Episode 300: Your Urban Legends - Too Many Ghosts Being Too Ghostly
/It’s our 300th episode! And to celebrate, you’re getting an extra-long urban legends episode! Ghost horses, ghost lights, office doppelgangers, ghost grandmas, and haunted houses? We’re hitting ALL the creepy and cool things this episode.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of animal death, drug use, death, illness, colonialism, displaced communities, suicide, misogyny, familial abuse, dementia, gentrification, insects/spiders, and decapitation.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends The Accidental Pinup by Danielle Jackson!
- 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
- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Sign up for DashPass and get 50% off your first order up to $15 value. Use promo code SPIRITS at checkout when you spend $12 or more.
- Studs is reimagining the piercing experience for each and every ear. Go to STUDS.com/spirits for 20% off your first purchase.
- BetterHelp is a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/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 it's Episode 300, baby!
[cheering]
ERIC: This is it! We've done it.
JULIA: We've done it.
AMANDA: Eric, can I get some like firework-
JULIA: Pew! pew!
AMANDA: -sound effects as I was saying that, please?
ERIC: Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, muddy, muddy all of the dialogue.
JULIA: It'll be great. Don't worry about it.
AMANDA: Well, I feel like we have to do something special because listeners were just treated to that beautiful new theme song, baby!
JULIA: Yeah!
AMANDA: Oh, it's been years and years. It's been hundreds of episodes, almost as many episodes as there are days in a year. That's a lot of things.
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: And it's a new remix theme song by Brandon Grugle. Thank you, Brandon.
JULIA: Thank you, Brandon.
ERIC: I think that is the celebration. I don't think we need the fireworks. I think we've got the new music.
JULIA: We do.
ERIC: I think that is everything the listeners have been asking for. But if they've been asking for even more longer hometown episodes, well, they're only going to get one and it's this one. Because we're doing multiple stories each. We're gonna have a real fun, celebratory time for Episode 300. Read it, read in some fun stories more than usual. So sit back, and enjoy. We are so happy that we were at 300.
ERIC: Also, when you clicked on this new episode, did you notice there's new art there? Oh my gosh. Look at your screen. That's new art!
ERIC: An art remix and an art refresh by our own Alison Wakeman!
JULIA: Whoa!
AMANDA: Thank you, Alison. Julia, it warms my heart that there are now two little skulls instead of just the one.
JULIA: It is both of us. Both of us-
AMANDA: It's us
JULIA: -a little skull. And then Eric, you're the cup.
ERIC: I am the cup.
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC: That's what, that's what we always call me.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: They call me Eric Hamilton "The Cup" Schneider.
JULIA: That's true. You hold the whole thing together, that's why.
ERIC: Mmmm, yes.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: You hold the liquid from spilling over.
ERIC: And if you don't see new artwork, that's because sometimes podcast apps are weird and don't update podcast art for a really long time. So like just keep your eye out. It'll change eventually. If you don't see it now or you can go to spiritspodcast.com and you could probably see it there somewhere.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: And now all your merch that has the old logo on it, that's retro now.
ERIC: It's vintage.
JULIA: It's worth more.
ERIC: Its vintage put that stuff on Grailed.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: $200 a shirt.
AMANDA: Guys, I was recently buying the sneakers that I'm going to wear at my wedding. And my feet are too big for women's sizes but just right for men's sizes. And so I was deep in sneaker internet trying to find the sort of sneakers I had in mind. I was on the Goat I was on the StockX, I was, I was in there and it was like wow, this is, this is a whole other world that I know nothing about much like the spiritual world and the spooky world that sort of is in and among and around all of us that we're going to explore for extra long today. And we're so excited to make more and more Spirits, another 300 episodes hit another milestone after this. And after that, gosh, I'm so ready. And by the way, lots of new treats and tricks over on the Patreon for you. We took this opportunity to make some refreshes make some changes get some exciting new [3:28] that we are so, so stoked about. So you'll see a little audio update in your feed after this episode explaining to you all about the new Patreon, baby.
JULIA: I'm really stoked about the new stuff that's on there.
AMANDA: It's like a vow renewal but instead of going to you know Mexico and like wearing-
JULIA: Eric looks so confused by you saying go to Mexico.
AMANDA: You know people do a vow renewal.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And they go to see tropical place maybe it's Key West I don't know.
JULIA: No, it's all the same.
AMANDA: And they recommit to their lives together. That's us now here with this.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: [3:58] Spirit.
JULIA: To get us started. Would you guys like a follow-up email from Phobi? As you might remember the one who keeps-
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: -sending in the Mama's psychic story?
AMANDA: Of course, I would.
ERIC: Yes. Please.
JULIA: So Phobi says, "Dearest Spirits people, Tis I, Phobi, of the “Mama psychic?…” emails. Preface: My mother believes she is super psychic. My dad and sisters are super skeptics, and I’m stuck somewhere in..." the middle. "Jumping in to send you this one, out of order, so that I can send you the next one. Which I need to deeply, desperately, lots."
ERIC: Okay.
JULIA: "During my adolescence, I went through a period where I would have unsettling dreams. Every morning for three months or so I would jerk awake gasping and sweating. I remembered none of the dream but sat in the lingering remnants of fear and anxiety before wrenching myself from tangled bedsheets. As time went on I would wake with an increasing sense of anxiety and physical disorientation, with my hands frozen cold and tingling with numbness." Maybe you were sleeping on the wrong I don't know. Just a suggestion.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: "Towards the end I would wake up so tangled up in the bedclothes so tightly that I would literally have to tip myself onto the floor and crawl out of them in a series of ridiculous contortions. A few times my older sister had to take my numb, frozen, useless hands and drag me out of the clinging cocoon. I finally mentioned this to my mother. She was really concerned about my hands (the cold numbness had begun to creep up my arms, it was taking longer to get the feeling back)" That's bad. That sounds like muscle problems.
JULIA: "And immediately took me to a clinic, but the doctor just told me to hydrate and exercise. A few weeks later my mom told me that she’d mentioned my dreams to a priest we’d met in the Philippines 3 years prior when we’d visited to attend a wedding. I was vaguely aware that this priest was also supernaturally gifted like my mom and that they’d kept in touch. At the time I was content to make friends with the priest’s daughter (a little older than me and a violin virtuoso) and actively not questioning the fact that this Catholic priest was dad to a family of seven kids." Oh, interesting.
AMANDA: Oh, not how it normally works.
JULIA: No, usually not how that works. I mean, I guess you could like have a family and then join the priesthood?
AMANDA: And then, yeah.
JULIA: Right?
AMANDA: Yeah, I guess so.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: I don't know. Let's just get in touch. I'm curious about this dynamic.
JULIA: "I was irrationally angry with my mom for discussing the dreams with the priest and I let her know it. I was so full or ire that I didn’t even register how out of character this was for me. As a teenager I found my parents frustrating often (true to this day). But I never shouted at them or mouthed off to their faces. I would walk away, till my anger cooled. To this day I am someone who goes quiet in anger, withdrawing. Early on in life I’d developed a fear of speaking harshly in anger and speaking a hurt I couldn’t take back. But here I was nearly shouting at my highly emotional mother and she was being very calm. Unusually so. Deep role reversal. My mom continued on, as though we were having a nice chat, and informed me that she and the Father were praying a novena for me that week. She said it was a good thing that I didn’t recall anything from the dreams; sometimes ignorance was a protection and it would keep me safe until I was ready for it."
AMANDA: Oh my god, novena is serious. That's nine days of serious prayer, baby.
JULIA: Yeah. Eric, as a captain of Team Ignorant, I would say, do you agree with the statement?
ERIC: I mean, that's a long time. But I mean, sometimes you got to do what you got to do. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's like a constant. Like it's not like a scratching at the walls or something like that kind of thing.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: So I feel like it's more like a Team Ignorant is all about like, in the immediate moment where something happens and like it's a flight or flight or hide situation. So, ao I mean, this is a falls in the purview, but I don't know if it's exactly a Team Ignorant thing.
JULIA: Okay. Okay. "So, two weeks later the dreams stopped. My hands went back to normal and bed became the marvelous sleep igloo it had been before. However, a dark dream…"
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: "Over a decade passed."
ERIC: Oh!
JULIA: "Then a few months ago, I dreamed. The beginning of the dream was hazy and forgotten. I’d been walking through the forest. I knew this forest, it was the small pine forest I had to pass through every day to get to my elementary school. I loved it, and the twists and dips of each trail were welcome and familiar. I was walking and looking down at the ferns that grew between the trails at the base of the old pines and cedars, each spreading frond as huge and green as I imagined their prehistoric ancestors to be." The people who write in are such good writers. And it blows me away every time.
AMANDA: I know.
JULIA: "I moved, walking without looking. Then I realized the path had taken a turn I hadn’t noticed, and the woods weren’t familiar anymore." And then in parentheses, it says, "Holy shit, as I’m typing this my heart is suddenly racing."
