate and the peach.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
MAYANNA: I've also been partial to the grapefruit soda, the Blood Orange grapefruit soda, also from Trader Joe's, because I don't know about where y'all live, but it has been disgustingly hot here.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: And so half of my diet of recent has been sugary cold beverages.
JULIA: Heck yeah. I love that. That's so good.
AMANDA: It is, for the first time, below 70 degrees today. And as you can see, Julia and I both broke out our full sweaters.
MAYANNA: It's sweater time. I love it.
JULIA: I'm so excited.
MAYANNA: I can't wait to break out sweater time. What is the temperature today where I live? It's 76. It's 76 right now. We're getting close. We're breaking new ground. Thank God, because I've been sleeping on my couch for the last week, because that's where the AC is.
AMANDA: That'll do it.
JULIA: Now, I'm thinking that the Blood Orange grapefruit soda. Is it blood orange color?
MAYANNA: Yeah, it's like orange red.
AMANDA: Ooh.
MAYANNA: It's really refreshing. It tastes like— you— it feels like you can taste the skin of the grapefruit, like there's— that, like— it feels— it's real nice. It is funny because one bottle, I poured it out for me and my partner, and it was, like, exactly, like, two glasses and a half.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Perfect.
MAYANNA: And, like, for this big bottle, you're like, "Just enough for a cup each, and a little top off."
JULIA: Also going into spooky season—
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: —that could be a great cocktail mixer as well, or a mocktail mixer, you know, as your base.
MAYANNA: Oh, yeah. It's absolutely a good mixer. I completely recommend.
JULIA: If you're not doing alcohol, like a sort of herbal tincture kind of thing.
MAYANNA: It gives you a little citrus, a little— yeah, a little fruity.
JULIA: Hmm, maybe a little rosemary. Oh, yeah.
MAYANNA: Uh-hmm. I do love a mocktail, too. I just haven't been out. I don't go out much.
AMANDA: Julia will have like a basil simple syrup in the fridge at all times. This bitch is so crafty.
MAYANNA: That's goals. I do want, like, a drink cart. I feel like that's a nice thing to have for guests.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: And, like, there's some great non-alcoholic spirits out there that are worth, like, checking out—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: —if that's your flavor and taste.
MAYANNA: I love that. Hell yeah.
JULIA: Ooh. Okay. So blood orange, I would add gin personally, and then, like, a rosemary simple syrup with a little smoked rosemary on top.
MAYANNA: Oh. Okay. Wait, are you— is this a background that you have? Were you a bartend— just a hobby?
JULIA: I'm an enthusiast.
AMANDA: And Julia was a cheesemonger for a while, so she had professional training and, like, flavor development.
JULIA: Fancy food is my specialty.
MAYANNA: Oh, my God. Are there any haunted cheeses?
JULIA: Oh, man, I think, like any of the cheeses that are traditionally still made in like a monastery, might be a little bit haunted.
AMANDA: Or, like a cave-ripened cheese. Or when you think about it, all fermented foods are haunted by bacteria in the very most delicious way.
MAYANNA: Oh, yeah, those are hella haunted, for sure.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. It's just— cheese is—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: —just the ghosts of milk past.
AMANDA: Yes.
MAYANNA: Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. I have it, I have it, "Moo."
JULIA: There we go. We found it. We got there.
AMANDA: Julia, what have you been drinking recently?
JULIA: Well, now, I want to get that blood orange thing and make the smoked rosemary. That would be really good.
MAYANNA: It's really tasty.
JULIA: My cocktail situation has been weird this past week because, again, I was at Universal, which is they make a lot of, like, specialty cocktails for the event to kind of pair with the food stands that pop up around the houses. I had this absolutely, like, weird, sour raspberry blackberry lemonade thing that also had, like, gin in it.
MAYANNA: Can I guess which house it was for? Was it the Freddy Fazbear House?
JULIA: It was not. It was actually—
MAYANNA: Okay.
JULIA: —for The Cat Lady of Crooked Lane Scare Zone.
MAYANNA: Fun.
JULIA: I think it was called the sour puss or something like that. It was very funny.
MAYANNA: Hell yeah. Amazing.
