Episode 307: Your Urban Legends LXXI - Logical Answers
/It’s what you’ve been waiting for. We’re finally going to solve ghosts. Answers like coffee ghosts, teenage shenanigans, and devious child lies.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of misogyny, missing persons, abduction, and death.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends watching your favorite horror movie!
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out the Queer Movie Podcast - a queer movie watch party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join them as they research and rate their way through the queer film canon, one genre at a time. Search for Queer Movie Podcast in your podcast app to subscribe today!
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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.
AMANDA: I'm Amanda.
JULIA: I'm Julia.
ERIC: And I'm Eric. And today, we're finally going to solve ghosts.
JULIA: We're going to solve ghosts.
ERIC: This is Spirits Hometown, Urban Legends: Logical Answers. And you know what, right now this very day, we've got guys in the basement of this house that is not haunted, figuring out for sure. Are their bodies down there? Is there some kind of spooky haunting thing. Dave, I've seen him. They got five deep, two cubic feet holes in there. No bones, no bodies, no nothing, no weird chills. I mean, maybe a slight chill. But that's because I had to turn off the heating unit, so the dust doesn't get all in the house, but no chills. So I mean, I think, I think we're in the clear in this house.
JULIA: Okay. Okay.
AMANDA: It is the time for Logical Answers. And I for one, I'm really excited to get into the emails that conspirators have been sending us for the last few months about their Hometown Logical Answers.
JULIA: I really like this as a theme, because Jake and I have been watching a lot of horror movies for Halloween, obviously. And one that I really enjoy watching with him is the Conjuring, because the paranormal investigators in the Conjuring, The Warrens, who we've talked about before, as part of the movie, they're like, yeah, you know, sometimes it's a haunting. Usually, it's not, usually, it's like the pipes, and Jake's like, yeah, it's usually the pipes, they're like, notorious for that. I'm like, and you would know it was a building inspector, wouldn't you? And he's like, yeah, the pipes, they make weird noises. So I'm like, fair enough, my guy, fair enough.
AMANDA: That's why he's got to offer his combination exorcism home inspection, it would– whatever the answer is, Jake's got it for you.
JULIA: I want it so bad. I don't want to sacrifice Jake to the Hollywood gods.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Just to get him a TV show. But I think if he did have a TV show, that was that it would be very, very good.
AMANDA: It'd be incredibly good.
ERIC: I don't think Jake would view it as a sacrifice. I think Jake is secretly itching to get, get that clout.
AMANDA: I mean, he was almost the Blue Man. So you know, it's pretty close.
JULIA: That's true. Famously.
ERIC: Wait, what? Was he? Was he? I don't, I don't remember this.
JULIA: He got into like the final round of callbacks and was going to the final audition and was probably going to get offered the job. But he like told his parents after he got to that certain point, he was like, well, like, listen, guys, I'm in college right now. I have to miss this one test in order to go to this final audition. And his dad was like, no, you have to finish school, you have to go to the test. And he's like, okay, so that is Jake's biggest turning point in his life when he looks at it. He's like, my entire life would have changed if I decided to go to Chicago to be a Blue Man. And it would have, it would have been weird.
ERIC: That definitely. That definitely sets you on a path, a path that no one has ever held back.
JULIA: The Blue Man, no one has ever returned.
AMANDA: Well, guys, I um. I don't have a story about a blue man. But I do have one about a Goat Man. Would you like to hear it?
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: Alright, so this comes from Taryn, she/her who says, “Hello, I grew up on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas and our local Hometown Urban Legend/Cryptid was the Goat Man!”
JULIA: Of course.
AMANDA: “If you want to picture the goat, man, imagine a Bigfoot-type of Cryptid. He walks up right at 7 feet tall with human hands and feet, but it's covered in fur and scales and has a goat's head (obviously).”
JULIA: I don't love that he has human feet. I want him to have goat feet.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah.
JULIA: It– it makes it worse somehow.
AMANDA: It does. Like we've read about Legends that have like women hiding, you know, goat feet or horse feet or something under their skirts, that will be much more palatable.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, it would. I think the idea of it, is that because it's a man's foot, that's all the proof that I have, that I saw the Goat Man and therefore–
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: It's just a guy with a goat head and you're like–
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: How can I prove?
AMANDA: Very true.
AMANDA: Those are just footprints, ma'am.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I'm sorry. I can't help you. “The Goat Man lives in the Fort Worth nature reserve, a gorgeous 3,621-acre reserve full of hiking trails, but specifically hangs up most on Greer Island. There he will wait until nighttime to come out and terrorize anyone still in the reserve. Some of the stories around Goatman’s antics include him throwing car tires at people (which cracks me up, where is he getting these endless supplies of tires)”
JULIA: Who’s– who's just dumping tires in this nature preserve? They deserve to get tires thrown at them.
AMANDA: Yeah. Also, tires are expensive.
ERIC: I mean, this tracks.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: You think?
ERIC: I feel like tires are definitely one of like the top five things being thrown in a nature preserve.
JULIA: Unfortunately.
AMANDA: Really?
ERIC: Because people don't want to get rid of them, and like you got to recycle them in a weird way. I'm sure because they're all rubbery. It's like, I bet because a man—imagine like a creek that's just kind of got too much litter in it, you immediately think of a tire.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
ERIC: Just saying.
AMANDA: That's fair. So in addition to throwing tires, the Goat Man also, “Snaps thick tree limbs and jumps on moving cars from the trees. The height of Goat Man’s popularity was in the summer of 69”
Julia: Nice.
AMANDA: Nice.
ERIC: Nice.
AMANDA: “But he still lives on in local lore today, and it's a very popular story around campfires.” Okay, any predictions or thoughts as to what the Logical Answers might be?