JULIA: "I was in a grove in the heart of a forest of dead wood trees. That makes no sense but it’s true. It should be ‘hardwood trees.’ Their naked leafless branches reached for the sky. None so big or tall as my evergreens. My evergreens were wrapped in layers of warmth and memory. Full boughs had sheltered me from rain and snow. The old enormous ferns between them had hidden me from other children when I’d need to cry away hurt feelings and scraped knees. The close, huge trees of the pine forest would keep me close and safe. There was no safety here. Naked reaching branches and trunks wrapped in smooth dark grey bark. I knew all of this in a second, I felt at once both robbed and stolen. I took in the rolling fog in the middle distance between the trunks of the dead trees. Below me, the forest floor thick with fallen leaves so dead and old that they were shriveled grey and would crumble into soundless dust underfoot. In the center of the grove, a tree stood alone, bigger and darker than the rest. I was aware of a presence at my side, close and looming. I turned my head, and without moving the presence shifted, moving across from me, no longer too close to look upon. There was a lady. It was a distinctly female presence that wasn’t feminine in any manner. She seemed impossibly tall and shapeless in her dark robes, like a solid shroud of shadow. Her skin was somewhere between pallid and grey. Her face was uncovered and I understood that she had facial features but I could not discern them. Could be staggeringly beautiful or unspeakably terrifying, as she chose. Her hair was dark and her head crowned with antlers or branches, such that I could not tell if it was she who was antlered. We spoke to each other then. I spoke in a way that had no sound. She spoke in a way that used no words. Sound was muted in this place. As though the vibrations twisted away from each other before they even formed in my throat, falling from my mouth down to the forest floor. As though I spoke a breeze that took an indirect path, barely stirring the air as it swept over and up for the Lady to hear. The Lady had asked me a question and I was explaining my answer."
AMANDA: Ugh!
JULIA: "Standing in this place it was as if I had become first one and then two steps displaced from my feelings. I was going through motions I had been through before. I was distantly worried that I should hurry up in my answer lest she lose her patience and get angry with me." There's nothing like a creature that you're like, oh, I know like, I can't sense the feelings that are happening here. But I know this thing could get angry at me. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yeah, like the menacing energy of a fairy who's perfectly content to talk to you now. But you notice the teeth are pretty sharp.
JULIA: Yeah, "The idea of her angry was at once both deeply and vacuously frightening to me. The Lady cut me off, she addressed me in such a way that I understood could roughly be abstracted to “baby squirrel.”
ERIC: Oh, that's not what I was expecting.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: Inexperienced, little existence.
The Lady was explaining something to me. Painstaking and in a tone reserved for very small, slow children. But I could only be grateful, the concept or contract or construct being explained was such a vast and intricate thing with its own dangers, and was I giving her my best attentive self even as the nature of the place pulled at my senses. Even as she spoke and I listened, I became separately aware that at the end of this explanation I would have to make a choice. The stress and anxiety of that decision, speeding towards me began to make my heart shake. I startled awake to the sound of your voices."
ERIC: It was us the whole time.
JULIA: "Because, of course, I’d fallen asleep listening to Spirits. I flicked on the bedside light and sat quietly unsettled in the amber glow. I lay there listening, and breathing while my heart ran down. Abruptly, my mind turned back the years like a rolodex and I was 16 shouting at my mom about a dream I couldn’t even remember.
What was there for me to do but rewind the episode, snuggle in and listen to it from the beginning? Nothing else. Only reasonable course of action. So, it follows that somewhere between waking in the wee hours and waking proper in the morning, I had dreamt thusly:" The second dream, baby squirrel. "In a darkened space, wrapped in the muted soundscape of" lady "voices, Amanda, wearing some sort of fabulous green jumpsuit, picked me up. Of course, she could pick me up—I was a baby squirrel."
AMANDA: Yes! I want nothing more than a hole the baby squirrel!
JULIA: "Amanda held me in her palm and tucked me into the space between her ribs and heart. The restless white noise of my wordless anxiety was soothed and hushed. I understood that I was in a safe space and if I ever felt afraid, I could hug the big, warm heart and know that I was not alone."
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: "Thank you." All three of you "For this lovely little podcast, stories, and the camaraderie of the creepy/cool community. With love and affection and support and creepiness, Yours, Phobi aka baby squirrel." And there's a PS, guys, get ready.
AMANDA: I love the PS.
JULIA: "PS. I wrote this all in a rapid-fire fever the day after my dark-woods dreaming. As I was reading it over, in my head I thought to myself, ‘Creepy, but it's ok. I’m ok. I’m fine.’ And then I heard myself say physically out loud from my own mouth: “That’s the promise. The promise is you will always be fine.” In the deafening silence that followed that unprompted and unexpected statement, I sat perfectly still while my heart tried to eject itself from my chest and flee the scene, afraid that if I moved I would have a full-on panic attack. …Had I fey bargained myself with a Dark Forest Queen? Hope you enjoyed." Amanda is like, ughhhhh!!!
AMANDA: I am. I realize being speechless isn't good audio, guys. But-
JULIA: No
AMANDA: Damn, I am speechless!
JULIA: I know, right?
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Wow
ERIC: You never want to make a deal with a Fae. But you really don't want to do it in a dream where you're not even sure you made the deal.
JULIA: Right.
ERIC: Because that's now you're like-
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: -who knows when, if at all, this is gonna come back to you.
JULIA: It might. It might come back to haunt you a little bit.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Big interesting situation we've got here.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: The fairy queen could be like, Hey, do you want to just make a quick bargain with me? And then you'll always be okay. But then your baby squirrel for the rest of time. Like that, That's some fay logic right there.
JULIA: But Amanda, even if they're a baby squirrel, at least they have a nice comfortable spot in your overalls.
AMANDA: Yeah, I'm wearing overalls right now you could just sit in the front pocket.
JULIA: It'd be so cute.
ERIC: Perfect.
AMANDA: I was at a Lizzo concert in like 2017 or 18. And she said something along the lines of like, you know, whenever you doubt yourself, or you're feeling lonely, or you need it, like just picture you know, like a box right in the middle of your chest and then put all the self-love in there and put your fingers on it and like then you'll know that I know that you're worthy of love, right? Like along those lines. I'm sure you can find YouTube videos. It's incredibly lovely. And I have definitely like put my little hand right on my breastbone. You know, I thought to myself like that's the spot that's where all the love is like Lizzo told me that moment was magical. You know, there it is. And that's where the baby squirrel was resting.
JULIA: That's so sweet. I could cry.
AMANDA: Ah! What a dream, what a letter. Love it.
JULIA: Who wants to go next?
AMANDA: Well speaking of adorable animals, Julia, I have you know from the beginning of the podcast denied and then come around to accepting and even embracing the fact that I was, of course, a horse girl.
JULIA: Ha-ha! Finally.
AMANDA: And it was and is true. And Jill wrote in with a Hometown Urban Legends titled to The Haunted Stable. Would you like to hear about it?
JULIA: Of course, I would.
ERIC: Yeah, let's go.
AMANDA: Alright. "Hi! A friend recently recommended your podcast to me, and I’ve been listening to it on my daily commute ever since. I love it! I’ve especially enjoyed the Urban Legends episodes, so I figured I’d send you a story of my own." Jill and Jill's friend. Good job. You're doing the good work out here.
JULIA: Good job.
AMANDA: "I've always been sensitive to Spirits and such as long as I can remember. I see them often." "The story I like to tell y'all is a bit more recent." "I used to work at a very haunted equestrian facility just down the street from an old cemetery."
JULIA: Excellent.
ERIC: Yes.
JULIA: You know it horses love? Ghosts.
AMANDA: When a horse misbehaves, it's because it sees ghosts. I truly believe it.
JULIA: Yeah, when they say, oh, something spooked the horse, it's a ghost.
AMANDA: It's a ghost. Horses just have a very well-developed self-preservation instinct.
JULIA: That's true.
AMANDA: "Strange sightings became fairly commonplace for me, especially since I was the first person on site in the morning and the last to leave at night. We had three main entities that hung around the barn, and over time I got to where I could tell which one was nearby just based on the vibes. The first one was benign if a little inconvenient at times. Soon after I started working there, I noticed a shape lingering in the indoor arena. It wasn’t always there, and it disappeared if I looked directly at it, but from glances caught out of the corner of my eye I was able to get a pretty good idea of what it looked like. It was a large, black horse with feathered feet, like a Shire or Clydesdale. He liked to hang out in one particular corner, which was inconvenient because the other horses knew he was there. They would often spook at the corner before I even saw the ghost horse, and on other occasions, they would make a point of going around him as if, to them, he was solid. Now, these are therapy horses." by the way, "They don’t get scared by much."
JULIA: They're still very sensitive horses because they're therapy horses.
AMANDA: They are but they're trained so that if kids have outbursts or like you know they are trained to like really find many things very normal and feel very safe no matter what's happening. So this is like very, you know, very, very extra.
JULIA: I just really like emotional horses.
AMANDA: So Jill continues, "My boss saw one of the horses spook at the ghost horse while I was riding, and laughingly asked what he was so bothered by. I casually replied, “Oh, it’s just the ghost horse. He likes that corner.”
ERIC: Hust the ghost horse, a normal thing to say.
JULIA: This is also a very fascinating thing because like I feel like a lot of times when we hear about haunted workplaces, it is the new people who are being told about the haunting.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Or they're discovering the haunting, and usually like the people who have been there longer or the bosses know about said haunting. So in this case, the boss doesn't know about the haunting, which means he's not in tune with what's going on in his workplace.
AMANDA: Well, the boss then asked Jill to describe said ghost she says, "Which I did. Turns out the winter before I started working there, a horse had to be euthanized due to severe illness."
JULIA: Ohhhh...
AMANDA: "He was a big, black Shire, and that “favorite corner” was the place where he was put down. I had never heard of that horse, let alone seen pictures of him, but after sharing my story with my boss, she showed me a photo. Same horse."
JULIA: Same horse!?
AMANDA: "He had been best friends with one of our other horses, and I guess he decided to stick around to watch over his buddy after his death."
JULIA: He's just waiting for his buddy to come join him.
AMANDA: I know, then they can gallop around together. "Another entity I encountered often was a small, black thing (I say thing because I never got a good look at it) that liked to dart across doorways and run up and down walls, quicker than quick."
JULIA: I was gonna say it's a cat and then up and down walls and then I was like, oh no.
