Episode 179: Your Urban Legends XXXIV - No Switch, Just Urban Legends
/Time to put down the Switch, stop playing Animal Crossing, and listen to some urban legends. We’ve got squatters rights for ghosts, toddlers toddling, and the spookiness of corroborating evidence. Beat that, turnip prices!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of natural disasters, child death, panic attacks, blood, accidental cannibalism, descriptions of violence, and threat of animal attacks.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of their Lost World by Stephen L. Brusatte! Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Multitude: Digital merch for all shows, including new Spirits phone wallpapers, are available at http://multitude.productions/merch. Listen to Meddling Adults and Head Heart Gut by joining the MultiCrew. And our newest show, NEXT STOP, has just launched! Check out NEXT STOP in your podcast player or nextstopshow.com!
Sponsors
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Visit skillshare.com/spirits2 to get two months of Skillshare Premium for free! This week Amanda recommends “Postcards from Here: Playing with Ink” by Dylan Mierzwinski.
- BetterHelp is a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
- Shaker and Spoon, the subscription cocktail service that turns your house into the craft cocktail bar of your dreams.
Find Us Online
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at spiritspodcast.com/books.
Transcript
Amanda:
Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia:
And I'm Julia.
Amanda:
And this is episode 179, Your Urban Legends, part 34. An age I'm not yet.
Julia:
Ooh, ha ha. Yes, I'm really excited for this episode. I love the urban legends episodes. I wish we could just do them all the time. Just I love reading other people's stories.
Amanda:
I know and we get to do a bonus one every dang month for our patrons, but I would do a bonus one every week if we could.
Julia:
Yeah, if we could. Maybe we'll set that as a Patreon goal or something like that.
Amanda:
Yes, after we buy our haunted Irish castle or maybe before that one.
Julia:
Maybe, maybe. That seems expensive.
Amanda:
You know who has great taste, Julia, which is not always expensive taste is our new patrons.
Julia:
Our new patrons! Noel, Kevin, Emma, Jordan and Michelle, welcome. Thank you so much for joining. This is literally why we can do this podcast. You help make it possible for this to be our job, along with our supporting producer level patrons, Sarah, Landon, Nicki, Megan, Deborah, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Neil, Jessica, and Phil Fresh. Our legend level patrons, for whom I get to pick out adorable presents every month Clara, Steven, Francis, Britney, Josie, Kylie, Morgan, Beam Me Up Scotty, Audra, Kris, Mark, Mr. Folk, Sarah and Jack Marie. Y'all are wonderful, wonderful beings and we will tell you scary stories anytime. You just have to see us and be like, "Hey, scary story."
Amanda:
Absolutely. We talk about all about the local craft brews that we are drinking in this episode after the refill, but Julia, I liked your name so much that I would please like for you to repeat it for me.
Julia:
It is the Holographic Haze New England IPA from Great South Bay Brewery.
Amanda:
Amazing, I can't wait to visit Great South Bay with you in the future.
Julia:
Yes, sometimes soon hopefully.
Amanda:
Absolutely. It's your week to let me know something that you are reading, watching, or listening to that you think conspirators would enjoy.
Julia:
Well, I just picked up this book from bookshop.org, which we've been using to list all of our recommendations and it is The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, by Steve L. Brusatte. I've been really digging more nonfiction stuff lately. I love fiction. I love the escape that fiction brings, but I also love dinosaurs, so I figured why not read about some dinosaurs.
Amanda:
That sounds like a great use of your time and a nice little way to escape.
Julia:
Oh, well, thank you.
Amanda:
In terms of housekeeping, we talked about doing an Animal Crossing bonus in this episode that we ended up publishing, so all patrons can access that audio at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. If you aren't on Patreon yet, hey it's a great time to join. Just throw us a dollar every episode. Not that much. You don't have to pledge too much. You can just pledge within your means absolutely. If you, like us, are spending a lot of this free time thinking about making stuff, about losing yourself in your hobbies or just enjoying stuff that you really like, why don't we recommend some of the resources we publish on the Multitude website. All of them are there for you no matter what you make or want to make online or if you just want to read more about the process of making podcasts. That's at multitude.products/resources.
Julia:
It's really good, Amanda's written some incredible articles as well as the rest of the Multitude team. Everyone is just super knowledge and it's such a blessing to be able to work with y'all.
Amanda:
Aww, Julia, it's a blessing to be able to work with you, including the 10-part fiction paper resource I'm making, Fiction Podcasts that we're publishing right now along with Next Stop, which is our newest show.
Julia:
Next Stop, so good, so funny. If you like stuff like Friends or How I Met Your Mother, but also you like more modern interpretations of those shows, Next Stop is the show for you.
Amanda:
We worked really hard on it along with Brandon Grugle and Eric Silver, who wrote and created the show and it was just ... It's been so much fun to work on. This episode is a heist that we are publishing this week and I just ... I love nothing more.
Julia:
It also features a restaurant that is both taken out of my imagination and also my nightmares and I'm very excited for people to hear it.
Amanda:
Oh, man, me too. I'm excited to do our live show at the Boston Museum of Science as of tonight when this episode is being published on and we'll also update our website with info on where you can watch the replay of that if you are listening to us from the future.
Julia:
From the future.
Amanda:
And finally, Julia, remind us what we're going to be watching next week for Myth Movie Night.
Julia:
We're going to be watching Godzilla King of Monsters and I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of opinions.
Amanda:
It's going to be wonderful, I cannot wait to watch this movie. I've never seen any Godzilla movies-
Julia:
Really?
Amanda:
... [crosstalk 00:04:35] my first.
Julia:
Really?
Amanda:
All right. This is going to be interesting. Well, all of that is coming up next week. Patrons, there are tons and tons of bonuses for you to enjoy. But in the meantime, y'all, enjoy Episode 179, Your Urban Legends, Part 34. Guys, I am not playing Animal Crossing right now in order to talk to you and I think I deserve a medal.