JULIA: So like, my instinct here is, in order to convince people not to stay in the park after dark, which they're not supposed to. Don't stay in a nature preserve after hours. Someone is going around and scaring people with the tradition of the Goat Man and making them you know, treat their preserve with respect.
AMANDA: Hmm, good.
JULIA: Like an overenthusiastic park ranger.
ERIC: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, some kind of EPA person or something, I think it's someone like cleaning up with their like throwing the tires to get to the end, someone's not looking down in the valley or the or the gully and seeing that there's just like a guy like a high vis jacket, like lobbing these things up there so that someone else can come around and pick them up and throw them away.
AMANDA: It's all very impressive to throw a tire like people do that at CrossFit. And they're like, extremely fit. And that should set me.
JULIA: That’s true.
AMANDA: “So over the years, people have admitted some of the antics attributed to the Goat Man really, were them just doing silly things as teenagers. I personally know someone who admitted to dropping tires at other teenagers who were “parked” on the island.”
JULIA: Ah.
AMANDA: “There was also a man named Foots Fowler”
JULIA: What?
AMANDA: “That lives nearby to the reserve. He was over six feet tall and later admitted to draping goat skins over himself to scare people in their parked cars.”
JULIA: So this was a guy who was like these teenagers, they're having too much sex necking in the island. Let me ruin this for them by creating myself into an urban legend.
AMANDA: Maybe the late 60s were a different time. But that seems like a way to sort of get yourself shot, or at least the cops called on you. I don't like that.
JULIA: Especially in Texas.
AMANDA: Especially in Texas. “However, even though the logical explanations have come forward over the years, the people of Fort Worth still love to tell tales about their Goatman, and he remains a beloved part of our town to this day. And a small part of me still likes to think that he is real, especially when I'm hiking on Greer Island (during the day, of course!)”
JULIA: Yes. Don't stay in nature preserves overnight if you're not allowed to.
AMANDA: And that was from Taryn. Thank you.
JULIA: I mean, so we've talked about this, a lot of Urban Legends are designed in order to scare teens into certain behaviors or away from certain behaviors, right?
AMANDA: Exactly.
ERIC: Yeah. Yeah. Overall, I feel like, I mean, bloody bones most famously is like the/are quintessential, like grandpa scaring you about a thing that you're not supposed to do.
JULIA: Yeah. How do we feel about teenagers perpetuating those kinds of Urban Legends where it's like, don't do this, or you'll suffer as a teen? And then they're also the ones dropping tires on people and whatnot.
AMANDA: I think it's a classic rite of passage. I think it got a, I think if there's, you know, people making true for younger teens, the Urban Legends that they themselves, you know, it's like, it's the beautiful cycle of passing on, you know, lore, especially for me growing up in what I felt to be very kind of soulless and banal suburbs. Those were kind of all we had, you know, of, like character and history to where we were from. So that always warms my heart.
ERIC: Yeah, I think, I think it's like the circle of– the circle of life i in high school is that like, the younger high schoolers get scared, but they don't know that it is, in fact, the older high schoolers scaring them like because there's that there's that dividing line of like being able to drive?
JULIA: Yes.
ERIC: I feel like that's a big part of it. Like once, like the older kids become more mobile.
JULIA: Gain that independence.
ERIC: They can start pulling these pranks and doing these things all over town. And the younger kids are the ones that are like, what's going on, but like they are old enough to kind of be able to like, tell the story in an interesting way to kind of perpetually keep it going, despite them not even having the full picture.
JULIA: Sure, and becomes a game of telephone where the details change to each microgeneration.
AMANDA: Exactly.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Well, I've got one that is submitted by Dott, and she writes, "I am the lab ghost."
ERIC AND AMANDA: Ooooh!
JULIA: She also starts it by saying "It's weirdly related to the shower ghost story."
AMANDA: Okay.
ERIC: Okay.
JULIA: “I recently started on the practical part of my Master of Science Thesis, which requires me to spend quite a bit of time in the lab. Due to the nature of my analysis, it's preferred that I do them when I'm alone in there, or at least don't have too many humans flinging their DNA and enzymes around. For that reason, I've been coming in after hours staying into the evening, and sometimes on the weekend. (I am in fact writing this while waiting for my gel electrophoresis to finish running.)” I don't know whether that is, sounds cool.
AMANDA: Very fancy.
ERIC: You always, always gotta wait for your gel electrophoresis to run.
AMANDA: Classically.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: As always, if you listen to Spirits at work, we'd love to know what your job is. That's really interesting to me.
JULIA: That is true. Yeah. I'm always curious and like what you are guys doing when you listen to us?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And are we distracting you from cool things like gel electrophoresis?
AMANDA: Are you walking your dog? Are you doing laundry? Are you cleaning the bathroom? Do you clean the bathroom? Remember the pedestal your toilet had met gets dirty.
JULIA: That's important. It gets really dusty. "However, this week, I was told completely off-hand that the lab had gotten itself a ghost. How did that come about?" You might be wondering. "Well, some people who would stay a bit late to finish their work would observe and overtime report, some odd activity. As this is a government facility it is limited access and requires a keycard. But due to the laws and work performed, it is not monitored in the corridors with labs and offices (nor inside these rooms), so there was no surveillance tapes available." What was the weird activity? The sound of doors slamming shut, lights turned off or on opposite to what they'd left it as. Equipment running despite no people in that lab, and sounds of footsteps that would suddenly appear and disappear. And worst of all, the coffee machine making coffee, but no coffee. All of these without an obvious source."
ERIC: That is the worst one, like if your coffee machine isn't making coffee, what's the point?
AMANDA: What's the point, buddy, I pay rent on this house. I pay your electricity bill, what do you do in here? Gotta carry your weight.
JULIA: Yeah. I was gonna say as none of us no longer work in offices where you know, you have someone who's in charge of like making the coffee in the morning except for yourself. Like, I can only imagine being like, Denise said she was gonna make the coffee, there's no coffee. I left for 20 minutes, and now all the coffee is gone. What's up with that?
