Episode 175: Your Urban Legends XXXIII - Ghost Kid Adoption
/We’re asking a lot of questions during this Urban Legends episode. Would you adopt a ghost kid? Which is scarier, corporeal or incorporeal? And can you predict the weather with PopTarts? Tune in to hear those age old questions and more!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of train crashes, robbery, potential child endangerment, and hurricanes/blizzards/storms.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott! Buy a copy and see our new lists of previous recommendations, guest books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Multitude: Listen to Meddling Adults by joining the MultiCrew at multicrew.club, and check out Next Stop in your podcast player or nextstopshow.com!
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Find Us Online
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast. A boozy diamond to mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia: I'm Julia.
Amanda: This is Episode 175. Your Urban Legends Number 33.
Julia: 33. Every time we say the number, I'm just blown away that we've done this many episodes of urban legends but I love them so much.
Amanda: I'm blown away that we are approaching Episode 200.
Julia: Yeah. That, too. Wow. Okay.
Amanda: We just did some content planning for the next few months. We're very excited about what we're going to bring you. I also think that we have to really do something special for Episode 200. Don't you think?
Julia: Yeah. I got to think about what I want to do and what our listeners would like the most. If you have suggestions, this is the one time I'm going to ask. If you guys have suggestions, please tell me them. If there's something special that you want us to cover for Episode 200.
Amanda: Lovely. I can't wait. Oh, my gosh. Also, listen. New patrons, you are just in time. Evan, Noelle, Mickey and Steven, you are joining us when we love and need you all the most. If you're joining the ranks of such distinguished fellow patrons, as our supporting producers, Landon, Nicki, Tyree, Megan, Debra, Molly, Dachshund, Samantha, S. Shaw, Neil, Jessica, and Phil Fresh.
Julia: Yes. Of course, our legend level patrons, the WWE Champions of our heart, Milena, Kylo the Husky, Francis, Clara, Lacy, Brittany, Josie, Kylie Morgan, Bea Me Up Scotty, Audra, Necro Fancy, Mark, Mr. Volk, Sarah, and Jack Murray.
Amanda: You know, Julia, I'm a proud paying subscriber of Dropout, Collehe Humor’s streaming service. There was a question on Um, Actually, which is like Jeopardy but for nerds. I asked a question about WWE. I knew it and I felt so proud of myself.
Julia: What was the question? Now, I need to know.
Amanda: They say a statement and then you have to correct them by saying, "Um, actually," and then saying what in that statement was wrong. This one was about the Hall of Fame. It was like, "Oh, yes. Well, the Hall of Fame was established in the then WWF." I was like, "No way. The Hall of Fame was established until it was already at WWE." It was right.
Julia: Very good. I'm proud of you.
Amanda: Thank you. Thank you.
Julia: I'm also really proud of the beer choice that you brought for this episode, Amanda. I'm really excited for you to tell people about it after our refill. I really enjoy just taking in some local beers, supporting the local businesses around New York and for Eric Ohio. It was really nice to drink local.
Amanda: Absolutely. We love highlighting local beers and craft beers during Urban Legends episodes. So excited and proud to be able to bring some love to KCBC, the Kings County Brewers Collective. I think I brought four shirts by them. Love when a brewery also has great merch. It's just my favorite thing. I'm wearing an Austin Eastciders one right now. You got to love it.
Julia: Love it.
Amanda: Speaking of which, Julia, have you been reading, watching or listening to anything good this week?
Julia: I have. I have a lot of time once I finish working for the day. I've just been marathoning through this book. It's non-fiction so usually, non-fiction books take me a little bit longer. I'm so enjoying it. It's called The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott. It is about the bootlegger George Remus. His eventual downfall as he tries to go up against the US government, a corrupt US government no less. Also, his-
Amanda: Aren't they all?
Julia: Yeah. Also his strained relationship with his wife. It's really, really interesting. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Amanda: You picked this one up at BookPeople in Austin, right?
Julia: I did. I did. BookPeople had such a great selection of books. I picked up stuff that I normally wouldn't pick up if I was ordering say from online local indie bookstore.
Amanda: Lovely. I love that so much. Everybody, if you are like, "Oh, man. I want more stuff to listen to and watch and read this week." You already tear way through or request from your library, Ghosts at Eden Park. We are so excited to tell you that we are piloting a new podcast. This was an idea that Mike Schubert brought up many months ago actually. We thought that this was the perfect time to make it a reality. Julia, tell us a little bit about Meddling Adults.
Julia: Meddling Adults, you can find it on the Multicrew Feed. If you haven't signed up for the Multicrew, you should do it. It's fantastic. You can sign up right now at multicrew.club.
Amanda: Just five bucks.
Julia: Meddling Adults is hosted by Mike. The first episode features me and editor, Eric. Basically, Mike read us a bunch of Encyclopedia Brown books. We had to figure out the mysteries before Encyclopedia Brown did. Let me tell you. I have never felt sillier than when I was not able to solve children's books for children. It is so fun. It's witty. It is a little bit sardonic. It is very entertaining. It is very fascinating and the clues and the mystery. We are going to let the Multicrew listen and give us some feedback and let us know what they would and wouldn't like to see.
Julia: If you want to participate in that pilot process, you can join at multicrew.club for now. Depending on the response, we will hopefully make it a public, full-fledged show later in the spring.
Amanda: Yeah. You guys are really going to enjoy it. Definitely check it out. Again, you can sign up right now at multicrew.club. Finally, speaking of little clubs here, we want to let you know that next week's Myth Movie Night is going to be Jason and the Argonauts. The 1963 version. The special effects are incredible. It's fully available on YouTube for you to stream.
Julia: I think we just recorded it recently. I think that was one of my favorite Myth Movie Nights that we've done so far. Definitely check it out. Check out the movie. It is under two hours long. It is worth seeing in my opinion.
Amanda: Here's the thing. It's a great movie. Myth Movie Night movies are not always fantastic. They're often educational. Sometimes, entertaining but this one, I could put it on in the background anytime.