AMANDA: Yep, same. Maybe baby squirrel TBD. "If I blinked, I’d miss it, but it seemed to carefully time its sprinting so I caught sight of it. My coworker said it liked to run past her legs, just brushing against her jeans or tugging lightly on her keychain as it went."
JULIA: Oh, hell no.
AMANDA: "For whatever reason, it never came close enough to touch me, and it steered clear of her too if I was there." That's all we got. Any guesses?
JULIA: God, I mean, like, I like your theory of a squirrel, Amanda.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Or some sort of woodland creature that is darting its way through this stable perhaps.
AMANDA: I mean, it'd be pretty fun if after death a barn cat gained the ability to walk on walls also.
JULIA: That would be very cool. I love that.
ERIC: I mean, it would also make sense. Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: There's also I'm going to do a quick Google real quick. But do you guys remember in one of our creepy or cool segments that we did at a live show I told you about the Japanese yokai spirit that was just like a thing that felt like an invisible cat, basically-
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: -that would wrap itself around your legs and try to trip you up?
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
ERIC: It could also be like an owl, right?
JULIA: Very true. Could be.
ERIC: Flying through, they're spooky, they gotta they got us. I mean, a hoot, and a hoo. Very, very ominous in the woods at night.
AMANDA: Sure.
ERIC: Very more ominous if it's that sound and also very ethereal. [ethereal hoo] I mean, I'm just saying, it adds up for me.
AMANDA: I will do like shiny things, I think. Some of them at least.
JULIA: I feel like most birds like shiny things. So-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: -I feel you.
AMANDA: Could explain the keychain, [21:29].
ERIC: Oh, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: The yokai that I was thinking of is called Ashi-Magari and it was basically just like a fuzzy little guy who would wrap around your ankles and try to trip you up.
JULIA: Incredible.
ERIC: Adorable.
AMANDA: Well, Jill has one more story from this haunted Equestrian Center. She writes, "The last one was the creepiest. I rarely saw him, but he made his presence known in other ways. He liked to come up behind me and whisper unintelligible words in my ear. I could feel his breath on my neck, but if I turned around no one was there. When I did see him, it was always as an indistinct figure standing absolutely still, about 100-200 feet away from me. He had a habit of following me around when I was alone on-site, and he also liked stomping around in the hayloft above our office space when he wasn’t stalking me. I didn’t like it, but horses still gotta eat after all. I couldn’t leave mid-shift just because of some ghost. I decided to ignore him, which didn’t really put a stop to his behavior, so after a while I started talking to him. I’d tell him I was much too busy to be afraid of him and that he should leave me alone because there had to be better ways to spend his time. Lo and behold, he backed off. I only dealt with him occasionally after that, until one day. On that day, I was off work, enjoying a beer at a local brewery. My coworker called me, in tears. She was alone on the property, and something had been tormenting her all morning. It had pushed her several times and nearly slammed a door on her hand. When she called me, she was so terrified she had locked herself in our office, and she said ghostly footsteps and voices could be heard in the loft above her. With boldness born of a desire to rescue the fair maiden, I abandoned my relaxing afternoon to go confront a ghost."
JULIA: I would just leave, I would just leave work. I would not come back.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: We recently talked in a bonus urban legends episode, which you can get on patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
AMANDA AND JULIA: Oh!
AMANDA: Now monthly, really easy to understand, et cetera, et cetera?
ERIC: About how haunted a workplace would have to be for you to be like, I'm out.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: And this is definitely far across that line. If you need to lock yourself away at hide from some ghostly apparition. It's too haunted to work there.
JULIA: Yeah, that's bad. Don't like it.
AMANDA: Well, let's see what Jill did. "When I walked into the facility, I could hear the steps and the voices coming from the loft, just as she described. Now, this loft was mostly open, with one staircase as its only access point. We stored some hay up there, but we were due for another hay delivery so there wasn’t much left. All that to say that once I climbed the stairs, I had a full view of the loft. No one passed me on the stairs, and there was no one up there." I didn't see a thing. "After walking around just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I was headed back down the stairs when I felt a cold hand push me. I kept my balance, but my skin crawled. Everything in me said run, but I figured if I did anything so dramatic the ghost might pursue. I don’t know. The dark pressure behind me grew, and I was afraid to look back. Then, it was gone."
ERIC: Oh.
AMANDA: "At the foot of the stairs, I saw the ghost horse. It was the first and only time I ever saw him leave the arena. He seemed to be looking over my shoulder, and he stood like that until I got all the way down. My coworker called my name, and I glanced towards her. When I looked back, the horse had vanished."
JULIA: I love this protective ghost horse spirit. Yes!
AMANDA: Right? "We didn’t hear anything from the spirits for the rest of the day, and nothing like that has happened since. About a year later, we left that old facility and moved into a brand new, probably not haunted one. Anyway, that’s my story. Hope you enjoyed."
ERIC: So was the, was the horse the one doing the inaudible whispers in the ear?
JULIA: No, the horse was protecting from the asshole ghost. ERIC:
Protecting. Okay because I was like we've got a Mr. Ed ghost for I was like that's that can't be what was happening, correct?
AMANDA: No. Also, horses are hot, they are huge animals and they are run hot, their breath is hot and wet.
JULIA: I thought you meant hot in a different way, Amanda. I was like, wh-?
AMANDA: No no no no no, no nothing about a horse, a horse is never cold. Nothing about like even a ghost horse, I imagine just like radiates heat. And I know I love the idea that this ghost horse moved out of his favorite little spot to come chase the bad, bad away.
JULIA: Yeah, like Lassie being like, I hear there's trouble in these parts. I'm gonna stop this ghost.
AMANDA: Exactly. Well, Jill, thank you. Thank you to the ghost horse. I hope the new facility is totally empty of spirits and just gives you a lot of space to hang out and be a horse lady.
JULIA: But now I'm thinking about how the poor ghost horse who's sticking around for his best friend. They've now, they moved to a new facility.
AMANDA: I bet he went with them.
ERIC: Okay.
AMANDA: And I think nothing bad has happened.
JULIA: I hope so.
ERIC: Yeah, I bet he got to like a ghost horse trailer. And like-
JULIA: Incredible.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: -attach that to the regular-
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: -horse trailer just kind of went, went down the highway.
JULIA: Heck yeah.
AMANDA: Exactly what I was picturing, Eric. So good. Alright. Well, Jill, thanks for writing in and guys want to go grab a refill? Yeah, let's do it.
ERIC: Of course, yeah.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
AMANDA: Guys, we made it to the refill Episode 300. I can't believe it. I know we got all [26:38] at the beginning of the ep, and trust me there is much more episode to go and some of the scariest stories we've told on the podcast. But gosh, I can't believe this is our job. We are so grateful. We want to thank, of course, our supporting producer-level patrons. Listen, guys, Patreon makes this show possible. There are so many sort of variables in the world of digital media and podcasting. And unlike a lot of creators out there, we don't have to rely on clicks or an algorithm or pleasing advertisers to make the show possible. We get to rely on the backbone of your support, and we have actually gone ahead and refreshed and added a ton of very exciting new benefits to our Patreon including tarot readings, advice shows a video advice podcast from me and Julia just for patrons and all kinds of other goodies that you already love, like recipe cards and director's commentary over on the Patreon we've also switched to being monthly versus per episode. So it's really easy to understand exactly what you're pledging, what you'll be charged and you can now pledge upfront annually. So if you want to get a discount and do a year's worth of Patreon right up front, you can that's all at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. But of course thank you to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Iron Havoc, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty. I hope all of you enjoy the tarot live check audio dispatch that Julia will soon be creating for our supporting producer and legend patrons. What else is going on around Multitude you ask? Well, I have some great news, which is if you love me and Julia talking and getting animated and caring way too much about folklore and cryptids you should listen to Join the Party. This is of course our actual play podcast here at Multitude with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh every week. This summer we are doing the Camp-Paign our Monster of the Week story set in a weird and wild summer camp. Or of course you can marathon our D&D games with Campaign 2 which is a modern-day comic book super-powered story and Campaign 1, a high fantasy epic that begins at a high fantasy gay wedding. Whichever adventure you choose, we invite you to join us and hang out each month for the Afterparty where we talk about the campaign's joke around and answer your questions. So search for Join the Party in your podcast app or go to jointhepartypod.com To get started. We would also like to thank our sponsors for this episode. And firstly, we are welcoming a new sponsor. This of course is Studs. I know that when I'm out in the world, I really admire the beautiful earrings and piercings that other people have. I have two of my own but I recently thought about adding a new one and I was really excited when studs reached out because they are all about styling your piercings about doing earscapes. Having your ears look beautiful at an affordable price. They make earrings from high-quality materials that won't irritate your skin. Plus they are lightweight and durable. 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And so even I know if I wear something simple, it's a way to show my personality and be out in the world. Right now studs is offering our listeners 20% off your first purchase when you go to studs.com/spirits go to studs.com/spirits for 20% off your first purchase. That's studs.com/spirits. We are also sponsored this week by DoorDash. And as we get into the fall, even if you're no longer in school, it just feels like everybody's busy like events started happening again, there's stuff you got to do, I have a wedding coming up and all the time, whenever I am busy, I feel like the first thing that I sort of lose track of is if I packed lunch, what I have in the fridge for dinner, and oh my gosh, I forgot to buy this one crucial thing at the store when I was out earlier. So I definitely appreciate that from DoorDash. I can get drinks, snacks, meals, and of course household items delivered to me in under an hour, they really do a good job of highlighting both the sort of national chains that are in your neighborhood, but also local partners as well. And for a limited time, our listeners can get 25% off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code SPIRITS that's 25% off up to $10 in value on your first order. When you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter code SPIRITS. Don't forget that's code SPIRITS for 25% off your first order with DoorDash. Subject change terms apply. And finally, we are sponsored by BetterHelp. Oh, guys, I so often feel overwhelmed by the problems in front of me instead of thinking about what I can do to make them better. And something my therapist and I talk about all the time is the fact that like our feelings really come from our thoughts and thinking negative things about myself or the world around me leads to feeling bad. And that might sound really obvious, but it is not obvious to me and something I work on in therapy is training my brain to like solve a problem in front of me instead of worry that the problem just will go on forever. I really appreciate that my therapist doesn't just kind of support me when I'm going through a tough time but also, challenges me to make my life a little better for myself. I'm great at coming through for friends and loved ones if they're going through something tough. I'll be like unleash me, bro. Like let me at whatever is causing you issues and I will fix it for and with you. But I don't necessarily give that same sense of possibility or care to myself and my therapist is like, hey, girl, don't do that. And the way I access therapy is through better help when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there visit betterhelp.com/spirits today to get 10% off your first month. That's better H E L P.com/spirits. And now back to Episode 300, baby.