Julia:
Thank you. Thank you for that. We really appreciate your sacrifice.
Eric:
How are your turnip prices?
Amanda:
My turnip prices are poor.
Eric:
Mine are also poor.
Amanda:
I did invest fully one million bells into them on Sunday. Just going in horde on making some amount of money.
Eric:
You've been playing a lot to have a million bells to spend on turnips, although I probably have spent close to 300,000 bells just moving houses around my island. I've been moving a lot of houses here and there.
Amanda:
I've just started on that train. I just set up my orchards, been doing the terraforming. My house is a piece of garbage, so I have been spending all of my time on the exterior of the island.
Eric:
Yes, I have not done much on my house yet, but I am excited. My girlfriend, Kelsey has a much nicer house than me, but I have the whole island.
Amanda:
I mean, the real question is where are the fuck are these people getting these nice kitchens from? That's my question here.
Eric:
I got one. I got a nice kitchen.
Amanda:
What?
Eric:
Yeah. I had a friend that had the cutting board recipe.
Amanda:
You have not initiated any Animal Crossing hangout with me and I'm feeling a little neglected.
Eric:
You have not initiated any Animal Crossing hangout with me either, so I think we're both fully at fault here.
Amanda:
That's true. That's true. To be fair-
Eric:
Anyways, Julia, how are you doing?
Julia:
I don't own a Switch.
Eric:
This is not our Animal Crossing channel. Unfortunately, Julia does not have a switch.
Julia:
I don't own a Switch, but I do have Urban Legends.
Amanda:
Oh!
Eric:
Excellent. Let's talk about those and me and Amanda will talk about turnips and shit some other time.
Julia:
How about you guys do a little bonus episode of just your conversations about Animal Crossing? How about that?
Eric:
Maybe. Maybe.
Amanda:
That sounds like a great interlude for our newly brought back poetry corner so that's-
Julia:
Fantastic.
Amanda:
Well, let's do it at the end.
Julia:
All right. Well, I do have an urban legend, it's from Kristen and the title of it is ghost orphans in Walmart and a very polite lady ghost in my room.
Amanda:
Ooh.
Eric:
Oh, okay.
Amanda:
Yeah. Getting real fancy here.
Julia:
Kristen starts, hey y'all, my name is Kristen. I've been a longtime listener and I love the show. I went to college on Galveston Island, a small island off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston still, to this day, holds the record for the most deadly hurricane in the US history. The great storm of 1900 killed over 6,000 people. That is a lot of people. Because of this, the whole island is haunted as heck and I mean haunted, haunted. One of the main stories I heard in the years I lived on the island is a story of St. Mary's Orphan Asylum. Hoo, all right.
Amanda:
Oh, boy.
Julia:
Both orphans and asylums.
Amanda:
That does sound like a Ryan Murphy joint, to be clear.
Julia:
It does. It does sound like the new American Horror Story, kind of thing. This orphanage was run by 10 nuns and housed about 90 children. As the storm hit the island, the waves washed away everything in its path including buildings. The nuns, in an attempt to save the children's lives took down clotheslines and tied the rope around their waist and to the waist of the few children each to try to keep them together. Unfortunately, only three boys from the orphanage survived the storm having come loose from their ropes. Today, a Walmart sits on the land where the orphanage once stood.
Amanda:
America.
Julia:
America. There's even a historic plaque with the names of the orphanage and the story of the nun's attempt at saving the lives of their charges. Now a lot of Walmarts, at least around here are open 24 hours, but the one in Galveston Island closes at midnight. This is because of crime or because they don't make enough money after that time, but I've heard numerous-
Amanda:
No, it's-
Julia:
... stories-
Amanda:
... because of ghosts.
Julia:
I've heard numerous stories over the years of people who hear children laughing uncomfortably close to them in the store only to turn around and be in an empty aisle.
Amanda:
Oh my.
Julia:
I don't know about y'all but I don't [inaudible 00:08:46] with creepy ghost kids.
Amanda:
I just got such an intense sense memory of being in a Toys "R" Us one of the few times my parents let us go into a Toys "R" Us when I was little, probably like seven or eight, because my younger siblings were like crawling and toddling age, and hiding behind one of those big shelves, at least to a child was like a big dollhouse on it or something where you could go behind it and hide there like I would do as a teenager in Costco, you know?
Julia:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda:
And like jumping out and scaring one of my parents. I'm sorry, Mom and Dad.
Julia:
Excellent, great. On another nicer, spooky note, the house I lived in was an old historic house that had been converted into two apartments and was definitely haunted. The house had been built in 1885 and because we lived on the top floor, which hadn't suffered too much storm damage due to the house being on stilts, it had a lot of original features, such as the original floors and doors. It was a great place, but not long after we moved in, I was trying to fall asleep when I felt a ghost-y presence in my room. Specifically it felt like there was a woman standing near my bed watching me. Not being one to want to anger ghosts, I sat up and said out loud, "Excuse me ma'am, if you are a ghost or a spirit that is here, I ask that you please leave me alone. I don't want you to leave because this is your home and you've been here longer than me, but I do spook easy and do not wish to feel you or your presence."
Amanda:
There you go! There you go!
Julia:
Again, being polite to ghosts is a good way to go about things. Just for those of us [crosstalk 00:10:18] who are-
Eric:
No, here's the thing, I disagree with this whole situation.
Amanda:
We know that you're on team ignorant, but for those of us who are not-
Eric:
No, this is not an ignorance thing, this is a different thing. Here's the thing. If you let's say buy a house from someone who has lived there longer than you they still have to leave. Just because they've been there longer. You don't get squatter's rights as a ghost. It should not be how it works. You can side like this is where you've decided to settle, but I do not accept you've been here longer than me because otherwise real estate wouldn't work.
Julia:
Real estate, you're being compensated for the home and that's why you leave. In the case of the ghost, the ghost is not being compensated to leave this house. The ghost died and is stuck there.
