Episode 276: Your Urban Legends LXI - Pavement’s Gone? Say So Long!
/From haunted colleges to towns full of creepy kids, we’re doling out advice on how best to survive your own hometown urban legends!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, government conspiracy, colonization, and college/finals.
Housekeeping
- MERCH! Preorder the Tarot Tee Shirt and get your other merch at spiritspodcast.com/merch!
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out Join the Party, a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast co-hosted in part by Julia and Amanda. Search for Join the Party in your podcast app, or go to jointhepartypod.com.
Sponsors
- BetterHelp is a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/spirits and get a free trial of Premium Membership. This week Amanda recommends her course on Podcast Marketing.
- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Get 25% off and zero delivery fees on your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code spirits.
Find Us Online
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) 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 http://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.
ERIC: And I'm Eric.
AMANDA: And this is episode 276, more of Your Urban Legend.
JULIA: Whoo!
AMANDA: We love hometown urban legend episodes. We love it.
JULIA: We do.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: So do. I just, I love hearing all your spooky tales. Gives me goosebumps and then I don't have to live through them.
ERIC: They're some of the best episodes. I enjoy getting to spend some time on camera with, with Amanda and Julia, getting to chat and everything. It's very nice to be a part of the conversation, so just a lot of listening to the conversation afterwards most of the time.
JULIA: Yes, but one of my favorite things is when you message me after listening to an episode and editing an episode that you weren't on, you're like, hey, this is a really good episode. I'm like, Oh, yay, Eric still likes the show.
ERIC: I mean, I think that after every episode, but some are just, like, cream of the crop.
JULIA: Thanks.
ERIC: They need an actual shout out on Slack.
JULIA: Mhmm. Mhmm.
AMANDA: I have a few things to check in on with y'al before we start the show, which is one I started allergy shots, which I just want to say is like allergens haunting my body. Like, just, like dosing little bits of ghosts so that the ghost of allergens can no longer haunt me. And I love that. And I've been thinking about that each time I have to step into a basement doctor's office to get the shots done weekly for eight months.
JULIA: That's so long
ERIC: Where did you get these shots done? In a basement? That's suspicious.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's a hospital but at the basement of a hospital.
ERIC: Okay. Okay.
AMANDA: So, you know, it's still, still a basement. But secondly, and more importantly, my sister has informed me that apparently our house growing up was haunted. I didn't experience this. She is six years younger than me, so it's possible that this is a late developing ghost. It's a ghost that I was too tired from babysitting to notice but I'm going to report this down guys and I'm going to bring this tape back to you.
JULIA: I do have some questions that I need you to ask because I know your sister was a twin and shared a room with her twin brother for a majority of her time. I'm curious if it was a joint thing maybe. Did they both experience paranormal activity? What's going on?
AMANDA: I'm gonna chase it down guys. I'm gonna chase it down.
JULIA: Also, check in with your other sibling and see what they have to say.
AMANDA: I will.
JULIA: Okay, speaking of being creepy kids, and also, you know, childhood things. I have a story.
ERIC: Excellent.
AMANDA: Let's hear it.
JULIA: This is from Buddy King, and they titled it The Creepy Kids Town; I.E., Don't make Detours.
AMANDA: Ooh.
ERIC: The creepy kids town. Is it like a town with creepy kids or a town run by creepy kids?
JULIA: I suppose we'll find out.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: Buddy King writes, Hey, gang, just at the top I want to say I love the show. And I've been marathoning it since I found it and appreciate all the content you've created. It really helps feed my ADHD monster which I feel and appreciate. I have a bunch of stories I could tell and may well at a later date, but I figured I'd start strong with one of the most unsettling events me and my family have experienced to date. For context, I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is a little bit of land that sticks up into Lake Superior and is forgettable enough that it doesn't even show up on some maps of the United States. The UP, the Upper Peninsula, used to be a major source of copper and iron mining, but when the mines shut down, the vast majority of the towns dried up making most of the area, especially the Keweenaw Peninsula, basically one big ghost town. Between that and the ghosts of the long dead miners that dwell in the hollow Earth that runs beneath my feet at this very moment, it makes for some spooky stuff.
AMANDA: After Creekside mushrooms I feel pretty worried.
JULIA: Not good about underground things.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So, this story happened when my mother, my husband, and I were on a road trip heading back to our home in the Keweenaw after leaving Marquette, one of the few largest cities left in the area. We had made the same trip countless times before and had never encountered anything exceptionally creepy outside of the normal ghost towns full of mostly abandoned houses, but this trip, my mom for no discernible reason, decided that she wanted to try and take a shortcut on the way home. Me and my husband tried to talk her out of it but she was dead set on adventure. The next line is this was a mistake.
ERIC: Oh boy.
AMANDA: Now, I love a detour. I love a spontaneous stop on a road trip. I love a road trip, period. And the thing I love the most about it is pulling over at a diner or convenience store or attraction that you hadn't planned on and enjoying it. However, I do have a rule for myself that it has to be within sight of the highway because I have lost cell reception and gotten myself turned around in way too many backroads in the morass of northern New Jersey and western New York not to live by that rule anymore.
ERIC: One time recently, me and Kelsey were on a road trip, recently is the incorrect word, one time over the last six years we were on a road trip. We were like okay, this is the place we're gonna stop to grab a bite to eat and go to the bathroom and this McDonald's was fuckin', like, over the hill and through the woods to grandmother's house and we go type shit. Like, I mean it was, like, a solid, like, 5 to 10 minutes off the highway to get to this McDonald's. It's very frustrating. When we finally got there like [5:09] there's no easy way to turn around at this point. And then like it was, it was actually easier to keep going and get on the highway at a different on ramp than go back to where we were. That's how far away we are from the highway. Terrible, terrible experience.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I don't like that one bit. You have to be able to see that McDonald sign from the highway otherwise you're not going to it.
ERIC: Almost definitely happened in Pennsylvania, the worst state to drive through.