JULIA: But yeah, also, there is a cocktail that I get every time I'm at the Universal Resort, it is the Milk Punch from the Sapphire Falls Bar. And my God, that's such a good milk punch. Clarify milk punch, it is fantastic. I got it twice while we were there because I was like, "I can't have this drink again for at least another year. I need to have two."
MAYANNA: That's real.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: I do feel that.
JULIA: Yeah. Amanda, how about you? What have you been enjoying lately?
AMANDA: Julia, I recently discovered that there is a new brewery that has opened near our hometown. It's called Lunchbox Brewing Company.
MAYANNA: Yo.
AMANDA: And it's in Bellmore. So I went by recently to try one of their just, like, house beers on tap, and I really liked it. They have trivia, they have, like, people's food trucks that come by sometimes. So I'm thinking, you and I should pop over here for maybe like a trivia night, or maybe like a weekend burger, because it looks super cute.
JULIA: It does look super cute. And it's right by the movie theater that we used to go to that I went on my first date with my husband at.
AMANDA: Aw.
MAYANNA: Aw.
JULIA: That's really cute.
AMANDA: I love that.
MAYANNA: I love that.
JULIA: So good. Amanda, do you have an urban legend for us?
AMANDA: Oh, I sure do, Julia. This one comes to us from Brittany, [33:09] she/her, and it's titled Creepy Child and setting boundaries with a Ghost.
JULIA: Keep those creepy children going. We love it. We love to see it.
AMANDA: A real down the middle Spirits experience I really wanted to provide for my audience.
MAYANNA: Hell yeah.
AMANDA: "Hey, team. I started listening to Spirits last year, and have been steadily working through your back catalog. I recently came across urban legends episode 101 from November of 2024, and was surprised and excited to hear that my sister had written into the show."
JULIA: Oh, my God.
AMANDA: "As a refresher, my sister TJ had sent in stories about creepy things that happened while she worked at a retirement home as well as an old hospital."
JULIA: I remember this one.
MAYANNA: Now that's a spooky place.
JULIA: That is a spooky place. I think we were like night shifts, terrible.
AMANDA: Night shift at the old folks home, definitely very creepy.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "As TJ shared in her email, a lot of the women in our family are spooky bitches, myself included. I, for one, was a creepy child growing up. I not only had a ghost friend, but I also sleepwalked very frequently."
MAYANNA: That is pretty scary.
JULIA: Those should be swapped in that sentence, because, yeah, sleepwalking a thing that children do, spooky, but not like, totally uncommon. Second part, ghost friend, a little bit more upping the game for creepy child here.
AMANDA: "I would wander around the house, often waking up in different rooms, not knowing how I got there."
JULIA: Terrible.
AMANDA: "The creepiest sleep walking occurrence was when one of my sisters woke up to me sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark, staring at her, and breathing loudly."
JULIA: The breathing loudly really does it for me.
AMANDA: "Apparently, I did go away when she told me to, but I don't envy her waking up to that side."
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: Mayanna, do you have siblings?
MAYANNA: I do.
JULIA: Okay. So I want you to picture being, like, eight years old and then waking up and that sibling is sitting on the edge of your bed, staring at you and breathing loudly.
MAYANNA: Not my favorite.
JULIA: No? Would you just tell them to, like, leave, or would you be like, "No"?
MAYANNA: I would think that I'm like, "Is this like a joke I don't get? Hey, stop it." Well, the other thing was, for a long time, my siblings and I all slept in the same room. Not that we didn't have different rooms, but we just all really liked sleeping in the same room together.
AMANDA: Cute.
MAYANNA: Because we were all really scared.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Fair enough.
MAYANNA: So we were like, "Let's all be scared together." So, yeah, if one of them was sitting up in bed, I would probably think they were possessed by a demon, yeah.
AMANDA: I did once wake up to my younger sister, who was a toddler at the time, probably like two and a half, three, standing at exactly eye level to where my head was on the pillow. I, like, opened my eyes and her eyes were right there, because she was not allowed to wake me up. But I guess she thought she was allowed to just stand there until I woke up, which to this day I still make fun of her for.
JULIA: That's very funny.
AMANDA: Back to Brittany's [35:54] email, "As for my ghost friend, this was actually the ghost of my oldest sister, who had passed away a year before I was born."