Julia: Yeah. It was delightful. I think that you all will enjoy that. Also, our discussion about the real Jason myth.
Amanda: It was so much fun. That's next week on Myth Movie Night. Without further ado conspirators, we hope you're well. We're thinking of you. We love seeing your tweets and your stories everyday on Instagram and Twitter reminding us that we are a whole family out there doing our best. We love you. We'll see you next week. Now without further ado, enjoy Episode 175. Your Urban Legends Number 33. Eric, it seems that you have reached a parenting milestone with your boys where you kicked them out as you're recording.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: I'm impressed.
Eric: I only kicked them out because Kelsey is also working from home. They're still being watched.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Otherwise, they would be in here making sure. We did reach another milestone, which was we have broken the record for most days in a row without having an accident in the house.
Amanda: Hey. Look at that.
Eric: Which is very, very great. He's really doing his part during these trying times to not cause any stress.
Amanda: Make things easy, yeah?
Julia: I'm so happy for the boys. They're doing their best.
Amanda: Yeah. It's very exciting. How are you guys all doing?
Julia: We're doing good. I'm excited to read some stories because I feel like this is the longest I get to spend talking to you guys each week. It makes me happy.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. It makes me happy to think about ghosts and other easy problems.
Eric: Just so the listeners know, we recorded this on March 24th. I think it's coming out in two weeks. The situation right now is precarious. Hopefully, it's a bit better when you're all listening to this.
Julia: Yeah. These have been the longest few weeks ever in my entire life.
Amanda: Yeah. Yup. That's for sure.
Eric: Who would like to start?
Julia: How about I start? I'm going to start with Mechanic Ghosts and My Girlfriend's Haunted Childhood Home. This was sent in by Victor. They write, "Hi, all. I started listening to Spirits about six months ago and absolutely love your show with Hometown Urban Legends being my favorite. Stories about the supernatural have always intrigued me. Hearing stories from everyone's hometowns is just an absolute blast to listen to. Although many people's stories go back to when they were kids, my only two encounters with the supernatural have happened to me in my adult life."
Julia: "I grew up and now live in a normal-sized small town in South Africa where there aren't really any urban legends that I know of. However, I work at a car dealership in the service department for about eight years now. When I was an apprentice all those years back and a mechanic, our manager always told us about the ghost that would come in at night in our workshop." Okay. Can we please guess what the ghost's preferred haunting is going to be? A Toyota Corolla.
Amanda: No, no, no. The thing that they are doing to haunt. Is it causing mechanical problems? I think that's too easy. I think that's too predictable.
Eric: I think it's a floating wrench.
Amanda: That would be pretty spooky.
Julia: All right. All right. I'm in for it. I just recently watched The Invisible Man because it was available on Amazon Prime. Boy, that was good. There was a lot of just spooky floating objects throughout. It was great.
Amanda: Very good.
Julia: I always loved these stories and made them out to be jokes. However, last year, our manager retired and I was promoted to the new manager. This means I found myself working late most nights. In many of these nights, I was completely alone in the dealership. At first, things started very subtly. The workshop is very small, very old and outdated with my small office located in the corner of the workshop with a small doorway in the workshop area. The first few nights, I heard small creaks and noises. However, our town and area is notoriously windy and I just summed it up as being the wind that was making the old roof creak.
Julia: Only a few nights later did the noise start to intensify with sounds of movement in the workshop as well as the clear, loud sound of tools being dropped and toolboxes being shut. I recall that one.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: Called it. Here's the other thing. A garage is a very large space, which means you can feel.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Even with a lot of cars in there, it can probably feel very empty.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: I imagine it's like, "Where's what coming from?"
Amanda: All the sound bounces. It's all concrete.
Julia: Yes. You can never tell where that sound is coming from. They continue. With the workshop in complete darkness and my office the only light shining through, I tried to investigate but find nothing. This continues for the next couple of nights that I find myself working late. Up until this point, it has not bothered me too much but the last straw was when I was working late one night. Instead of a loud noise from the far part of the workshop, the loud noise was directly next to my office.
Amanda: No.
Eric: No good. No good.
Julia: At this point, a man stands up directly next to my office window and starts casually walking into the workshop. I was frozen in place and had no idea what to think or do about the situation. I picked up all my paperwork, put away my laptop and left. Since that night, I take all of my work home with me instead of working late again in that workshop.
Amanda: Smart.
Julia: Very smart. Very, very proactive. I appreciate the choice. You removed yourself from the situation, which is what we always recommend.
Amanda: That's true. That's true.
Eric: I recommend also ignoring the problem.
Julia: Okay. This is where you and I differ.
Eric: No, no, no. That's the thought. I also agree that it's important to leave.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: I say you ignore and then get out. You don't investigate and get out. You're an investigate and get out.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: I'm an ignore and get out. Yeah. I don't need to know the mystery of leaving behind-
Julia: I don't think you can ignore it that point.
Eric: I'm leaving that mystery behind. I don't need to know.
Julia: No. I'm pro leaving the mystery behind. I am against laying in bed being like, "If I don't look and see what it is, it can't hurt me."
Amanda: Right. I agree.
Julia: Victor has a second encounter. This is one that still haunts them to this day. It's why they hate staying over at their girlfriend's mother's house. They start, "My girlfriend's-
Eric: The in-laws, right?
Julia: Am I right? I do.
Amanda: Sleeping in separate sofa beds. No.
Julia: The worst. Even when it's a futon or a pull out couch, terrible. My girlfriend stays in the city, which is an hour's drive from our town. We make turns visiting each other over weekends. One weekend, we decided to go visit her mother instead and stayed in the house that she grew up in. The house is quite old and very big, with a long hallway from the kitchen, past all of the rooms towards the main bedroom at the end, which leads to the second floor with a small flight of stairs. After a nice night in with the family, we decided it was time for bed.
Julia: We slept in her childhood room. At least it's not separate beds. This is a plus here.
Amanda: Hey.
Eric: Very good. Very good.