ERIC: Well, we are back for the big 300th Episode celebration. I have said recently on the podcast, I'm doing less beer drinking and trying just kind of whiskeys and whatnot. But I was in Portland recently and I think I might have mentioned this on a recent episode as well. But I want to give him another shout-out because I don't have any other real new alcohol I've been trying. So I went to the Liquid Riot Brewery and Whiskey House. What are they called? Dispensaries? No, no. Distillery?
JULIA: Distillery?
ERIC: Distilleries.
AMANDA: Distillery?
ERIC: I didn't go to a dispensary if the FBI is listening. But anyways, I got a bottle of their rye whiskey, which was very good. And we did try a couple beers while we were there as well. They have a Japanese style lager, and some really interesting IPAs and other things. So if you're in the Portland, Maine area, Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon. Check them out. They're right on the water there. Very nice place to have a nice little dinner. See some boats coming in and out. And yeah, I highly recommend it. And I'm sure they have some distribution in the area as well.
JULIA: Much like you, Eric, I'm trying to drink less beer at least at home. Like I feel like I'm-
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: -sending my beer drinking out into the world rather at home.
ERIC: That's often what I've been doing. I don't bring beer home. But when I'm out, it's like, well, my mind is we'll have a nice crisp IPA on the patio here.
JULIA: Exactly. But last time I was at my local beer distributor, they have a huge section now of non-alcoholic beers, and I picked up a Nonalcoholic Peach Gose from a company called Partake and it was surprisingly good.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Yeah. And then for my going out beer I've been very much enjoying again shout out to my local brewery, Bluepoint Brewery. They have a peach half and half sour that they made in collaboration with Subtle Tea,
ERIC: Subtle Tea.
JULIA: And it is one, extremely boozy, it's like 8% It's great. And two, taste like a sour peach tea and it's delicious.
AMANDA: Oh my god. Incredible.
ERIC: That's very interesting. Like kind of that that tea infusion into the beer. That's sounds very good.
JULIA: It was mad good.
AMANDA: I dislike summer. I don't like being a sweaty boy. And I'm always a sweaty boy in the summer, but the sort of end of August, New York City empties out and I try to enjoy that time for being able to do things I normally can't do such as go to a speakeasy behind my favorite hot dog called Please Don't Tell. And I had for the first time Raicilla, which is an agave-based spirit similar to mezcal or tequila but something different and new and had it with like a tomatillo and cilantro-based cocktail. It was so tasty, refreshing. I definitely want to experiment more with making some Raicilla drinks at home. So that is my recommendation.
JULIA: That sounds dope.
ERIC: That does sound really good.
AMANDA: Yeah, it was like it was savory. It was so good.
ERIC: Well, I have a story about leaving tips from Monnie. So I feel like we've gotten our refill, make sure to tip your bartender when you're out and this is along those same lines.
JULIA: Okay.
ERIC: So, as I said, this comes to us from Monnie and she writes, "Your show has consistently been among my favorite podcasts since I started listening in 2018. Like many other listeners, I've particularly loved the urban legends episodes. I've always wished I had a story to send in, and the other day I realized that I've had one the whole time, from my own family!
JULIA: Ah-ha!
ERIC: I'd all but forgotten about it until recently. It's short but sweet, and I'm excited to share it I was fortunate to be able to have my great-grandmother (I called her Bubbe) in my life until I was almost fifteen. She was beloved by all and a truly remarkable woman. To give you an idea, she was the kind of old lady whose Facebook profile picture was of her smoking a hookah."
JULIA: Hell yes.
ERIC: "Her favorite sayings were "fuck a duck!" and "shit on a stick!"
JULIA: I love Bubbe.
AMANDA: Yey!
ERIC: This lady rules.
JULIA: Can I have Bubbe in my life?
ERIC: I mean, perhaps maybe her ghostly, ghostly apparition will give you give you a tip someday.
JULIA: Bubbe, stop by anytime.
ERIC: "We roasted marshmallows in her honor at her shivah. She was fun-loving and valued family above all else."
AMANDA: Bubbe, what a legend.
ERIC: "When she passed away at her senior living facility at age 91, some folks came to move her. As they were getting ready to leave, one of the workers returned a five-dollar bill to my great uncle, saying, "I'm sorry sir, a family member gave this to one of our guys but we can't accept gratuities." My uncle thanked the man and proceeded to try and figure out whose five dollars it was."
JULIA: Ha-ha-ha!
ERIC: "Each family member said it wasn't theirs. Nobody knew where the five dollars had come from. Another important note about Bubbe is that she always carried a five dollar bill, in case an opportunity arose to tip someone."
JULIA: I love you Bubbe much
AMANDA: Classic grandparent behavior. My grandpa was the same way.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Oh my goodness.
ERIC: That is what made me pick this email. I used to mow my grandmother's lawn and she always she has established on the show very old over 100 years old.
JULIA: Bless her.
ERIC: Once they had like released the new designs on the 20s would still give me a crisp old $20 bill.
JULIA: Uh!
AMANDA: Grandma, where do you get this from?
ERIC: Where are the? Like, always always the crispest always the oldest bills so like she always had them somewhere ready to go. Like she had always gone to the bank. And like made sure she got new money but somehow was always old money too. So like-
JULIA: That is so sweet.
ERIC: Maybe there's a safe in the basement. No one knows about
JULIA: Maybe she's like, I don't trust these new 20s Give me one of the old ones.
AMANDA: I know, a 20 you can rely on.
ERIC: Exactly, exactly. So this idea of a grandmother always having an exact type of bill really, really resonated.
AMANDA: Did Bobbe tip her own mortuary worker?
JULIA: Oh definitely.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: 100%
AMANDA: She must have, right? Incredible.
ERIC: Pretty baller move. "To this day we don't know who gave that man a tip, but we like to think that it was Bubbe's way of saying a last "thank you" to some kind individuals in a helping profession."
JULIA: Incredible.
ERIC: "I hope you enjoyed this short little story about my family! I hope to keep listening Spirits and other Multitude shows for a long time to come. Yours in creepiness and, of course, coolness Monnie."
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: Yay!
ERIC: Oh, hopefully, you'll, you'll be here for the next 300 episodes of Spirits.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I hope so too.
JULIA: Alright, guys, I have a follow-up to one of our previous emails.
AMANDA: Delicious.
JULIA: And this is written in by Joey and they wrote, "Can Confirm - Doppelgangers are a Problem in the Phillippines."
AMANDA: Oh, no, Joey! The most haunted of places.
JULIA: So wrote, "Hi. Spirits Crew, I was catching up on podcast episodes and I got to Urban Legends 61 where one of the stories mentioned doppelgangers in the Philippines. First, I would like to say that Yes, when creepy shit happens around us, Filipino people will laugh it off and say "yeah, that happens," though in my experience, that usually comes after the horrifying realization that something creepy has happened. And, to be honest, that only happens when in an urban setting. When something creepy happens in more rural areas, a desperate hush will fill the room, a silent agreement not to piss off the supernatural being around us."
AMANDA: Incredibly hardcore. No one goes harder than the Philippines. I, you've heard it here.
JULIA: And Joey continues, "As you may know after reading a lot of stories from my fellow Filipinos, growing up in the Philippines means you can't really escape being superstitious. There are always people, whether it's older relatives or friends, telling stories about their experiences with aswang, enkantos, ghosts, and doppelgangers. For the most part, these were only scary stories to me. I never wanted to experience any of them first hand and I did my best to avoid them when I could. For example, I would close my eyes whenever we drove through dark, provincial roads after spending a day on a beach far from the city. And when someone points out something they see in the dark, I shut my eyes tighter and sink into my chair."
AMANDA: Team Ignorant.
JULIA: Team Ignorant all the way.
AMANDA: You're the lieutenant of Team Ignorant, I'm gonna go right out there and say it.
JULIA: "I was successful, except for that one time I saw my first ghost while I was interning at a local mental institution and when I encountered a doppelganger at my office. The doppelganger is the creepier story." I like they do like so I saw ghost and a doppelganger, doppelganger was worse.
AMANDA: I mean, I think so for certain.
ERIC: Yeah, I don't want a duplicate. I can handle some weird supernatural thing going on that like-
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: -is see-through been over there.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. The plausible deniability of meh could have been an illusion, right? Like, could have just been my eyes, whatever. I'll take that millions of times over a doppelganger.
ERIC: Although I did just see an article that was like-
JULIA: Oh, my God, I saw that too.
ERIC: Almost everyone on earth has a genetically identical person to that. And I'm like, that's-
AMANDA: But then their lead photo, they just like shaved one guy and put it put the same glasses on him. I was like, I don't think they look that similar. That's just a white guy.
ERIC: Yeah, a lot of times they're not that but I'm like, oh, well. Does that, does that make sense?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So would you guys like to hear the doppelganger story?