JULIA: Oh.
MAYANNA: Oh, wow.
AMANDA: "Despite never having obviously met her, I always felt very close to her, and I actually have a distinct memory of speaking with her when I was young. It was nap time, and I remember not wanting to go to sleep, so my ghost friend, my older sister, hung out with me instead. I remember being there, talking, playing, giggling with me through the entirety of that nap time. Unfortunately, I don't remember specifics about what we said or other interactions, but I have such a strong feeling from that one memory that I know it was a frequent occurrence."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "As I grew up, I stopped sleepwalking and stopped seeing ghosts, but I'm still, I would say, sensitive to that part of life."
JULIA: That's really sweet.
MAYANNA: Hmm.
AMANDA: So cute, right?
MAYANNA: I love that.
AMANDA: "So that brings me to my main story."
MAYANNA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: Excellent.
MAYANNA: I thought it was just a wholesome little time.
JULIA: Like, oh, that's so sweet. You're, "Nope. Nope."
MAYANNA: Like, "Oh, nice." No.
AMANDA: It's the wholesome appetizer to the spooky chaser.
MAYANNA: Okay, here we go.
AMANDA: "So that brings me to my main story. My husband and I moved into our current apartment around a year ago. A few months into living here, I started noticing some unexplained things happening. Lights seemed to turn on by themselves, and doors that I thought for sure I had closed would be open the next time I entered a room. We also had one time where a circuit blew for no apparent reason. Nothing unusual was plugged in, nothing changed. And while my husband was getting that fixed, our Roomba started to move on its own."
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: "Spooky, but could be explained."
MAYANNA: Sure.
JULIA: Now, I want to propose a statement, and I want to you to go on this journey with me.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: As adults, is the moving inexplicably Roomba, the same energy as, "Oh, the possessed Furby in my room woke me up"?
AMANDA: Yes.
MAYANNA: Yeah, I'd say so, because especially, most Roombas are set to go at a certain time.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: And I feel like if it's just doing its thing— if it— especially if it, like, turns on for, like, a little bit and then turns off again. You're like, "Well—"
JULIA: Hmm.
MAYANNA: "—don't love that." I— also, I'm having a debacle with my fire alarm right now, where one of them was going off and I got it replaced, and then immediately the other fire alarm started going off.
AMANDA: Hate that.
MAYANNA: So I called my building manager, and they were like, "Okay, we're gonna get somebody out there as soon as possible, but if it keeps beeping, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take it out of the ceiling and you're gonna put it in the sink and you're gonna drown it because it'll short it out. But before that happens, it screams."
JULIA: Wait, what?
MAYANNA: And so I had to keep waterboarding my fire alarm.
AMANDA: As it screams of agony, got drowned out.
MAYANNA: It's like, "Beep!" and I'm just like, "Stop. Stop." Firing water directly into the vents. "Beep!" "Stop it."
JULIA: I have so many questions about what led your building manager to start giving this advice.
MAYANNA: He's like, "This is what you do. You just short it out. Because if it's malfunctioning, it just— it's gonna keep doing it so you kill it, you drown it today."
JULIA: You kill it.
AMANDA: You're right, Julia. Like, this must have happened enough that he's like, "This is what you do."
MAYANNA: Just put it in the sink.
AMANDA: Like, there's a Post-It on the computer monitor—
MAYANNA: Just put it in the sink.
AMANDA: —being like, "Oh, yeah, no, that's the policy."
JULIA: I am gonna have to ask Jake about that now when he gets back.
AMANDA: Damn, dude.
MAYANNA: I literally was, like, on the phone. I was like, "The sink? And he's like, "Yeah, the sink." And I was like, "Okay."
JULIA: You're like, "Should I do my bathtub instead? Would that be a better place to drown it? I don't know."
MAYANNA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Can you put that in writing so my security deposit isn't affected?
MAYANNA: What's the respectful to burial place for your fire alarm?
AMANDA: I'm not putting it in the recycling.
MAYANNA: If it didn't stop screaming, I was gonna have to hit it with a hammer a bunch until it died, so—
JULIA: Oh, my God.
MAYANNA: I just didn't know what else to do.
JULIA: Are you sure your building manager isn't also a serial killer? Because that's— this is the energy that is coming out of here.
