Halloween Double Feature | Your Urban Legends 113
/Since it’s the week of Halloween, we’re breaking out a DOUBLE FEATURE URBAN LEGENDS EPISODE. There’s hauntings. There’s watery footprints. There’s a mysterious pit. Plus, it ends up being a haunted smells-centered episode, much to Amanda’s delight/fear.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, racism, drowning, abusive relationships, insects, child endangerment/death, murder, gun violence, family member death, and animal endangerment.
Housekeeping
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Get our new Old Wives’ Tale Teller Corduroy Hat!
- Submit Your Urban Legends Audio: Call us! 617-420-2344
Sponsors
- Bookshop.org, where you can now use the code we shared in the midroll to get 10% off your purchase!
Find Us Online
- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com
- Patreon: patreon.com/spiritspodcast
- Merch: spiritspodcast.com/merch
- Instagram: instagram.com/spiritspodcast
- Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/spiritspodcast.com
- Twitter: twitter.com/spiritspodcast
- Tumblr: spiritspodcast.tumblr.com
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. And Amanda, it is another Hometown Urban Legends episode, but this one is special, I want to say.
AMANDA: Why is it special, Julia? What makes it different?
JULIA: It's the spooky season one.
AMANDA: Yay!
JUlia: We are so blessed when we have a five-episode drop for October, for Spirits, like it truly is. When we have a five-Wednesday October, I feel really blessed, personally.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So because we already had a bonus urban legends this month, with Mayanna, who is a fantastic guest, I wanted to give us an even chunkier urban legends episode, because this is coming out the week of Halloween, Amanda.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Everyone needs even more spooky stories to get them to the end of the week Friday where they can then really indulge themselves in all the spooky things for Halloween.
AMANDA: Julia, should we challenge the ConSpiriters to listen to this episode in the most sort of aesthetically pleasing way possible? Like while trick-or-treating or—
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: —making mulled cider or watching the leaves fall.
JULIA: I— yes. I think that you should listen to this episode in the spookiest setting you possibly can. Maybe you're waiting online for a haunted house. Maybe you are drinking mulled cider next to a fireplace while you watch the leaves fall outside of your window. Maybe you are watching trick-or-treaters go by, and you're handing out candy, and there's also candy apples or something like that. I don't know. But I want to encourage you to take a photo of wherever you're listening to this episode and send it to us. Tag us on Instagram, tag us on Bluesky. Most of those are the two places we currently are on social media because it's a hellscape. But hey, enjoy it, and tell us how you're enjoying it.
AMANDA: Julia, I think that I will enjoy this episode by you kicking us off.
JULIA: I'm happy to do that. I'm gonna start with an email from Dee, [2:25] she/her, titled, Savannah Haunted House That Wasn't Supposed To Be Haunted.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: She writes, "Hey, Amanda and Julia, I wrote in last year to tell you about the ghostly figure that I caught on camera during the haunted walk tour of my city's historic jail-turned-hostel."
AMANDA: Oh, my.
JULIA: "It's probably best known for Amanda's orgasm ghost theory."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: She continues, "I definitely was not expecting that when I listened to the episode, but it's canon now."
AMANDA: You know, I strive, Julia, to add value to this podcast. I am not the expert. I am the layperson. I'm your BFF who wants to learn about what you think is interesting. And sometimes I'm going to bring strong head canon that no one has expected. In an age of generative AI, I think it's very important that I consistently surprise the algorithm, okay? I need to bring my human value to this podcast in saying things that no computer could predict, and the orgasm ghost, and the headless kink of the stump kink, those are going to be the kind of value that I add to this podcast.
JULIA: And I love you for it. I truly do. "When I heard your call for more Urban Legends on last week's Spirits episode, I figured I'd write in this year with another spooky tale. In 2011, my parents decided to take me on a road trip to Disney World, right after visiting our Pennsylvania cousins for Independence Day."
AMANDA: Cute.
JULIA: "When we got to the US border and told the guard our final destination was Florida, he broke his stoic demeanor to say, 'You do know it's July, right?'"
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: "But probably figuring that we were just some crazy Canadians who didn't understand what Southern US summers were like, he waved us through. Since my mom and stepdad didn't like driving long distances," wild thing to drive to Florida then from Canada, just saying.
AMANDA: That's kind of the longest drive you can take in Canada.
JULIA: Truly, truly. "We decided to make a few stops along the way, including a two-night stay in Savannah, Georgia. We'd been there on our last trip to Florida a few years before, but to our disappointment, my mom and I hadn't had any paranormal experiences."
AMANDA: Sounds like you got what you wanted, baby.
JULIA: "We'd gotten some photos of some weird-looking orbs in the cemetery during a ghost tour in Charleston, but not so much as a wisp in Savannah. So much for the most haunted city in America, or so we thought."
AMANDA: Dun, dun.
JULIA: "Upon arrival, my stepdad made a beeline for the military museum that he missed out on the last time because my mom and I had zero interest in going. He was a skeptic about anything supernatural, so we still didn't want to miss out on the chance to prove him wrong in case we had any ghostly encounters. So my mom and I decided to spend the afternoon touring a historic house that was literally the only Savannah House Museum pitched in the AAA guidebook as nothing more than that. A historic house. A Regency-style family home, creepy for its history of enslaving people, but containing nothing seemingly more scary-looking than children's toys in the nursery."
AMANDA: Okay, promising.
JULIA: As we've all talked about before on the podcast, you know, when terrible things happen places, just because it's not advertised as being haunted does not mean it's not haunted.
AMANDA: Yeah, that's like a residual haunting, an unintentional haunting, a— the haunting earned.
JULIA: An unacknowledged taunting, I would say, because of the history of Savannah in general.
AMANDA: And I would say much of the US and world.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. Particularly though in the South.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "I was staring at these toys in question at the end of our tour as the rest of the group surrounded our tour guide at the top of the staircase, when from somewhere in their direction I heard the guide say, 'Sorry, I'm just finishing a tour. If you go back to the reception desk, I'll be starting the next one soon.' I turned away from the nursery just in time to catch the briefest glimpse of a man and two boys descending the staircase to the landing before turning around the bend and continuing on their way. The guide thought for a moment before saying, 'I should double check that they know how to get back to reception.' She headed downstairs and then came back a few minutes later looking puzzled. Apparently, they were nowhere to be found."
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: "And the docent at the reception desk swore that she hadn't seen anybody enter or exit the building since our tour started."
AMANDA: Shit, man. Ghost tourists.
JULIA: "'But you guys saw them, right?' The tour guide asked our group. My mom and I nodded. Everyone else shook their heads. Apparently, they thought the guide had been talking to someone around the bend in the staircase, in a spot that they couldn't see."
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: "Now the guide hung back to talk to my mom and me as the rest of the group headed out, asking if we had noticed anything strange about the man and the boys. Of course, I couldn't help much. I was internally kicking myself for being too preoccupied with the dead-eyed porcelain dolls and sad-looking rocking horse in the nursery."
AMANDA: You weren't looking at your phone, okay? You were looking at your surroundings.
JULIA: You were trying to see if the creepy toys were haunted.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Understandable.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "But luckily, my mom had been standing right beside the guide and saw everything. She confessed that the only thing she thought was weird, other than the fact that they didn't talk, was that they were wearing thick, long-sleeved shirts and pants. Definitely not weather appropriate for Savannah in the middle of July.
AMANDA: Just like the border guard said earlier!
JULIA: You know it! You know it!
AMANDA: Fortunately! [8:08]
JULIA: "As we were preparing to head out, still really trying to rationalize the whole scene, my mom suggested half-jokingly, 'Maybe they were ghosts.'"
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "Turning to her with a somber expression, the guide said, 'They better not be. Otherwise, I'm quitting.' Retrospectively, for the sake of the tour guide's job security, I hope that it was just a hoax. But for the sake of my own morbid curiosity, I hope they were really some solid-bodied ghosts who just felt like popping in on a random tour group, 'for the vibes.'"
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: "I really wish I could remember the name of the house so I could look it up now and see whether or not it is advertised as being haunted. But for now, stay creepy, stay cool, and always pay attention when your tour guide is talking at the top of a staircase. You can look at the creepy dolls another time. Dee." [9:08]
AMANDA: Dee, incredible story and incredible advice. I absolutely love that this tour guide was so unprepared for a potentially real haunting, whether they thought they were working at a house that was advertised as a haunted one but actually didn't have, you know, anything they'd experienced. Or if this was simply a historical property, they encountered potentially a ghost and were like, "I'm getting the fuck out here." Both are great.
JULIA: You really have to think about, imagine you're super into history and you're living in Savannah, Georgia, but you don't like the idea of ghosts whatsoever. Your job search is extremely limited as a result, right?
AMANDA: Yeah. I don't think the job market for people into history is great to begin with, Julia.
JULIA: It's not.
AMANDA: I think a love of history and a sort of, like, squeamishness or healthy fear of ghosts is gonna be a hard-man diagram to live in.
JULIA: It is. It really is. As someone who tried to get history jobs right out of college, I'm gonna tell ya, it's a hard field. It's a hard field.