JULIA: Well, apparently Michigan is also pretty bad because they go on while the first 5 to 10 minutes of driving down the unfamiliar stretch of road was largely normal. Things quickly start to become troubling. The woods up here are made of birch and jack pines and in some places can grow quite thick, especially during summer when this occurred when the woods were full of reeds and ferns that make seeing into them while moving at highway speeds difficult, but that didn't stop us from seeing the wooden crosses nailed sporadically to some trees in the forest edge. We thought, all right, yeah, that's creepy, but seeing as most of the people here are either Christian or Catholic it wasn't that unusual to see someone get a little zealous with their arboreal decoration, even if it is in the middle of the empty woods. Another thing that seemed benign at the time was the large number of very large ravens that were perched in the trees or circled in the air in the distance, not abnormal here, but by the end of the day, it felt like another sinister piece to the Stephen King jigsaw puzzle of the day that we were about to have
AMANDA: Love a raven, they're the cats of the sky. They're big, they're intelligent, they love mischief, and they like to take things. I love ravens. However, I see how depending on what happens later you look back and you're like ah shit I really should have known with all the crosses and the ravens, you know.
JULIA: Quite foreboding. Yes, yes.
ERIC: I like, I like the optimism the writer has here in that like oh, yeah, they were decorating their trees but it's like these are the trees on the side of the highway. People aren't decorating those trees with anything ever. That ain't, that ain't property that needs decorating.
ERIC: I mean even when I see like a single cross, it's like a grave marker for somebody who, you know, was killed in a, in an automobile accident or a bicyclist that was killed. I'm like, like it you know, it's sad. It's not sinister, but it's still sad.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I think if I saw a number of them in a row, I'd be like, oh shit, and then promptly leave.
ERIC: Yes.
JULIA: Yes, precisely. I would stop going down that road, turn around, leave right now.
AMANDA: But we're not here to judge y'all. We're here to witness so...
ERIC: We're not here to judge?
AMANDA: Okay. All right.
ERIC: We have. I mean, we've done 60 of these. There., we're here to judge in some senses.
AMANDA: Okay, fair.
JULIA: So, after about 20 minutes, we finally entered a town. Like I said, most towns up here are very small or largely unpopulated, but this one seemed to have plenty of homes that were in good repair, with mowed grass and all of their windows intact. Altogether, it seemed like a normal place at first, but for some reason, the three of us just couldn't shake the feeling of unease that had been building the whole time we were driving. As we continue to hoping to just get through and connect back to the major highway we passed by the little town's park, which was about the size of a football field located in the middle of town with a stretch of grass and a baseball diamond near the back. As we drove by, it became evident that the whole time we'd been driving through this little town we hadn't seen a single adult. Stranger yet was the fact that the park was filled with kids, most of them 7 to 10-years-old by my best guess and not a single adult, teen or elderly person in sight.
AMANDA: Are you in the novel Summer land?
JULIA: Is this the movie Children of the Corn?
AMANDA: That sounds scary fuck.
JULIA: We all shared an uneasy moment broken up mostly by me or my husband recommending that we just turn around and drive back the way we came like sane, rational human beings. My mother however, being the headstrong woman that she is kept trucking right along, sure that we would be coming back to a major road on the other side of this town. As we made our way past the park, it felt like every set of tiny eyes were trained on our car, most of the kids stopped playing and just stood staring at us not with fear or apprehension just watching. It didn't take long to get to the far end of the park where the road we were on turned left heading between the far end of the park and alongside the other defining feature of this awful town. At the back, just across from the park, was a graveyard ordered in a shiny new chain link fencing. Now, this would be a creepy place for a graveyard one way or another, but the thing that killed us to the bone wasn't the location but the contents of it.
AMANDA: Oh?
ERIC: I don't want to know the rest of this.
JULIA: Inside the fence were a number of regular headstones albeit simple in design, but the further we went along the road we thought would lead us out of town the more Spartan things became. Stone grave markers soon became wood. And at the far end of the graveyard, the ground looked raw and freshly turned where rows of grave markers are made of PVC pipes and duct tape.
AMANDA: What? Are we sure this didn't turn into, like, a subdivision? Because I've walked around those places in Florida where there's a cow field and then five days later there is, like, leveled swamp and electrical hookups, but those are houses apart not, like, grave plots apart.
JULIA: Yeah, so at this point, I thought we were going to be murdered by a gang of toddlers like we were in some B-list Netflix original series and begged for my mom to just turn the car around before the local children could put us under some plastic headstones but instead, ever team ignorant, my mom just kept going forward. The road thankfully took us out of this little town of terror and for a moment I thought we were going to be in the clear, my husband however, noticed something alarming. The road narrowed ahead of us going from a two-lane road to a single lane. With the forest to our left and right now trapped on a single lane road we had no choice but to drive on and it didn't get better as the road went from paved to rough gravel and it became clear it was not connecting back to the highway. Whatever road my mom thought we were on, this wasn't it.
AMANDA: Okay guys, when would you have turned around?
ERIC: At this point, I think. I think at single-lane road, that feels like the end. The only time a single lane road is going to expand back is if, like, it's a single lane crossing bridge and like a park area. Other than that, I feel like once you've narrowed the road, you're not like re-narrowing it. Like, you're--. It's a driveway or some small little thing back there. It's not like oh, and now we're on route 72 again, like that's, that's not gonna happen.
JULIA: Yeah, no, once you hit gravel on a single lane road, hell no dog.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: May I propose, pavements gone? Say so long. That's what I have to say on road trips and unplanned detours.
JULIA: I love it.
ERIC: You may propose. You may propose it and we accept it.
JULIA: Let's make a sticker. That sounds incredible.
AMANDA: Thank you.
JULIA: So, let's, let's get to the climax here of the story so...
AMANDA: Oh God, my hands are so sweaty. Okay.
JULIA: After a handful of minutes of quiet terror and stifled "I told you so" thrown at my now openly confused mother, we reached the climax of our story. The gravel road bowled out into a little circular turn around cut through a tall barbed wire top chain link fence proudly hanging from which was a large metal sign that read the following. Restricted area, No Trespassing, US government property.