AMANDA: Luckily, Brittany [39:56] had no haunted smoke detectors to deal with, but she did have that Roomba starting to move. Yeah.
MAYANNA: Just a haunted Roomba, but which is much more wholesome and helpful to your cause, yeah.
AMANDA: But Mayanna, "Apart from those occurrences," Britney continues, "I also felt a presence like I was being watched. It wasn't there all the time, and I was trying to convince myself it was all in my head, and there had to be natural explanations for everything that was happening. But soon after these things started to happen, I was hanging out with TJ and mentioned the weird things going on. Now, she has more experience with ghosts than I do, and has actually become quite accomplished at communicating with them. When I mentioned what was happening, I was hoping for a response of, "Oh, yeah, I'm sure it's nothing." What I got instead was, quote, "I had been wondering if I should have said something earlier, but I didn't want to scare you."
MAYANNA: Never a good sign.
JULIA: No. No.
AMANDA: "TJ told me that the first time she'd come over to my new apartment, she had seen a form standing in one of our doorways."
JULIA: Oh, boy.
AMANDA: "She said it hadn't appeared to be malicious, and the energy of the house felt good. So she figured if I hadn't noticed anything so far, it might be leaving us alone. And was just kind of curious about her specifically, since spirits in her experience do tend to be more visible to those who can see and talk to them. After hearing this, though, I wasn't super comfortable with our current situation, and asked her to come over and help me talk to the ghost."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: I want to say, sister code, that's a great call. TJ, good call in a tough situation.
MAYANNA: Yeah, I think that's a good instinct. Yeah, you're right.
JULIA: I really like that Brittany's immediate response to this is like, "I'm uncomfortable, but it's not I'm gonna go, you know, cleanse the house, do an exorcism, et cetera. It's like, "I should talk to this ghost, see what's up."
AMANDA: Yeah. Let's see. We don't have to call the cops if we hear a loud noise. Okay, we can, like, go out and figure it out and then see what is needed.
JULIA: We can investigate and we can communicate. That's all I'm saying.
MAYANNA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: That's the adult way to do it.
MAYANNA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Soon after, TJ came over to my apartment and invited the ghost to come talk to her. I didn't see or hear their conversation, but I certainly felt that presence show up as soon as he joined us and started talking to her. I felt the presence. I could tell you exactly where it was in the room. There was an energy almost like a buzzing of electricity. As she chatted with him, we also learned some things. We still aren't sure of his name, but she said that he definitely had masculine energy. She said he'd been there a long time, likely before these apartment buildings even existed, and he just enjoyed being around people."
MAYANNA: Aw.
JULIA: Okay, that's nice. We'll allow it.
AMANDA: "He loved the transient space of people coming in and out of apartments and just getting to observe their lives."
JULIA: Like that makes all that sense to me, because think about the existence of a ghost and watching someone else, like, kind of live in the space that you are occupying. I feel like it's like watching 19 seasons of a TV show, as opposed to, like, a tight four season arc, and you're like, "And they're moving, and the next couple is coming in, and now I get a new season of whatever my show is."
MAYANNA: It's a lot, like, actual play in that way.
JULIA: Yeah. Like campaigns, exactly.
AMANDA: Exactly.
MAYANNA: We're luxuriating in the story.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: Yes.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "This spirit even told my sister which apartment was his favorite one to visit."
MAYANNA: Aw.
AMANDA: "We aren't quite sure why, but we're guessing they might have a pet that interacts with him."
JULIA: Aw. Like cats.
AMANDA: "We also found out he likes me more than my husband because he appreciates that I can tell when he's there and he likes to be noticed, which was why—"
MAYANNA: What a sweetie.
AMANDA: "—he was messing with us just a little bit."
JULIA: Ah, okay. Okay.
MAYANNA: "After talking to him for a few minutes, TJ turned to me and gave me an opportunity to set my boundaries."
JULIA: Hmm.
MAYANNA: When I turned and started talking to the spirit, the chills I was feeling before intensified as it felt like I was receiving his full attention. They went up and down my spine and made the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stand straight up. I told him he was welcome to come visit us whenever he'd like. This had been his place much longer than it had been ours, and I wasn't going to stop him from hanging out, but I did set some very clear rules. I told him that he was not allowed in our bedroom or bathroom. Those were completely off limits. And I told him that when he was visiting, I would prefer not to sense him, not to see or hear him."