AMANDA: Yeah, that would happen to me a lot when I worked in finance, where I was like working for a manager and doing a lot of like, you know, putting together events and managing interns and like, you know, when new people came, I'd like help get their desks together. So like, you know, some admin stuff, but also I had a lot of other duties. And so whenever things happen, like, oh, my favorite tea is no longer stocked in the pantry, people be like, um Amanda, like, could you help me with this? And at the time, I was 22, and I was like, sure. But now I'd be like, why are you asking me, buddy? Why are you asking me? Do I look like a facilities manager? Do I? Do I look like the catering at you know, bigbank.com that you can write to? No, not me.
JULIA: No, just because I'm the woman here.
ERIC: One time Amanda gave me a tour of bigbank.com in the building. And I mean quite, quite the views they have over there.
AMANDA: It's true.
ERIC: Quite luxurious, the offices for bigbank.com
AMANDA: Yeah, it really is.
JULIA: So going back to Dott and her apparent lab ghost. "Apparently nobody had a timeframe of when this started. But it was certainly a recent occurrence, which got to the point of a lab-wide email getting sent out. The only problem with that email? It only went out to employees, and students were not included. So when I heard this, I decided to keep my mouth shut and relish my new status certain that I was the ghost. Why? First off, I have to move between labs to access all the necessary equipment, each of them behind heavy doors that would slam shut behind me. When leaving a room I'd always turn off the light no matter how I found it. But if I had just popped out to get something, the light stayed on, often barely missing the other people working on the same equipment in the same room. The running equipment? I'm not going to stand there and watch the centrifuge spin for 5 minutes, I have better things to do. The footsteps are a relic of me being a sneaky kid teaching myself to walk as quietly as possible - but sometimes I slip up and I make noise. As for the coffee, I'd make myself a cup and head to the student offices, just across from the cafeteria and in the opposite direction of all labs and employee offices where all the worried employees were sitting and listening to these hauntings. It also didn't help that my assigned lab bench is in the far corner of the room, where you have to enter and walk halfway into the room to see me there, keeping me invisible from the glass door and the worried eyes of my co-workers. Anyway, I'm not staying here long with most work being in bioinformatics but I will enjoy the status as long as it lasts. Stay creepy. Stay cool. Stay a ghost, Dott".
AMANDA: Dott, what incredible power do you wield over your coworkers? Man, I would lean the fuck into this. I love it so much like you're a bioinformatics student, which means you're basically a chemist and I think that means you can whip up some invisible link and leave some invisible [spooky voice] ink stain.
ERIC: I mean, I was gonna say go like full carry hell race or whatever. And like on your last day, just like in red paint in the bathroom, like leave now or get out or something like that, As it never happens again, because you're gone.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: And just like—
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: What's going on?
JULIA: Yeah.
JULIA: And now all your co-workers are like, what changed? What's going on? And no one remembers you, because you were only there for a short time and they're like, something must have happened. What did we do? Did we get rid of the cursed beaker? I don't know.
ERIC: You know what you do? You don't make it threatening. You make it prophetic.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Ooh.
ERIC: I will ascend. I'll be back, stuff like that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Because [15:54] you indicate that you are going away or may potentially come back.
JULIA: You haven't seen the last of me.
AMANDA: Okay. All right. Or try this. Maybe when you finish all your stuff, It's your last day. People don't know because like you're a student, no one cares about you, I'm sorry. You'd like to burst into the staff lounge and be like this has gone too far. I am going to figure this out and get to the bottom of this. You run, you know, in some direction. Never see you again.
ERIC: There we go.
JULIA: Amanda, that's brilliant.
AMANDA: It's pretty good, right?
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Or if I can, yes, and yours as well.
AMANDA: Always. Julia.
JULIA: You burst in, you go, this has gone too far. I quit, and then you just run out.
AMANDA: Also good. I was thinking of the employees that like we're never seen again, from the underground mushroom farm, remember that?
ERIC: Oh. How can we forget?
JULIA: How can we forget the mushrooms?
AMANDA: Yeah, there's a real kind of like, oh, yes, she went out for one last, you know, one last investigation and was never seen from again.
JULIA: Until she writes a letter asking for me to be a recommendation at her new job.
AMANDA: Exactly.
ERIC: Oh, you've already lined up those letters. You've already lined up those letters, months in advance of leaving academic job.
AMANDA: That's fair. That's fair. Incredible, incredible Dott, you really delivered on the premise. Thank you.
ERIC: Well, I have a story here from Kelsey, not the one I know. But you know, you gotta have multiple Kelseys out there.
JULIA: Probably still cool.
AMANDA: Kelsey knows us. And I bet Kelsey is cool.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: Exactly. Exactly. So this story is titled "I found out I accidentally made up, a child-stealing ghost".
JULIA: Woah. Oh.
AMANDA: Oh, that's big.
JULIA: That's a bad type of ghost to make up.
ERIC: That is a bit. I'm thrilled by this one, because it's like, where those kids go If you've made it up. Let's find out. "Hello, Spirits team. When I was in elementary school, I think 2nd or 3rd grade, my best friend and I would sit by this huge tree and read books at recess when it was not." So this, it says it from Kelsey. But it sounds like it could be from maybe Julia and or Amanda. "Sitting at recess reading books together."
JULIA: Hey, rude.
AMANDA: Rude.
JULIA: Highly rude.
ERIC: Rude? What—I said that you like reading books in 2nd grade. How's that rude?
AMANDA: I would never incept you guys by sending a Hometown Urban Legend to our own email address.
ERIC: Fair. Fair. "When it was just the two of us, all the other kids would let us have our space and sit quietly for a read."
JULIA: That's very kind of your classmates because I am sure that didn't happen to Amanda and I in 2nd grade.