AMANDA: No!
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: With the final nail in the coffin, we turned our car around and sped back out through the town of parentless creepy children and back to our normal route home which thankfully didn't lead to a town of horrifying murder children. Since the events of this story, I have tried to find whatever this nightmare town was on Google Maps but I've never managed to find an area that matches what we saw. Did we slip into some alternate reality for eight hour of dread and do sweats or did the government disassemble whatever Stranger Things-esque experiment town they had built after we passed through? Maybe it's best that we don't know. Thanks for your time. Until I write again, your Buddy.
ERIC: So, the point I would turn around is still where I said at once that you're on the single lane road but I do want to point out, like, the thing that caused me immediate alarm on this is the cemetery with chain link fence.
AMANDA: Yes.
ERIC: That's not, that's not right. I think I've seen that a handful of times, but it's usually like an old tiny settler thing that just kind of off like the side of a road or something, like, no one's getting buried here anymore. This is a finished cemetery, but like if it's a big cemetery you've got some, like, stone work or it's just kind of open.
AMANDA: Right.
ERIC: You don't have a chain link for a cemetery. That's strange.
JULIA: I mean, they were making the crosses in the most freshly dug graves out of PVC and duct tape. Something was clearly wrong here.
ERIC: Yeah. Oh, well, yes. I mean that as well.
AMANDA: Yeah. But I totally agree, Eric, that, that the dissonance of noose chain link fence by clearly old headstones. Like, I've been to modern cemeteries or like places where like, people have their ashes interred and it's like, it's marble, you know, it's like, it's like they stone. They try to make it classy. And I think it's totally understandable. Like you were saying, if you know, it's like someone's family plot and they have a fence, that's just whatever, say it's a big property.
ERIC: Mhmm. Yeah.
AMANDA: But new grave marker, chain link fence, old headstones all in the same place, even before you get to the PVC, I'm fully out of there.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: In my brain, it's like equating like, Oh, if there's only children left in this town, no one is carving gravestones. And certainly, like, no one is, like, cutting wood crosses.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: It's just what the children can manage.
AMANDA: Well, now we know guys. Pavements gone? Say so long.
JULIA: There it is.
ERIC: Exactly. Exactly. I have a story that comes to us from Ellie. She/they titled: Creepy Keyboards and My Dog's Ghost BFF.
AMANDA: Yay.
ERIC: Hello, Spirits. As a firm believer in all things creepy and cool, I figured it was time to write in with some of my own creepy and cool stories. For some background, I grew up in a small New Hampshire town of approximately 300 people. As you're probably aware, just about every older building in New England is haunted as we establish on the last episode talking about New England basements.
JULIA: Mhmm. Mhmm.
ERIC: I grew up in a house with a ghost. The neighbor across the way from us had all kinds of creepy stories about the ghost house and I vividly remember the ghost that lived in the second floor bathroom of my elementary school. These experiences have placed me firmly in the believer category, and I tune in to all things spooky. Despite growing up in New England, some of the best creepy stories happen to me during college. I attended Ohio University for my undergraduate career. And when I say the whole campus is full of ghosts, I mean it. Now, we have established that Ohio University is down in Athens, Ohio. It is historically extremely haunted. There's like five cemeteries that create a pentagram if you're looking at it on a map.
JULIA: Cool.
ERIC: All kinds of, all kinds of classic creepy stuff going down in Athens. The university was founded in 1804 as part of the westward expansion act, and some of the buildings on campus date back to as early as 1816. Ghost stories are commonplace around campus. And if you Google Ohio University, Wilson Hall, you'll find all kinds of buckwild stories about the building, especially room for 28.
JULIA: Again, we've talked about this on the show, but I feel like it bears repeating the more details the worse it is, you know? The scarier it is. The fact that it's a specific room and we know the exact number. Spooky. Don't like it.
ERIC: I think it is possible that we have discussed that specific room on this --
JULIA: Oh no!
ERIC: -- show before, but I could be wrong. I know that we've done other stories from Ohio University because once again, it's historically quite haunted.
AMANDA: Mhmm. Mhmm.
ERIC: But however, Ellie writes, My story takes place in a different residence hall. During my second year on campus, I lived on the second floor of Voigt Hall. The building was built in 1954 and named after Irma Voigt. Irma was the Dean of Women and served in that role for almost 40 years. The Dean of Women.
JULIA: That's my type.
ERIC: I am in charge of the women here.
JULIA: The ladies? I'm the Dean of them.
AMANDA: Isn't that the dream?
ERIC: She's also the ghost who still walks the halls of the only all female residents hall on campus. In the lobby of the building directly in front of one of the doors is a painted portrait of Irma. Supposedly, if you walked in that door and don't acknowledge Irma's portrait, she'll visit you sometime during the night. There are also rumors that Irma was in love with a woman named Edith Wray. I mean, she's the Dean of Women. She, she better be, she better be a historical lesbian.
JULIA: Gay.
AMANDA: Yay.
JULIA: Snap, snap, snap, gay.
ERIC: She was in love with a woman named Edith Wray and that she strongly disapproved of men being in the building with, in quotes, her girls. During my time in Voigt Hall, I had my emotional Assistance Dog Piper with me.
AMANDA: Yay!
ERIC: When we first moved in, Piper was great with both men and women. Soon after, however, she started barking and getting defensive anytime we walked past a man on our walk.
JULIA: Your dog was possessed by the Dean of Women.
ERIC: At night, she would stare in one particular corner of the room and sometimes she just chill out in that corner. I'm convinced that she made friends with Irma, who was apparently a dog person when I did more reading.
JULIA: Of course she is. She's a lesbian.
AMANDA: Mhmm.
ERIC: The most convincing experience I had with Irma involved an electric keyboard in the middle of the night.
JULIA: Funky. I love it.
AMANDA: Irma. Wow.
ERIC: Oh, yeah, I was thinking of the wrong type of keyboard. Now I've, now I've got the right mindset.
JULIA: Yeah, like, tenenenew.