JULIA: I really like that. Being like, "You can hang out. That's totally fine. I don't want to see your face around here."
MAYANNA: Yeah, I don't want to know you're here. I don't want you to even say hi to me. I do think, though, that is like— that is kind of the good rule for neighbors in general, which is like—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yes.
MAYANNA: —if we see each other in the hallway, we will not, respectfully, "Do not talk to me. I will not talk to you."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MAYANNA: "If there is an emergency or a zombie apocalypse, we will obviously team up. But that is an unspoken agreement. We do not have to have any dialog about it at this time."
JULIA: Fair enough. Fair enough. It only makes me a little sad, though, because TJ said specifically, "Oh, he likes being noticed."
MAYANNA: I know.
JULIA: Aw.
MAYANNA: That is sad. Yeah, I guess he still has that dog.
JULIA: Yeah. Or, yeah, whoever the neighbor's animal is.
MAYANNA: Well, I want it to be a turtle.
AMANDA: Oh, right?
JULIA: The turtle's giving the ghost attention, I love that.
MAYANNA: Yeah, the turtle's just like [chomping noise]
JULIA: Making direct eye contact—
MAYANNA: Yeah.
JULIA: —while it eats its lettuce.
MAYANNA: Exactly.
AMANDA: "There is a nice, little coda, though. Since then, I've only had a few interactions with the ghost. Once, he turned on the bathroom fan when I was showering. I'd forgotten to turn it on, so I laughed, said, "Thank you for being so considerate. But as a reminder, please stick to the common areas."
JULIA: Follow the boundaries, ghost.
MAYANNA: That is so funny.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Very roommate protocol like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —"Thank you so much. Not gonna happen again."
JULIA: "Please don't be in the shower while I'm in here. Don't do it."
MAYANNA: "Why are you in the bathroom with me?" Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "I've also had times where I did feel watched when doors have opened on their own, but I'm no longer creeped out by it. Now that I know what's happening, I just smile and say hello to our friendly apartment ghost."
MAYANNA: Adorable. That's cool.
AMANDA: Just they are coexisting. Maybe he's spending more time with the turtle.
MAYANNA: Yeah. He's like, "All right, I see. I gotcha. No worries. I'll just go to— I'll go where I wanted."
AMANDA: To be fair, that is also how I feel about the mice that definitely live in my basement, where I'm like, "Listen, I— my stuff's in plastic bins. You guys can have the walls. You guys can have the foundation. You can sleep in a place where I can't see you when it's cold."
MAYANNA: Yeah.
AMANDA: "But I don't want to see you."
MAYANNA: Yeah.
AMANDA: "Don't wanna see your poops. And stay away from my wiring, please."
MAYANNA: There you go.
AMANDA: And Brittany signs off, "Stay creepy. Stay cool."
MAYANNA: Stay creepy. Stay cool. Have you considered building them a tiny, little mouse mansion out of cardboard?
AMANDA: It's a great idea, but I might have to, sort of like, lure them outside my house and into my nosy neighbor's house. I think that would be good.
MAYANNA: There you go.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
MAYANNA: There you go.
JULIA: I think maybe we have time for one more. What do you think?
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: This one's actually appropriate, given we were just talking about setting boundaries in bathrooms with ghosts. This is from Robin, [46:44] they/them, titled Ghost Moment Explained.
MAYANNA: I love explained.
JULIA: Explained. "Hi, Spirits team. Hope you're doing well. I just got the shit scared out of me, and oh, boy, do I have a story to tell you. So to put it politely, I was in the bathroom to handle business before bed."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: "As I was settling in, I heard my cat come in, meowing like he needed something desperately. Probably he was hungry. But as we know, all cats meow at their owners like they're dying 100% of the time."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "I called to him to let him know where I am, but he keeps just meowing that way. Just as I'm thinking to get up, I hear footsteps followed by more meowing. Now, assuming it's my husband, I call to him to check on the cat. He doesn't answer. Now, assuming he just didn't hear me, or maybe that I misheard the footsteps, I wait a bit to listen. The cat keeps meowing, and it really does sound more and more like the way that he meows when he is talking to my spouse." I like that, like, cats have certain voices that they speak to certain people with. You know, there's a certain tone to the meow.