AMANDA: Well, Julia, can I follow up your story here with a submission from Kate, [10:08]she/her, titled Former Creepy Child Now Works in a Haunted Warehouse?
JULIA: Ooh. Okay. Hit me with it.
AMANDA: Promising, no? Kate writes, "Hey, Spirits crew, I have a few stories I want to offer, but I waited until I was all caught up with the podcast to send them in. After about a year of listening and nearly 460 episodes, here I am." And this came in on October 2nd, so I wanted to reward Kate with a contemporaneous reading.
JULIA: Incredible.
AMANDA: "I have a boring job and listening to podcasts, pretty much all day long, is my little bit of joy, so you guys have kept me a lot of company through the monotony of repetitive work. To get some context in place, which I will elaborate on, I was a creepy child. I grew up in and still live in a mildly haunted/spirited house. I was a theater kid and I'm currently working in a haunted warehouse where I sometimes write gay fan fiction on the clock."
JULIA: Okay, I love it. love it.
AMANDA: We love wage theft.
JULIA: I like that those two things not related, but I appreciate the flavor.
AMANDA: We love wage theft when it's against employers and not employees.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "We will start with me being a former creepy child. I'm not sure if it counts as a true creepy child because the behavior stopped when I was about two. Not quite old enough for the traditional creepy child archetype, but I promise it was creepy nevertheless. According to my mother, there was a time until I was a little bit older than two that I would routinely talk to the corners of walls. She claims I was talking to my guardian angel, but I've seen enough Supernatural to suspect that maybe it wasn't an angel indeed."
JULIA: Wow. The person writing gay fanfic on the clock is super into Supernatural. I'm shocked by that statement.
AMANDA: "My mom's second theory, branching off of the angel theory, was that whatever spirit I was conversing with was reincarnated into my now best friend because she was born at about the same time that my spirit conversations stopped."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "Is my friend an angel? Possibly. Was I a creepy child? Up for interpretation." I love this idea, Julia, of a baby who can– you know, who's learning to sit up and maybe toddle and then maybe walk just confidently babbling into a corner.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: It's so much creepier than a cat looking into a corner or a dog, like, looking into, you know, a skylight or a window and just kind of, like, barking at it. The baby is like, "Baby, you can— your perception's the same as mine, y'all. Like, if not, less. So what are you perceiving that I'm not?"
JULIA: Yes. Or just like the idea, too, that babies are like, "This is what people do when they're alone. They just go, 'Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.'"
AMANDA: Exactly, at no one. I guess in an age where kids see us talking into devices or Bluetooth headphones, that's less creepy than it was before.
JULIA: Yeah, that is true. That is true.
AMANDA: "So, my house is mildly, likely, casually haunted."
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: "Two points here. My mom experiences ghost scents in our house." Another one.
JULIA: Your favorite.
AMANDA: For haunted smells, Julia.
JULIA: Amanda will never let haunted smells go and I love that about you.
AMANDA: No. "We've always assumed that it's the ghost of the house's original and only other occupant before us."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "Sometimes she swears she smells cigars in the hallway, right around the door to what used to be the master bedroom, which is now her home office. She is pretty superstitious, so that's not super surprising to me. Just for example, she believes you can't gift someone an empty wallet or purse because to do that would wish money troubles of them, kind of like the giving of knives, cutting a relationship that you've covered on the show. So she always puts a dollar or a gift card inside."
JULIA: I love a little, old wives tale like that.
AMANDA: "The cats also definitely see things in the house."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Cats, for sure, have a sense for spirits. We know this. I'm not surprised that they see things, period. But still, the staring is unnerving. All three of our cats will often stare off into the hallway simultaneously and intensely. The exact same way they stare down spiders and birds in the same hallway, by the way, where my mom smells the ghost cigars."
JULIA: Hmm. Okay, all right.
AMANDA: "I think they know when the ghost is there."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "Anyway, if it is a ghost, he's chill, doesn't cause any problems, just smokes cigars, and there are occasional cold spots when he moves around the house."
JULIA: I don't love that, but okay. Also, like my thought too about— and I don't want to detract from ghost scents because I don't–
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I would never take that away from you, Amanda.
AMANDA: Thank you.
JULIA: But cigar and, like, smoke in particular, whether that is like cigarette, cigar, like if you had a smoker in a house that lived there for a long time before you moved in, sometimes that scent lingers, but also like sometimes it gets triggered by heat changes and stuff like that. And they did just say they get like cold spots and stuff like that, so that could be–
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: –potentially something. I don't know why I'm trying to logic this away.
AMANDA: You're offering an alternate interpretation, which is very valid.
JULIA: All right. Fair enough, enough.
AMANDA: "Not much context to give on being a theater kid, except that for us, we called the area under our school's stage the dungeon." And Julia, ours, of course, was–
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: –the pit, one T.
JULIA: The pit.
AMANDA: "Our school had five different, unconnected subfloors and basements, so giving a specific name to the one we were talking about was probably a good call."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "My particular theater class also did a pre-show good luck ritual where we'd hold hands, close our eyes, and 'carry' the energy around the circle by squeezing each other's hands one by one, kind of like the wave in a stadium."
JULIA: Okay. Sure.
AMANDA: "Basically, if the energy didn't make it back to the director, it was bad luck."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "This actually happened once when I was there. Someone lost a cue that night and came tumbling on stage late, only to run into me during the Act One finale."
JULIA: Whoops. Uh-oh.
AMANDA: Yoinks.
JULIA: Just stay offstage at that point.
AMANDA: I know, right? "Now for the real story, and the reason I knew I had to write in. It's my haunted warehouse."
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: "The ghost in the warehouse where I work is named Charlie. And I was told by my coworkers when I first started that he died when the building was still a canning factory. So Charlie has been there for a good hundred years."
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: "Mostly he just stands around creating cold spots, but has occasionally caused plugs to suddenly be loose, even though no cables were touched. Nothing too dangerous or concerning, more annoying."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "I thought the mild haunting would stop when the business moved to a new building across town."
JULIA: Charlie came with you guys.
AMANDA: "The new building also used to be a factory before we moved in and the land is super marshy, so we have water problems. But there was—"
JULIA: Oh.
AMANDA: "–no supernatural activity, at least for the first year."
JULIA: Listen, mold can do a lot of things to the human body and the brain. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. If you have water problems, make sure you don't have also mold problems.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. "Just to be clear, I even asked if anyone had died there."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "One of my coworkers had actually worked in the same building when it was rented by a previous company and said that she couldn't remember anything. And I want to note that this specific coworker is heavy in the superstition, believes in ghosts. However, we were wrong."
JULIA: We were wrong that someone had died there, which means someone had died there?
AMANDA: "A little over a year after we moved into this remodeled building, I encountered the footprints."
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: "Now, normally, footprints are not a thing that freaks me out. This is a concrete warehouse floor and the doors don't all have great seals on them, so water definitely gets in sometimes. Wet footprints, pretty normal to encounter."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "But these weren't normal footprints. I had walked one day through the warehouse from one end to the other and there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. But when I returned, coming back the other way, that's when I saw them. In the middle of the floor with no explainable source, wet footprints of bare feet."
JULIA: Bare feet?
AMANDA: Bare feet, Julia, at work.
JULIA: Not bear paws. We're talking about feet with no shoes, no socks.
AMANDA: B-A-R-E, human feet.
JULIA: We are seeing those toes, I hate that.
AMANDA: We're seeing them toes.
JULIA: I hate that.
AMANDA: Or it's somebody who wears a very close fitting glove shoe.
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: Also haunting. Also bad.
JULIA: Still bad. In this day and age, bad.
AMANDA: "So it took me a moment to kind of realize what I was seeing. It was raining, so I expected to see footprints, except they weren't shoe prints. They were bare feet."
JULIA: I don't– oh. No, why? Why?
AMANDA: "Then I saw that there was no trail of prints extending to a door or a puddle. There were just two isolated rows of bare feet footprints pacing–"
JULIA: Two rows?
AMANDA: "–one way and then the other, across the floor before vanishing."
JULIA: I thought we were talking about— there's two sets of footprints. They're both bare feet and wet. No, no.
AMANDA: It's pretty bad, Julia.
JULIA: It's bad.
AMANDA: Kind of like Jesus kind of took the person up into his arms and then there was two and then one, like no.
JULIA: No.
AMANDA: Nope. "I grabbed a coworker to be like, 'Uh, do you see these two?' And she did."
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: "She wasn't too freaked out because we both already worked with Charlie, the previous ghost."
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: "I left work about an hour later, still pretty unsettled. In fact, a couple of days later, it was still on my mind. So I told that same coworker, who had worked in this building before, about it. She still couldn't remember anything strange from her previous tenancy, but she said she wouldn't be surprised if there were spirits in this building. She also seemed delighted that I had the encounter, not the sort of fear or trepidation that I expected."
JULIA: No, because she's a creepy bitch, too. That makes sense.
AMANDA: "Now, every time it rains, I look for the footprints. So far, I haven't seen anything, but she, because I do feel she's feminine, might just be a shy ghost waiting for the right time."
JULIA: Maybe.