ERIC: Of course.
JULIA: So Joey says, "I used to be a manager in a call center a few years back. One of my jobs is to make sure that my group of agents are logged in properly because people can be a bit groggy or in a rush when working the night shift. There was one agent who sat behind me, let's call him Jeff, who usually showed up a bit earlier than me to get another hour of sleep in at the company "nap room" before the shift started in earnest."
ERIC: That's extremely haunted. Like not like literally by a ghost, but a workplace that has a Nap Room. That's like haunted.
JULIA: I think that's a cultural thing because I was watching some sort of thing on Instagram, where I believe the person was from Vietnam. And like, it was like, you know, a TikTok, basically, where they're like, someone walked into the office and was like, why is everyone asleep? They're like, well, it's the nap hour. And everyone's just like sleeping at their desks. And they're like, that's wild.
ERIC: If it's a cultural Nap Room, not haunted.
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC: If it's American Capitalism tried to get people to stay-
AMANDA: Yes.
ERIC: -at the office longer and longer by giving them weird amenities like a place you can nap for an hour, but you still got to do another five hours after that. That's, that's haunted.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. Are you sub-contracting to Google? If so, probably, probably the bad kind of Nap Room. But hey, you're right [43:54].
JULIA: So Joey continues, "From the way the desks are situated, as I walk into our area of the office, Jeff's back is towards me. Music was playing from his laptop as always (it was early in the-" morning "-and there was no one to disturb so I let it be). I greet him with a soft, "Good morning." even though it's nine in the evening because, idk, Call Center humor I guess. He responds in kind, not turning around to greet me. We weren't close as far as coworkers go so this was standard for us. As I settle in my desk, he closes his laptop and walks out of the office to the Nap Room (OR SO I THOUGHT)." In parentheses, "I make a mental note to wake him up a few minutes before we start taking calls from customers and I set up for the night's shift. Fast forward an hour. All the agents under my care are here, getting in as much conversation with one another before the hard work begins. All except Jeff, of course. Most of the time, he doesn't need to be fetched from the Nap Room, but sometimes he does. I wait as much as I can before I decide to look for him. I go to the Nap Room on our floor, carefully and quietly checking for him in the bunks. I couldn't find him but it was pretty full, so I figured he went to the second Nap Room on the floor above us. He wasn't there either. I wasn't too distressed because the building was huge and he could be anywhere. In a bathroom or getting some coffee from the company kitchen or smoking outside in the designated smoking area. It wasn't the holiday season so the phones wouldn't be ringing off the hook so I walk back to the office confident that he'd be there soon enough. Though, when I got back, I did ask our coworkers if they've seen him. None of them have. Then, one of Jeff's friends walk in and I ask her if she's seen him. She says to me, "Oh, didn't he message you? He said he was sick and can't come to work."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "My eyes widen and a chill skitters over my skin. I don't typically carry my phone around when I'm at the office so I dig it out of my bag to check. And right there in my notification, in the minutes that I was gone searching for him, was a message from him saying that he was sick and couldn't come in. I looked at his desk and realized his bag wasn't there. "Fuck," I say out loud. At this point, people were quieting down since the shift was about to start so they heard me swear. Jeff's friend asks me what was the matter, and I told her, and everyone who was listening, that I had seen A Jeff here at the office. "Are you kidding?!" Some of them ask. And I shake my head, a horrified expression on my face. I was not the type to joke about these things. If I learned anything from all the scary stories, it's to never joke about a supernatural being. A few agents laughed, joking about how even though the building we were in was newly built, it was already haunted. Other agents express how freaky it was for that to happen. Even the manager from an earlier shift confirmed that she saw Jeff leave the office, so did a couple of agents under her, which creeped me out even more. It's one thing to be the only witness to something creepy. It's a whole nother thing to have multiple people witness it. It made the whole thing So Real. The scariest part was that doppelganger used the computer. Everyone agreed that every time they met a doppelganger (and yes, multiple agents started sharing their experiences), the doppelganger usually didn't do anything. They just walked around, MAYBE talked a little, and disappeared. This one used a laptop AND used Spotify. I wasn't the only one who heard the music playing. The agents from the earlier shift heard it too. Naturally, we go about the shift as if nothing happened because customers don't care if you just had a brush with the supernatural, They Need Our Help!!!!!"
AMANDA: Yeah, think about that. Everybody next time you call somebody and you had a frustrating experience, but it's not the agent's fault. Just be like they could have just been a doppelganger of their coworker. Like, let's go cut them some slack.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: "Anyway, when Jeff came back to the office, he asked me about the full doppelganger story because he heard from his friend what had happened. I told him and he proceeded to be as freaked out as the rest of us were. And again, as soon as the phone start ringing, the creepy experience was relegated to the back of our minds. That's my creepy doppelganger story. I'm sure many Filipinos have their own doppelganger stories. Or maybe it's more of a thing from my side of the country. Either way, it IS a problem and I have no idea how to fix it."
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: "If you have any ideas, feel free to throw them out there... Much love from the Philippines. Thank you for keeping me company during long walks back home and long flights across the country. Stay Creepy and Cool, Joey"
ERIC: I know what's happening here.
AMANDA: Oh?
ERIC: And there's one there was one line that gave it away. What is it? The doppelganger used Spotify. Here's what's happened. The doppelganger has a fire mixtape and it's gotta get those streams. Gotta get those streams. So it gets that revenue. This doppelganger is out here grinding hustling, doing all the music stuff that's the whole thing they trickier with like adding music to playlists and naming your music weird things and stuff like that in order to get the revenue up this doppelganger is a rapper but a Spotify rapper a lot of SoundCloud rapper which is a different genus of rapper.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So you think that this doppelganger is impersonating multiple people logging into their Spotify accounts getting the the listen-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: -to the views on their playlist, and then moving on to the next person to dopplegang?
ERIC: Yeah, it could be even as nefarious as the doppelganger is is making these people sick so it can sneak in with their key card to work.
AMANDA: Oh.
ERIC: Every time you're sick, a doppelganger has actually given you a tiny little bit of poison just so you get sick enough that you call in, and then it goes in while you're unsuspect as long as it hits play drops that volume down to zero, so no one's the wiser. That's what's happening. 100-
JULIA: Wow.
ERIC: 100%
JULIA: Wow.
AMANDA: Damn Spotify, criminally underpaying artists is truly bad for all of us.
JULIA: Mind blown.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. Daniel Ek makes a decision, a butterfly flaps its wings and doppelgangers are exploding all over the Philippines.
ERIC: Exactly.
AMANDA: Damn.
ERIC: That's it.
AMANDA: Damn
JULIA: Damn.
AMANDA: Well, I for one never tired doppelganger stories. So if people have more, please send them in.
JULIA: Especially from the Philippines.
AMANDA: Maybe especially in the Philippines and you can maybe do a roundup of all doppelganger urban legends.
JULIA: I would love that.
AMANDA: I would love that. Alright, folks, this is an email, one of the poetic ones that I thought we could kind of lull ourselves, soothe our souls after that deeply disturbing workplace drama. This is from Hana whose pronouns are listed as Madam and it's titled Lost in the Sands of Time. Hana begins by saying, "The stories I am about to tell you are true, all of them. I come from the American southwest, in a corner of the world where endless skies are cut along the horizon by jagged purple mountains; it's a land of sand and sun and sorrow. There's a lot of stuff that people know about the wild west, they know about cattle rustlers, cowboys, Navajo, and apache warriors. They know about ghost towns and tin mines and trains. And most of the stories people know are probably true enough -- however, there is one critical mistake outsiders make when they tell our tales. Something I feel I must address before you non-locals start reading. Your entire lives you have read stories in the past tense, you learned history and finished every verb with an ED-" at the end, "You put an expiration date to the character and let them fall, buried in the sands of time, as little more than a memory, a fun story you can tell about a people long ago. That's not how time works in the desert. Here the sun stands still, time slows to a sleepy crawl, and those wild souls that roamed the hills and mountains of my homeland -- they roam it still. There is no dying in the desert, there is merely sleep, and then the endless wander of a trapped soul searching for a way out of time's hourglass. A way to escape the evershifting sand." I know "It sounds dramatic" "But it's true and once you learn to see past the veil of time, you'll see them everywhere. I remember driving down desolate highways and seeing the silhouette of a horse and rider thundering beside me, racing down the dunes. I've seen skinwalkers, creatures with the shadowy bodies of elk whose long spindly legs appear like jagged broken branches and whose eyes blink fire red. I've seen ghosts riding at top semi trucks, hoping from cab to cab on the very edges of the wavering headlights. I've sat alone in the middle of nowhere and listened to mournful voices cry out in plea to the setting sun to stay in the sky just a bit longer, long enough for them to find their way home. Those aren't the stories I'm here to tell you about though -- I'm going to tell you about a house."
ERIC: That was all the lead-up to the house?
JULIA: It's all lead-up, baby.
AMANDA: That's right.
ERIC: Whatever the house is.
AMANDA: That's right.
ERIC: Jesus Christ.
JULIA: It’s setting the scene.
AMANDA: Setting the scene, the scene is set I feel like I'm there.
ERIC: It is laid out and highly detailed.