ERIC: Got it. Yes, yes. My roommate and I were both trying to teach ourselves how to play piano, so I brought an old keyboard with me when we moved in. One night, I was staying up reading as one does, and my roommate had long since fallen asleep. All of a sudden, the keyboard which was still on my roommate's desk made a noise like someone had firmly pressed down on two of the keys. It was such a clear sound that I thought my roommate had left it on and had rolled over and hit the keys in her sleep. I got up planning on turning the keyboard off, only to realize it was already off. And it wasn't even plugged into the wall.
JULIA: Oh.
ERIC: Now, this keyboard ran purely off AC power from the outlet. There wasn't even an option for you to put batteries in it and it was completely turned off. So Spirits, I ask you, how does a keyboard like that make noise without being pressed on? Or plugged in? Look, we're not electricians over here.
JULIA: No.
ERIC: I'm just a humble electrician's son.
JULIA: I will say, extremely creepy to hear those notes in the dark and in the night. Would have been funnier if it was one of those, like, pre recorded --
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: -- things that you can play on the keyboard where you're like.
ERIC: Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.
JULIA: Yes, incredibly.
ERIC: That's all we can hum. Man, that's such a wrote podcast joke at this point.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: I shouldn't have. That was not funny. I apologize to the listeners. I'm very, I'm very sorry. Anyways, let's finish up this story.
JULIA: Please.
ERIC: To make it worse, I remembered that the piano downstairs in the lobby was there because Irma loved to play. Needless to say, we kept the keyboard in the closet for a while after this incident. This letter is already long enough. I think more people should call these letters. I know that they're technically emails but I feel like the idea of them being, like, old letters that we are receiving via the mail is a good idea.
JULIA: If you want to mail us one of Your Urban Legends episodes, Amanda will read it.
AMANDA: We've gotten one letter like that so far, and I really need more.
ERIC: Yes.
JULIA: Yes, please.
ERIC: Amanda, where can they find the PO box?
AMANDA: Our mailing address is on our website, spiritspodcast.com.
ERIC: If you want more spooky stories from my university, perhaps about the pentagram of cemeteries surrounding campus. See, see it's true. Tales of my hanging out at an old New England cemetery with my best friend or to hear about the ghost cat that lived in my off campus housing. I'll send those in as well. Stay creepy. Stay cool. Of course we want those letters.
AMANDA: Of course.
JULIA: Yes please.
ERIC: Either as digital letters or physical letters.
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
ERIC: So, with that, let's head off to the cafeteria and refill our old tiny plastic red cups while we get a slice of pizza or whatever they're serving today.
JULIA: Mozzarella --
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: -- sticks, baby, here I come.
AMANDA: Oh, Julia. A break in the action. How're you doing today?
JULIA: I'm doing all right, Amanda. You know, I am here. It's party time. Here at the podcast, this party. Do you want some dip? Amanda, you want dip?
AMANDA: Oh, yes! Thank you. I would love that.
JULIA: It's a tiki dip.
AMANDA: Amazing. And I know that the our newest patrons Isabella, Rye, and Jacob actually brought homemade Siki dip from, like, the street place down the street that kind of doesn't have a name. It's the most delicious food ever.
JULIA: I love a hole in the wall place that doesn't have a name.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: What do you Google? Who can say?
AMANDA: Who can say? Just show up and try and they also brought a side of lemon potatoes that I'm going to share with our Supporting-producer level patrons: Uhleeseeuh, Anne, sorry, I see you getting hungry right now, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jaybaybay, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Little vomitspiders running around, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, Taylor, and Zazi. And the legend Level-patrons who always get extra pita: Audra, Bex, Clara, Iron Havoc, Morgan, Mother of Vikings, Sarah, & Bea Me Up Scotty.
JULIA: Oh, my God. They all brought baklava. Amanda, that's so much baklava.
AMANDA: Yayyy! My favorite! I love it so much. And if you would like to be named in every episode, if you'd like to be thanked as a new patron, if you would like to get access to the six years of bonus content available to you on Patreon that's dozens of extra Your Urban Legends episodes and hundreds of recipe cards and episode notes. There's so much there. Go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
JULIA: Amanda, I feel like I can tell how good a book is by how little I'm sleeping at night.
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: Which is probably not the best for my own, like, mental health.
AMANDA: No!
JULIA: And also physical wellness, but I haven't been able to put down These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. It is.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Truly, Amanda, if you haven't read this one, you need to read it.
AMANDA: No, I haven't. I really need to. Okay, I'm gonna look it up right now at spiritspodcast.com/books where I can get a list of all of our recommendations and also buy from independent bookstores near me? Yes, please.
JULIA: Amanda, it is Romeo and Juliet told in the 1920s set in Shanghai.
AMANDA: Incredible. I need it right now.
JULIA: I know! Amanda, it's so, so good. So good.
AMANDA: Oh my gosh, it's so delightful.
JULIA: It truly is delightful Amanda and if you are also a listener looking for other delightful things to put in your ears, maybe you'll get the audiobook of These Violent Delights, maybe you'll download Join the Party, which is Multitude's d&d actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh every week. You know how I know that, Amanda, it's because you and I are collaborators on Join the Party.
AMANDA: Because you're one of them. It is truly so delightful. We welcome everyone to the table. That's the mission of the show. That's why it's called Join the Party, right? We're inviting you in. If you don't know what d&d is, or how to play it, or you're like, hey, people I know love this must be for a reason. I don't know. No one ever invited me in. We're inviting you, join our party, we'll teach you how to play. Don't worry.
JULIA: Sometimes you listen to actual plays and you're like, "Yeah, but what's going on behind-the-scenes? We talk about what's going on behind-the-scenes in our after party, which is a session that is held to discuss the campaign to joke around and to answer listener questions, so if you have a question, we'll answer it.