Amanda:
Listen guys, none of us really own land anyway because it was originally taken from people who lived there already. I think that this is a great opportunity to just tear down the whole system of land ownership.
Julia:
Okay. Sure. We can solve hauntings by just tearing down the establishment of real estate.
Amanda:
Abolish rent and then all ghosts are like, "Tight, it's better now."
Julia:
Okay. Well, Kristen finishes up by saying, "I did feel her there a few more nights, but she never seemed to be as close as that first night and then she stopped visiting me." My roommates also claim to have felt a presence in the house, but whoever they are, I don't think they meant us any harm. Again, love the show, stay creepy, stay cool, Kristen.
Amanda:
Very sweet. Thank you Kristen. I like that one. That was great.
Eric:
I like that, that's nice.
Amanda:
I have an email from Jack who titles it I'm Genderfucked or The Town That Made Me a Listener.
Julia:
Ooh, interesting!
Amanda:
They write, good morning, night, witching hour Spirits Podcast Fam. I'm a big fan and ever since I stumbled upon a Waystation randomly I hadn't and still haven't seen Lost Girl nor have I listened to any of their Multitude shows. I think I just liked the cover art. It is great cover art, by the way.
Julia:
Fair.
Eric:
With Waystation.
Julia:
Oh, so good.
Amanda:
A quick forward before we get into the meat of the story. I am going to be bringing up what I was listening to/reading at the time when these events took place. While it's relevant to the part of my email, it's also just a weird thing that I tend to do in life. I should start off by saying that I was creepy child adjacent. As a child, I would get these vivid visions that would leave me near comatose. If you imagine the feeling when you get sucked under a wave in the ocean, you can start to imagine what it felt like. The first time I ever had one of these visions I was preschool age. My father and I were taking a road trip up the West Coast to San Francisco. We were driving past a particularly long stretch of cliff side roads, long stretches of plant-covered cliffs that sheared off severely into the crashing ocean waves below. This is just reminding me of Animal Crossing and terraforming, by the way, it's where my brain's at.
Julia:
I do have a question.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Julia:
How many of us here and also at home ... How many of us remember things from when they were toddlers, because I don't?
Amanda:
No, I don't either. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eric:
No, not me. Earliest memories are definitely around like three or four.
Amanda:
That's toddler. I mean, that's pretty early I'd say. Maybe [crosstalk 00:13:18] toddler.
Eric:
I don't know when you're ... become a child and when you're no longer a toddler. I thought toddler was like ... ends around three-ish.
Julia:
I think it's like two to four, that's my understanding of it.
Amanda:
I'm making semi robot arms, because I think it's when you toddle as you walk as you were learning to walk so I would put that as like late three into four.
Eric:
You've said toddle twice as a verb, is that correct?
Julia:
Yes, it is, but I never hear anyone say it.
Eric:
I've never thought about this.
Julia:
It's like Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. Toddlers toddle.
Eric:
I had no idea.
Amanda:
Back to Jack. What I found on the other side was only what I can describe as little house of the prairie. I was surrounded by tall beige plants when I felt a hand grab mine and I was pulled forward with two girls on either side of me. They looked like twins with the same brown ponytails and white dresses. There was a house in the distance, a wooden behemoth that looked like a cross between the borough and a romanticized, polished version of the American Wild West. The girls pulled me up the porch stairs and through the door into what I can only describe as Greta Gerwig's Little Women. It was a sprawling wooden property and the girls and I made a clockwork circle around the house. You know those tracking shots in films that are slightly sped up? One shot long takes that take forever to rehearse. It felt like that. As the girls paraded me through the house weaving and bobbing around wooden furniture and past tall, narrow windows. Beyond the house was the sprawling, windswept plains, which glowed golden under a hot sun.
Amanda:
The other thing that I remember is that everyone was so happy. The mom was happy. The brother was happy. The father was happy. The two girls who each held one my hands in theirs were happy. This vision, the first of many I would have over my adolescent years was so vivid that it was fully immersive. This was, in fact, the most immersive they would ever get. As we completed our circle of the house, I felt something in my hand that was not another living, breathing person's hand. I looked down and there was a doll clenched tightly in my palm. It was porcelain and I was still looking at it when it started to disintegrate right in front of me. Alarmed, I looked up to see the two girls were turning to dust as well, so was the brother, and the mother and the father. Dust, dust, dust. The floor was turning to dust below my feet. The walls breaking apart in showers of sand.
Amanda:
I didn't jerk awake, so much as I gently opened my eyes as if I had awoken well rested from a gentle nap. As I slowly oriented myself, I looked around. We had left the cliff's edge and were traveling into the mountains.
Julia:
So that was all a vision or a dream? I'm blown away that one can remember something like this from so long ago as a person who also has extremely vivid dreams, I get it. Extremely real. But, hoo boy, there's a lot to unpack here.
Amanda:
Well, I wish I could say this was my last experience with being spoken to, alas it was not. When I was in elementary school, I went to the YMCA during the summer for daycare and that place freaked the hell out of me. Now I'm the kind of person who can tell you pretty reasonably well when something took place, but the strangest thing is that I can't separate one memory of this daycare from another despite the fact that some of the memories have to have had three or four years in between. What I can tell you, however, is that this place could have been the setting for a couple very good low budget horror films. Despite the fact that we were confined to two rooms, a hallway and the playground, this place was like a maze. It felt as if it stretched on forever and not in the way that most things seem bigger when you're a kid. I mean that I would routinely spend five minutes walking down this hallway as fast as I could walk without it being a jog. Despite the fact that this hallway should've taken me maybe two minutes at a leisurely pace maximum and it was incredibly isolating. Both in its foreboding aura, but also literally.
Amanda:
Despite the fact that the daycare was located in a building that couldn't have been more than 20 years old. It had the most amount of electrical malfunctions. I would go to the restroom and have the lights flicker harshly before suddenly dying. This happened multiple times. One time I was washing my hands and getting ready to exit the restroom and the lights started to flicker. Expecting them to go off soon I fished up and booked it for the door, but the door was locked and then the lights went out. I was sitting there, door locked, in darkness for an hour before anyone else came to find me.