ERIC: "Then one summer, my friend moved away. And it was just me reading by the tree and other kids would run around and annoy me, and they were so loud and I hated it!!!"
JULIA: Amanda, were you also one of those children, that was like, I don't want to spend any time with these children? I want to talk to the adults.
AMANDA: Oh yeah, multiple times, my parents have sat me down and been like, just like socially like for life, you do need friends.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I was like, but I don't have anything in common with them. Like, you know, they want to talk about like, you know, boys and how that homework is hard and you know, TV shows and Homestar Runner and I'm like oh, you know read any good books recently? Like I– I really did not get how that went or why you would want it so yeah, that– that was, that was a big, a big idk for me.
JULIA: That's true. Yeah, same
ERIC: Our one niece is very much like that, where she will just meet an adult and find out everything about that adult's life, and tell that adult everything about her life and it, like she's, I've been on vacation with, with the girl so many times at this point. She will just find these adults, and just like chat their ear off and it's just like, wow, that is something that I definitely never did as a kid.
AMANDA: Yeah, she might have anxiety, because me too. I would go to a party and be like thank God, adults to talk to. Like, would an adult just talk to me? Like someone would just please like, explain to me your job, that will be great.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: Oh we're a bunch of weirdos. God bless.
AMANDA: Yep, that's why we're here. We found each other.
ERIC: Kelsey continues, "One day I had enough and wanted my reading tree back! I told some of the loud and annoying kids that my friend did not move over the summer." And that was just what the adults told everyone so they would not be scared. I told them that my friend and I were by this tree over the summer just messing around, and being eight years old. I then told them that a ghost came and snatched my friend and told me that this area was for reading only and not messing around."
JULIA: Oh my god.
ERIC: "I told them this ghost said she would be back if anyone was hanging around this tree and not sitting quietly reading. For some reason, they believed me and I got my quiet reading spot back to myself."
JULIA: That is fucking devious.
AMANDA: I love it.
ERIC: "Flash forward 17 years.”
JULIA AND AMANDA: Whoa!
ERIC: “I completely forgotten about all this ghost stuff I had made up until, I was babysitting my neighbor's younger daughter, who goes to the same school I went to. We took my dogs on a walk and we went by the school since it was a Sunday morning and no one was there. We walked past the tree I used to sit by and the young girl froze and backed away. I asked her what was wrong thinking she saw a bee or something. She said a ghost haunts that tree. And no one goes near it at recess unless they are reading. I then remembered the story that I'd made up and smiled. I didn't tell the young girl that I made up the story. (I knew she wouldn't believe me anyways). And instead, I told her to let's get out of here. And then we walked around the long way. I was so surprised the story I made up to get some alone time and keep reading, was retold over the years. And I'm glad I gave lots of generations of book nerds a quiet place to read at recess. Kelsey"
JULIA: Incredible. That is so good.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Truly Kelsey, like you, you have left you to know, a positive impact on this world. Good, God damn.
JULIA: I think Kelsey, in the email, says, oh, you know, I don't know why the rest of those kids believed me when I said that this tree was haunted. Kids will believe anything. Jake and I went pumpkin picking with his cousins this weekend, one of them was like 4 or 5 I want to say, and she was telling her mom, oh, I want like one of those like big, big pumpkins. You know, the ones that you see in the pumpkin patches and like huge and misshapen and look weird.
ERIC: Oh, yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah, the ones that are like 60-70 pounds and more.
JULIA: Yes, exactly weighs more than this child, etc.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And so her mom's like, no, no, pick one, pick one the normal pumpkins. And Jake's like, yeah, you don't want one of those pumpkins, those are actually eggs. And at the end, after Halloween, a monster hatches out of them and I looked at him and like, you can't tell a child that. And then she was like, she was picking out her pumpkin and she held it out to her mom, and she's like, is this one also a monster egg? And I looked at him, I'm like, Jake, what did, you can't just lie to children like that. Just cause it's fun.
ERIC: Everything you can. You probably shouldn't. But you can.
JULIA: I mean, you can. But you shouldn't.
AMANDA: I know. It really makes me want to like, it again. I babysat my siblings my whole childhood, part of why I didn't see, see the need for friends, because I'm like, yeah, other kids suck. Like, I don't know. She was just lied more, should have lied a lot more. She just lied. And I feel like I really failed them as an older sister because I feel like one of the jobs of an older sibling is to like, you know, gently sort of [23:24] and like, you know, build up your tolerance to be like, are you joking with me right now? And I joke with my siblings, none at all. Because, I was so gullible that I was like, surely I can take advantage of a naive baby, but those naive babies were much more on the ball than I was.
JULIA: Street smart those babies. Streetsmart babies, that would make a really good cartoon. [sings] Street smart babies, were doing crimes!