AMANDA: "There have also been times when a motion-activated light in the middle of the warehouse flicks on, in that same area where she appeared the first time. Plastic sheets are blowing around, like someone walked into an area when no physical person has walked through."
JULIA: Don't love that.
AMANDA: "And at this point, I want to know her name simply so can stop referring to her as the ghost. She's not–"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "–a bother, to be clear, just more of a companion in the more boring warehouse hours."
JULIA: I think you just have to give her a name, you know?
AMANDA: I think so, too.
JULIA: I think if no name is being provided, just provide one until an alternative arrives.
AMANDA: Julia's middle name is Rose.
JULIA: That's a good name. That is like very old lady-ey kind of.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And I think fairly ghostly.
AMANDA: I think fairly ghostly, I like it.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Just to conclude this section, the coworker who also saw the footprints and I have agreed the ghost is likely either a woman or a child based on the size of the footprints and the fact that she doesn't seem to make appearances when there are men in the warehouse, only around the two of us."
JULIA: Ah, okay.
AMANDA: I love this. I vote Rose, but I think you and your colleague should decide on a name.
JULIA: I'm like, unfortunately, getting drowning victim from wet footprints and also the idea that she's not a fan of men being around, like that's giving me La Llorona, you know, drowned woman in white style stuff.
AMANDA: Yeah, this used to be marshy, right? Like we're kind of— even though it's on the other side of town, maybe there's like a connection where houses are often built on, like, pillars or by docks for easy loading.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Seems right to me.
JULIA: It also seems like the rebuild of this place was done poorly.
AMANDA: Unsuccessful renovation.
JULIA: I'm gonna say bad renovation.
AMANDA: I'm with you.
JULIA: I think you should contact the construction agency that did that renovation and say, "Hey, bad job."
AMANDA: And Julia, there's a bonus at the end here that I thought you'd particularly enjoy.
JULIA: Give me.
AMANDA: It's called the pocket dimension at the Met.
JULIA: Oh, my goodness. Yes, I am very excited.
AMANDA: It was Julia's birthday yesterday as we're recording, so this is my little birthday treat.
JULIA: Yay.
AMANDA: "A long time ago, you guys talked about, the Babes in the Woods on an urban legend episode number 29, The Bathroom is a Ghost."
JULIA: Wow. That's so long ago. Go on.
AMANDA: "When I heard the episode, I lost my absolute shit because this reminded me of something that happened when I was in high school. I've seen the Babes in the Woods. On the surface, this doesn't sound very concerning. The Met Museum has the sculpture on display, supposedly. However, I don't think it's actually there. Or if it is there, it's inconsistent and not on our plane of existence."
JULIA: Go on.
AMANDA: "So back in 2015, my school art class took a Saturday field trip to New York to see a few museums. A group of me and a few friends at the time were, 'chaperoned' by the art teacher rather than a volunteer parent. I use quotations in chaperoned because she just kind of let us loose once we were inside the museum and said, 'Meet me back at the steps on time, have fun,' and wandered off."
julia: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: "So four teenage girls were left to mind themselves. I don't remember too, too much about where specifically we went in the Met, except that we giggled at the naked Greek statues, like of course you do at 16, and the room with the sculptures."
JULIA: Classic.
AMANDA: "I remember the feeling I had, though, as I walked from one room to the next, that this room in particular was different. Off, somehow. As we started looking around, there was really only one work on display. A big sculpture in the middle of the room. It had no information plaque on it or even near it. As we circled it, whispering among ourselves, the museum guard at one of the room's entryways walked toward us and started talking with us about the sculpture. I don't remember everything he said, just that he was actually describing the Babe in the Woods story, something that I wouldn't be able to verify until later rediscovering it, thanks to Spirits. And he ended the story with, 'They look like they're sleeping, but they're dead. And the bird, well, he's directing the funeral.'"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Wild.
JULIA: Listen, I love that the security guard is also like, "I know this story. I know about these dead children, and the bird."
AMANDA: I mean, listen, I'm sure he answers a lot of questions all day long about art, but wow, what a creepy ending. "We thanked him for the information and left the room, all feeling fairly unsettled and confused. Except when we left the room, it wasn't into the section we thought we'd be in, and we got quite lost. At this point, we were pressed for time to meet back up with our art teacher, and we couldn't backtrack. So either, none of the four of us has at all any sense of direction or the room in the Met doesn't exist within the laws of this plane and spat us out kind of wherever it pleased. So, yes, the sculpture is real. Yes, you can get it through the Met, but I think it exists in its own pocket dimension within the museum, guarded by an entity that looks like a museum security guard who lets patrons come and go as he pleases. I've not yet been back to try and find the sculpture again, though I do plan to. So if anybody can confirm or deny its presence on this plane, I would appreciate it."
JULIA: I love The Met in general. It is a– at sometimes, very confusing museum because the layout, not every room leads to every other room is how I would describe it. And sometimes you're looking for something and they'll just move stuff around.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Like I was looking for my girl, Joan of Arc, last time I was there and they fully moved her and I had no idea where to find her. So I had to wander around that European art wing for a long time until I found her again.
AMANDA: Yeah. The floors are also inconsistent. So you can go up a couple flights of stairs and then later find yourself on the ground floor and be like, "Wait, huh?"
JULIA: Now I will say, I was looking this up while you were telling the story, Amanda. According to the Met website, it is currently on display in Gallery 761, which is on the second floor of the American Wing, and it is, like, in the center of the room sculpture, but it is, like, tucked in the back corner of the American Wing where it is next to one of the larger rooms, but it's not connected to one of the larger rooms.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: So it is very possible to get very lost and not be able to find it. I will say, I will give credit where credit is due. It's not easily accessible.
AMANDA: Well, I think that Kate should go back and confirm if the kind of, like, vibe and aura of the room is the same as she experienced the first time, and if perhaps she recognizes or is approached by a security guard talking about the scary, scary story.
JULIA: I hope so. For everyone's sake, for the people listening to this, for my sake, I want it to be true.
AMANDA: This did also remind me, Julia, of the Met Museum used to be closed on Mondays for cleaning and is now open seven days a week.
JULIA: Shout out.
AMANDA: But while it was still closed, one of my coworkers worked at the Met. I was in college and we both worked at the theater at NYU, but her main job was interning in the framing department at the Met.
JULIA: Cool.
AMANDA: And so she was like, "Oh, if you ever want to come by one day on a Monday, tell me." And I was like, "Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes."
JULIA: "I've never wanted anything more."
AMANDA: She was older than me, I thought she was cool, and I was just like, "I'm gonna come." So I came one Monday and walked up to the clothes museum and said to the security guard, "I'm Kate Lee's [26:58] guest," and they let me in. And so I wander around the museum and then she's like, "Oh, meet me in my office," and then gave me a room number. It was, like, the gallery room that you just read, but then it had, like, more digits at the end. And so she's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, go to this gallery room. I'll find you." And so I'm standing in a gallery room in, I think, also the American Wing, and I'm just like waiting and I was like, "Hey, I'm here." And then out of the wall, a hidden door opens.
JULIA: Cool,
AMANDA: Like in between two paintings.
JULIA: So cool.
AMANDA: In the room, it was like a gigantic room, like obviously the gallery is huge, like 15-foot ceilings. The room was maybe, like, 50 feet deep by, like, 50 feet wide, and they just had hundreds and hundreds of, like, gilt gold frames—
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: –hung on the walls in those big, like– you know, at, like, a furniture store, they'll have rugs on, like, huge pieces of cardboard to, like, flip them like a book?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Like that.
JULIA: That's so cool.
AMANDA: They were just, like, work tables with paintings and frames, and Kate Lee was like, "This is my office." It was basically the top ten coolest moments of my life.
JULIA: That sounds incredible. Truly. That makes me so happy.
AMANDA: Those are pocket dimensions that definitely do exist in the Met. Thank you, Kate.
JULIA: All right, Amanda. I have one more before we take our break and it's a bit of a doozy. Are you ready for it?
AMANDA: Ooh, I'm so ready.
JULIA: This is from Delaney, [28:17] she/her titled, Psychic Powers, Disembodied Heads and a Transforming Cat From Hell.
AMANDA: Let's fucking go.
JULIA: "Hi, Spirits. I've spent the past four months marathoning the entire backlog, nine years' worth, eight hours a day at work. So thank you for keeping me mostly sane. I found y'all through your episode about the goddess Isis on Queens Podcast."
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: "I thought to myself, 'Damn, I'd love to be friends with women like this.' Loved the show ever since and am quite sad that I now have to listen at a regular pace."
AMANDA: Oh. That makes me so happy.
JULIA: "If any of this is read on the pod, I'm definitely gonna share it with my mom because she's my rock in what I'm about to tell you."
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: "My family has always been a, 'little spooky.' My maternal great grandma was known to be a psychic of sorts. She supposedly helped her local police find a missing person's body as well as act as a 'consultant' for cases."
AMANDA: Oh, my God. Can there be a TV show about her, please?