Julia:
How is that possible? This seems just like a very poorly managed YMCA.
Amanda:
I know, it's a daycare, come on people.
Julia:
You can't just lose a child.
Amanda:
Well, another time a room at the daycare just vanished. A whole ass room just wasn't there anymore. I have three or four friends who can attest to this as well. One day it wasn't there, the next day it was, no explanation. The thing I think I've tangentially alluded to, but haven't made super clear is that inanimate objects, towns, buildings structures or road, et cetera speak to me. My visions as a kid being one example, this being another. When a building or road or whatever tries to speak to me it has an aura, a presence. For example, the feeling of being pulled down into a vision. The only way I can describe the presence of the daycare is a step below a panic attack. It was the feeling of your chest tightening and tightening and your pulse thumping harder and harder, but there was no push over the edge. No swallow to force down the lump around your throat. No deep breath to clear the congestion that was slowly building in your lungs. I'm sure that the daycare was trying to tell me something, but whatever it was trying to tell me, I don't have a clue. Maybe it just wanted to mess with me.
Amanda:
The final story I want to bring up has a very clear message. In early 2019, my family and I took a drive down to a coastal California town. I didn't want to go, but alas most teenagers don't have a ton of autonomy so I was sequestered in a car for four plus hours as we made our way up there. Most of it was flat plain lands and email's anything to go on, the plains hate me and to be fair the feeling is mutual. I could feel the plains encroaching on me from the moment we crossed into their territory. The grass had a voice to it as it swayed in the wind and the message was clear, I wasn't welcome here. Now not everything that tries to talk to me elicits the same feeling, but this one was almost identical to the one I felt at the daycare center only instead of moments this lasted hours as we slowly crept our way through the plains. Each minute we spent there I got tinglier as if the grass was telling me loud and clear to go away, to turn back, to save myself.
Amanda:
Eventually, it got so bad that I started to swallow incessantly, something that only happened when I was getting a panic attack. I went searching through my podcast feed and through Waystation I found Spirits. Now I bring this up because the entire time we'd been exploring the town I felt this immensurable weight on my chest. Not the panic attack adjacent feeling that the plains brought me, but the feeling that I was being watched. Even when I was the only one in the store or when I was 15 steps behind my parents, but 15 steps ahead of anyone else on the sidewalk, I felt this omnipresent feeling that I was being watched and whoever was watching me didn't want me there. Again, the prevalent feeling I got was save yourself and the only thing that stopped it from being completely unbearable was Spirits. I went through the entire back list of hometown urban legends, which at that point went up to the Froyo Ghost Haunting episode.
Eric:
My favorite.
Amanda:
I also bring up Spirits because it transitions us perfectly to the motel we stayed the night at because I was listening to Episode 80 Genderfuck the Gods with Andrea Lam. I stepped out briefly to grab a snack from the vending machine in the hallway when the weight of being watched finally piqued.
Julia:
Hey, motels are bad.
Amanda:
Motels are very bad and murdering. A whole choir of anxiety built in me as if a thousand people's eyes were on me all at once. The feelings came, first a whisper, but building in volume until they sounded like a choir of chanting audience members on a late-night game show. Run, run, run, run, run. Suffice it to say, I sure ran, ran as fast as I could almost knocking over my stepmom on the way back to our hotel room. Let's just say I was glad to see us leave and even more glad to be a leaving with a new podcast that I still listen to now over a year later.
Julia:
Oh, hell yeah. I'm super glad that we're able to provide some sort of solace during moments like this.
Amanda:
Yeah, I didn't mean to toot our own horn, but I love when Spirits comes up in an urban legend and the fact that this helped alleviate the hauntings, but also helped transition you the fuck out of that place. I am glad to hear it.
Eric:
I have a mega story that will span three parts.
Amanda:
Ooh! Like a serialized Victorian novel. I'm so excited!
Eric:
It will span this part, the part right after the refill and continue on at the end of the month in our bonus hometown urban legends episode for our patrons.
Amanda:
Oh, hell yeah.
Julia:
What? This is an unprecedented crossover property. I love it.
Eric:
It's crossing over between two files and one [inaudible 00:21:40]-
Amanda:
Very exciting.
Eric:
... on the same podcast.
Amanda:
I love it. Listen, Eric, anything that gets me to look forward to the next day, like waking up to turnip Jesus or some new cherries I get very excited about.
Julia:
What is happening in Animal Crossing?
Eric:
I don't know about turnip Jesus. I mean, I know about turnips. I don't know how Amanda has prophesied them into some-
Julia:
I don't know. [crosstalk 00:22:04].
Eric:
I'm not exactly sure what's happening there.
Amanda:
Every Sunday, a relatable peasant comes to town and sells you wares that come out of nowhere.
Eric:
This story is titled Urban Folklore from Poland and My Escape from a Ghost Village.
Julia:
Oh, hell yes. Escape from Ghost Village. I love when places are haunted and then our listeners have to escape from them. This reminds me of Rory's first email that we read in Portland in 2019 about escaping that town that kept sucking them back in.
Eric:
This comes to us from someone who has only listed her name as Strange Creature.
Amanda:
Love it, very good.
Julia:
Love it.
Eric:
Here we go.
Julia:
Super good aesthetic.
Eric:
We're going to start with some Polish. I've been listening to your podcast for a few months to catch up and I finally did. When I listened to the first Urban Legends episode, I was pretty excited since it was the first time I've encountered these kinds of stories in years. Since on your show you mostly share stories from the United States, I thought you may find some of the urban lore from Poland interesting and entertaining. Some of those go back all the way to the times of the Polish People's Republic when our country was under heavy political influence of the Soviet Union. I'll try to go chronologically from oldest to newest, so please enjoy.