AMANDA: "The first story I have to tell you is about happened in an old mountain house my sister used to live in. My city is a large well-known city now, but it had humble beginings. It began as a mission and a resting spot for weary travelers. It became home to an unusual assortment of people. A tribe of displaced pueblos fleeing for their lives, rings of Mexican cattle herders looking for land and a future for their families, northern Europeans hoping for opportunity and train cars of Chinese and Japanese fathers on their way to work in mines." to provide for their families, "The wealthiest of these wanderers all built houses on the west side of the mountain, looming structures of stone that had been hewn from the mountains the rested on. These old houses were built in the 1800s into the 1900s, and as they aged they became smaller and smaller by comparison. Their original prowess faded as bigger and grander houses sprung up around them until the small, two or three bedroom stone houses with their absent outlets and barely functional, "electric lights," were completely outshone by the larger more modern houses. It was in one of these forgotten, rundown mansions that my sister was born and lived. My sister, half-sister technically, inherited this house from her-" "-mother and lived there with our father. The house was built in the late 1800s and was one of the jewels of its neighborhood. Its first family is unknown save for a single newspaper clipping we found in the attics crawl space, an obituary, stating simply that the mother of the family had died in an accident and that the children had gone back east to be cared for by an aunt."
JULIA: Oh, hell no, dog.
AMANDA: "The following owners likewise suffered an accident and sold the house."
JULIA: Oh, no dog!
AMANDA: "-And so on and so fourth. A woman hung herself after finding out her WW2 soldier husband would not return, two hippie roommates overdosed, bit by bit the house fell into disrepair as it went on and off the market. From the day they bought it the house brought nothing but bad luck to the family. It was a home that hated women and breathed a spirit of malace over everyone that entered. That is, until little Ali was born. Perhaps it was because she was a baby, perhaps it was because she was so pure in that home of darkness, but the shadows began to attach themselves to her. There was a woman in the kitchen who would softly sing to her and tell her how to cook. A woman in the bedroom who would sit guard at the foot of her bed and keep the other, darker shadows, forms of old men in suits and wide brimmed hats, from gaining entrance into her room. There was another woman still, young and pale, who would softly sing wordless songs to Ali as she tried to sleep through the sounds of fighting which filtered through the old stone walls. The house had driven her grandmother to a dementia set - senility and the mother to-" "suicide, but not" harming. "Ali was in bruised, and scarred, but never broken. The spirits who were so malicious to all else, never let her be broken. The house was sold when, in a fit of wisdom, our father decided to cut his losses, cut ties, and take Ali with him to a house that wasn't filled with-" malice.
JULIA: Hmm, great idea.
AMANDA: Don't worry, he took Ali and her grandmother to a new house and grandma is safe and happy with lots of adult coloring books to enjoy. "The house was bought almost as soon as it went up for sale."
JULIA: No, why?
AMANDA: The neighbors at this point surely should be like, hey guys, let's not.
JULIA: When there's an open house you should be standing outside being like, you do not want to move in there.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: That's how you promote neighborhood you know, camaraderie and stuff.
AMANDA: Well, Julia, this explains it because, it was, "The only dumpy house in a neighborhood of restored mansions, it fetched a pretty price. The owner must have thought he'd scored a bargain too with how fast our father-" was willing to sell it. "Until the renovations stalled. He sunk more money into the build, and hired a bigger crew, still no progress. He finally went himself and what he saw chilled him to the bone." Schneider, having been through a bunch of these renovation issues yourself any guesses here, any predictions?
ERIC: Hmm. Well, today I realized that some water comes up right through the bottom, the bottom of our floor in the basement so my mind is kind of just like something seeping in.
AMANDA: Okay.
ERIC: Something like that it's just kind of come in through-
JULIA: Blood through the walls!
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Like that way like the the parts of that. Also we had right on the corner of the house, there was a small hole that some birds were flying into and like they didn't make a nest in there.
JULIA: Great.
ERIC: But like that's another thing where it's like this something has gained entry to the house in a way-
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: -that it shouldn't have water has gained entry-
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: -in a way it shouldn't have in the basement these birds I've now sealed up that patch made sure nothing was in there. sealed it up. All clear. But yeah, I feel like it's maybe just like something about like the general the house should be a protective structure.
JULIA: Right. The outside is getting inside.
ERIC: In its bones in a bad way.
AMANDA: Yeah, I think violates your threshold. And that's that's like the most elemental reason that people have a home.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: The other thing that we feel should be safe.
ERIC: Like vampires they asked to come in. So it's like you kind of made the mistake there by-
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Some things get it they get in there a different way. That's that's even more nefarious.
AMANDA: Well, here's what the developer saw. It was "An empty house. The trucks were there, the tools were there, but none of the 35 workers he'd hired were in sight. Swallowing a feeling that was somewhere between terror and fury, he marched up the old stone steps toward the crumbling house. It's front door was unlatched and swung in at a touch. There was no light in the house. He flipped switches as he went, nothing. He'd been told just the day before that the lights had been fixed, but clearly they'd been lieing. He pulled out his cellphone and clicked on the flashlight feature just in time to illuminate the blank kitchen wall. He dropped his phone, back down, and plunged the room back into darkness, but even without the light he could still see the words, burned into his retinas. "Get out."
JULIA:
Yeah! Classic.
AMANDA: "They were written in bold scrawling letters, scratched into the peeling floral wallpaper. He heard the noise then. The steddy tapping that he'd taken to be a clock or a fan, tap tap tap, coming from the hall. It was growing louder. He could hear it over his panicked breathing, over his thudding heart beat."
JULIA: Also, my guy, if the electricity doesn't work, why is the fan working?
AMANDA: There you go, Julia. "The steps were getting louder. He turned and sprinted for the back door. It was not a large house and thus he had reached it in just a few steps. It, like the front door, was open and swung out easily, but this one slammed shut after he'd left. He looked at the back yard and there found all of" the workers. In parentheses, they're all alive, Julia.
JULIA: I was about to be like, uhhh...
AMANDA: "They all stood or crouched a man who was kneeling in the dirt." getting sick. Some were patting his back, just soothing him and helping him kind of regain his breath "while others were searching through the coolers for a bottle of water that wasn't cold. So you wouldn't like shock you know, his throat as he had. The new buyer said, "What's going on here?" They replied, "Lopez here was under the house. He had a bit of a scare and the boys are just checking up on him." responded the foreman. "I saw her" screamed the man, once he'd recovered himself. "The old lady from the hallways, she was there, under the house."
JULIA: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
AMANDA: So, a lot of information in the sentence, right? There was an old lady in the hallways. And then he saw her where he didn't expect her which was under the house.
JULIA: Uh-huh.
AMANDA: He continued, "I saw her body laying in the dirt. And then she got up."
ERIC: Oh, boy, it just keeps keeps getting worse in ways that are unimaginable.
JULIA: Do you know what? It would have been bad enough if he had discovered a dead body under the house? Which for this par for the course?
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: But the fact that it got up?
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Guys, it does get worse.
ERIC: Right? I mean, I mean, it definitely is, I gotta get better at this point. It's only going to get worse.
AMANDA: Hana included in parentheses. "This entire story, by the way was punctuated with enough swearing to double the word count. So I'm leaving it out just for the sake of brevity. Great. Great. Al right. So in the story, Mr. Lopez continued. She was on her stomach, and she growled at me, like a dog See, worse, much worse, it seems worse. Roven much worse. Then she started crawling toward me faster than anything that normally crawls. He was a mess of tears and profanity at this point. And the developer had a hard time making out what he was saying. But he managed to piece together this last bit. The woman who moved more like a spider than it ghost- Worst case scenario. -has scrambled across the crawlspace. Under the house hissing and growling, demanding they leave her in her house alone. The plumber who had been laying pipes dropped everything and got out of there as fast as he could." Good!
JULIA: Good smart.
AMANDA: "Crawling backwards across bits of broken glass and sharp rock slicing his hands as he went, but not pausing to care. He broke into daylight just as she caught up with him. Their faces had been inches apart, and he could smell rot and decay on her breath. Her teeth which looked to him almost like animal canines, ground as she pulled back into the shadows. And as she did so she stared daggers at him. And once more hissed a warning. Get out of my house. The Plumber quit that day and never went back."
JULIA: Good. See, again, we talked about this.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: This is the level of wanting that you're like, no, I'm not going back to that job ever again.
AMANDA: Yeah, no, burn it down. Not literally probably for safety, but like, just condemn it. No. So a plumber quit that day never went back. A few days later, the foreman quit. And after that the contractor returned the bid saying he couldn't get any employees to agree to work on this cursed house.
JULIA: Yeah, that would make sense.
AMANDA: The only reason we know this at all is because a few weeks later, the new owner called our dad furious and told him the whole story finishing with I should have known it was too good. Now I'm putting it back for sale at half what I paid for it. I can't sell a half-demolished house for much of anything. My dad told him basically, sucks to suck. And that was all we ever heard of it.
JULIA: I was very curious how they heard about this. And-
AMANDA: Me too.
JULIA: Yeah, that guy sucks. This guy particular sucks.
AMANDA: No, thank you. Suck to suck. Sorry. And so Hana finishes with two PS's. One is the house has now been bought by someone else who plans to excavate the crawlspace and see if anything or anyone is down there trapped for eternity in the hot sands.
JULIA: Hey, good idea.
ERIC: You need a whole new foundation. You gotta you got to start from scratch.
AMANDA: Take her down.
ERIC: If you've got a half person, half creature crawling around on there and you got to lends this both spiritually and constructionally.
AMANDA: Yeah, maybe there are some remains down there. And that's why there is a spirit so tight like you got to you got to figure it out. You got to take it all the way down. And then Hana finishes by saying if you'd like the story, I have plenty more. Maybe next time I can tell you about the house I just moved into from the 20s and our resident ghost, a faceless young woman who sinks through cracked windows and layers men into the mountains outside our home.
ERIC: That's too many things. Faceless, okay, I can handle faceless.
AMANDA: Sure.
ERIC: Sings. No wait a second.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: How's that happening without face?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Then oh, what's the singing cause? Men to run away to the mountains. Oh, just wow. Well, so much.
JULIA: Also peeking through windows. I feel like this is what's the like famous phrase from like Coco Chanel, which is like get dressed and then take two pieces off so you don't over-accessorize.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: That's what this ghost needs is to pick two things to remove from their description.