MAYANNA: Yeah. They have a language just for us.
JULIA: "I call again, but again, my husband doesn't answer. Now, I do hear footsteps this time, sounding like they're leaving the bedroom, but at this point, I'm spooked, so I finally get up. I go outside. Nobody's there, not in the living room or the bedroom, but I do hear my husband talking to his friends online. Now—"
MAYANNA: Okay.
JULIA: "—officially scared out of my mind, I run to him and explain what has happened. He comforts me," good husband, "and promised to wait in the bedroom while I handled my business, which, admittedly, I didn't really want to do, but I got it done."
AMANDA: Tough situation.
JULIA: "Pretty soon after my spouse found the supposed, quote-unquote, "ghost," it turns out our cat brought in a mostly alive dragonfly.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "The incessant meowing and footsteps-like sounds were caused by him somehow getting his prey under the bed."
AMANDA: Oh.
MAYANNA: Oh.
JULIA: "My spouse kindly removed the dragonfly, and I officially was safe to go to bed." They also sent a photo of the dragonfly. I'm good. I don't need to see that necessarily right now. Oh, sorry, no, it's a picture of the cat, so I will share it. Hold on one second.
MAYANNA: Oh, that's nice. I like that.
AMANDA: Much better.
JULIA: We'll all enjoy a picture of a cat.
MAYANNA: Aw.
AMANDA: Aw.
MAYANNA: The gentleman.
AMANDA: That's a cute, little kitten.
MAYANNA: I, too, have a great tabby. Oh, little guy. Oh.
AMANDA: Aw. Great work.
JULIA: They finish off with, "Love you both. Stay creepy. Stay cool, Robin."
MAYANNA: That's great. Thanks, Robin.
JULIA: Incredible. We love a explanation to finish us out. And also cats trying to bat something away or, like, play with something while it slowly demises, is probably a very spooky noise in and of itself, so—
AMANDA: Well, Mayanna, thank you so much for joining us here on Spirits. We didn't even name check your brand new podcast, Simple and Clean, which folks should absolutely check out. It's lore heavy. Would you give them the one minute pitch?
MAYANNA: Absolutely. Simple and Clean Podcast is a podcast hosted by myself and Mischa Stanton, another Multitude family member, as we deep dive into the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise that encapsulates, like, 13 games, one weird movie, several phone things that were exclusive to Japan. We talk about characters, we talk about themes, we talk about worlds, we talk about Disney. And so even if you are not someone who has played Kingdom Hearts, hopefully you find something in there that's interesting. Because when we're talking about Kingdom Hearts, we might discover we're talking about a little bit more.
JULIA: Yeah. I would say if you are not a Kingdom Hearts fan, but you like the amount of lore that is in, let's say, The Lord of the Rings books, or, like—
MAYANNA: Yes.
JULIA: —just the similarian, [50:54] you know, like the— that's the amount of lore and complicated situation that—
MAYANNA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —goes into Kingdom Hearts, and you both do such a fantastic job kind of doing a deep dive into all of those that makes it feel like you're not losing the audience, even if someone—
MAYANNA: Thank you.
JULIA: —hasn't played the game.
MAYANNA: Thank you.
JULIA: I was trying— I was playing Kingdom Hearts inspired by the podcast recently, and I finished the first game. And Jake asked me, he's like, "So what is Kingdom Hearts?" I said, "I simply couldn't tell you."
MAYANNA: It's a state of mind. Yeah, we're trying to make the series accessible for people who, one, don't have a lot of free time to play video games, who might feel like Kingdom Hearts is a franchise is inaccessible because it's— there's a lot of wacky, zany stuff in there. But it's a silly little time, and I— it brings us so much joy. So I'm so happy to hear that people are responding to it. So thank you.
JULIA: If you want to check that out, you can find Simple and Clean in the same podcast app that you're listening to this episode in. Mayanna, thank you so much for joining us. It was so delightful to have you on.
MAYANNA: Thank you so much for having me. This was such a dream and a treat.
JULIA: And remember the next time you're night caching, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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