JULIA: I would love that. That would be great. "This was back in the 1950s and '60s, so it's plausible. You know how the police worked back then. Not the best. Now, the 'sight' has been passed down through her daughter, then my mom, now me. Julia, when you described your experiences of deja vu as remembering prophetic dreams, I knew exactly what you meant. I have those all the time, too. I'll dream of something very specific happening with no context. It could be the next day or a week from now or even years, but every dream eventually happens in real life." Now, if all of my dreams happened in real life, the world would be a crazy place.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But I do love that you know what I'm talking about where it's like, "Ah, that's what that was. Got it."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "For example, when I was in middle school, I dreamt that I was talking to a strange woman dressed professionally. I could see the style of her hair, the jewelry, the color of her blouse. Years later, when I was 19, I had a job interview with that lady, same outfit, same hair, everything."
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: "And I'll have the deja vu feeling suddenly, remembering the dream vividly going, 'Oh, duh, this makes sense now,' to myself. I've learned to write them down in case I can maybe use it to my advantage to be prepared, you know, because, finger guns, anxiety. All right, on to the creepy. When I was four, my parents rented a house on the south side of Chicago. My first memories were made here. We only lived there for about a year, but you'll see why. My first moment of consciousness that I had as a person, I was getting tucked into my bed by my mom. I remember the softness of my Winnie the Pooh blankie, the book that my mom read to me, which was the Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, for those curious, highly recommend. The illustrations alone are delightful. I fell asleep, had a dream about ice cream, I think, and suddenly awoke with my head pounding. My room was dark, save for the nightlight. I didn't hear anything. Not the quiet hum of my ceiling fan, not the subtle creaking from my baby brother's swing that he used to sleep in, nor my dad's obnoxious snoring from across the hall. All I could hear was my heart racing, but no sound was in my ears. It was like they were stuffed with cotton, and my head hurt as if someone was squeezing it from both sides. I couldn't move, but was very aware of the feeling in my body. The mattress sank beside me, the same as when my mom sat there hours prior. The space was simultaneously empty, but also filled with a heavy presence."
AMANDA: No. It's not your mom. It's not your mom.
JULIA: "Fear took over my little body, knowing I was powerless to do anything. I couldn't even blink or call out, much less run to my parents' room for help. Above my face, maybe six inches away, a head appeared. It was a man, clearly decomposed, greenish skin and dark holes where his eyes once sat."
AMANDA: Oh, fuck.
JULIA: "His lips were shredded, what remained of his blackened teeth poking through. The neck was separated by what was obviously a few blows, strips of flesh dangling."
AMANDA: You saw this level of detail? Oh, my God.
JULIA: And remember this level of detail, too. "I'm not sure how long this head hovered over me. The sparse, greasy hair moved, caught in a gentle breeze, the only way I could tell that time wasn't frozen. And then, after what felt like an eternity, his mouth opened, wider, wider, until his jaw unhinged. Inside was pure darkness, a black hole sucking in all light."
AMANDA: Uh-uh.
JULIA: "The face ever so slowly inched closer, a mere breath away. Overwhelming rot filled my nose."
AMANDA: Smell haunting, Julia. Doesn't that take it to the next level? It does.
JULIA: "And then it was gone."
AMANDA: Nope. Uh-uh. Ugh.
JULIA: "The floating head, the depression on my bed, yet the awful stench remained until we opened the windows the next morning." But hey, smell is creepy. I agree, Amanda.
AMANDA: Same brain.
JULIA: You're welcome. You're welcome.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: "Sometime the next day, I walked into the kitchen to hear my dad talking to my mom about the really scary nightmare he had last night. I caught the words floating head. Pause, scream internally. I told him I had the same one. I'll never forget how wide his eyes went when I described it."
AMANDA: Yeah, dude.
JULIA: "That was the first hug from him I can remember."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: To be fair, this is also, like, one of the first memories she said she ever had, so—
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope you're not chronically underhugged, but also I love that your dad was like, "Come here, I don't know."
JULIA: That's terrifying. I hate that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I hate that.
AMANDA: Oof.
JULIA: "Days later, my mom screamed from the basement. She ran upstairs, slammed the door shut, threw the laundry basket on the floor, and yelled, 'Nope!' My dad and I raced down there, bumping into walls, and me tripping at least once along the way." Ladies, ConSpiriters, let me tell you all, this is a content warning for bugs. Just letting you know. "The entire unfinished basement, walls, ceiling, floor, support beams was absolutely covered in ladybugs."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "Reds, oranges, yellows, ladybugs just squirming. We could not see an inch of concrete. We could not see the laundry machines. The illusion was so strong."
AMANDA: Oh, my God. The illusion?
JULIA: That's what she said, the illusion. "Was this a curse from the floating head? Did we invoke a nature spirit by putting my mom's flowers in a vase? I'll never know, because we moved soon after that."
AMANDA: Okay, wait, I have a million follow-up questions about what happened here.
JULIA: We're not done, though.
AMANDA: Oh, my— okay, okay, okay. I'm holding my applause for the end.
JULIA: "Couple years later, my parents were looking desperately to find a new house after something happened to me at a house that we were then renting." A little bit of a content warning, plus a PSA from Delaney here. "It is never too early to educate your children about consent. Don't need to say anything more about that, but–
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "—a life lesson to bring to your table."
AMANDA: And I love that your parents were like, "Let's nope out of here."
JULIA: We are removing ourselves from the situation. Love that for us. "My parents were talking to a real estate agent and current owners in the living room. I was ironically left alone to wander the house. The whole second floor is the master bedroom with a little closet built into the slanted walls. The little closet in the slanted walls of the upstairs bedroom, always haunted. I'm just going to like say that outright, always haunted."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Always haunted when I moved into the place I'm living now, there are knee walls, which is what my mom calls them.
JULIA: That's what we're talking about, Amanda, and they're terrifying.
AMANDA: Yeah. So one of them I opened up and confirmed that it is— just has like an HVAC unit, like the air conditioning compressor.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: The other one is in my bedroom and it is painted shut. So it's just gonna stay that way.
JULIA: Yeah, no. You don't need to open it.
AMANDA: I don't know what's in there. There's like an 800-pound bookshelf in front of it, so that's just gonna stay right there.
JULIA: No one can crawl out and that's the important part.
AMANDA: Crawl out? Crawl out?
JULIA: I said what I said!
AMANDA: Let's move on.
JULIA: All right, so little closet built into the slanted walls. "I opened the sliding wood door, got in, curled up into the fetal position. This felt safe. I needed safe."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: "A shadow passed over me, just outside the closet. I looked up and I saw a boy about my age. 'Oh, it's their son," I thought to myself. 'Sorry, I can go downstairs if I need to,' I told him, sitting up. He looked at me blankly, then smirked. With all of his strength, he slammed the door shut and held it."
AMANDA: Oh. Oh.
JULIA: "I was thrust into darkness. Now the closet wasn't my safe space, but my prison. Memories rushed over me, forcing my throat shut, tears flowing from my eyes. I tried and tried and could not slide open the door. I screamed for my mom. I heard footsteps crashing up the stairs and the door flying open. My mom saw me, fell to her knees and held me while I cried." These are— the comforting of the parents is probably, you know, the most heartwarming part of the story. Very scary otherwise. Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I know. I want to give your parents a hug. Yeah.
JULIA: "I managed to get the words, 'Boy,' out. We went downstairs to a very concerned group of adults. My mom asked the owners if they had a son, and if so, she needed to speak with him now. Right now."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "They looked at each other with a mix of emotions, then at my parents with poker faces, 'No. We don't have a son. Not anymore. He passed last year.'
AMANDA: Yeah. Oh, God.
JULIA: The next line, Amanda, you're gonna scream at, "We bought the house and still live there."
AMANDA: Okay. So, informed consent is very important. And I think if you know what you're getting into, and it sounds like both families are in different kinds of tragedies and need new environments.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Maybe this is a sort of like two folks in recovery and healing can help each other, maybe. And if the presence is one you know about and can understand, I won't judge these folks for doing what they did. That's it. Can't fucking believe you still live there.
JULIA: The next line is, "Choices were non-existent, taxes are high, we'd love to move if we could afford it."
AMANDA: Yeah. Well, how's it been?
JULIA: "I haven't seen the boy again."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: "I think he followed his parents to their next home, thankfully. Side note, the amount of closets I was trapped in in my lifetime is hilarious, both physical and metaphorical."
AMANDA: Very funny and solidarity. I appreciate that he made himself known because it sounds like, again, that's a particularly— you don't want that to be a surprise later. And undoing a house purchase, very hard, is from what I understand. So I want to believe that this is the sweet spirit that kind of just caught you off guard, but I am very glad that nothing has stuck around in this particular home.
JULIA: "I have, however, seen another entity here."
AMANDA: Motherfuck!
JULIA: "Fast forward, I'm now 10. I'm in the basement, the playroom for me and my two brothers. I'm setting up my Fisher Price castle set, one of the best ways to pass time for an undiagnosed autistic kid in my opinion."