ERIC: Alright, well with that, I think we all need a bit of a refill. And also we're gonna jump out a plane to LA and pitch that to Warner Brothers
JULIA: Please.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. The air outside is crisp, the leaves are crunching under my Doc Marten boots and oh my goodness, it is almost Halloween time and I thrive here. I do. I gain my power. I am at my most powerful at this time of year and I feel like you probably already know that if you listen to this show, but I want to thank the people who I am currently celebrating Halloween season with, and that is our newest patrons, Caffeinate and Advocate, Abby, Haley, Nicole, and Sonja, welcome, thank you so much for joining us and you join the ranks of people like our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Iron Havoc, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Megan Moon, Nathan, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi. And of course, our legend-level patrons, who it's Halloween season for them all year round, and honestly, I wish I was living that kind of life. I could live that kind of life, huh? Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Cicuta Maculata, Clara, Ginger Spurs Boi, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty, and you could join our Patreon at patreon.com/spiritspodcast and get things like bonus Urban Legends Episodes, recipe cards for every episode, ad-free episodes, so many incredible options if you join the Patreon. Again, that is patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And like I said, it is pretty much Halloween season. I have been celebrating all month long, but I want to recommend to you right now, hey, buy some kind of spooky lights for your living room, hang them up, turn all the lights off beside the spooky lights, watch a scary movie or watch a fun spooky movie or something Halloween related, have some popcorn, have some candy and just enjoy this season. It really is the best season in my mind. After you've done that after you watch your Halloween-inspired stuff. Why don't you listen to another podcast here from the Multitude collective? I'm going to recommend for you today the Queer Movie Podcast. It is a queer movie watch party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John, you can join them as they research and rate their way through the Queer Film canon one genre at a time, I would recommend checking out the various horror movies that they've done over the years. There are some really, really good ones in there. From rom-coms to slashers, a contemporary art house cinema, to black and white classics. Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things gay on the silver screen and not to brag or anything, I get to edit the show. It's very funny, it makes me laugh out loud while I edit it. I really think that if you like Spirits, you're gonna like the energy that Jazza and Rowan have. New episodes are every other Thursday, and you can find it in any podcast app by searching Queer Movie Podcast, check it out. Now, this show is sponsored by Better Help. A lot of times, I feel like life would be so much easier if it just came with a user manual. So when life isn't working for you, it is normal to feel super stuck. It's normal to feel like you're unsure about what's going on and you don't know what the next step should be. But one thing that has always helped me kind of take those next steps, is talking to my therapist. Anytime I'm facing a challenge, I will reach out to my therapist and just try to talk it through because sometimes it's better to have someone who is not biased, who does not know the situation but can be like an impartial person for you. And one of the best ways that I have found to get therapy is through Better Help. 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I'm going, to be honest, I'm starting to see signs of aging on my skin and it is really difficult to figure out like what works, what doesn't work, what is actually proven, what is going to reduce those wrinkles, what is going to— just treat them and keep my skin nice and healthy. Well, finding skincare products that actually work for you might be complicated, but that's why we're super excited to be working with Apostrophe who is the sponsor for this episode. Apostrophe is an online platform that connects you with an expert dermatology team to get customized acne treatment for your unique skin. Through Apostrophe, you can get access to oral and topical medications that use clinically proven ingredients to help clear acne. Simply fill out an online consultation about your skin goals and medical history. Then you snap a few selfies and a board-certified dermatologist will create your first customized treatment plan. They offer access to treatments for all kinds of acne. Hormonal acne, which is my problem, facial acne, and even back chest, and butt acne. They treat breakouts from literally head to toe. Honestly, I really love the experience. I really don't like going to a dermatologist's office to get like acne treatment, because I just I feel really judged, I'll be honest, I feel super judged. But the way that Apostrophe goes about it, is they tell you what they think is best for you and then they keep checking up on you and making sure that the treatments actually working. And again, I don't have to keep every week, every month, every couple of months going into a doctor's office to see whether or not my acne is getting better. So we have a special deal for our audience. Get your first visit for only $5 at apostrophe.com/spirits, when you use our code Spirits. That's a saving of $15, this code is only available to our listeners. And to get started, just go to apostrophe.com/spirits and click begin visit then use our code Spirits at sign up and you'll get your first visit for only $5. Thank you Apostrophe for sponsoring this episode. And finally, we are sponsored by Brooklinen. Fall is here, and Brooklinen knows that colder temperatures mean spending more time cuddling under the covers with a good book. Luckily for you, Brooklinen, soft, cozy home essentials offer everything you need to feel warm and fuzzy all winter long. I mean, we've talked about how much we love our Brooklinen sheets right, and now that it is a little bit chillier in my house. I really like that both Brooklinen keeps me warm and comfortable, but I'm not waking up sweating ever in my Brooklinen sheets. And you know, we love those buttery soft sheets, they are the best and since I got my king beds as we moved into the new house, those Brooklinen sheets have been, a dream, an absolute dream. 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ERIC: Welcome back. It's a spooky month. It's the end of a spooky month. And you know what, I– I decided to have a spooky beer this month. Great Lakes Brewing, our local classic brewery here in Cleveland, has a lovely spooky beer called Nosferatu.
AMANDA: Incredible.
ERIC: It's an imperial IPA.
AMANDA: Very good.
ERIC: It's a great one. I love it. I had a four-pack of Tallboys, sitting around and I had one of those and you know, just good stuff. Just good stuff. It's a classic here.
AMANDA: Delish. I have been enjoying you know people say the phrase hyper-local and sometimes I sort of roll my eyes like okay guys, but there's a brewery like five blocks from my house called Greenpoint Brewing, and they make a beer named Milk and Honey with New York State honey chamomile flowers and very like floral hops. And so it is almost like a chamomile tea like honey citrusy beer and reminds me very much of like a hot toddy or you know, like a warm, comforting sort of fall wintry beverage. So I have been enjoying that American blonde ale, Milk, and Honey from Greenpoint Brewing.
JULIA: Ooh, that sounds delicious, Amanda.
ERIC: Sounds very good.
JULIA: I am going to recommend the beer that I saw when I was in my local beer distributor and the name alone made me buy it. And that was, of course, it's a pop-up, I came up as soon as they about to say it.
ERIC: Are you 21 years old?
JULIA: And that was Nobody Says the B Word from J. Wakefield brewing, and it is a homage to Beetlejuice and it's effing delicious. So good.
ERIC: Sounds really good.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: The kettle sour with like orange puree and a little bit of like that marshmallow flavor and it taste like Halloween to me.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: So good. So so good. Incredible. Well, I have here a story from J. they/them. And it is titled "The Closet Monster" And then J also put the answer in the subject, but I'll withhold that so that you guys are not spoiled. All right. "When I was younger, I shared a room with my sister who's about two years younger than me, but she was always the braver one. We'd gone through a few different configurations of furniture, but eventually ended with me in a twin bed against the wall and her on the top bunk of a bunk bed on the opposite wall, there was a double closet on the wall in between. This is important because our house was old and creaky built cheaply in the 70s and well-maintained in the years before we moved in. The closets in particular with kind with heavy wooden doors, suspended on roller tracks from the top"
JULIA: They make a lot of noise.