AMANDA: And you get to choose two genres, okay. If you want to join our party, if you want to start the show, and you're not quite sure where to begin, you can start with Campaign I, the party campaign, which has classic high fantasy gameplay, but if you're like, I'm not into dungeons and not into dragons, I don't really know, then you gotta listen to Campaign II. It's wrapping up in about eight weeks, huge, great time to join, excellent opportunity for you. And that's all about using d&d mechanics to power a modern superhero-centric upstate New York, like, Neo superhero story. I am so obsessed with it. I love it so much. I want to live in Laketown city, that's Campaign II.
JULIA: Truly. It's great. So, what are you waiting for? Pull up a chair and join the party search for Join the Party in your podcast app or go to jointhepartypod.com.
AMANDA: We are sponsored this week by DoorDash. And when you have friends over, when you get home from a long day, when you're like, "Holy crap, the weather's getting nicer, I can go see my friends in the park again." And then I am in the park and I don't want to leave the park, but I do want to order, like, bagel sandwiches or acai bowls or pizza, or maybe just, like, a single Gatorade from a 711 to the park, you know what I turned to do to do that?
JULIA: DoorDash!
AMANDA: It's definitely DoorDash. You can get what you need and want to eat right now right to your door, or to your picnic blanket, which I've done many times with DoorDash, along with the restaurants you love, you can now also get groceries and other essential items delivered with DoorDash. If you forgot your sunblock or your bug repellent or somebody, you know, get some minor cut where it's not a medical emergency, but you're like, Oh God, I wish I had, like, that weird toe bandage to put on my weird toe. My weird toe not yours, because my Birkenstocks are rubbing against my toe right now as I talk, you can get it delivered by DoorDash. For a limited time, our listeners can get 25% off and zero delivery fees on their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code spirits.
JULIA: So, that's 25% off up to a $10 value and zero delivery fees on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter the code spirits. Don't forget that's code spirits for 25% off your first order with DoorDash. Subject to change, terms apply.
AMANDA: Terms apply.
JULIA: This podcast is also sponsored by BetterHelp online therapy. Amanda, I feel like if someone I cared about needed help, I would drop anything for that person. Amanda, if you needed help, I would drop everything to come help you. And we go out of our way to treat other people well, but how often do we give ourselves the same treatment? Amanda, what have you been doing to, like, invest in yourself lately?
AMANDA: I changed my therapy schedule actually, because I found myself, meaning I had Better Help therapist, and this is just true and this is how I get therapy. In the evenings or in the weekends and I kind of by the end of my day, you know, I dread it a little bit. I don't want to talk about my problems. That, that can kind of suck sometimes. So, I worked with my therapist to find a better time and now we meet in the mornings and I get to start my day thinking about how can I prioritize myself, be less hard on myself, work on my stuff, and make sure that literally the first thing I do once a week on Wednesday mornings is care for and about myself and spend time doing it. So, working with and not against my own schedule and saying to my therapist, "Hey, this time isn't working for me that much." She was super flexible. She was super great. And we found a better time for me, so now I get to have my coffee, have my therapy, and then go to work.
JULIA: Aw, thank you, therapist, Amanda of the other Amanda, your therapist.
AMANDA: Yeah, her name is Amanda.
JULIA: So, BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to, especially if you're waking up in the morning for the first time and you have bedhead and you're like, "I don't want to see anyone right now." It is much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp Online Therapy. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and Spirits listeners get 10% of their first month at betterhelp.com/spirits. That's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p.com/spirits.
AMANDA: And finally, we are sponsored by Skillshare. This is the online learning community that we love because they know that you were born to create. You can learn, express, and discover all the stuff that you can make with online classes from Skillshare. We recommend a different class to you with every ad that we read on Skillshare, but did you know that I have a Skillshare class too? You can take a class from me.
JULIA: Whoa!
AMANDA: See my physical face back when I had long hair. I had very cool earrings on that day and one of my favorite shirts. And I filmed that in the Skillshare offices, they are very bright and lovely. And what I love about Skillshare is when you're developing a course with them, they know that this is something you're fitting into your busy life. And so, they encourage you, "Hey, like keep the video short. Make sure that each of them has a distinct lesson." So, if you, you know, weeks later think like, "Oh right, I wanted to kind of brush up on this thing or I began a project and I want to check back and, you know, see what the instructor had to say about this or that." It's really easy to navigate, much more easy than, like, chapters in an ebook, which I'm constantly futzing with at home, you get to go back and watch a professional, excellent, you know, high energy video from an instructor who knows what the heck they're talking about. So, whether you look up my podcast marketing class, or one of the hundreds and hundreds of others available to you, you should go to skillshare.com/spirits where our listeners get a one month free trial of premium membership. That's one month free skillshare.com/spirits. And now, let's get back to the show. Guys, speaking of college throwbacks, I have been stocking my fridge with Genesee Cream Ale for years now, whenever we drive upstate where it is distributed, we always pick up a case but recently, we went to the Total Wine, which is a US based chain that I had never been to until very recently, and they didn't just have shitty beer from New York State, but shitty beer from all over the country. And I say shitty, I mean, like bargain basement beer that you drink in college, and we found the most beautiful shiner can that have, like, retro art. It was like a lovely kind of throwback type image on the can. It's shiner, it's great beer, it's great and normal and fairly cheap but the can really makes the experience for me, so I've been doing my home with beer shot combos with shiner recently. And I gotta say, it's amazing.
JULIA: Yummy. I love that for you. I also love that you're like I've experienced a new thing, Total Wine experience, so I'm like, Amanda, come visit me on Long Island. We'll go anytime you want. It'll be great.
AMANDA: It's fully in a former Petco. It's huge.
JULIA: Yeah. And they separate the wine and spirits from the beer section and the beer section has, like, good cheeses and meats and stuff. It's great.
ERIC: Whoa!
AMANDA: I have no idea. I have no idea. It's a full charcuterie experience.
JULIA: Yeah. Truly.
ERIC: I don't know anything about this off to see if there's one around.
JULIA: I bet there is. I visited my local favorite brew pub which is the Blue Point Brewing Company and they were having a sale on Tallboys of a new beer that I hadn't tried before but actually surprisingly liked it is their dry hops to double IPA that they also brew with spruce needles, and it is delightful it's called Evergreen Magic and I bought a buy one get one free four pack of Tallboys and I am loving it.