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: "Setting up armies, but never going through battle. Planning storylines for my Barbies, but never acting them out. Sorting Halloween candy by types and colors. All signs my parents somehow missed. I'm setting up the king in his throne with his squire ready to carry out his silly whims. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a cat's vague shape watching me by the door to the laundry room. Our cat, Shadow, is dark grey. I already wear glasses due to too much reading at night, so I think nothing of it. Then I hear my dad upstairs talking to her, playing with a toy or something. Now, I do not want to turn my head to look, but something makes me. Where the cat shape was, it is now a very tall, very skinny, shifting, misty shape of a person. It reached the ceiling, and then some. It was bent over, too tall to fit in this space. Meaning that the face was closer to me, staring into my soul."
AMANDA: I think that freaks me out because it acknowledges the physical space you're in. Do you know what I mean? Where like, it's more—
JULIA: Hmm. Yeah.
AMANDA: —evidence that the entity is kind of sharing a plane with you.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Because it is interacting with this space enough that it's like, "Oh, I can't be in the ceiling. I have to be below the ceiling."
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: "I stared back, again, too afraid to move or blink. This thing felt malicious. The drone of the dishwasher just up the stairs disappeared. I couldn't hear my dad laughing or the frenzied pitter patter of the cat playing. The heating in the vents stopped, as did the furnace on the other side of the door. Air did not exist for me to breathe. As I'm staring up at this being, it takes a step towards me, pauses, tilts its head a fraction. Another step, tilts it back the other way. Step, lifts one arm, stretched out towards me, step. It is now between me and the stairs, so I couldn't even run if I tried. Step, step. Sweat drips down my back, needles prick my legs, adrenaline floods my system. I swallow over and over, step. The hand is one step away from being able to touch me. I, instinctively, shut my eyes, using whatever childlike belief I had to imagine it gone. I wait. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I scream. My eyes open to see my castle set fly backwards, slamming against the opposite wall. But the figure is gone. My body regains control, sound returns to my ears, and I have never ran so fast up those stairs to date."
AMANDA: Oh, my God. That's some serious shit.
JULIA: Yep.
AMANDA: We got physical touch. We have the set flying away and the very clear visual. Oh, my Lord.
JULIA: Oh, and Delaney's not done, baby.
AMANDA: Oh, oh, oh, gosh.
JULIA: "As I entered my teens, I discovered my love of history. I checked out a book about mummies from my school library, and that was that."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "Every documentary on TV, you bet I watched. I was obsessed with Egyptian mythology, which in turn became all mythology. Wonder what made me love Spirits? Truly a mystery. LOL. I wanted to learn about the history of our town and more specifically, our house. Our library has a historical society where I found documents relating to its construction in the 1960s. One thing I did not expect, but was grateful and scared of finding was a news article making the front page of our local newspaper. Two construction workers were drinking on the job." And then here's my expertise by proxy explaining why that's a terrible thing to do. I don't need to explain that. I think we all realize why drinking while doing construction work is bad.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: "Got into an argument," and Amanda, one shot the other to death.
AMANDA: Oh, my Lord!
JULIA: You want to guess where this guy died, Amanda?
AMANDA: I mean—
JULIA: In the basement!
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: In the basement!
AMANDA: Yeah, that'll do it.
JULIA: The face I made while reading this, oh, boy.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: "I brought my mom back to read these articles a few days later. We decided to check out some books about spirits and how to appease them. From what info was available at the time, which hasn't aged super well, we bought some sage and a little milk bread with various flowers to leave in the basement."
AMANDA: Can't hurt.
JULIA: "My mom handled the sage throughout the house being polite but firm with whatever was living with us, that we were offering the milk bread but you cannot stay here any longer. That it will not scare or hurt her children again. And she used the man's name from the article when addressing it."
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: Smart. Good call.
AMANDA: Damn. Yes. You— thank you for sharing this with your mom. And mom, thank you for being an example, okay? We need this kind of supernaturally literate parents that believe and defend their kids and are willing to be like, "No."
JULIA: "And just like that, Amanda, we've been entity free since. The only creepiness we experience now is our love for Halloween season, my mom and I watching serial killer documentaries and vampire movies together. And, well, the fact that my mom made a certain 'game' for my brothers and I. Whenever my parents fought, which was like World War III, unfortunately, my mom had go-bags ready just in case. But if she couldn't take us to our grandparents' house for the day, she drove us to our favorite—" do you want to guess the next word that I'm about to say?
AMANDA: Is it graveyard?
JULIA: Cemetery.
AMANDA: Yep. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
JULIA: "I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't creepy to us. It was a quiet place, grassy, generally well-kept, safe from my dad's wrath, and no one around to bother us in times of high stress. She taught us to respect the dead, that there was nothing to be afraid of. We took our little brushes and we cleaned off headstones so that they could be read by visiting family, cleared away dead leaves and weeds. We acknowledged those past and wished them peace. We left flowers that mom picked up from Walgreens on the way. Overall, it was wholesome stuff to pass the time until it was okay to go back home. It made things easier to process. We had a sanctuary and had a good perspective of death with no need to fear it, to live life how it best suits us while we're here. So it's no surprise that we're a creepy family. And I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily. It's what my mom and I bond over the most. We're both looking forward to starting our yearly tradition of binging scary movies for spooky season and decorating the house a month too early for the neighbors' taste. I am just a spooky girl from a spooky family. This has gone on far too long, apologies. Writer's nerves is a hell of a drug. But I know better than to ask if you want more stories, so I'll write in again eventually to include my dad's life-changing experience with the infamously sexy Mothman, The Little Footprints in the Dust, and various other goodies. Bless you if you liked my ramblings from the past, I just wanted to write in for so long, but made it my mission to finish the marathon first. Stay creepy, stay cool. Later, Satyrs, Delaney."
AMANDA: Delaney, this was absolutely epic. Thank you so much. Your mom sounds incredible. My grandma would take us to graveyards sometimes to do, like, charcoal rubbings of headstones. Similarly, like clean up graves that had not been tended to recently and I think it is lovely. And you have friends in us. We don't think that's creepy at all.
JULIA: Hell yeah, I love it so much. Thank you so much, Delaney. Amanda, I need a breather after that one. How about we grab our refill before we finish things up?
AMANDA: Let's do it, Jules.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. First things first, we are having a sale over on Patreon. It is our Halloween sale running now until November 5th and you can get right now 25 % off your first month or the full year. It's very exciting. I'm really stoked. So you can use code HALLOWEEN25 to get 25% off your first month or first year of our Patreon. And I'm telling you, we have some great rewards over at Patreon. I tell you about them every week, but stuff like ad-free episodes, bonus urban legends episodes, so much more. Go check it out. That is patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And shout out to our newest patron, Paul Henry. He joins the rank of our supporting producer-level patrons like Alicia, Hannah, Scott, and Matthew Rico like Lily and Wil 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. So, again, if you are at all interested in trying out our Patreon, now is a great time during this week only. From now until November 5th, use code HALLOWEEN25 for 25 % off your first month or the year. And hey, it's Halloween season and something that I find scary is tech. Tech scares me, guys. AI scares me. A bunch of different stuff scares me, which is honestly why I really enjoy another show here at Multitude, which is Wow If True. Wow If True is your one-stop internet culture shop explaining how, what's happening online actually shapes the real world. And they are the internet experts and real life besties to unravel it. Tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling, and science fiction author/attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. And more importantly, they are the only podcast that will mention Neopets and also horizontal mergers in the same episode. You should check out this show. There's an episode that is coming out soon about an AI pet that Amanda Silberling got and raised. And I think you would be really interested in what she has to say about that. But they're also asking and answering your burning questions about the internet. Like, why are the edge lord tech bros literally everywhere, even in the White House? Are the AI overlords coming for our jobs? And if so, why are these AI so awful at playing Pokémon? How does AI actually work anyway? Is Pepe the Frog a hate symbol or just a misunderstood green guy? And speaking of misunderstood green guys, why is Shrek still so popular? These are all questions I ask myself on a daily basis. So check out Wow If True wherever on the internet you find your podcasts. New episodes every other Wednesday. And finally, we are sponsored by bookshop.org. Bookshop.org works to connect readers with independent booksellers all over the world. And listen, the holiday season, it's coming up soon. If you're planning on buying some books for the loved ones in your life, bookshop.org is the place to do that. They believe local bookstores are essential community hubs that foster culture, curiosity, and a love of reading, and they are committed to helping them thrive. So every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Here's how it works. You visit bookshop.org, you find a local bookstore page, and then you select the bookstore that you want to support. And even if you don't choose a store, you'll contribute to their profit sharing pool that helps all bookstores. Your order will be filled directly by their distributor and then the full profit from your purchase will be sent to the bookstore that you select. And then they donate profits directly to those bookstores. bookshop.org, we love them. And if you are planning on purchasing some books in the near future, you can use our code SPIRITS to get 10 % off. That is code SPIRITS at bookshop.org to get 10 % off. And hey, thank you for supporting small businesses, especially independent booksellers.