AMANDA: I have the same closet. I hate that closet. "These stuck often and it was a common occurrence for us to open doors too quickly and pull them off the track. This means that we inherently mistrust the closets in our house and we only open them when absolutely necessary since they were so difficult to open without breaking".
ERIC: I liked the idea of a closet being opened only in an absolute emergency. Because like I opened my closet daily.
AMANDA: Yeah multiple times a day.
ERIC: And I can't imagine living in a situation, where like I couldn't open my closet as just like a normal part of my day-to-day goings on.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. And you know making some assumption about J's age relative to Spirits listeners, like if they were growing up in the, you know, the 80s, 90s, early 2000s. Having an open closet and open shelving was not cheap yet. And my answer would just be, to take the doors off the closet, put them in the basement, and just have an open closet. You can hang a little curtain on a tension rod, you can just leave it open, whatever. But especially these are children, you know, they are not going to be keeping their closet looking neat. And I imagine the parents being like, good God, you don't clean up your closet.
ERIC: Yep.
AMANDA: If they had to look at it every day.
ERIC: It's like that means moons haunted, except for it's like doors haunted?
AMANDA: Yes, exactly.
ERIC: Like we just removed the door. We've solved the problem.
AMANDA: Alright, it's a little more scene-setting here. "Our room was also very dark at night. The only window looked out onto the backyard and our neighbors didn't have lights in the yard opposite. So the only light that came in was a little bit of moonlight and then only on clear nights. One such night there was just enough light coming into the room to illuminate things in a creepy way. More darkness would have been better and then there wouldn't have been as much for my imagination to settle on. I just felt worked myself into hysterics, but I knew that my sister would be annoyed if I bothered her, so I tried my best to get to sleep. In the middle of this mounting dread, I looked up across the room to the stubborn closet, the one that was nearly impossible for us kids to open. My soul left my body as I watched it slowly slide open by itself".
JULIA: Wait that.
AMANDA: ”I tried to convince myself I was dreaming, but I couldn't wake myself up. I could only watch as the closet was slowly opened to reveal its contents. A monster"
ERIC: Ooh.
AMANDA: "Monsters have now become stuck children's characters these days, that my kid brain experienced true horror at what I saw. Seven feet tall, covered in hair, yellow eyes, thick lips tusks. It sat there silently, unmoving but making direct eye contact with me. I want to shout to my sister but since she was in the top bunk, I couldn't tell if she was awake. And I didn't want to draw the things attention. Slowly I raised my blanket up over my head and laid down. I don't know how long I waited, maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour, but eventually, I slid the blanket back down to look out into the room and check on the whereabouts of the monster. As soon as the blanket cleared my eyes, I saw that it had now moved to mere inches away from my face, and was still making unblinking eye contact."
JULIA: What the fuck.
AMANDA: "In slow motion, I raised the blanket again, covered my head completely, and waited. It felt like I didn't blink. But hours later the sun came into the room and my mom woke us up for school. The monster was nowhere to be seen and I have never told the soul about my experience." Now, what do you guys think? The logical answer is?
ERIC: So I definitely thought that this like wasn't a dream at first, but then the monster shows up and I was like now it sounds like a dream. So like I mean, as we've established earlier in this episode, and in many other previous episodes, my house isn't haunted.
AMANDA: Hmm. Definitely not.
ERIC: But sometimes because of, because of the heat and the cooling of the earth. And the way wood works, things compress and tightened. So sometimes a door, perhaps the door to my attic, sometimes just slightly creaks open.
AMANDA: Yeah, maybe in your camera as you record a podcast with us your colleagues.
ERIC: Yeah, exactly. So like, but like that. That's a logical answer. We know what's happening there. This we—I don't, I mean, the door is just opening, and presumably they were closed before. I don't know. Maybe it's oiled well or something like that. But I can't— I don't have any explanation for the monster part of it. Maybe it's just like a very messy pile of clothes. Or maybe like my sister had one of those, like orange Muppets from Sesame Street may be like that, along with some weird stuff could appear like a monster? But I'd have no idea.
JULIA: Yeah, I'm guessing, 'cause I don't recall if they mentioned that. Like the sister was definitely asleep in the bed. But it would be very funny if the sister crawled down and put on like a weird mask and that was a real creep.
ERIC: A classic prank between me and my sisters and to my parents, to each other and my parents, we would just put like a different like a stuffed animal in someone's bed, then we'll like slowly escalate it like at one point we just had like a mannequin’s head and we just put it on someone's bed, which is I think we did that to our parents. So like a classic prank in our house was just a big plush animal or a mannequin head or so it kind of like, think like that. I've when I say mannequin had, I actually am like hat display head, that like my–
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: –like her son head off. Or something like that we just [39:32] like round.
AMANDA: Very chic.
ERIC: Yeah. But yeah, I don't Yeah, I think Julia might have it with— with what was going on there?
JULIA: Yeah, they did say the like younger sister was more like adventurous and brave right? That would be—that seems like a very classic, younger sibling move.
AMANDA: It does. Alright, let's get to it. J says "I've always been a skeptic and I remember the experience vividly. But after years of thought, I think I've come up with a logical answer. Now the closets in our house were notoriously difficult like we said, and my dad always wants to fix a problem, but only after it annoys him enough to motivate him to fix it."
JULIA: That sounds like most people, that’s fair.
AMANDA: "Being impatient kids, we yank that closet off the tracks enough times that he must have applied enough WD-40 to the track, to allow the door to slide open with nearly no resistance, possibly even from air currents, or the shifting of the house.” There you go Scheidner.