Julia: Somewhere during the night, I woke up and started to feel uneasy. I was still half asleep but had this horrible feeling of being watched. I turned over and at the foot of the bed, I saw two tall figures standing shoulder to shoulder holding hands.
Amanda: No.
Eric: Too close.
Amanda: No.
Eric: Too close.
Julia: I do like that they're holding hands. That's cute.
Eric: Social distancing.
Amanda: It's so ominous, Julia. It's so ominous.
Julia: I could see that it was a man and a woman and they were staring down at us. The man's face was hardly visible. However, I could see the woman and she had an eerie wide smile and wide large eyes. Okay. I'm back on, team. This is bad. I tried to wake my girlfriend up at this point and told her there were two people in the room, which she replied to, half asleep herself that I was imagining it and should go back to sleep. I rolled back over and tried to sleep knowing there was no chance in hell I was going to get up and walk past those two.
Julia: Okay. In this situation, I agree. If you have to walk past the ghosts, that is a problem.
Amanda: Yes. That is fine.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: When I looked over my shoulder, the woman would start to lean away from the man and would widen her eyes even more looking me directly in the face. I turned back over and tried to force myself to go back to sleep to the best of my ability but this unfortunately, did not happen. I was awake the rest of the night until morning but did not look up once because I feared seeing the smiling woman again look back at me. In the morning hours, my girlfriend awoke and started getting up. This is when I looked for the first time to see the two figures gone.
Julia: Later in the kitchen with our morning coffee, I told everyone what I experienced. My girlfriend could not remember that I woke her up during the night. However, her response and the response of her mother was that many people who stayed over had mentioned sightings but it was "strange" that I saw something in the bedroom. Because everyone always tell them that the one single, tall dark figure that stands at the end of the hallway leading to the mother's bedroom.
Amanda: You know? That one?
Julia: You know, just the one tall figure.
Amanda: No.
Eric: You know, just one sometimes. That's fine.
Julia: Why there was two figures now and both of them in the bedroom, we don't know. I do know that I try and get any excuse not to stay over her mother's house again. This is a great excuse not to stay over at your in-laws.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: I love it. Horrifying.
Amanda: Oh, boy.
Julia: Very good.
Amanda: Julia, that was a really good one to start us off with. Uncharacteristically, I have a sweet one now. If we want a little reprieve.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Are you sure? Let's do it. This is from Nim who writes, "Hey, Spirits. I was really excited to write in when something finally happened I could tell you about. However, as I was sitting down to write this email, a spooky thing happened so I thought I'd include that, too.
Eric: Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
Julia: Love it.
Amanda: The titular story, I Saw a Kelpie begins. I was out on a theater tour in Scotland, which sometimes means getting up on the road pretty early. One such morning, we set off in the dark and we were driving east, so pretty much directly into a gorgeous sunrise. I was upfront in the van with the driver and the rest of the cast were in the back. Most people are sleeping or listening to music but if you're upfront with the driver, it's an unspoken rule that you stay awake to keep them company, give directions, etc.
Julia: Sure. Sure. It makes sense.
Amanda: We turn a corner onto this gorgeous stretch of road that goes up to a mountain on our right and sloping down away from us on the left. Because we turned a corner, the sun was now on our left coming up over some hills in the distance. I was looking down into the valley and on the far side of the empty fields, I see a man walking toward the road with the sun behind him casting him in shadow. As we get closer to him, he stops and the sun flares that comes out from behind the cloud and then the man was gone. Literally, he was nowhere to be seen. In his place, exactly where he was standing was a black horse-
Julia: Oh, my God.
Amanda: ... Looking right at us as we passed. There was no way the man ran back down to the valley and the fields had no horses when we turned the corner again. Being a Spirits listener, I immediately was like, "Holy shit. That was a kelpie." No one in the van knew what a kelpie was so they didn't really care and said I was just seeing things or whatever. I was wide awake doing my front seat job and I was mega excited about what I had just seen.
Julia: I have an important question. Was the horse wet?
Amanda: As a black horse, I think it's more challenging to see at a distance than others.
Julia: I suppose.
Amanda: Nim, if you are hearing this, please write in and let us know.
Julia: The whole beginning of that with the positioning of the sun and stuff, I was like, "Is this a riddle? What's happening? Do I need to know what way the shadow is facing?"
Amanda: The compass pointed south. Oh, no.
Julia: Oh, no.
Amanda: Okay. Then let's get to the spooky thing as this email was being written. As I'm sitting down to write the email, I decided, "Who writes emails without snacks?" Naturally, I went snack hunting. My mum was asleep so I have to keep the landing light in the downstairs hallway light off as I go down to the kitchen. I walked down the stairs in the dark, which I hate doing. It always creeps me out and went into the dining room. It was dark but I could see slight outlines of objects. As I walked through the doorway, there was this pitch black silhouette directly in front of me.
Amanda: So close that I literally walked into it. My stomach flipped and I got this horrored feeling that I've just done something really rude. Like I'd walked head on into a stranger in the street. I had to pause a moment while the sensation passed and then I turned the lights on just to check and obviously, couldn't see anything. Being British, I decided the best course of action was to apologize. I addressed whatever it was that I just disturbed and said, "Hey. I'm really sorry for walking into you just now. I hope you have a good night."
Julia: Good. Polite.
Amanda: I took a breath and got my snacks and went to switch the lights off. Quickly apologized once again and headed upstairs. As I put my foot on the first step, I felt a very gentle pat on my shoulder, which I'm taking to mean, "No hard feelings."
Julia: That's very cute and also very scary. When things are corporeal, it is worse.
Amanda: Yeah. See? I don't know. I think it's better. Obviously, it's one more chaotic haunting but I just feel like the more corporeal it is, if it leaves footprints, if it leaves tracks, whatever, at least you can convince yourself that something was actually there.
Eric: I don't want something to have actually been there.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Corporeal means it could hurt me.
Eric: That's the difference.
Amanda: Fair enough.