AMANDA: We are sponsored this week by Soon To Be Mythical. Folks, pay attention, you're gonna love this one, okay? This is a conservation-driven apparel and accessories brand, featuring endangered animals and also some cryptids. Now, the endangered animals are perhaps soon to be mythical, right? We're trying to prevent them from becoming mythical by conserving the environment and conserving the species. And so when this brand reached out to us to sponsor the show, Julia and I said, "Holy crap, I don't think we've ever seen a brand that is more in line with Spirits." You can get a T-shirt with a beautiful logo that says, "Mermaids against microplastics." You can get a T-shirt with a yeti on it, holding up a sign against climate change. You can even get a beautiful, very soft jersey T-shirt with Mothman on it. It says, "Mothman: Endangered," and then, "Only appears before disasters." I just— I can't believe this is a thing. I'm so happy it's a thing, up to 25% of proceeds from the shirts that they sell and the accessories and things will be donated to non-profit organizations that assist with the conservation of endangered species and they print stuff on demand, which I love. There's not like, you know, hundreds of T-shirts and sweatshirts lying around in the warehouse. They make them as you order them. And they hope, actually, that the business is ultimately irrelevant because they help the animals become so common and thriving that wearing a T-shirt that says, "Soon To Be Mythical" makes no sense. So help them postpone the myth, okay? Visit postponethemyth.com and use the code SPIRITS10 to get 10% off your order. That's postponethemyth.com, code SPIRITS10 for 10% off. I love the stuff, I love my T-shirt. It is so smooth. It is so soft. Postponethemyth.com, SPIRITS10, 10% off.
JULIA: And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And hey, what you been drinking lately? What's been the cocktail of choice for Amanda's over there?
AMANDA: Julia, I've been doing what I call the custom THC seltzer, which is not in fact a THC-infused seltzer. It's a weed gummy and separately a sparkling water.
JULIA: I mean, if it works, works, right?
AMANDA: I've actually not been drinking particularly much, but I like having a weed gummy. I like turning my brain off. I like watching the squirrels outside and drinking a little sparkling water when my body is thinking that sensations are particularly delicious is a great thing.
JULIA: That's fair. Actually, I like that combination of things. I recently tried one of the THC seltzers from my beer distributor. It's wild that I can buy THC seltzers from the beer distributor. What a world we live in.
AMANDA: We're living in a uniquely bad world for lots of things, Julia, but a uniquely good world for people who really wanted to smoke weed in high school but weren't necessarily cool enough for boys to buy us weed, and that is me.
JULIA: Oh, boy, yeah, that's me to a T as well. You got me. You got me there. Yep.
AMANDA: Now, girlies can buy our own THC seltzers.
JULIA: I mean, I have to tell you the story now of me going to the beer distributor and being like, "Oh, I've been meaning to try one of these. Which one would you recommend?" The guy's like, "Oh, man, I really like this one." And, like, puts one in front of me. I said, "Sir, that is 60 milligrams—"
AMANDA: That's a lot.
JULIA: "—of THC in one seltzer." He's like, "Yeah, yeah. You know, like— so, like, a pretty good high. But if you like really want to have a good night, here's a hundred one." I'm like, "No!"
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: "Look at me."
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: "Look at my size. Do I seem like I can take a hundred milligrams of a seltzer in one go?"
AMANDA: I mean, listen, maybe you have incredible tolerance and I like that he assumed you weren't a lightweight.
JULIA: I— maybe he should have, though. So I bought a 10 milligram one and then I drank half of it. And I was like—
AMANDA: There you go. There you go.
JULIA: —"Yeah, this is good." I think I just don't drink the seltzer quick enough to— like, it feels too spread out as opposed to, like, a gummy where it's all in one go.
AMANDA: Yeah, you gotta pound it a little bit. You know, sometimes you're in your early to mid-30s figuring out weed, and that's a lot.
JULIA: For the first time. For the first time. It's everyone's first time for a lot of New Yorkers here now that it's recreationally used.
AMANDA: You know, Julia, people often will talk about how Spirits helps them feel represented in the world , and I hope this is one of those ways.
JULIA: Me, too.
AMANDA: But what have you been drinking recently apart from your THC seltzer experiment?
JULIA: I mean, it is pumpkin beer season, so I am always a huge fan of the Pumpking from Southern Tier Brewery. That is one of the best in general pumpkin beers. And the fact that it's 8.6%, I'm like, "I can have one of these and just be done for the day," which is kind of fantastic. So I like that. And I also, for the first time, tried the Dogfish Head Pumpkin Beer and very much enjoyed that one as well. It's very good. It's a little bit more brown ale forward as opposed to the sort of crisp ones that you can often get. Like you'll see a lot of, like, pumpkin IPAs, which I think are nice if you're looking for a crisper pumpkin beer.
AMANDA: But I am in the toasty, nutty caramel zone. So something more along the lines of a brown ale is something I'm very into.
JULIA: Exactly. So if you like more of a brown ale, I really did like the Dogfish Head, but Pumpking is always going to be my number one boy, for sure.
AMANDA: Honestly, normalize sugar rims at other times of year because I'm telling you right now, all of the beer I like, Belgian beers, dark beers, stouts, porters, all benefit from a sugar rim.
JULIA: There you go. You know, a sugar rim and a pumpkin spice rim. I think we should even go a little bit further and do a little bit— like instead of just the cinnamon rim, I would like a nutmeg rim.
AMANDA: Oh, baby, that would be so spicy, I love that.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. I think it would be really good.
AMANDA: Tight.
JULIA: I'm just saying. Amanda, do you have another story for us here?
AMANDA: I do, Julia, and it wouldn't be an extra special Hometown Urban Legends episode without a note from Ma Winchester!
JULIA: Yeah! Back again.
AMANDA: Back again. Our close personal friend, AKA somebody I've hugged in real life. Ma writes, "Hey, girls, sorry it's been a while since I told you a story, but I left you on a bit of a cliff if I remember correctly."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Don't worry, I always have more stories to tell. I'm actually writing this from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, so after this weekend, I may in fact have even more to add to the list. But for now, I wanted to tell you about how I found out that my daughter Katie could communicate with spirits."
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: "And the most unusual happy birthday message I ever received."
JULIA: All right, I'm into it.
AMANDA: "I discovered that Katie had the ability to communicate with spirits almost 11 years ago. At that time, she was living at home and we had a family room set up in the basement, which was absolutely lovely in the summer since being underground made it feel air conditioned."
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Because cooler— the heat rises, sure.
AMANDA: Which, by the way, I'm enjoying now that we're in the cool part of the year, because my house is very, very hot in the summertime. But I'm like, "Oh, it's so toasty in the winter." Ma continues, "I began noticing a weird smell when I was down there watching television alone, which happened just about every night since I'm a night owl."
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: "The smell reminded me of cigarettes, but at least to my knowledge, nobody in my family smoked."
JULIA: How did this end up being such a smell-centered episode? What the fuck?
AMANDA: Haunted smells, baby.
JULIA: Haunted smells.
AMANDA: "When I failed to figure it out on my own, I started asking questions of my family. I was the only one among us who had noticed the odor and nobody had any ideas or explanations, except maybe a candle or incense that Katie occasionally burned in her room. So we experimented to see if that was what I was smelling, but the scent didn't permeate into the basement family room."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "I jokingly said, 'Well, maybe it's just a ghost,' to which Katie replied that I should let her know next time I smelled it. She told me then that she was sensitive to spirit energy and had been working on developing her abilities, but had been a little bit shy to tell me about it."
JULIA: Aw.
AMANDA: "A few nights later, I was downstairs watching a movie with Katie and SW," who has said I can use the name Sam for her going forward. So our original Winchester—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —writer inner, Sam, thank you. Welcome. "When I noticed the smell once more. This was a first. I hadn't noticed it when anyone else was with me before. I got Katie's attention and let her know the smell was present. And neither Katie nor Sam, who was around 11 at the time, could detect it."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "Katie was quiet for a while before saying confidently that there was in fact someone there. She had some difficulty figuring out what the spirit wanted at first, but eventually let me know that it was an older gentleman. Sam was at this point hiding behind me on the couch. She was, again, 11, a little bit scared of the paranormal at that point."
JULIA: That's scary. Yeah.
AMANDA: "But I needed to know what was going on. Katie began to tell me that the spirit had just wanted to see us. And when she said that, I began to understand who it may have been. The absolute turning point was when Katie also said that she felt the spirit wanted to see Sam in particular."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "Now, my father had passed away about 15 years earlier, so well before Sam was born."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "And he was a heavy smoker until he ended up having a heart attack that caused him to have to stop [1:02:39] Katie, tears in my eyes and asked if it was him. She also teary nodded that it was. She told me he wanted me to know that he loved me and was proud of me, things that he was never able to say to me before he died. Now this exchange happened the night before my birthday."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "The next morning when Katie got up, she came to let me know that he had communicated with her again and asked her to tell me happy birthday from him."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: "I like to think of this as my most unusual happy birthday message, because how many people can say that they've received that specific message from someone who has died?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "My father has made his presence known at a few important moments. When Pa Winchester and I were house hunting back in the seller's market."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "We were having trouble finding a house. We used to say when we saw pennies that they were a sign from my father. And so when we went to the house that we ended up buying, there was a penny on the floor. And after our offer was accepted, Pa Winchester went back to the house with the realtor and the penny was somehow still there in the exact same position."