ERIC: There we go.
AMANDA: “As for the monster, a child's mind latches on to the weirdest things. We used to watch The Muppet Show, and there was a particular episode that really messed me up. The character Sweetums, an adult human-sized monster suit Muppet, appears in the sketch chasing a woman around a tree on a deserted island. I walked into the room and viewed the scene unprepared and ever since that day, Sweetums the Muppet is the image that embodies my mind's fear in dark rooms. It's Sweetums that chases me when I have to turn off the lights at the bottom of the stairs, and can't seem to get back into the light fast enough."
JULIA: Oh, but I love Sweetums.
AMANDA: I know. "My logical answer is this. My child's mind made it all up. The closet must have slipped open due to the well-oiled roller track, and since I had just recently been exposed to the trauma that is Sweetums, the moonlight on the close of our closet took the form of this terrifying monster in my primed mind. At the height of my terror, I looked across the room and again saw the monster's face in a pile of laundry, or a blanket which my sister was notorious for kicking off her bunk in the middle of the night." There you go, Julia. "This whole story boils down to an over-application of WD-40 and an over-exposure to Muppets at an impressionable age. Hope the story was entertaining. It felt good to share it through my visceral terror at googling a 50-year-old Muppet character seems like something I should bring up in therapy." Probably at this point. Yeah. "Stay creepy and cool, J"
ERIC: Can I just say full credit for me? I said both grease the doors and I've entered the muppet.
JULIA: Yeah, you did say Muppet honestly, Eric win,100%.
ERIC: I want to be very clear. I did not look at the email. I genuinely guessed.
JULIA: I love that for you.
ERIC: I will say, I will say similarly there was a handful of very creepy things I remember from my childhood that scared me. One that I think we've discussed is the slime monster from a ghostwriter. Far too scary for a children's show for sure. Another was a very scary episode of Thomas the Tank Engine with a diesel who was just a big jerk.
JULIA: Oh, no.
ERIC: But the one I want to talk about right now is, there is an episode of Sesame Street. I guess an episode because there are a bunch of skits that they often we use in those things where the Count is in an Egyptian tomb.
AMANDA: Ooh.
ERIC: And for some reason, I do not recall the video. I don't remember any of the details. But I think, he likes to trap Bert and Ernie in an Egyptian tube or something like that. And while he's like directly counting, and that was the one thing from Sesame Street that genuinely scared me a lot. So there's definitely—
JULIA: I did find the clip it exists online.
ERIC: Oh I knew you would. I knew you would find it Julia, and maybe we will link it in the show notes below and maybe I'll give it a little watch after this and, and see how scary it remains today.
JULIA: Impeccable.
AMANDA: Yeah, if you feel like confronting a childhood nightmare.
JULIA: Well as– we've also discussed on the show that mine was the animated Grinch. So I feel you.
AMANDA: Yeah. And I recently saw a screenshot of our real monsters which I never watched but saw commercials for.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I think Julia, this maybe is where my like hatred of fusion creatures came from. Because all of those monsters I mean, they were well designed and that they were just like had body parts or body parts should not be and they're like silhouettes and things were so against kind of biology that my, my child's brain was like, no way, no way, no way. And I think, think it was the creepiest thing in the world.
JULIA: Yeah, they were all real bad. They were all very creepy and probably should not have been for children.
ERIC: They were real monsters. Ah,
JULIA: They were. They were real monsters. Alright, y'all. How about we get one from Eric, a different Eric?
ERIC: Whoa, that's me. But not. That's amazing. You've had an Eric and a Kelsey in this episode.
JULIA: Something was meant to be. You guys are just so logical that your namesakes are also very logical.
ERIC: Yes.
JULIA: That makes sense. Eric, right. “Get ready, buckle up, because these stories have a perfectly logical explanation where nothing dangerous or untoward ends up happening at all."
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: "Hi, it's Eric, (but not that Eric). I love your show, especially the Urban Legends episodes, and I've been waiting for this moment to tell you my amazing stories. Without further ado, let's get right into the stories. Story number one, THE CURSÈD MOBILE GAME???”
ERIC: Ooh.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: "It was a day like any other that found me looking through the spookiest of app stores— Google Play— looking for some new game to try out. I settled on a game called Merge Meadow. The game seemed interesting because it had a day/night dichotomy between two different gardens you could have, wherein you would collect and merge small creatures."
ERIC: Ooh.
JULIA: “The day garden had normal animals"
AMANDA: Oh no.
JULIA: What happened?
AMANDA: I don't like this.
JULIA: The merging of creatures.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: I expected this to be about like the guy that figured out how cauliflower has different shapes and colors, whatever that guy or peas. What was the guy? The guy that figured out how crossbreeding works? I was expecting that plot.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Had not combining creatures, ala Frankenstein.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I was thinking oh, great. Okay, we—we have a daytime garden and nighttime garden you can have different plants blooming in each, love it. Amanda that's just gardening in real life. I just—I —I live in an apartment. I want a garden.
JULIA: Oh my gosh.
ERIC: I'm looking at this game. That website. It's still downloadable. It appears.
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: Probably not in some time, though, because the phones that they have the screenshots are like iPhone 5's and a Samsung Galaxy 2, so.
AMANDA: Oh, great.
ERIC: Might not be currently up to date, but quite cute art. I'll say.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Alright, Julia, tell us more.