AMANDA: Love it
ERIC: Very good. I recently for lunch today picked up a burger from a local burger joint and I got a milkshake with it because I love myself a milkshake and you know what I do I got home? Poured a little bit of that bullet right in there.
JULIA: Nice.
AMANDA: Nice.
ERIC: We've talked about just, like, throw in a little bit of spirits in anything you're drinking, and you know what, bourbon in a vanilla milkshake is a, an excellent choice if you're going to do that.
JULIA: That does sound dope.
ERIC: And I mean the quality of milkshake obviously if you go to a real nice place they have these already made but I mean if you're just looking to do this, just drive out over to your local Mickey D's and just grab, grab a large vanilla and puts, put some [31:48]. I don't know how it would be with, with chocolate. I feel like vanilla and bourbon kind of work well together, but you know, you know, do you. Do you. Don't do, don't do uh, one of those Shamrock Shakes. Although, you know what, shamrock, shamrock shake with some whiskey also could be good but I think in that case, you would want to use some Jameson just, just to keep it, keep it as, as green and Irish as possible, but strawberry milkshake don't do it in that one. That would be no good.
JULIA: I don't know. I don't know.
ERIC: Although, Julia is saying maybe. Julia is saying maybe.
JULIA: Listen, I don't like strawberry milkshakes or whiskey so probably not for me, but probably someone would like that.
ERIC: Yeah, maybe you could just do vodka. You could do whatever you want.
JULIA: Yeah, fuck yeah.
AMANDA: I'm certain there's a guide to boozifying your milkshakes online somewhere.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Hell yeah.
ERIC: It's, it's probably better than what I'm doing, which is taking an already made milkshake and putting alcohol in it. There's probably a way to do it while the milkshake is being made at home to really liven it up a bit more.
JULIA: I also am impressed by anyone who goes to McDonald's and surely can get a shake because every time I go the shake machine is down so...
ERIC: I've never had this problem but I also haven't, like, gotten a milkshake from McDonald's probably in a decade.
JULIA: Well, I stopped trying because every time I went their machine was broken.
ERIC: There's a lot of podcast episodes about this. The Sportful has done a series, I think Reply all did episode on milkshakes. There, it's all, it's a vast conspiracy about the milkshake machines being down. Like, no joke. Genuine stuff is, like, like lawsuits and stuff. It is wild the milkshake McDonald's drama that exists out in the world.
JULIA: The controversy. Yeah.
AMANDA: Well, guys, I don't have a conspiracy theory to share, but I do have a widespread actually countrywide problem that Jana has brought to our attention. Do you want to hear about it?
ERIC: Yes.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Okay, so Jana titles this email. I think the Philippines has a doppelganger problem.
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: Plus my mother's strangely haunted life.
JULIA: Don't like that.
ERIC: Oh, wow.
AMANDA: Hey, Amanda, Julia, and Eric. I've been a fan of the pod since 2018 with Spirits and other Multitude shows being my constant commute companions. It's given so much joy to my trips. So, to preface this, I think I have to say a few things about how my mother and I were raised and how I believe that no matter how logical you are, as a person, if you grew up under my grandmother's wing, you'll never really be a skeptic.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: My grandmother was a fairly traditional Filipino grandma. She believed all the superstitions and cooked the best food among other things, but what made her so fascinating to me when I was younger was her penchant for spiritualism.
JULIA: Mhmm.
AMANDA: My mom was a very sickly child having been born with asthma and rarely ever going a year without at least a mild medical emergency. Same. My mom always spoke fondly of the moments that grandma took care of her and most importantly, protected her. My grandmother would place crackers and honey near my mother's bedside when she was delirious with fever and stand vigil. She told my mom it was to protect her from encantos while she was vulnerable. This isn't actually a normal and widespread thing to do traditionally. I think it was just something that she personally knew to do. She was so nonchalant about things like that, that it wasn't so easy to dismiss, which would have been fine if they hadn't lived in an old abandoned movie theater.
JULIA: What? Explain.
ERIC: The dream.
JULIA: Honestly. Yeah. You know what, I remember reading a book when I was a kid.
ERIC: I also remember this.
JULIA: Shut up. I think it was called like the Thief King or something to that effect, and it was about a bunch of, like, orphans or like small children that, like, ran away from home who were living in an abandoned theater, and like, yeah.
ERIC: This sounds kind of familiar.
AMANDA: Why did we fantasize about being orphans so much as kids? Maybe it was the Disney movies that led us to believe it that's how you have adventure.
JULIA: Alright, it was called The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke.
AMANDA: Oh yeah, that's right. The Thief Lord, I remember that.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Well, don't worry guys. To this day, my mother insists that this place was haunted. She and my aunt used to wake each other up in the middle of the night to keep each other company while using the bathroom because apparently the living space was all the way across from the bathrooms, which meant they had to walk through the wide theater in the dark. There were no lights in there, just the living spaces, not the theater itself. My grandmother was apparently not affected by the oppressive atmosphere and my aunt even remembers that she did laundry in the scariest part of the building. They've all seen her heard weird things there one way or another. They moved before I was even born, so all I have of that place is their stories. My mom eventually found a job in a hospital in the Philippines. It has a lot of history and you guess hauntings.
JULIA: Of course.
AMANDA: She was a medtech and has all kinds of stories from the place but the one I wanted to focus on was about creatures that I think are doppelgangers.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: I want to hear a lot more Jana about this movie theater, so you gotta like, you know, do a census of your whole family and get back.
JULIA: I need to know every detail about that movie theater. 100%.
AMANDA: Yeah. Where were the living quarters? Was the theater still in? Like, you said abandoned, when was it abandoned?
JULIA: Were the seats removed?
AMANDA: Did a caretaker family live there? Yeah, exactly. I have to know.