Amanda:
Here's the thing. Poland doesn't fuck around and I'm very excited about this.
Julia:
Hell yeah, Poland, shout-out.
Eric:
First one I'm going to tell you about is rumors regarding Black Volga. The car is a type of limousine. Oh, it's a car. It sounds much more [inaudible 00:23:27].
Julia:
I'm like, "Oh, no." Oh Black Volga, must be a witch.
Eric:
The car is a type of limousine that was a means of transport of choice for Soviet officials back in the day. Scary stories of abductions were told by parents to their children if they would see a Black Volga, they should avoid it at all costs or else be snatched and drained of blood.
Julia:
Ooh, vampires?
Eric:
There were different versions to the identity of passengers of the malicious cars. Some believed they were Soviet officials, other believe they were Catholic nuns or priests or even actual vampires. The children's blood was either to be drunk or transfused in order to rejuvenate elderly members of said organizations.
Julia:
This is a-
Amanda:
They still think they do that. This is a Roald Dahl novel style theory and I am so behind it.
Julia:
Yeah.
Eric:
Yeah.
Julia:
Wasn't there a whole thing? Vampire facials were a thing five years ago and still are a thing, I think.
Eric:
Peter Thiel of PayPal is into the weird vampire blood of the youth.
Amanda:
If anybody's a vampire, it's that man. Yeah.
Eric:
It definitely is.
Julia:
Don't sue us.
Amanda:
I think once you reach into the multiple billions of net worth they just find you and they're like, "You're one of us now, sorry I don't make the rules."
Eric:
Also in times of the PPR, people used to pass over the tale of a cemetery dare. Usually the story involved three or more drunk men. One of them was there to go into the graveyard and stab one of the graves with a knife. This is Julia's entire shit.
Julia:
I'm so ready for this. I feel like I've heard various versions of this story and I'm so glad we're hearing the Polish version now.
Eric:
The poor guy was said to accept the bet and go deep into the cemetery to avoid being spotted by a militia officer walking by. After performing a task, he would try to stand up, but would fail to do so because of something or someone tugging at the hem of their coat. The shock would cause them to have a heart attack and die. The friends who, in the meantime, have gone home would eventually get worried and go out to get them. Upon arriving at the cemetery, they would come to a dreadful realization that their friend had died and the cause of death would be none other than a knife that went into the ground through the deceased coat pinning them to the ground and actually causing the deadly circumstances.
Amanda:
I love that so much. I like the implication that he thought it was the hand of the dead grabbing onto his cloak, but instead it was just him aiming badly.
Julia:
Truly hoisted on your own retard, right?
Amanda:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eric:
It's like an opposite of hoisted on your own retard.
Amanda:
It's true. [crosstalk 00:26:03] retard in the ground.
Eric:
Yeah. This is our final story until we get our refill. There was one more quite disturbing tale that had to do with times of Poland under the political influence of the USSR and the fact that many people emigrated to the West, mainly France, the UK and the United States. It involved a family that stayed behind in Poland and often received packages from the auntie who managed to escape through the Iron Curtain. One time, they received a box containing a peculiar gray powder. As they were used to receiving luxurious goods from their auntie, they didn't think twice and started using the powder as a seasoning in their kitchen.
Julia:
Bad.
Eric:
I bet we all know where this is going.
Amanda:
Ashes, ashes.
Eric:
A month later, a belated letter arrived. It's hard to express the terror they felt once they had learned that the aunt had died. The letter containing her last wish was her ashes to be scattered on the homeland ground.
Julia:
I love that I feel like I've heard all of these stories before, but these have an added twist to them. The escape through the Iron Curtain makes it just so much more like, oh of course, they wouldn't have known because there wasn't great communication between the East and the West. I love it. It's great.
Eric:
This is exactly why we need to fund the postal service.
Julia:
Yes, it is.
Amanda:
It really is.
Eric:
A timely lesson from the Cold War, all the way till today.
Amanda:
Listen, there's a lot we could dig into right there.
Eric:
Let's go grab a refill, hopefully without any ashes and we will be back with some personal spooky tales from Strange Creature.
Amanda:
Love it.
Julia:
Yes.
Amanda:
Let's go. We are sponsored this week by Skillshare and you know that Skillshare is the online learning community offering our listeners two months of free premium membership. They'll help you explore new skills, deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity with their classes. Right now, it's a great resource to have on had so you can stay inspired, express yourself and connect to a community of creatives with fascinating classes on topics like the one I took this week, which is Postcards From Here, Playing with Ink.
Julia:
That sounds like fun.
Amanda:
It is. It's sort of a way to talk about where you are in the world both physically and mentally and making postcards out of that, which as somebody who is not very visual arts minded was a really fascinating way, not just to learn a new skill, but also to be a little introspective and take a little time for me.
Julia:
Amanda, if you want to explore new skills, deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity, you can just start taking classes from Skillshare.
Amanda:
We are sponsored this week by BetterHelp. If there's something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals therapy is a really great way to think through things, make decisions and just get some advocacy and support from somebody who is only there to help you improve your life and to think through things that are bothering you. BetterHelp is an online counseling service that will assess your needs and match you with your owned licensed professional therapist. You can start communicating in under 24 hours and while this is not a crisis line, it's also not self help. It's professional counseling, done securely online. I've been using BetterHelp for about six months and I really appreciate the fact that I am matched with a counselor who I really get along with and who I can talk to on the phone every other week securely from my house and in the comfort of my own library where I feel really at home and I can really open up.
Amanda:
Because BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, they make it easy and free to change counselors if need be. You can also log into your account anytime and send a message to your counselor. Between phone calls or video calls, if something comes up or if you have a thought or if you just prefer to correspond in text with your therapist versus a call you can do that at anytime. BetterHelp is also more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available. They're actually offering 10% off to Spirits listeners, so you can go to betterhelp.com/spirits to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, .com/spirits to get 10% off your first month. Join the over 800,000 people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional at BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, .com/spirits.