Eric: I want it to be when you don't have your phone in your pocket and you feel it vibrate, I rather experience that ghostly than actually have evidence something was in my room with m.e
Julia: Yes. I agree.
Amanda: Yeah. All right. Fair enough. I guess in a situation where something was definitely there and either you have to convince yourself, Eric Schneider style that nothing really happened. You can face reality man style and feel like, "Fuck."
Julia: I don't know, man.
Eric: I'm fine with the being there. I just don't want to acknowledge it.
Julia: That's fair.
Eric: I've got a story from Andrea titled The One Time My Brother was a Creepy Child and We Should Have Listened to Him.
Julia: You have to listen. No, don't. Actually, I take it back. Don't have feelings with a creepy children.
Eric: Andrea writes, "Back in 2001, my family took a vacation to the Grand Canyon. I was eight years old at that time and my brother was three. We stayed in the town near the Grand Canyon that offered a train ride to and from the National Park.
Julia: Hold on. Pause real quick. Why do all of the creepy children stories revolve around some family vacation? All of the ones that I can think of in my head are like, "Oh, yeah. We went on a trip and then I met a ghost child. My parents don't remember it at all."
Eric: We're in the cat spills and in the cabin.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: They're often also at national parks. That's what you were going to say is that like, "Yes. This grand thing that our nation keeps for the future generations. Mega haunted."
Eric: We may never know.
Julia: All right. National Park is haunted. You heard it here. I want to get a National Park poster but-
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: ... All haunted slogans instead.
Eric: Spooky parks.
Julia: Someone make those for me, please.
Amanda: Yeah. Yes. Also, a call for national and state park hauntings. Whether in the US or other countries, I'd love to know about it.
Julia: That's a great idea.
Eric: My family took a train ride over to the Canyon. I have to be honest. I really don't remember that much about it. A lot has happened since then. My mind has to make room for other memories but this memory is the clearest that I have from that day. My family was waiting to board the train to head back to town we were staying in when my brother burst into tears. My mom was concerned and asked him why he was crying. My brother, through his tears said, "The train told me it's going to crash."
Amanda: No.
Julia: Bad, bad, clairvoyant child. It's bad.
Eric: Okay. I hate it.
Julia: Don't get on that train.
Eric: My parents looked confused but brushed off what he said and tried to soothe him by saying the train was not going to crash. As we began boarding-
Julia: No. It's karma.
Eric: ... My brother kept crying and as we got nearer, he began screaming and trying to run away.
Julia: No.
Eric: He kept trying to, "I don't want to get on. It's going to crash."
Amanda: Smart. Smart child.
Eric: I was confused as heck to say the least. As a basic older sister, I thought my brother was full of it and this scene he was causing my cramping my side.
Julia: Mood.
Eric: I tried to help my parents calm down my brother and was able to get my brother to stop crying. The classic bribe. He could pick any snack from the snack cart. That seemed to do it. We sat down. The train began moving and not long after that, we were traveling quickly through the desert. We were cruising along the desolate land for quite some time and then the train started to slow down until it stopped completely. We were not near our destination at all. What do you think is about to happen?
Julia: The train broke down in the desert and they're going to have to wait hours for someone to come get them.
Eric: Okay. Amanda, do you have a guess?
Amanda: I think that is quite likely. I think they're going to see some silhouette or sight out of the train windows.
Eric: All righty. Here we go. Some people were getting on board the train. We realized it was cowboys that were robbing the train.
Julia: What?
Amanda: No.
Julia: No.
Eric: Don't worry. It was a shtick for the train ride.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: Getting robbed by cowboys out in the Wild West. People handed the tips so I call this weird. The money anyways. This was the biggest mystery to me from that day. Now, here's the thing. You might have actually just been robbed by some weird '90s cowboys. Because-
Julia: These very polite '90s cowboys.
Amanda: I know.
Eric: ... If they were just giving people tips for no actual reason, it seems like you might have actually been robbed.
Amanda: That's a great heist though. If your heist is you're a robber posing as a robber, that's awesome. All right.
Eric: Yeah. We just do this for the kids. We just do this for the kids.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Also-
Julia: You should give us money.
Eric: ... For the pearls, ma'am.
Julia: We're definitely associated with the train. Wink. Sorry. That should be with a Southern accent.
Amanda: One of the conductors or ticket takers is in on it. They let you on the train.
Eric: Yeah, exactly.
Amanda: Like, "Come on. It's pretty good grift."
Eric: Really good.
Julia: It's got to be the engineer. The engineer stops the train and then they get-
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: ... A 30% split.
Amanda: There you go.
Eric: After the stunt was over, everyone was waiting for the train to begin moving again. For a while, nothing happened. Passengers were becoming concerned and eventually, the conductor informed us that the train could not move forward. While this cowboy scam was occurring, the conductor was taking a walk outside to pass the time. There's a storm that had passed through earlier that day. The conductor noticed that this storm had washed out part of the tracks not far ahead from where the train had stopped.
Amanda: No.
Eric: Yes. Had the train not stopped where it did, the train would have derailed and crashed.
Amanda: Dang. That's serious.
Julia: Dang. Listen to your child.
Eric: You better believe my parents and I were freaking out. We looked to my brother who is calmly sitting in his seat, enjoying his snack and tried to pull together how we could have known this would have happened. Of course then I became scared. We were stuck in the desert and was getting dark. My three-year-old brother was a medium and I think I had to cry. The tables have turned because my brother was now calming me down. Telling me help is on the way. Hours later, vans drove up next to the train and all the passengers disembarked the train and climbed into the vans.
Eric: We eventually made it back to our hotel safe and sound. I still think about how lucky we were that we made it back that way. When you better believe that when we were getting on our plane to fly home, my parents asked my brother. Did the plane said anything to him. He said no. To this day, my parents tell the story. It somehow gives them chills. My brother has never spoken honestly since so that's a positive in my book. It's funny because now as an adult, he doesn't remember this happening. He's tired of hearing the story about him being a creepy child.