ERIC: I have not stopped thinking about what I would do with an abandoned movie theater since we started this. And I think the main issue is theaters on a slant for the height differences. Like, you'd really have to, like, do some work to make that a livable space because otherwise you're just dealing with, like, just everything's gonna roll across the floor downward.
AMANDA: Or Eric, consider glutes of steel at all times.
ERIC: Glutes of steel.
AMANDA: Because you're constantly walking up, like, a 5% incline, I mean.
ERIC: Right. I'm with you on there, but think about using a desk on a 5% incline. Like, I'm not worried about the movement across the floor. I'm worried about how you would just simply lie at a bed and it rolled over and you just keep rolling down a hill.
AMANDA: I guess you could just live your life 5% inclined. Or build platforms.
JULIA: I lived my life at 5% inclined at a time.
AMANDA: Yep. That's where I was going. Thank you, Julia. Okay, so Jana continues. This is a uniquely creepy story in my mom's life, because unlike the others, it doesn't come from a place it followed her. And I think it followed me too.
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: The most recent encounter she had was during a recent trip, my uncle had a place where she was visiting as well as a makeshift office where he normally conducted business. It was huge and spread out and it's basically a very small kind of subdivision village. She was walking toward the office having just left the house to visit her uncle and check up on me and my cousins because we'd gone over there earlier in the day. She saw my uncle's assistant walking toward her and tried to engage in a conversation asking if we, the kids, were still with my uncle, but apparently the assistant just kept walking past her. My mom walked faster to the office in a huff because she was, like, Wow, your assistant is being so rude.
JULIA: Fucking rude. All right.
AMANDA: Imagine the shock my mother had when she saw that assistant, just outside my uncle's office entertaining all of us kids. She told us the story even claiming that my uncle's assistant was wearing the same clothes as when they ran into each other earlier in the day, but that couldn't have been possible because the assistant was with us the entire afternoon. And everyone just did that standard Filipino thing when you describe something that sounds like a haunting. We laughed it off and said that happens.
ERIC: That standard Filipino thing.
AMANDA: Other Filipinos in the audience, please write in.
JULIA: Is that true?
AMANDA: My mom has had multiple encounters like that. And so far, I've had two. I can tell you about my most recent one. It happened when I was in junior year of high school, my best friend joined the art club and I was in journalism. Our club rooms were on the opposite sides of the building and my meeting usually ended before hers. We had an agreement to walk home together, so I checked on their room and they were still having a rapt discussion. I was flustered because a lot of people looked at me peering in through the window, so I waited downstairs, a floor below. I thought I could just meet her out there.
JULIA: Love social anxiety making you make decisions. Hell yes.
AMANDA: I know. Also, great news to any high schoolers out there. No one is ever going to look at your outfits and compare them with the day before in so much detail as they do in high school. Adulthood, you're free. Nobody notices you. They're all too busy. Don't worry.
JULIA: No one knows. No one cares. It's all great.
AMANDA: So, I just waited down one flight past the time, pacing back and forth on a short strip of hallway. Besides the flight of stairs, there was a bathroom that I had checked on earlier because I wanted to wash my hands. It was locked, which was to be expected because it was 5pm and they usually lock them by 4:00 or 4:30, but while pacing, I saw a girl come down the stairs and hurried over to greet what I thought was my friend but it was just this random girl. We made eye contact which is why I remembered her and her face and then she went into the bathroom. It wasn't really a big deal. I just figured that maybe I, earlier hadn't pulled the door hard enough because sometimes they do get stuck. Really not a big deal, but another pace back and forth later, I saw her again. Same girl coming down the stairs made eye contact with me but this time she didn't go into the bathroom. She gave me a weird smirk and headed down the stairs.
JULIA: Oh no. Don't like that.
AMANDA: Something about her unnerved me so much that I tried wrenching open the bathroom door to make sense of what I just seen, but guys, it was locked. I ran downstairs to try to catch a glimpse of the girl again, but she was gone.
JULIA: What a fucking bold power move.
AMANDA: I know. School was basically empty by that point with only a few stragglers and my friend's club meeting that was refusing to end. I went back up the stairs, outside the club room and waited there within view of her door because I was very spooked. I kept trying to make sense of it. Like, maybe I missed this girl going up and back down the stairs after the bathroom but it was impossible. I was standing just in front of it maintaining a very small walk space starting at the stairs and ending by the bathroom. There was no way I could have missed her. I still think about that moment all the time. It's not the creepiest thing, but I really do dislike the fact that I can't explain these moments. Stay spooky. Jana.
JULIA: I love doppelgangers. I think they're a really interesting and fun, like, trope that we see in a lot of urban legends. I'm curious if sometimes maybe it's not doppelgangers, but rather like a time loop or like a sight of something that is going to happen. And then it happens.
AMANDA: Like, kind of multiverse splintering timeline splintering moment?
JULIA: Yeah, why not? You know? So, like, you know, for the first story, maybe the assistant was going to walk that way and didn't see the aunt because she wasn't there in the time that she was walking, and then fast forward. And there she is.
AMANDA: I think what haunts me about this story is that it wasn't somebody that Jana recognized and not that you know, every single person who goes to your school by name like our school, Julia was like, I don't know what, like, 1200 people? And I don't think I knew everybody's face, but if I saw someone that distinctly and then never saw them again, that'd be pretty unusual. Like, I would notice them again, you know, down the line somewhere in, in school, but unlike the assistant example, she did make eye contact the second time and she gave her a little smirk, which to me is just like, oh shit, like, there really is something happening here.
JULIA: That's bad. There's something going on. They know something, you know?
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
ERIC: Well, I have another story that takes place during college. So, this comes to us from Tabitha and she writes, during my second year in college, I got stuck living in an all woman dorm on the edge of campus.
JULIA: What's up with all these all lady dorms?
ERIC: I didn't even remember that these were related in the sense that they were both about all women dorms. I completely forgot about that fact.
JULIA: It also feels like the first story was very much like yeah, all lady dorms and this one's like I got stuck in an all lady dorm.