AMANDA: Yeah, I love it. Hana, excellent email. Thank you for writing in I've been thinking about the desert all morning since I read this so appreciate you.
ERIC: I've got a story from Maggie called the Blue Dog Problem, which is a nice little, nice little dog story.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: We love a dog story as long as it's not sad and stoned dog.
ERIC: It's not ridiculously sad the way stone dog was sad but I mean it's it's gonna have some light old dog death but you know, par for the course type stuff.
JULIA: Right.
AMANDA: Par for the course you know, animals they have to enter their ghost phase. We've talked about this.
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC: And most of the story slight spoilers isn't about that dog that does eventually pass about the different ghost dog.
AMANDA: The dog is simply in a haunting era.
ERIC: Exactly.
JULIA: Excellent.
ERIC: "This story is about some nightmare slash possible ghost sightings that I had as a little kid up until I was about five years old. We had a Schnauzer. He was very old, but I still loved him a lot."
JULIA: That was my childhood dog just for reference.
ERIC: Oh, adorable. What was, what was yours named?
JULIA: His name was Blizzard because he was a white schnauzer.
ERIC: Oh, adorable.
AMANDA: Blizz. He was so grumpy and only like peanut butter.
JULIA: He was a grumpy old man. He was like a grumpy old twink that's how I would describe my dog.
ERIC: Ah.
AMANDA: Yes, he was old man skinny. I loved Blizzard.
ERIC: "I might've been four, I woke up in the night and saw a blue schnauzer outside my bedroom door, I immediately thought it was a ghost. When I woke up in the morning I told my mom I saw a blue dog that was a ghost right outside my" room "She told me it was probably just otto (our dog at the time) walking the halls, and there was nothing to be worried about. I shrugged it off and lived my life for the next few days, then one night I woke up again and saw the blue dog. This time he was accompanied by a bright orange and black spotted cat named Dot and someone who looked just like my mom, but taller than the doorframe along with three kids that looked like me and my two brothers."
JULIA: Uh-oh.
ERIC: So you've added a cat named Dot I don't believe we get clarification on how we knew the cat's name was Dot, which I love.
JULIA: The four-year-old named the cat when they saw it that's it.
ERIC: It's just like that's, that's Dot right there.
JULIA: That's Dot.
ERIC: And then just a very tall mom, just a very tall mom too tall for to see through the door.
JULIA: And babies that look like you.
ERIC: Yeah, "They talked to me, it was terrifying. The "ghost" family and blue dog of my sleep paralysis/nightmare/ghosts(?) are still a running joke in my family. The Blue Dog visited me as well after Otto eventually passed so it truly could have been a ghost the family and the pets were transparent. My mom and dad were orange-ish and my brothers were blue and I was purple. The kids often saying to Dot who was very large and cartoonish." I love that. It's like it's like just Garfield. Like it's like very like a very opposite Blue Dog. It looks like your dog very tall mom some differently like cran colored children and then Garfield. Just like a cartoon cat essentially.
JULIA: Sounds like a child's dream. Yes, excellent.
ERIC: "The kids often talked and sang to Dot, who was very large and cartoonish. The kids were weirdly short (even for kids 2, 5, and 8). I don't know if I dreamt that I woke up when I ran into the blue dog and Dot or if I was awake, awake, but nevertheless my encounters with these supernatural phantasmal weird dream spooky chaos beings will never leave my brain. Stay creepy, stay cool, don't get spooked by the blue dog." I do love that like in this one. At first you're like, oh could be just a child seeing their dog. The lights hitting it a weird angle, that kind of thing. It's blue. Yeah, something like that. But the fact that the dog shows up as well later on after Otto has passed is very much like something's going on there.
JULIA: I don't like it. Something hinky is happening.
ERIC: It's like a ghost doppelganger family essentially with like slightly different proportions and colors and everything.
JULIA: You know what vibe it gives me? It gives me Coraline vibes and I don't like that.
ERIC: Yeah, maybe it's a ghost cat that's projecting all of this other stuff because there isn't a physical cat.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: Something like that's going on.
JULIA: Maybe the cat is like I want your life, tiny human.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Taking bits of it from them.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Very scary.
ERIC: Well, we've made this much worse. So-
JULIA: Yes, we did. Good job guys. High fives.
ERIC: You're welcome, Maggie. The ghost cat is draining your life force.
JULIA: Great!
AMANDA: Okay, guys, I have a really good palate cleanser. Can I can I break in here with uh, this is an excellent episode, right? We can do whatever we want.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Sure. Yeah, whatever.
AMANDA: Alright, so this was sent to us from Jill, a different Jill a few months ago. Oh no, a few weeks ago who says, this is a Japanese-style urban legend written by my 10 year old. And you know how there are those AI bots which will like aI together an image or a tweet, right?
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: Or like scrape a body of text and come up with like, you know, AI fairy tale, you know, after reading all fairy tales.
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: This is like that, but adorable because it's from a kid. So Jill says I've been devouring Spirits and racking my brain since the first urban legends episode of what I could tell you. I thought at first about telling you the story my mom used to tell me about the time after my grandma got divorced. And she my two aunts and my mom moved in with my great aunt, my grandma's sister, and the fact that my great aunt lived in a quintessential haunted house, even including an attic room door that open and close on its own.
JULIA: Spooky.
AMANDA: But then I thought about telling one of my most horrifying recurring dreams, but I decided to pass up both of those opportunities to tell you about a story my 10 year old came up with after she heard about a couple different Japanese urban legends. So it combines things kids do that are creepy, with a good creepy story that a child can as up with my daughter told me, I decided to make it end that way because I figured Japanese urban legend, it needed to.
JULIA: Excellent. I feel like we we've like taught people well.
AMANDA: This child was three when our show started, alright?
JULIA: That's pretty good.
AMANDA: We, Jill are basically co parent [1:10:14]. Hopefully, you don't let your kid listen to our show until they're at least 12, please. So this is my daughter story told and written in the style of a Japanese urban legend. It's called Mother Nature. And I have written this out pretty much word for word and what she told me and then said, if you're interested, I'll send you a picture of the character that my daughter drew.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Certainly. We are going to reply to Jill and hopefully get that up on her Insta so follow @SpiritsPodcast. So there was this girl who loved plants a lot. And when a company came through to build a massive pool, they were chopping down a bunch of trees. When she realized they were destroying her plants, she sneaked into their camp to beg them to stop. The company decided she was just in the way so they tied her up out of the way on one particular tree. I'm getting Hallmark movie I'm getting Wild Thornberrys I'm getting anticapitalistic kid, Jill, you're doing a great job. This tree that she was tied to had leaves that were green on one side, but blue underneath. They went about their business forgetting about the girl and eventually, the company stopped building the pool. Even the girl's family and friends forgot all about her.
JULIA: No!
ERIC: Oh, no.
AMANDA: She had been tied to the tree using the vines of the tree itself. And eventually, she became one with the tree.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: And her skin became like bark and her hair and clothes turn blue and green just like the trees leaves. Years later, a drop of water fell on her and brought her back to life.
JULIA: Whoa!
AMANDA: She found out she had magic powers she could heal, bring plants to life and cause plants to grow really fast.
JULIA: Yeah! It's poison ivy, guys.
AMANDA: The people loved her calling her Mother Nature.
ERIC: Oh, it's the origin story.
AMANDA: Right. Many years after that she saw workers chopping down the forest which reminded her of what happened to her.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
AMANDA: So she decided to take revenge. If you say Mother Nature three times-
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: -will call her to you.
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC: Hell yeah.
AMANDA: She will come down and planted seed of the tree she was killed on.
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: Using her magic she will grow it into a sapling and then into a full-grown tree overnight. Once grown, the tree will cast a hypnotic spell on the person who called her and make them come to the tree.
ERIC: Magic Tree.
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC AND JULIA: Magic Tree
ERIC: Sorcerer tree.
AMANDA: The same spell will make the person's family and friends forget about them.
JULIA: Uh-oh!
ERIC: Uh-oh! A little too dark.
AMANDA: Once at the tree, the roots and vines would wrap around the victim, and then after three days, turn them into the tree they would resemble Mother Nature herself. Then the tree would disappear, taking the victim with them. And the spell that had kept everyone from remembering them would be broken but their loved one would be gone devoured by the tree itself.
ERIC: This kid is going to become the coolest eco-terrorist ever.
JULIA: Did I time travel and write this?
AMANDA: I know. It's incredible. Jill finishes with that's the story of my 10-year-old came up with my 8-year-old also has a story idea but wasn't quite ready to tell me.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: I love my creative children. Cheers, Jill from Indiana.
JULIA: Hello yeah, dawg. Incredible.
ERIC: I love that.
AMANDA: Jill, we were transported. I love this. I'm gonna reply right now and say Jill, this was incredible and we would love to see the picture.
ERIC: I liked that it started off as like, oh yeah. Like a child understands like nature's good.
AMANDA: Companies are band.
ERIC: And that it becomes immediately, just like and then she comes back and starts murdering people they forget about them they and forget about them. It's just terrible for everybody involved it's just metal as hell.
AMANDA: Well, the forgetting spell it was actually really useful because that lead you know, make sure that there's a sort of germination period-
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: -where nobody thinks the missing I mean, Jill, she's thought about every angle.
ERIC: No, I mean like, the logic holds.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Makes sense.
AMANDA: Incredible. Oh my god. So good.
JULIA: Alright, y'all. Well, we'd like to finish with one more story.
ERIC: I think we would.
JULIA: So this is a story from Victoria. And she titled it I Met A Man in The Woods and He Told Me This Story.
ERIC: Oh, good.