Julia:
Amanda, as anyone knows who is following our Finsta as part of the MultiCrew, I have been making a lot of cocktails lately. Just a whole bunch.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Julia:
One of the things that is really inspiring, the different recipes and choices that I've been making lately is my subscription to Shaker & Spoon. Shaker & Spoon is a subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make handcrafted cocktails right at home. Every box comes with enough ingredients to make three different cocktail recipes developed by world class mixologists. All you need to do is buy one bottle of that month's spirit. Last month's was vodka and I had so many good citrus-y and tart flavors. It was great. I loved it so much. And then you can just make 12 drinks at home. Right now I'm loving being able to make classy cocktails and not having to go out to bars to buy them. For just about $40 to $50 per month, plus the cost of the bottle, it is a super cost-effective way to enjoy craft cocktails. You can skip and cancel boxes at any time.
Julia:
The cost that you probably were spending at the bar, you're now spending less making great cocktails at home. You can get $20 off your first box by going to shakerandspoon.com/cool. Again, that's $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/cool. And now let's get back to the show.
Julia:
We're back from the refill. In support of our local breweries and stuff I've got a can from Great South Bay Brewery and it's their Holographic Haze New England IPA. It looks like a Pokemon card, like a poison or ghost-type Pokemon card, except it's a holographic bass on the front.
Amanda:
That is incredible. Please take a picture and we'll put it on Instagram.
Julia:
Absolutely, I will.
Amanda:
I have from King's County Brewing Company KCBC Marble of Doom IV. They do something which I really enjoy, which is they have lines of beer that they redo again and again and their whole thing is fresh fruit and really funky fermentation so every batch is a little different. Marble of Doom III was more raspberry. Marble of Doom IV has boysenberry in it.
Julia:
Oh, I love boysenberry.
Amanda:
It's definitely like a little ... not even more tart. It's almost less tart, but like a dusky ... oh, it's so good.
Julia:
I love boysenberry. It's an underappreciated berry.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Eric:
I've got a Blue Dog Hazy Jane. It's a nice IPA. It was easily available at the grocery store when my girlfriend went there.
Amanda:
Hell yeah. Love it. Sometimes that's enough.
Julia:
My local beer distributor right now has set up a little tent outside of the store so that they can social distance properly and you shout at them what you want and then they bring it to the thing and you exchange cards and then you take your beer, it's great. I kind of love it.
Amanda:
It's very sweet. [crosstalk 00:33:09]. Our has like a barrier of barrels in front of the store and each of them is exactly three feet wide when you count for the curve. They have two of those staggered and you lean over it. It's fun in a way. It's very inventive.
Eric:
I haven't left the house in three weeks.
Amanda:
Are you okay?
Eric:
I'm doing fine.
Amanda:
All right. Good.
Eric:
I mean, I walk the dog. [crosstalk 00:33:34]. Kelsey is the one going out for groceries and whatnot.
Julia:
Yeah, smart.
Amanda:
Let's all vacation back to the forest of Poland, shall we?
Julia:
Yes, please.
Eric:
Here are some personal stories from Strange Creature. I have a personal relationship with the other three urban legends I have to tell you since they were spread around when I was about 10 to 13. 2000 to 2003 was a time of proper Western capitalism blending into the Polish city landscape and also satanist hysteria.
Julia:
Oh!
Amanda:
Ooh!
Eric:
They got the satanic panic.
Amanda:
Hell yeah.
Eric:
That they [crosstalk 00:34:11], I guess. The USSR held it off for a while.
Amanda:
Little bit late.
Eric:
First tale that has to do with this is a bit similar to the Japanese urban legend about a girl in a surgeon mask.
Amanda:
In case you don't remember that, that is the slit mouth woman story that we talked about in our Japanese urban legend episode a while back. One of the worst ever. One of the worst ever.
Julia:
It was great.
Eric:
It was so, so spooky. Older kids, parents and even some of the teachers told us to avoid groups of people dressed in black. They were supposed to be satanists who would come up to you and ask you to show them your notebook. If it was lined, they would cut your face horizontally. If it was square, they would cut your face into squares.
Julia:
No!
Eric:
If it was blank, they would simply skin your face off. You know what? I thought it was definitely going to be like a ... that if it was blank you're okay, but no.
Julia:
You're always fucked.
Eric:
Just all of them were bad.
Amanda:
Oh, yeah. No, no, very yokai, always fucked, there's no right answer, don't look at anyone.
Julia:
Also, this is a side note, I just like the way you say satanist, Eric.
Eric:
Thank you.
Amanda:
But if you had one of those fashionable gridded, I mean, the ones where it's just dots, not lines.
Julia:
Oh, interesting. I guess they just [crosstalk 00:35:20].
Amanda:
Maybe.
Julia:
Face [inaudible 00:35:22].
Amanda:
Why did I ask?
Julia:
Acupuncture.
Eric:
There was no real explanation as to what the purpose would be other than to sow terror. That's it. That was just a story that went around Poland-
Julia:
Great.
Eric:
... about the satanists back in the day.
Amanda:
Oh, that's bad. Oh, that's bad.
Eric:
The second tale I remember vividly is sort of reminiscent of the Black Volga tale. My friends used to warn me against black BMWs. It was easily distinguishable by a number of features. Some mentioned the plate being 666 or the car having no door handles or horn-shaped side view mirrors. No matter the description, one should never interact with the driver of said car. If the car had stopped nearby and you should be so stupid to talk up to it, the driver was said to always ask the same question, "What's the time?" Less spooky than you [crosstalk 00:36:13].
Amanda:
Not super spooky.
Eric:
If a person told him the time, however, they would be fated to die either 24 hours or the week later. However, the Prince of Darkness in this tale was much more merciful than his disciples in previous legend. He would spare you if you answered him, "It's hour eternal."
Amanda:
Oh!