Eric: We never have been able to figure out who's voice that was that warned my brother. All we can conclude is there is someone who must have been looking out for us and keeping especially close to my brother.
Amanda: Dang.
Julia: Wow. I like the idea that they were like, "Did the plane talk to you?" He's like, "No. It's a plane. What are you talking about?"
Amanda: It's very good. I do feel a little bit parched though after that desert scene. Anyone want a refill?
Julia: Yeah. Let's go grab one.
Eric: That'd be great.
Julia: Amanda, I have been cooking a lot at home but there's only so many meals that I can cook that I am an expert in. For instance, I can't make sushi. I don't know how to make sushi. I don't have access to premium grade tuna. I am so grateful especially right now that I can just order sushi whenever I need from DoorDash.
Amanda: Yeah. One of those foods that I wish I could cook and one of these days I'm going to get into is fried chicken. I just feel like I can't carry that much oil home from the supermarket. I don't have a vessel that's big enough. My stove is small. Being able to get chicken from my local Pies-n-Thighs, which is an incredible mini chain here in New York is so lovely.
Julia: Yeah. The great thing is DoorDash is bringing all of your flavors to your door. Ordering is super easy. You just open the DoorDash app. You choose what you want to eat. Your food will be delivered to you wherever you are. Make sure you tip your drivers. It's very important right now. Not only is your favorite pizza joint already on DoorDash or your favorite fried chicken place, Amanda but there are over 310,000 restaurant partners in over 4,000 cities. You might just find a new favorite especially nowadays.
Julia: With door to door delivery in all 50 US states, in Puerto Rico, in Canada, in Australia, you can order from all your local go-tos or you can choose from your favorite national restaurants like Chipotle or Wendy's or Cheesecake Factory. Amanda loves the Cheesecake Factory.
Amanda: Got to love it.
Julia: With DoorDash, you never have to worry about your next meal. Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter the promo code, CREEPY. Again, that's $5 off your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter the code, CREEPY. Again, don't forget. That's CREEPY for $5 off your first order with DoorDash.
Amanda: We are also sponsored this week by HoneyBook. When like me, you've been lucky enough to turn your creative passion into your full time job, it might surprise you how much of your time is spent doing things like drafting proposals, creating contracts and chasing down payments. Just got off the phone with somebody trying to chase down a payment. It is a big part of my week. The good news for me and for all of you is that HoneyBook can help with those tedious administrative tasks so you can get back to doing what it is that you love.
Amanda: HoneyBook is an online business management tool that organizes your client communications, bookings, contracts and invoices all in one place. My favorite thing, they already integrate with thinks like QuickBooks, Google Suite, Excel and Mailchimp. All those services that you rely on. With HoneyBook, best of all, you can also automate your busy work. They have easy to use templates for emails, proposals, brochures, invoices, all those little things where it's like, "Oh, I need this document but it takes so much time to make on your own." They have e-signatures automation to save you time.
Amanda: E-signatures are so clutch. Generally, they help you simplify your to-do list and stay in control. Right now, HoneyBook is offering our listeners half off when you visit honeybook.com/spirits. That payment is flexible so the promotion applies whether you pay monthly or annually at honeybook.com/spirits. That's honeybook.com/spirits for 50% off your first year.
Julia: Amanda right now, I'm really only going outside for food and liquor. This is when Shaker & Spoon really is coming into play for me. Shaker & Spoon is a subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make handcrafted cocktails right at home. I miss going to bars so much because I just like a good, well-crafted cocktail. Now, I can make them at home. Every box comes with enough ingredients to make three different cocktail recipes developed by world-class mixologists. All you have to do is buy one bottle of that month's spirit and then you have all you need to make 12 drinks at home.
Amanda: What I love is that it is really affordable. It's definitely not unusual especially here in the big city to spend 40 or $50 out for two people at a craft cocktail bar. The fact that you can get 12 drinks worth of materials for just 40 or $50 per month, plus the cost of the spirit is really cost-effective. It's a great way not just to enjoy craft cocktails at home but also to be able to build up those skills and to learn how to do it. Eric Silver famously learned nutmeg is just a nut. We got a nut of nutmeg. You just grate it into a drink and it's amazing.
Amanda: I learned to do fat washing of glasses and how to use egg whites in drinks. I really do feel over the last couple of years of enjoying Shaker & Spoon, I've been introduced to new spirits that I never had before and really got the chance not just to try it and leave the bottle up on my shelf in my small apartment. Being able to use that entire bottle in lots of different drink styles to making multiple of the same drink. Because you love it so much, you want to have them again the next night. That really is the beauty of Shaker & Spoon.
Julia: Yeah. I think right now is a great time to make yourself a cocktail. Have a virtual happy hour with a bunch of your friends with your Shaker & Spoon boxes. Really just enjoy each other's company and stuff.
Amanda: I love that so much. You can even get $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/spirits.
Julia: Yup. Again, that is $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/spirits. Thank you, Shaker & Spoon.
Amanda: We love you guys. Now, let's get back to the show. Guys, we are all drinking local and supporting our local breweries right now. I wanted to brag right now about the thing that I got delivered yesterday, which is Fear the Sunset pastry stout from Kings County Brewers Collective, KCBC, which is just a couple of miles from my house. It is a 16% pastry stout with coconut, coffee, vanilla and hazelnuts. It is not boozy at all. It tastes like a milkshake.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: It is amazing.
Julia: Wow. I'm going to have to order some of those to my local beer distributor and grab some.
Amanda: It is so good. I can't get over it.
Julia: This is from Wyatt. It is titled A Visitor in the Night or My Overly Long Campus Legend. I think I'm going to read the first couple because he sent in five stories. I think I'm going to read the first couple and then the rest, we'll save for our bonus episode for patrons.
Amanda: Very nice.