ERIC: By the way, I cannot imagine a more dangerous place to put a dorm. All of the rooms on my side of the building faced away from campus and had a sliding glass door. The fence surrounding the school was about 15 feet away and on the other side was the parking lot for a pawn shop.
AMANDA: Oh.
ERIC: There weren't even any other dorms around us, just academic buildings. I'll never understand why they thought this was a good design decision.
AMANDA: Okay, I went to school at NYU, which is slowly eating up all the real estate in lower Manhattan. It's not good. The dorms that NYU owns are for the most part apartment buildings that they bought for cheap in the 90s. Those were all my dorms, apartment buildings. Was this dorm a motel? What's happening here? I've never heard of sliding glass doors in a way that could be retrofitted to serve as a dorm that isn't a motel?
JULIA: Yeah. No, it seems Motel-ly.
ERIC: My first dorm was a motel
JULIA: What?
ERIC: In college my freshman year. It was, it was like a motel that they built. I think they built it initially for, like, visitors and, like, parents that were coming to visit because my college was in the middle of nowhere. And eventually, like, that wasn't happening. And then they I mean, there was no other reason for there to be a motel in this place, but yeah, my first dorm was just, like, your standard issue double queen size type room with a sink in the bathroom. Just like exactly what you would expect in, like, motel from the 80s look like.
JULIA: At least you had an ensuite bathroom.
ERIC: We did. It was quite nice. It was quite nice.
AMANDA: I'm speechless..
JULIA: Buckwild.
ERIC: Anyway, I was, it says anyway here. They knew we were gonna go out on a tangent like that. Anyway, I was working on homework one night and, and because I am a huge procrastinator, the essay I was writing was due the next day. I don't remember exactly what happened to my laptop, but I do remember that it just died and I was finishing the essay and there was no hope of reviving it before the submission deadline.
JULIA: Classic.
ERIC: I'm terrible at remembering when things happened, but I think this was right before either Thanksgiving or Spring break because neither of my roommates were home and there weren't many people on campus. I remember my freshman year, there was back to my freshman year apparently, there was like a fall break that we had or just like an extra extended weekend. Like, I was across the country from my freshman year, so I didn't go home for those kinds of things. And it was super weird because it was like me, like, it wasn't a huge university. There are probably only a couple 1000 people but, like, almost everyone left because most people were in state students and, like, I was one of like literally a few dozen people on campus just for, like, those four days. It's just like, all right, the cafeteria has everybody in it and it's like 40 people.
JULIA: That's wild.
AMANDA: Truly the dream. Truly the dream. I love this.
JULIA: I feel like we both should have gone to smaller colleges if that was the dream.
AMANDA: I know. I know. I made a bad choice.
ERIC: Once I finished panicking and kicking myself for not writing the essay in a Google Doc, I used my phone to look up where the campus computer lab would be open. I found that it would be open early enough in the morning that I have a few hours to recreate my essay and get it submitted. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about the process of rewriting the paper. All I remember is finishing it with about 10 minutes to spare, submitting it and staggering out of the building.
JULIA: I'm having horrible college flashbacks listening to this.
ERIC: Yeah, no kidding. Remember computer lab? Do they still have, I guess they still, they have --
JULIA: They have to.
ERIC: -- computer labs, but I bet that's more like specialized. Like, this is like the, like, visual medias. Like, I feel like most people are at college, you have a laptop or you have something so you don't, like, need to go somewhere to use Microsoft Word.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah, I think they require laptops now, but in my day, you had to print in the computer lab or the single library for 40,000 kids to use. Yeah, it was a lot.
JULIA: And then you could only print out a certain amount of pages per semester too, which made it 1000 times worse, because you're like, what if I have 240 page papers and you gave me a 50 page cap, like fuck that.
AMANDA: Mhmm. Mhmm.
ERIC: Tabitha continues, I was in really bad shape by the time I left the lab. I hadn't gotten much sleep and I chugged tons of caffeine and had just fried my brain scrambling to get the essay done. I was having a really hard time focusing and probably staggering around like a fool. I'm incredibly lucky that this happened in the middle of day rather than the middle of the night. I was so out of it that I couldn't even remember how to get back to my dorm. Here's where it gets pretty strange. As I was trying to figure out what to do next, a squirrel jumped out on the path right in front of me.
AMANDA: Oh?
ERIC: For whatever reason, I knew that I was supposed to follow this squirrel.
JULIA: No.
ERIC: This is your brain on 5am essay writing.
AMANDA: No, buddy.
JULIA: Don't follow the squirrel, don't do that. Squirrels are bad.
ERIC: It hopped along in front of me occasionally looking back to make sure I was still there. In what felt like no time, I found myself standing in front of my dorm with a squirrel right in front of me literally waiting for something. I had no food to offer, but once I thanked them, they skittered off happily. Rather than thinking about the weird thing that had just happened, I dragged myself into my room and passed out for hours. I've thought about this over the years and honestly think something took pity on me and decided to make sure I got home safe. I appreciate whatever that was. I also made sure everything I write is saved to the cloud now. Why tempt fate again?
JULIA: Smart.
ERIC: Tabitha.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Smart, smart.
ERIC: I just like the idea of just a woodland creature helping you out ala like Snow White.
JULIA: Very fairy tale.
ERIC: I'm going to lead you home because, like, a squirrel is a pretty erratic animal.
JULIA: Yep!
ERIC: Especially once close to a human. The idea of, like, it checking that you're still, like, behind it and, like, guiding you somewhere is just adorable to me.
JULIA: Sounds like a d&d campaign.
ERIC: It sure does.
JULIA: Sure does.
AMANDA: Incredible. Well, someone uh, someone chose to help you and I think you should feel pretty pleased about that.
JULIA: You should. So, whether you are currently writing papers in the computer lab at 5am or you are following a squirrel to your final destination, which makes it sounds like you're following a squirrel to your death.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: That's not what I mean. Remember to stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool. Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @spiritspodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a forum to send us in your urban legends, and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more like recipe cards with alcoholic and non-alcoholic for every single episode, director's commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits, you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye.
Transcribed by: John Matthew M. Sarong