Julia:
Okay. That seems creepy. If I asked a stranger a time and they're like, "It's hour eternal," I'd be like, "What are you talking about?" I'd be like, "Are you a satanist?"
Eric:
No, that's hour eternal, not our eternal with an H, just to be clear.
Julia:
Oh, yeah. It's with an H, right? Not without an H.
Eric:
It's with an H, yes.
Julia:
It's still creepy.
Amanda:
It sounds like the kind of trolling answer a kid would give in an urban legend and then get their face made into a grid.
Julia:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eric:
For sure.
Amanda:
Oh, bad.
Eric:
We've got one more story, but we will be saving that for our end of the month bonus urban legend episode for our patrons. Hop onto Patreon if you'd like and if you join at the $4 level or more you can hear a bonus episode every single month and go back through the back catalog and hear a bunch of other older bonus urban legend episodes.
Julia:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). They're great.
Amanda:
Oh my gosh, so many.
Eric:
We've been doing a whole year of them at this point-
Amanda:
Wow!
Eric:
... so there's 36. We do one each one those episodes. There's 36 more urban legends upon Patreon for y'all.
Julia:
There you go.
Amanda:
Would you guys like a sort of light haunting from Debra?
Julia:
Sure.
Eric:
Sure, why not?
Amanda:
Now Debra's name is said in a French fashion. I cannot make that noise.
Eric:
Debra.
Julia:
Debra.
Eric:
I don't what the French-
Amanda:
Yeah. Sorry, I can't make that noise with my mouth.
Eric:
I like how you started the bit and then I made the bit and then we're like, "This bit is over."
Amanda:
Well, it reminded me how close I cannot come with actually trying to do it. It has an accent over the E. This email is titled Sam's Gone Wrong - Demon Children. Hello lovely people of Spirits. First, really love the show. Now, let's talk about spooky stories.
Julia:
That's great, love the intro.
Amanda:
That's exactly correct. All right. Both the following anecdotes happened to me in my teens and they both took place in the same apartment. Let's start with the story of how my stupid goth, edgy teenage self scared herself and her friends to death. Shall we?
Julia:
Please.
Amanda:
To set the scene, let me first tell you that we were in my friend's apartment in a classic 19th Century Parisian building. We were just chilling, talking about nothing in particular, listening to music on my friend's stereo. This makes me feel so old. But we quickly got annoyed because the device kept turning itself off for no apparent reason since we were all sitting several meters away. Being very silly teenage girls we promptly decided that a spirit must be behind it and proceeded to turn off the music and the lights, took three candles out, one in front of each of us, three incense sticks, which we put in a class and started asking if there were any spirits around. This is such escalation of oh the stereo keeps going out. I respect it and also I hate it. It's like ah yes, well we're having technical issues so it must be a ghost. Break out all the equipment. At first unsurprisingly nothing happened, that is until one of the candles was blown out, the incense made a complete turn inside of the glass and the doorknob fell out.
Julia:
Bad, bad, bad.
Amanda:
It was an old, round doorknob, which was probably damaged already to be fair, but it meant that we were suddenly locked inside the room with no means of opening the door.
Julia:
But also how does a doorknob just fall out of a door without being shaken or anything?
Eric:
I can tell you exactly how, it's old.
Amanda:
Yes.
Eric:
This happened at Kelsey's apartment.
Julia:
Oh, no.
Eric:
One time the doorknob just fell out.
Amanda:
Yeah, as you turn it to open and close it all the time it can come to the end of its spindle and just fall out if the weight of it creaks. This one's happened to me at 2:00 in the morning when I had just gotten home from the airport in the bathroom at my old apartment. Luckily, I was fully dressed, which living alone going between your bathroom and your room, whatever, I don't know. It could've been showering. But instead I had to call my super. My front door happened to have been unlocked and he was able to get in and open it from the outside.
Eric:
Didn't this happen when I was at your apartment too?
Amanda:
It did, it did, but then I fixed that problem. Finally, after I got locked in myself I was like, "No, no, no." My guest got locked in, that's not good enough. I'll wait until I get locked in and my super showed me how to take apart and put back the doorknob.
Julia:
I think that also happened to me at your apartment as well.
Amanda:
It was a known issue guys. I lived there for three years. It was a known issue.
Eric:
No, it was. It definitely was a known issue. We definitely knew how to use the bathroom by the time our second and third ventures into your bathroom.
Julia:
Yeah. I think I just stopped closing the door all the way. I was like, "I hope Amanda doesn't come in."
Amanda:
I did tell everybody, "Hey, don't turn the doorknob, just use it to push and pull," like you do with doorknobs.
Eric:
It worked.
Amanda:
All right. Locked on the inside, being of relatively sound mind we immediately stopped everything, turned the lights on and started banging on the door screaming until someone opened it from the outside. Fast forward a few months. My friend is having a horror movie night and sleepover at her place. These girls [inaudible 00:41:21] by the way. They're doing seances, they're doing horror movie sleepovers, this is great. There are about 10 of us there and we have a rather pleasant evening, until bedtime that is. Story of my life. I sleep in the living room with a bunch of other teens and my best friend sleeps in the bedroom next door alone and that's when the fun begins. By fun, I mean the utter horror of going through a demonic nightmare. A chill settles in the room and I am really cold, utterly freezing, which seems odd for the season. I start to doze off nonetheless, but unfortunately for me whenever I close my eyes I am greeted with the hellish vision of a young girl, perhaps seven years old with long, greasy blonde hair, a dirty white dress and very yellow teeth.
Julia:
Ooh, I feel like this is the first time I've been like, "Well, the ghost had bad teeth." I'm like, "That makes it worse somehow.
Amanda:
It does. She's constantly dancing around me, laughing and mocking me.
Julia:
Oh, so bad.
Amanda:
But she never talks to me. After what seemed like hours, I think about leaving the room to see my friend who's next door. When that thought crosses my mind, the little girl shows me a vision of myself, walking down a corridor to find the bedroom door open and my friend with a slit throat, lying in her own blood, her unseeing eyes staring at me so [crosstalk 00:42:37] I decided to stay put.