Julia: He starts, "I've been listening to Spirits for quite a while but I just binged through the Urban Legends and was inspired to share my very spooky ... It's type out like that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: ... Experience with a campus urban legend. The story I'd like to recount spans the duration of my freshman year and I think would be best is told in a series of vignettes. A lot of smaller things happened but I think I have to capture the most important bits for your enjoyment and fear. Without much further ado, here's my story. The first is A Bump in the Night.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: During my first year of college, I moved into a pretty standard issued dorm. Four walls, two beds, two desks and overall, very symmetrical. The only semi interesting piece was the closet space, which is a built-in that surrounded the door. On each side of the door, there was a large open closet without doors, with drawers underneath and cupboards above. When you walked into the dorm, you would have the closet walls on either side and there would be a cupboard above you until you walked about three feet into the room.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: This would be important later. Again, I feel like I'm solving a riddle.
Amanda: Yes. Good overhead storage, no. I'm picturing it really well.
Julia: My new roommate and I settled in and about a week in, something unusual happened. In the late night hours, I woke up to a sound. I sat up a little and saw my roommate had been woken up, too. Before we could say anything, there was a loud bang that sounded from the middle of the room between us. It sounded like someone had dropped a large textbook against the tile floor making a hard slapping sound. At the time, we were spooked but not very familiar with dorm acoustics or our neighbors so we brushed it off as a noisy dorm in the wee hours of the night.
Julia: In hindsight, that sound absolutely was not coming from above or below or anywhere outside of our room.
Eric: Oh, boy.
Amanda: That's totally a thing. A first night in a new place, I think everybody is a little bit spooked out.
Julia: Yeah. It can be scary at times. The next vignette is A Shadow in the Night. Weeks later, after the memory of the bump in the night was mostly put into storage, it was an otherwise ordinary night. My roommate and I were both sleeping and I woke up suddenly. Immediately remembering the last time I woke up in the night, I looked over to my roommate but he was sound asleep. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness a little bit, I saw something strange. Next to my roommate's bed there appeared to be a dark and vague figure.
Julia: I could make out the shape of a head and shoulders but the darkness in my roommate's bed prevented me from seeing much below about elbow height. As I looked at the figure, I noticed it was positioned between me and the closet. Such that it must have been a dark sweatshirt hanging by its hood on my roommate's closet. Due to my sleepiness and the angle and darkness, my eyes were inventing a spooky image. Latching on to that conclusion, I quickly closed my eyes and eventually fell back to sleep. In the morning, I had a cruelly early 7:30 AM calculus class. I was awake before my roommate.
Amanda: Oh, God.
Julia: As I was getting up, I glanced over at his closet and it all came rushing back. I stared blankly seeing that in fact, there were only t-shirts hanging in my roommate's closet. The hook that I expected to see a sweatshirt ominously hanging was actually in a different part of the closet entirely.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Julia: I'm not sure what I saw but there was something very dark in the room that night looming between myself and a mostly empty closet.
Eric: Haunted hoodie. That's the answer. The hoodie is haunted.
Amanda: It'll be one thing if the hook was just empty. The fact that the hook was somewhere else entirely is like, "Oh, damn."
Eric: I'm going with haunted hoodie.
Julia: I like haunted hoodie. I actually think this is where I'm going to stop it and save the rest for our patrons for the bonus Patreon episode.
Amanda: Amazing. If you want to hear that episode and another bonus episode every dang month, patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
Julia: Amanda, do you have another story to tell us? Is it as sweet as the first one?
Amanda: I sure do. This is from Becca. It is definitely creepy and cool about experiencing haunting as a baby and her baby experiencing haunting.
Julia: Oh, no. Generational haunting is bad.
Amanda: I don't know if it's generational. I don't know if it's just the places that they've lived. We can decide as we go through. This is from Becca who says that she just finished binging Spirits from November 2019 to March 2020 where-
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: ... She listened to one episode a day, which is bananas.
Julia: Incredible.
Eric: It's a lot of spirits.
Amanda: Her favorite episodes are the Urban Legends ones. She was very excited to write in with a couple different experiences. I'll take a page out of your book, Julia. I'll read two of them and save one for the bonus. In my early days, probably when I was about a year old, my parents bought a house behind the park here in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. The house was old and it was a duplex turned to single family home built in the early 1900s. My parents were newlyweds and the prospect of having their own home was exciting.
Amanda: My dad started remodeling right away putting down ceilings, opening and replacing walls and doing the ever so traumatic popcorn ceiling removing thing that most dads do. That's so true. He said he always got a weird feeling in the home but it was still exciting to him because every time a wall came down, he would find clippings from newspapers from the early 1900s tucked into the walls.
Julia: Spooky. I don't like it.
Amanda: Jars and coffee cans full of change saved by the previous home owners during the depression.
Julia: Hey. You know what I hate? Finding things in walls.
Amanda: I hate finding things in walls, too. As a side note, he kept-
Eric: I love finding things on walls. It's so great.
Amanda: Eric, it's so creepy.
Eric: Someone put it there. That's so cool.
Amanda: Why did they put it there? What was wrong with it?
Julia: Creepy.
Eric: I'm fully on board with finding things in walls. If I'm a skeleton in a wall, bad. If I'm a box with some old photographs, cool.
Amanda: I think that's extraordinarily haunted. I think Becca's dad agrees with you, Eric because he kept all of the clippings in a family photo album-
Julia: Bad, so bad.
Amanda: ... Alongside a bunch of pictures of our grumpy cat named Oscar.
Eric: Yeah. Smart cat.
Julia: I want to be Oscar. He seems cool.
Amanda: One day when my dad was alone in the house doing that awful popcorn ceiling thing, a big globe of drywall compound fell from the tool he was using onto his face. Oh, no.
Julia: What was the appeal of popcorn ceilings? What was it?
Amanda: I have genuinely no idea besides sound baffling?
Julia: I don't understand.
Amanda: I don't know.
Julia: I'm going to find out. Reason popcorn ceilings are also called acoustic ceilings is because they are better at absorbing sound.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: I don't know if this part of the reason because of the increased surface area due to all the raised bumps, which is said to help muffle noise. You were right, Amanda.
Amanda: Well, it's still ugly. Yes.