JULIA: "Hey, Spirits fam. I had an interesting encounter a couple months ago and I figured I'd share it. I live fairly close to a skate park with some nice wooded trails and a river and I try to get out there whenever the weather is nice. The first time I made it out this year I decided to forego my usual trail in favor of one that is a bit longer since I had just gotten a new fitness tracker and was trying to get those steps in. It was a nice day for mid January around 50 degrees so the trails were more populated than I expected for a week day. Being a long legged human. I walk at a faster pace than many and so had passed a couple of people already when I met Paul, in front of me on the trail it was an older person picture adorable grandpa tape hiking with a pole and a backpack on a low difficulty trail. And as I went to pass him I said hello and commented on the weather as to not try to catch him by surprise as I came up behind him. He said hello back and continue talking to me as I awkwardly sped up to pass him and then slow down to hear what he was saying."
AMANDA: We all know the feeling. It's okay.
JULIA: "He introduced himself and said that he was a retired trail guide to trying to get back into shape. As I struggled internally over whether to speed walk away and leave him behind or stay to listen, he started talking about the history of the park and the different types of trees and plants around. Being a big big nerd, this helps my decision to continue on with my new friend. Now I realized that this sounds like a bad life decision. And it did hit me for a moment like oh, no, what if he's a murderer. However, I always take precautions when I hike alone pepper spray, whistle, etc. There were other people passing as we went by and I usually get a vibe from people I talked to and I didn't feel threatened at all. He truly seemed like he just wanted someone to talk to and you'll haven't told me about any fae who lure you in with nature facts, so I felt pretty safe walking with him."
AMANDA: That's true.
JULIA: "So after a couple of miles a small talk and hearing about different hikes that he led, I figured I'd ask him if he had any good ghost stories." As a classic spirit's listener would thank you. "So here's what he told me. Back when Paul was working as a trail guide, he had been in charge of a group doing the length of the mountains to sea trail which crosses North Carolina from the Tennessee border to the coast. Around segment 14, the trail takes you down near Wilmington and fairly close to Mako, North Carolina, which is locally famous for its own urban legend. The Maco Light. Apparently, if you walk along a stretch of railroad track outside of town at night, it's pretty common to see one or two greenish lights floating above the tracks. The legend goes that it is ghost looking for his missing head." and then the link to me the full story on a website called northcarolinaghost.com/coast/macolight.
AMANDA: Wow. I was worried Paul was the ghost, let's hear it.
JULIA: "For over a century mysterious lights were seen bobbing up and down along the railroad tracks near Maco station a few miles west of Wilmington." I'm actually going to very quickly search our email, is this the ghost lights?
ERIC: What, what State is this in?
JULIA: This is in North Carolina.
ERIC: I want to say that the ghost lights were on like in Michigan like the sand dunes of Michigan sounds right? But there are sand dunes there. So like maybe it has to do a sand dunes or something.
JULIA: So these are totally different. Train lights, ghost train lights. Let's go.
ERIC: As far as I can remember that I think that is the case, I could be wrong.
JULIA: So the northcarolinaghost.com continues, "When anyone approached the lights they would disappear. The lights were observed many times over the years and even photographed on occasion. It's even said that President Grover Cleveland saw the lights while on a Whistlestop Tour in 1889. The source of these lights has never been determined but according to the legend, the light is the ghost of a railroad worker who died on the tracks one night in 1867. On that tragic night in 1867, a train was rolling along the tracks, and signalman Joe Baldwin." Worse that we know the gear and also the man's name, just saying.
AMANDA: Always.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: "He was sleeping in the caboose, Joe's slumber was broken by a violent jerk. A veteran railroad worker Joe Baldwin recognize the motion and immediately knew that the caboose had been detached from the rest of the train. Joe Baldwin's heart began racing. He knew that his one car was now stuck on the tracks and that the main part of the train was rapidly moving away from him and he had no way of contacting it. Joe also knew that he wasn't the only train scheduled for those tracks that night. A passenger train was due along soon and if the incoming train struck the stalled Caboose there would be a horrible accident. Joe Baldwin had a choice to make." This is so dramatically written. I love this. He knew that he had to signal the oncoming train to stop. He knew that the only way to do this and to be sure the engineer in the approaching train would see the signal was to stand on the platform at the back of the caboose. Joe Baldwin knew that if the oncoming train hit the stall Caboose at full speed, everyone on board of the passenger train could die." So dramatic.
AMANDA: Seriously.
JULIA: "He also knew that it takes a long time to stop a speeding train. Even if the engineer saw the light and stop there wouldn't be time enough to slow down and prevent a complete disaster. The chances were good that the caboose was still about to hit and if he was on that Caboose when it happened, Joe Baldwin knew he didn't stand much of a chance of walking away from that crash. He could either save his own life or try desperately to save the lives of the passengers." This is a real-life trolley problem. I'm realizing now.
AMANDA: Seriously. Maybe the trolley problem was named after this, we don't know.
JULIA: We don't know. "Baldwin made the heroic choice grabbing his lantern or Joe Baldwin stood on the back of the caboose as the sound of the oncoming passenger train rumbled closer. Joe frantically waved his warning light trying to catch the attention of the engineer. Joe's plan worked. The engineer of the oncoming trains saw the light and pulled hard on his brakes, but the momentum of the tons of speeding steel kept the train moving and the locomotive slammed into Joe's caboose. Joe's bravery saved many lives but not his own. Joe Baldwin was decapitated in the crash."
ERIC: Whoa!
JULIA: "Joe's head was thrown by the force of the accident into the murky swamps that surrounded the tracks. It was never found. His headless body was buried with heroes honors a week later."
AMANDA: Damn Joe.
JULIA: "For years after that accident lights were seeing moving up and down the track around Mako, sometimes only one light sometimes two. People said that it was the ghost of Joe Baldwin still searching for his missing head. The Maco light was seen for over 100 years, but it has not been seen since 1977. This was the year that the railroad tracks at Maco station were pulled up. Many explanations have been offered for the mysterious lights, including one intriguing geological possibility, Maco stands on top of a geological fault line. Some have speculated that the source of the lights was static electricity produced by the pressures of this fault building up along the tracks and discharging as light when the tracks reached their capacity. This would explain why the lights haven't been seen since the tracks were pulled up."
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: But that is not the end of the email. That's the end of the Joe Baldwin story. Going back to Paul. "Paul and his buddies had imbibed a few as he told it and decided it would be fun to see these lights for themselves. If they really did exist. They found the tracks and started walking along them. And it wasn't long before they saw one of the lights shining about chest high a little ways down from where they were. Everyone was a little freaked out, which was understandable and Paul decided to walk towards it to see if it moves or if he can find the source for it. The light doesn't move as he gets closer and closer and soon he's able to almost reach out and touch it. He takes another step and it winks out as if it had never existed. Paul turned back to his friends to ask if they could see where it had gone. But they asked what he was talking about because he was standing right in the middle of it. Anyway, thoroughly spooked at the point where the trail split off. I said goodbye to my new friend and made my way back to my car alone. I've been back to that hike several times but haven't met him again. So I can't actually verify that Paul was a real person. But that's the thing that happened to me and I hope you'll enjoyed hearing about it."
AMANDA: Paul might have been a ghost.
JULIA: "Always looking forward to the next creepy cool legend. Victoria." I bet Paul is now a ghost because he stepped into the light and it like absorbed his being and now he's just like a ghostly man who goes on hiking trails.
AMANDA: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good, haunting era to me.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah. happy for him.
AMANDA: Well, folks, I think that brings us to the conclusion of our extra long 300th episode.
JULIA: Wow, guys, I can't believe we've been doing this for 300 episodes. Hey, 300 more.
ERIC: 300 More. Well, I mean, we got, we gotta get to 666 episodes.
JULIA: We gotta.
ERIC: At least we-
AMANDA: We have to.
JULIA: That'll be our final episode. Let's call it shot now. Final episode.
AMANDA: And as always, listen, if by some miracle, we get 6666 patrons, you girls buying a castle in Ireland.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: We're doing that shit we've committed to you.
ERIC: Yep.
AMANDA: And speaking of the Patreon great stuff happening over there. So when we started Spirits, many eons ago, we sign up for Patreon, which at that time made you charge people per thing, per creation. So we're like, okay, great, our Patreon is, you know, $1 plus per episode, but in the year since they have moved to doing things monthly. And if we want to use our new tools, if we want to, like use the benefits and different things that Patreon lets us do to like, communicate with you more effectively, we got to switch to the monthly tier. And so that's what we're doing this month in September. We have all kinds of new benefits available for you. Julia, you're gonna read some Tarot for the patrons.
JULIA: I am if you want to get a personalized Tarot reading, join our highest tier and I will send you one and it'll be good and fantastic. Or if you want to just get a general vibe for the season. I'm doing those at our second-highest tier for anyone who signs up for that. We're also going to be doing an ad-free episode. So if you just want like that good Spirits, Spirits content, just want to get to the story and that's it.
AMANDA: No break. No refill. You're like I'm gonna pour a drink at the end of the episode. And I'm going to just keep it through no refill for me.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Hey, we got that option for you. And what I think I'm most excited about is the monthly advice video podcast.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: That Julia, you and I are going to be recording. We're going to take your questions on life work podcasting, everything in between, and release it as both audio and video so that if you want to see our voices come out of our faces, that's an option for you now.
JULIA: Yeah, do it. It's gonna be great. I think there's a lot of really fun, cool new options for all of you and I am so glad that we get to do fun and exciting things with our Patreon even 300 episodes in.
AMANDA: I know and thank you again to Brandon and Alison for the new music, the new art I am so stoked. I can't wait to be doing new and interesting things with all of you and I don't know guys, all I can suggest and say is remember-
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool
Transcriptionist: KM