Julia:
I'm sorry, what?
Amanda:
A while later, other teens start to wake up and as we talk and laugh I no longer get cold. Later in the day, I tell my friend who slept next door about what happened to me. "That's so funny," she says.
Julia:
No, it's not.
Eric:
Maybe not.
Amanda:
"I had a vision of a very creepy little boy and I saw you walking down the corridor and staring at me looking terrified, but I hadn't gotten up."
Julia:
I don't like any of this.
Eric:
All bad.
Amanda:
I hope you enjoyed the story and by enjoyed I mean got as scared reading it as I am writing it. Truth is, I'm a skeptic and to this day I'm still trying to explain it all as my friend, blowing a candle, a very old doorknob, my overactive imagination and my best friend having lied to me. But who knows?
Julia:
Bad, bad, bad. Hate it. Hate it all. All bad.
Amanda:
Lots of love from Paris, Debra.
Julia:
Debra. Oh, God. Okay.
Amanda:
The corroborating visions always gets me, you know?
Julia:
Yeah. I don't like it. It always gets me, but I don't like it. Bad.
Amanda:
All right. I'm going to close this out with a little bit of a foreboding one, I suppose. We can leave our listeners with a little creepy concern looking over their shoulder vibe. This is from Ashley and she titles it Coyotes Don't Hunt in Packs, so What's Hunting Us?
Eric:
No.
Amanda:
Ashley starts, I live in Georgia in a weird space near Atlanta, but still in the country. My family has five acres of land that our house is on. It's closer to the road and the rest of the land is raw, which I mean, I guess is not farmed or anything like that.
Eric:
Yeah, probably just grass.
Amanda:
My dad used to hunt deer there and my cousins and I would play in the woods. Of course, you would. What else is there to do on five acres of land? I was one of the youngest and an only child. One Halloween my cousins and their friends came to our house for the holidays. We built a bonfire and we're sleeping in the woods because we were those kinds of kids. They were all in high school and my younger cousin and I were still in elementary. We got woken up late at night when the fire was dying by a very peculiar. Something in the woods sounded like something almost human trying to make an owl call. We have lots of owls. They're horrifyingly huge, but they rarely come out and I'm used to their calls. But this was kind of hallow. I don't know how to describe it. I know what a human pretending to sound like an owl sounds like, my dad and his friends are redneck hunters, so this wasn't that.
Amanda:
My little cousin and I wanted to go up to the house. It's about a five-minute hike through clean trails. We took my older cousin, her friend a lantern and my two black Labs. I'm glad you had animals with you.
Julia:
Excellent.
Amanda:
To protect from whatever-
Julia:
And a lantern.
Amanda:
... is happening here.
Julia:
You're doing great.
Amanda:
The whole time we could hear something running around us just outside of our wide lamp light. One dog stayed close to us, the other stayed within the light snarling and snapping. We got inside the fence encasing my house and backyard and the dogs flanked us. My cousin and her friend dropped us off and went back to the fire. Nothing else happened, but I don't think anyone really slept that night. Whatever was running around us there was a lot of them and we always assumed it was coyotes, but coyotes don't make owl sounds and they don't hunt in packs. That's the end of the story.
Julia:
That's a very good email.
Amanda:
It's very, very good. I like it so much. I want to know what it was.
Eric:
I didn't have this exact thing happen to me, but we went to a wedding in extremely rural Illinois last fall and we had cabins to stay in. When you're in a valley and there are literally no lights and I mean no lights for easily five miles probably. Maybe not five miles, but like two miles easily. It's spooky when you're taking your dogs to go to the bathroom. I saw some eyes glowing in the brush-
Julia:
Oh, boy.
Eric:
Did not like it, very bad, very spooky, hate it.
Julia:
Yeah. One of the scariest things I remember in terms of being alone with no lights at night was we went to a wedding up at Lake George a couple of years ago and we were talking back from the wedding, which was in a recommendation hall on a camp premises and we had to walk back to the cabin we were staying in and Jake and I left on our own and it was pitch black besides our phone lights. I just wanted to see. It was like oh I wanted to see the stars, so I turned off the phone light and it was just pitch black. It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in my entire life. There were weird noises all around. I was like, "No actually the phone's going back on, this is terrible."
Eric:
What was particularly scary about my situation was I was staying with the bridal party because Kelsey was in it, but I wasn't doing a lot of the bridal party stuff.
Julia:
Sure.
Eric:
I was often in the house, the cabin alone.
Julia:
Oh, no.
Eric:
It was just me and the dogs. The dogs are small, not going to save my life in any terrible situation.
Julia:
Yeah, I know.
Eric:
I would just be out there. I was like, "I am so alone right now." There's a sense of aloneness that is just like hard to grasp when you're in the middle of nowhere.
Julia:
That's so creepy.
Amanda:
See when I'm up in Lake Placid and we're driving up to our house there's like a hill that crests and then we sort of curve around back down to the house and every time the headlights crest that hill. One time, we did see a bear there and you saw the lights reflected, the headlights reflected in their eyes back at you. That memory was when I was so young that every time I go up to the hill I'm just like, "Bear, bear, bear, bear, bear, bear, bear," and there's never a bear there and I'm always so upset.
Eric:
Well, in that place one time we did like a ... there's a quick turn to get to part of the road and there was just an owl in the middle of the road [inaudible 00:48:52]. And I was like, "Ah!"
Amanda:
How about no curves in the woods? No curves in the woods.
Julia:
No. Everything is straight line in woods.
Amanda:
Only straight lines in the woods.
Eric:
Well, conspirators.
Amanda:
No, but that's like a grid and the face. No!
Eric:
Well, conspirators, thank you for not being alone with us during these times and in the woods. Until then-
Amanda:
Stay creepy.
Julia:
Stay cool.