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: "With permission, he brought that penny to me and I have it framed with a picture of my father to remind me of his sign."
JULIA: That's so sweet.
AMANDA: "I also have a picture that was taken at Katie's college graduation of my then infant granddaughter. In the picture, there is a swirl of mist around her, though nothing was there visible to me when I took the picture."
JULIA: What the hell?
AMANDA: "And it wasn't present in other pictures taken at the very same time." And, oh, do you remember Sam's 'invisible' visitor, Mortz, [1:04:16] from the Winchester Creepy Kid story?
JULIA: I do remember Mortz and I said that's a weird name and I don't like it.
AMANDA: "I'm pretty sure Mortz was my father trying to have some fun with the granddaughter who was born after he passed. Coming up with a name like Mortz, which is so close to so many translations of the word death–"
JULIA: Yep.
AMANDA: "—is absolutely something he would have done."
JULIA: Yeah, I don't like that.
AMANDA: "After all, he did name his cats things like Beelzebub, Banshee, and Lucifer."
JULIA: Oh, come on.
AMANDA: "With love, Ma Winchester. P.S., I get giddy every time you shout me out and I would absolutely be down for a lunch with you two, Mother Goose and Kathy." [1:04:55]
JULIA: Let's go. One day, one day.
AMANDA: Julia, there is, in fact, the image of this adorable baby in a floral headband.
JULIA: Oh, my God, there is weird fog.
AMANDA: It is a pretty distinctive fog.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: It's not like a smear. It's not a cloud.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: It's a little fog in front of a very cute baby.
JULIA: Yeah. Like my instinct is like, "Oh, maybe it was a smudge or something like that," but it is like very distinct in shape is how I would describe it.
AMANDA: You can see the light interacting with the stuff.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And if that smudge wasn't on other photos taken at the same time—
JULIA: I don’t know.
AMANDA: —it seems like Grandpa Mort.
JULIA: Okay, Amanda, are we ready for one last story before we wrap things up?
AMANDA: I am, Julia, and it's been so nice to do this Halloween double feature with you. I hope people are enjoying it.
JULIA: Me, too. Okay. This is from Dr. Martin, they/he, titled Below The Ravine.
AMANDA: May I just say? Let's go, they/he doctor, let's go.
JULIA: "Dear, Amanda and Julia, longtime listener, second-time writer, but this time with something for you instead of asking for something from you. I still really appreciate your virtual visit to my mythology class and if I get to teach one again, you'll probably hear from me then. But for now, I have a spooky story from high school that I've been meaning to send in for months.
AMANDA: And may I say? Julia and I are bookable. You can certainly bring us to your mythology class where I mostly sit around and say, "Yeah," and Julia teaches things. It's great.
JULIA: You know what? I enjoy talking about the things that we love on this show, and I'll talk to anyone about it. It's great. I love it.
AMANDA: Send us an email, we'll almost certainly say yes.
JULIA: "So before we get to the main story, I think it's probably worth mentioning a few things about my family. I was raised in a household that was, A, very Catholic, and B, very sensitive to ghosts and spirits. My mother's side is good, old Boston Irish-Italian with a dash of Portuguese in the extended family, and family gatherings are a boisterous affair, which are where I get to know some of the family ghost stories." I just imagine you're just like at a barbecue and then you're like, "Oh, what do you mean there was a ghost?" And they're like, "Ah, sit the fuck down. We're going to tell you all about it." Incredible.
AMANDA: Yeah. In my family, it's more like, "You know, when so-and-so was in jail," or, you know, "So-and-so's out of wedlock son." And I'm like, Excuse me?"
JULIA: "I'm sorry? What's going on?"
AMANDA: " It's not fun. It's not fun stories."
JULIA: "My mother and her siblings all remember the woman in heels who lived in their childhood home."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "They were all sitting in the front living room one night and heard her shoes click down the stairs just on the other side of the wall before coming to stop in the front entrance way, next to the living room door. Declaring that if you're nice to them, they won't cause you problems. My grandmother invited her to watch TV with them. There was silence in response."
AMANDA: Now, Julia, that feels less like being nice to a spirit and more inviting them into your life and activities.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Which I don't have a problem with on its face. I just do want to point out the distinction.
JULIA: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's polite, like if the whole family's doing activities, you, I guess, could invite the ghost to hang out.
AMANDA: You know, you're right. It's like a roommate you're not particularly close with, where you're gonna be like, "Hey, I made food. Do you want any?" Or like, "Hey, I'm watching Survivor. Join me."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Like, you're not gonna not invite them.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah.
AMANDA: Okay?
JULIA: That would just be rude. Yeah. "So there was silence in response, but true to my grandmother's word, she never caused them issues and she was always invited when they heard her." So there we go.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: "My mother, too, has her own ghost encounters, which she treats as a normal part of her day. Now, my mother spends most of her day alone in the house. It is a small ranch style house on a high traffic, low-housing density road through the New England woods. It is also a new build. We were the first family to live in it, so one would think that it would be pretty ghost-proof." Never, never assume that.
AMANDA: Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
JULIA: Because even if it's a new build, something might have happened on that land.
AMANDA: Julia, it's like how they describe cell phones these days as water-resistant. They are not waterproof, okay?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: You can absolutely immerse yourself too far in the paranormal, just like you can immerse your iPhone for too long in a sink.
JULIA: "A few years back, my brother was helping my mother maneuver boxes in the basement when he heard the back door open and footsteps in the kitchen above them. He asked my mom if dad was off work. She told him no and that nobody was going to be there. Unnerved, my brother went upstairs to find the back door fully closed and locked."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "And the house empty besides the two of them."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "When he went back down, she just shrugged and said, 'Eh, it was just the ghost,' and that she was used to it. All this to say that nobody in the family has been surprised to learn that I have encountered my own ghosts, especially in my days at boarding school." Boarding school just instantly haunted.
AMANDA: Incredibly, indelibly, inherently haunted.
JULIA: Great. "Most of them were odd, but pretty explainable once I learned the history of the spaces where I'd seen things. But one stands out both for the number of other people involved, and for the fact that I still don't have a solid grasp on what exactly happened in the ravine that day."
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: "My high school was in a different wooded corner of New England, set on a hillside by the river.
The campus was large enough that some areas, like the soccer fields, were down a path through the woods, across a little wooden bridge over a creek and up the other side. Downstream of the soccer field crossing, the creek descended quickly through a narrow ravine that marked the edge of the main campus and mostly woods beyond. I had gone exploring down that way a few times as a freshman to discover a surprising set of ruins lurking in the ravine." I don't like a ruin.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: I mean, like, I do, I do like a ruin, but for the sake of stories where we're talking about hometown urban legends, I don't like a ruin one bit.
AMANDA: I think that I particularly dislike the unexpected ruin, by which I mean it's magical. But stumbling across a ruin gives fae portal every time.
JULIA: Yeah. This is—
AMANDA: Like in Lake Placid, Julia, where my grandparents used to live, you saw there was, like, a stone staircase leading to nowhere—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —in their kind of, like, backyard-ish because there used to be a resort there, and then it burned down, and stone doesn't burn, and so it just stayed there. And as a kid, I found it magical. And now looking back, if I had, like, rented a home from someone on, like, Virbo and then I'm like, "Oh, the ghost stairs in the back?" I mean, I might choose the rental because of that, but I sure would treat it with some amount of, like, respect.
JULIA: Yeah, I think there's a certain aspect of, like, if you know the history of the area, you're like, "Oh, that's the old—"
AMANDA: It's from a thing.
JULIA: "—water tower, sure."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But if you have no context for it at all, you're like, "What the fuck happened here?" "The first section I spotted was an L-shaped wall, the last section standing of a creek side structure. No mushrooms, thankfully."
AMANDA: Hoo.
JULIA: "It was maybe three feet wide on either part and was about as tall as I was at the time, so just under five feet. There was an old electrical box helping to keep that section still standing, and you could see where the part of the wall had once held a window casing. The wood was dark and moss covered it, and it stood just over the remains of a small concrete dam that no longer served any functional purpose without whatever had once been able to cap it off and slow the water. Continuing downstream, there were the rectangular foundations of some much larger building, with a row of brick columns that no longer supported anything above them and heaps of corrugated tin roofing strewn across the bottom a few feet below. As I walked, balancing on the lip of what I think might have been a long abandoned power plant, I looked up the ravine toward campus and saw a building that, by general standards, was quite dilapidated. But by comparison to the surroundings, that was much more intact. It was built into the hill. Its once white walls now spray-painted where they weren't dirt covered. Its entrance nothing but a rectangular opening with a door lying flat on the ground behind it. There's something about the door like still existing there, but not being an actual barrier that is scary. I circled the building at a distance. Climbing up the side of the ravine until I was standing over it and could see right through the enormous hole in the roof, and to the enormous eyes, white paint on a black background that stood out among the chaos of other colors." That's very scary. Why would you paint eyes, like it's a giant predator? I hate that.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: "Some empty cans let me know that this building still saw the occasional person."
AMANDA: I love that!