Julia: It's still so bad.
Amanda: He rushed to the sink to rinse his eye out as you do. As he was bent over the sink washing his eyes, he felt a huge gust of wind and had the immediate feeling that someone rushed up on him and then felt a shove and hit his head on the sink.
Julia: What the fuck?
Amanda: Terrified, he frantically looked for the someone that had shoved him but subsequently found no one in the home and skedaddled out of there like nobody's business. My mom also said that she hated going up and down the stairs in that house. She always had the feeling that someone was waiting for her on either side of the stairs. The feeling that they wanted to push her up or down the stairs.
Julia: Oh, my God.
Amanda: My bedroom is at the top so obviously, this was unavoidable.
Julia: These are very aggressive ghosts and I'm not a fan of it.
Amanda: Yeah. This also brings back the one thing I was terrified of, house-wise as a kid, which was someone reaching up between the slats of the open staircase and grabbing my foot.
Julia: Because you had the open staircase, yup.
Amanda: Yeah. Very then. I was born in December, a few days before Christmas. I've always gotten Christmas-themed baby gifts. One of them including a Santa Claus who had a pull down music box style beard that my mom hung on the outside of my crib.
Julia: That's very funny.
Amanda: It was my favorite thing. Being an infant, I wasn't capable of pulling the beard down on my own. My mom often heard it going off by itself. She would go into my room, find me laughing and giggling with the Santa playing music and talking away. She would just pull it down herself and leave me to nap. Understandably, she was suspicious. Every time she'd hear it, she would check on me and find me alone in my bed happy and smiley but she had a problem with the toy playing by itself.
Amanda: One day, she let whatever was playing with me have it. She yelled at the top of her lungs that she wanted it to leave me be and to stop pulling the Santa's beard. Then she picked me up and carried me out of the room.
Julia: We learned you need to be polite to ghosts.
Amanda: We have.
Julia: They will forgive you for being rude but you need to be polite.
Amanda: I totally agree, Julia. I think this goes to us, too. Because the following night, my mom tucked me into bed and proceeded to hang the toy from my dresser across the room, so farther away than it was before. At about 2AM, the whole house was awakened to the sound of me screaming and crying. With the faint sounds of Christmas music playing from my bedroom.
Julia: Oh, boy.
Amanda: What a creepy combo. Let's just say here.
Julia: That's bad.
Amanda: This is a Yankee Candle factory of haunted right here. There's so many layers that it's confusing. It's muddling. I don't know what the scent is. I just don't want to smell it anymore.
Julia: Just screaming but also Jingle Bells for some reason.
Amanda: My mom rushed in to check on me only to find me alone in my crib. Sheets and pillow on the floor, all the dresser drawers open and the Santa's beard completely pulled down, broken off from the amount of force used to pull it down one last time.
Julia: Extremely bad.
Amanda: Needless to say, we moved shortly after.
Julia: Yeah. Yeah. A good choice.
Amanda: Fuck me, man. That's so scary. It's an infant.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Pack your bags. Move away. Your house is haunted.
Amanda: Pack it and move, Rebecca.
Eric: No good.
Amanda: Now, for Becca's baby's haunting. Three years ago, my husband and I bought our first home and I was due with our first child. A month or two later, we were all moved in. The three of us now and we were so happy to have our own little family in our own space. Our house is built in the 1900s and it's very comfortable. It's a sturdy brick home and was quite move-in ready. We got it as an estate sale as the previous owner had passed away. I'm relatively in tune with my ability to be affected by presences of people who have passed. I felt no negativity in the home so we felt very comfortable buying it and moving in.
Amanda: Then we started to notice tiny hints of a haunting here and there but neither ghosts that we had seen gave us a bad feeling. Okay. Becca, by the way went from tiny hints of a haunting to neither of the ghosts were bad.
Julia: We were seeing several ghosts at this point but they weren't bad.
Eric: Also, tiny hints are too big of hints.
Amanda: Yes. Any hint is too big of a hint.
Eric: I want no hints.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. Often, we would capture orbs in videos and photos and hear walking upstairs when we were downstairs. We figured out who are ghosts are though, which gives us some peace of mind. One is a woman in her 50s with long, light hair. She often stands on the stairs when we are in the living room and just watches us. She never lets us see her. She always vanishes whenever we notice that she's there. She seems to give us the like, "I know you're here. I'm letting you live here. Just don't bother me," kind of feeling.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: We've both seen her multiple times on different occasions and can give separate instances without hesitation despite only recently discussing our similar experiences. As far as ghosts go guys, this is fine. Listen, if you're going to have a ghost in your home, isn't this an okay one?
Eric: I'll say this is on the more okay side of acceptable but is it fine? I'm not willing to commit to fine.
Julia: It's debatable really, to be honest.
Amanda: All right. While the other spirit in our home is a small child around four years old. A little blonde buy. He wore '70s style clothing and I've seen him many times. Always out of the corner of my eye in the hall at the end of the kitchen as I wash dishes at my sink. As if he comes down the stairs, peeks around the banister just to see what's going on. When you realize he's there, he turns and runs up the stairs like he isn't supposed to be down here watching us.
Julia: I like that. That's cute.
Amanda: He's not. He's not, Becca. He's not supposed to be there. A month or two living in the home, I heard a child yelling, "Mama. Mama," at around three in the morning.
Julia: Nope. Nope. Nope.
Amanda: Now being relatively new to being a mother, it woke me right up. My baby was three months old, so it couldn't have been her and she wasn't able to speak yet. As we live at the top of a hill by a park, I open the windows and listen to the whole block but there were no people outside at three in the morning. It was at that point I decided that I was just going to be this little boy's new mom figure. I welcomed his presence into our family suspicious but honored to have been chosen by him as such.
Julia: I feel like this is at least the third if not more story where a listener adopts a ghost child.
Amanda: Listen, it's not a bad strategy.
Julia: It's not bad. You don't have to pay for ghost college.
Amanda: You sure don't. About a year and a half later, I was due with our second daughter and we were having a movie night in the living room where we proceeded to fall asleep. Our oldest was tucked into her bed sound asleep and dreaming. Around 3AM, I woke up. Managed to get my grizzly bear of a man up the stairs and into bed.
Amanda: After laying there for 10 or so minutes, I started to hear footsteps like our eldest had gotten out of bed and was walking around her room, out into the hallway, then stopping at the top of the stairs where she usually stands when she wants to do that creepy kid thing that would stare at you until you wake up.
Julia: Love that.
Amanda: I rolled over and tending to tell her to get back into her bed only to see an empty hallway. I chucked it up to hearing the old house settle and roll back over to try to fall asleep again. It was only then that I heard her door, which is original to the house. It has lots of layers of paint. It can't move by itself and never has just swung open in the breeze open and footsteps come out into the hall again. Now I got to thinking, the first time I heard her walking, her door hadn't opened but now it was.
Amanda: As I laid frozen in my sudden realization of what was occurring, I distinctly heard her princess flashlight make its twinkle noise. I heard the physical click of the button that makes the noise. When I heard that, I was sure this time that she was awake. I sat up, walked into her room and told her to go back to sleep. When I got there, she was asleep. She was five-year-old spread out in her bed, snoring like a Snorlax. The flashlight was under her bed. I was so spooked. I left the door open and buried myself in my blanket, squeezed my eyes tight, praying to fall back asleep.
Amanda: At that moment, I felt the bed start to violently shake.
Julia: Oh, boy.
Amanda: I was terrified. I couldn't move but then it hit me. My husband was running and asleep like a dog. I kicked him and said, "You need to stop. You need to wake up. I'm hearing someone walk around and you just scared the life out of me." He was groggy and confused but stopped and fell back asleep. It's very funny. I thought everything was done now. Fast forward about 20 minutes and I felt the corner of the bed depress on my side of the bed. I froze. I didn't move my eyes, ears, nose, fingers or toes. I simply spoke out loud, "Let me sleep."
Amanda: Whatever was sitting on the bed didn't move but it didn't leave me and my husband's bed. I closed my eyes tighter and managed to force myself to fall back asleep. In the morning, it was gone.
Julia: Spooky.
Eric: Wow.
Julia: Don't love it.
Amanda: Becca, be careful. Be a good mom to that ghost.
Julia: Protect that ghost, baby.
Eric: I've got a great way to figure out if any of these spooky things will happen to you.
Amanda: Don't like that.
Eric: It's called pop tart divination.
Amanda: Okay. Sure.
Eric: This comes to us from Adrian.
Amanda: Now, we just picked up some of these pretzel Pop-Tarts as part of our self-isolation.
Eric: Pretzel Pop-Tarts.
Julia: Where did you find them?
Amanda: Snacks.
Julia: I've been looking for them.
Amanda: Just the grocery store.
Eric: I don't know what these are.
Amanda: They're pretzel Pop-Tarts, my dude. Pop-Tarts-
Julia: They're-
Amanda: ... Outside is pretzel.
Eric: They're pop tart brand.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Yes. It's like pretzel bread on the outside, right?
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Whatever-
Amanda: It's like cinnamon-
Julia: ... The filling is.
Amanda: ... Yeah. It's really good.
Eric: What's the filling?
Amanda: Cinnamon vanilla.
Eric: Whoa.
Julia: Sounds so good.
Amanda: It's very Dunkaroo vibes to be honest. It's great.
Julia: I want real bad.
Eric: That sounds great. I don't know about these pretzel Pop-Tarts but toaster did not reveal those to me in a dream. Let me tell you what Adrian has written here. I had to write in to tell you about my mom's special brand of divination. Poptarto-Mancy.
Julia: Incredible.
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Eric: That's right. My mom can make future predictions using Pop-Tarts. Specifically, she can make predictions about our town's school closings based on what kind of Pop-Tarts are for sale. Seriously, it was magic. I am the eldest of four kids. School closings and delays were an important thing for my mom to keep track of us, especially when we had different bus times. Mom doesn't work on Mondays so that is the day that she does the weekly grocery shopping. I don't remember when she started making these predictions especially since Pop-Tarts didn't make their way into the shopping cart all that often.
Eric: I don't know why she was checking the prices. She wasn't intending to buy them. We come home from school to mom watching the local weather. She'd say, "You're not going to have school on Thursdays. Pop-Tarts are for sale." These predictions never fail. If the weather was predicting snow, ice or hurricanes, hello from your northern neighbor, Connecticut and Pop-Tarts were on sale, school would be closed. If the weather predicted a storm and Pop-Tarts weren't on sale or only certain kinds were on sale, like the seasonal flavors, then we would have school that day.
Eric: Just in case you're wondering if the grocery store knew things we didn't about our school board superintendent-
Amanda: I am wondering.
Eric: ... Decision-making, our town is very small and does have a small IGA grocery store. My mom did weekly shopping at the big chain grocery store two towns over. Different grocery stores in different towns. There's no way the store managers, corporate sales people/Kellogg's had any insight onto a small town school closing decisions. I'm 30 now and none of my siblings are in school anymore so my mom hasn't practiced her Poptarto-Mancy in a while.
Eric: It was accurate enough skill that we could plan ahead for an unexpected day off in school, which made snow days more fun for us and non-snow storm days less boring. Don't forget to check the price of Pop-Tarts when a storm is coming this fall and winter season.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: That's very, very fun.
Amanda: I have a hypothesis.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: I think that when bad weather is forecast and it's bad enough that they're anticipating some disruption to the supply chain of restocking the grocery store, maybe the grocery store will order more shelf staple goods than usual and put old items on sale to move that inventory out. That way they can be freshly stocked and ready to go even if the roads are shut for a day or two or three.
Julia: That was what I was thinking as well. Also, I love the idea of Poptarto-Mancy.
Amanda: Poptarto-Mancy is the best thing I have ever heard.
Julia: All right. I think that is it for us for this week. Remember to stock up on your Pop-Tarts and remember to stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.