JULIA: "But I followed the implicit gaze of the spray-painted eyes to notice the last structure I had walked right past and missed. Back on the other side of the stream, past the yawning foundation and the last standing walls by the dam, there was a concrete trapezoid almost camouflaged into the hillside."
AMANDA: Okay. Of all the shapes you could have said, trapezoid is not one I was expecting.
JULIA: No, me either.
AMANDA: I was like, "Okay, grain silo, squarish barn, you know, like pillar."
JULIA: No.
AMANDA: Not a trapezoid.
JULIA: "And in the middle of it," Amanda, "a square hole with nothing but darkness visible beyond going straight back into the hill. Now, I am not Team Ignorance."
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: "I am team Find a Buddy. I did not approach the hole that day. In fact, it was several trips later before I decided to do so. I don't know why, but I just kept coming back to this strange little lost collection of buildings. I didn't always plan it, but some days when I was at the dining hall, I just had the urge to take a little detour out behind the old garage's term maintenance buildings and down to the ravine. On one trip, odd noises coming from the empty foundations led me to getting help for a dog that had fallen in." Amazing, that's so good, you saved a dog."
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: "Other than being hungry, it was fine, don't worry. But it wasn't until the fall of my sophomore year that I got the feeling that something was amiss with the spot."
AMANDA: Julia, tell me why my brain interpreted that sentence as the downfall of the sophomore year? And I was like—
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: —"What happens?"
JULIA: Uh-oh. Well, we'll see. "I had been at a birthday party for a new friend I had met during soccer tryout week who had just started as a freshman that year and was also the child of two teachers who lived just off campus. Now, I was one of the few non-freshmen there, so when the birthday girl asked me what people wanted to do since video games were getting repetitive and couldn't handle all of us at once anyway, I asked who had found the ravine yet." Now imagine being the cool, you know, upperclassman at this party being like, "So all you freshmen, do you know about the haunted ravine yet?"
AMANDA: And this is autumn, Julia. This is a few weeks into freshman year.
JULIA: They’ve only been there so long.
AMANDA: This is like, mwa, exactly, right timing.
JULIA: Yeah. Oh, God. So good. "Nobody had. And my friend who had grown up on campus demanded to be introduced to this space that she had never been to before, so that's wild too, is like, this girl grew up on campus, she's a freshman at the school and she's never heard of the ravine?"
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: "She's never heard of the ravine?"
AMANDA: Either it was sort of, like, hidden enough that it really feels like a find or her entire life happened not to have come across it, in which either case, it's magical.
JULIA: Yeah, it's spooky either way.
AMANDA: Ugh. Dream birthday. I'm sorry I didn't introduce you to a ravine with ruins this year for yours, Julia.
JULIA: It's okay.
AMANDA: I'll work on that for next year.
JULIA: "So the seven of us trundled across campus over to the wooden bridge and took the longer scenic walk down the ravine instead of going the shorter way from the dining hall. The vibes were off from the moment we got close."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "Whether there had been a storm or something, I'm not sure, but part of the L-shaped walls had come down since the last time I had visited."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "Even though going had been my idea, I started to feel nervous about being there. I took us down closer to the stream itself and was heading toward the open foundation when I noticed someone pull back into the shack on the hill out of sight."
AMANDA: Aaah. No.
JULIA: "I signaled for people to quiet down, but didn't say why, and went forward a few steps, keeping the stream between me and the shack."
AMANDA: There you go. That's a mythology professor in the making.
JULIA: "Only the birthday girl and one other friend kept walking with me. When we got across from the entryway, I could see to the back of the room where the roof was collapsed and there was no sign of anyone. But I couldn't shake the feeling that they were just lurking on the sides of the door. The other friend suddenly tapped my shoulder to point up to the other side of the ravine where she swore she had just seen someone but couldn't explain where they'd gone."
AMANDA: Aah.
JULIA: "The birthday girl was panicked and said that she felt like we were being watched. We were standing in a little circle, alternately trying to calm each other down and spooking ourselves by reaffirming what we thought we were seeing and feeling when we heard the scream."
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: "The other friends had drifted up the hill while we weren't looking and now three of them were beside the concrete trapezoid in the hill. It took me a moment to realize that the fourth was now clinging to the tree roots by the square hole with her arms and head still outside of it. Two of the people there sprang into action, grabbing her arms and helping to pull her up from the ground. They were able to get her just outside on the ground where she sat down, shaking. She couldn't or wouldn't explain why she had had the urge to know what was down there, even less why her tool of choice was her entire body."
AMANDA: Uh-uh. Uh-uh. It's giving House of Leaves, you know, impossible to resist going into the void. No, no.
JULIA: "It was only when she was mostly in and realized she wasn't feeling water or ground or anything but emptiness below her that logic kicked in and she started panicking about how little grasp she had on the ground around her. We went to help her to her feet. On the way up, her foot slipped on a loose stone and she slid towards the hole again. The two holding her kept her from going in, but we all paused to listen for the stone to hit whatever was at the bottom."
AMANDA: Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
JULIA: "And heard nothing."
AMANDA: Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Okay, I might have to revise my scary senses ranking, Julia. In the absence of sound, I would say is slightly above smell.
JULIA: "The next sound we did hear, besides some nervous breathing and the thumping of our own hearts, was the sound of a cascade of rocks coming down from both sides of the ravine, by the shack and straight across from it. There was still no sign of anyone else there, though. At that point, we panicked and ran for it."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "I pointed the group up a part of the hillside away from the shack and made sure that everyone is in motion before I gave the concrete trapezoid one last look, and really, really wanted to know what was at the bottom. Now, fun fact, I'm claustrophobic. The thought of caving intensely terrifies me. I have no desire even to be underground in a basement unless I really must. I like wide open skies and high tree canopies. And logically, I knew already that however deep it was, my freshly five-foot-one self was not going to learn more than my five-foot-six friend without a greater commitment to," all caps, "FINDING OUT. But in that moment, with everyone else on their speedy little way out of the ravine, the thought of remaining in the dark bothered me a lot. A hand on my wrist snapped me out of the thought as the birthday girl dragged me in the direction that I had been urging everyone else to go. We left the woods, everyone scattered to their own dorms, and I went back to play a few more rounds of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to make sure that my friend's party didn't end on that note."
AMANDA: You know, when you think about it, there is also a yawning ravine under Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Like, you fall off the platform, and like, yes, the little cloud picks you back up, but like, you know, there's a yawning ravine.
JULIA: That is true, but it's like open sky of a—
AMANDA: It is.
JULIA: —yawning maw, you know?
AMANDA: More of an endless fall than a—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —yawning maw. Yeah, that's true.
JULIA: "We never did go back to that part of the ravine, and a few months later the campus shut down and we were all relocated elsewhere." Hey, what?
AMANDA: Whoa.
JULIA: Hey, what?
AMANDA: That's sudden.
JULIA: That's wild. Why does a boarding school randomly close in the middle of semester?
AMANDA: Right, and midway through a year.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, that's bad.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Okay. "The birthday girl and I went on to become best friends and we still play tabletop RPGs with each other online. We have had a few more spooky adventures, but she still refers back to this one anytime I suggest taking a walk in the woods. Or the time with the bees, but that wasn't just supernatural, it was just so many bees. I'll pause there for now and we'll try to remember to write back in with some of my more explicable ghost encounters another time. In the meantime, I will do my best to stay cool when things get creepy. Sincerely, Dr. Martin."
AMANDA: Dr. Martin, what a friend. What a friend to the show.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Love this story. Thank you so much. And if you or your— the birthday girl turned bestie, want to write in about other aspects of that haunted boarding school, including why the fuck they evacuated you all the way through a year, I'm here for it.
JULIA: I also— like I desperately want to know what those runes actually were.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: I don't know if I want to say I want to go to there, but I am curious.
AMANDA: I am curious.
JULIA: I am curious.
AMANDA: And listen, I have a car now and Julia's trying to do more traveling, so we will experience your hauntings, particularly in the Northeast US upon invitation. Okay?
JULIA: If we can drive there.
AMANDA: If we can drive there, we're going to go there.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Let me say North Carolina to Maine. And I would go as West as like Western PA.
JULIA: Ooh. And, you know, if we ever go on tour again—
AMANDA: Hey.
JULIA: —we could always make some trips.
AMANDA: Well, thank you, Dr. Martin, and I'm glad you're well.
JULIA: Amanda, I think we have to leave on that note with the image of this trapezoidal, yawning maw of darkness.
AMANDA: I'm still thinking about the bees. So many good images to end on. Julia, happy spooky season and ConSpiriters, thank you for listening, for making us part of your routines all year round. We hope you enjoyed this extra-long Your Urban Legends. And hey, if you enjoy it, you can get bonus Urban Legends every dang month. You could have essentially a 90-minute episode every month if you join us on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
JULIA: It's a fun time and hey, you can even sign up for the seven-day free trial and try to jam in as many of those bonus Urban Legends as you possibly can in those seven days.
AMANDA: In this economy, you gotta make the most of a free trial and we support you in your endeavors.
JULIA: Heck yeah. Well, Amanda, happy Halloween.
AMANDA: Happy Halloween, babe.
JULIA: And remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
[theme]