JULIA: Yeah, I think it's one of those ones where you like, you know, you're like, Oh, I opened this egg and I have three of these foxes. And now I can combine them into a bigger Fox thing you know? Sure. Like I said "the day garden had normal animals and the night garden had fantasy animals. Now the other important thing about these creatures is that the first letter of their names always lined up with the first letter of the animal's name, such as (Freida the fox and Ingrid the imp). So when I started up the app, I naturally picked the spooky night garden and I started playing. After a while, I unlocked Benny the beholder. (I assume you guys know what a Beholder is. It's like an eyeball with a bunch of like smaller eyestalks)" Big and cool. "This was all well and good until I come back to the app later to find that BENNY IS NOW NAMED ERIC. I didn't give it my name, there was no nickname system, so how did it happen?!? Naturally, I assumed it was cursed and (Team ignorant?) deleted the app. Years later, fast forward years later from this app. I'm researching the game to send the story into you guys because obviously, (this isn't now, this is a pre-logical answer.) But I cannot find any written record of the beholder being named Benny. I vaguely remember seeing the wiki page that called it Eric, but checking now the only sources are sites that probably gave me like 12,000 viruses and still didn't say either name."
AMANDA: Uh huh.
JULIA: "So the logical answer, I guess they either had to not use Beholder because it's copyright"
ERIC: Literally what I was gonna say. I was literally gonna say that—the haunted part of this, is that the Beholder is copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons and Dragons.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I was gonna say that's not just a generic creature. That's a Wizards of the Coast thing.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: I forgot to leave you guys room to guess.
ERIC: Though, It's okay. It was fun. It was still fun.
JULIA: So Eric assumes either "the holder was copywritten, so that wouldn't work. Or I made Benny up. I guess I could just check the app to see what the name is now, but I'm not sure I want to download it again." Actually, he says "(that was my attempt at conveying spooky voice through text)" which I'll try again.” I'm nOt sUrE if I wAnT tO dOwNlOaD iT aGaIn!”
AMANDA: There you go.
ERIC: There we go.
AMANDA: Nailed it.
JULIA: Story number two, "THE SPOOKY SOUND. THAT DOESN'T GO OVER THE PHONE???"
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: “It's June 22, 2021. (I saved this because I know you guys love specific dates.)”
AMANDA: A specific date, thank you!
JULIA: "I'm walking outside in the park behind my house, on the phone with a friend. (Let's call them J.)"
AMANDA: We just had a they/them J in our last letter! What?
JULIA: I'm sure there's a logical explanation to all this.
AMANDA: The synchronicity, man.
JULIA: "We're just chatting along when I hear a sound. It sounds like a dumpster lid shutting and like it's coming from all around me. It is loud and very noticeable. I asked J if they heard it, but they said they didn't hear a single sound. However, back at the house when someone else was talking down the hall, J could hear that perfectly. I trailed to the local garbage truck, which was out that day to see if it had made the sound. But it didn't make anything close to the sound that would travel across the entire field to get where I was.” Alright, logical answer guesses. Why was it not picking up on the phone? Was it a ghost sound?
ERIC: I mean, my immediate understanding of phones, is that the reason like music sounds really bad on phones is because only certain frequencies are used. That's why hold music always sounds like absolute trash.
AMANDA: This is very mundane, but it was my guest too, is like phones are calibrated to transmit human voices, and anything outside the sort of bell curve of average human voice frequency, they don't do a good job with. So even a very loud background noise. If it's not, if it's too low or too resonant, won't translate even like a distant voice down the hall.
ERIC: I like that Amanda gave a much more detailed explanation of how that works than me the sound engineer on the show.
JULIA: That's fair. That's right.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Sometimes that happens.
AMANDA: Listen, Eric, I've been proximate to sound engineers for so long that I— you know.
ERIC: Don't I know it?
JULIA: So the logical explanation that our Eric provides is that "It was some manner of other truck and it echoed around the houses surrounding the park. As for J not being able to hear it? No idea. Maybe it was something more sinister after all." But I think Amanda and your, points both of you, probably hit the nail on the head in terms of why it wasn't heard over the phone.
AMANDA: It's pretty good.
JULIA: Now Eric, there is one final story here from the other Eric, would you like to read it?
ERIC: I would love to do that, myself.
JULIA: Excellent.
ERIC: Story three is titled "THE MONSTROUS SCUFFLE IN THE TREES???”
JULIA: Dun-dun-dun!
AMANDA: Whoa–aah!
ERIC: "So me and someone else (we'll say Q) we're walking in the same park as story number two, but this time at night"
JULIA: Inherently creepier. Excellent.
ERIC: Of course. Yeah. "We were just being quiet and appreciating nature. When we heard the sounds of two distinct creatures. One was a deep growl like something you would imagine a fierce and strong animal would make. Like a bear or a boar, or something else. The other one was a high-pitched screeching noise, an owl maybe? possibly Mothman? No way to tell. Needless to say, we skedaddled back to the house."
AMANDA: Okay.
ERIC: So what do we think these two animals potentially could have been? It's a simple one. But we don't have a lot of information.
JULIA: You know what that actually sounds like a cat that like got a mouse or something like that, like an animal that caught another animal and that's what the screeching was. The circle of life.
ERIC: My cat used to just get in fights right outside my window growing up, and there were no low growls. Is as possible, they were just two unrelated animal-type things happening all at once.
JULIA: That's true.
AMANDA: I'm gonna guess like a possum maybe? I have heard sort of like garbage creatures of the night. A hiss.
JULIA: Lovingly garbage creature of the night?
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure they're important to ecosystems, but that's my guess for the— but the growling I have no idea.
ERIC: Yeah, I feel like we don't know what a lot of animals sound like because we lied to all the time in media.
JULIA: That's true.
ERIC: Like any time you see an eagle, you're usually hearing on TV or video are a red-tailed hawk.
JULIA: Right.
ERIC: Eagles just go like clickety, clackety, clickety, clack. They just made very odd sounds. So like, I don't know what a possum really sounds like or a raccoon or any of those types of animals.
JULIA: We also don't know what like where Eric lives in the world.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So it could be some animal that we're not thinking of because we don't have those where we are.
AMANDA: Exactly.
ERIC: That's very true.
AMANDA: Maybe deer, do deer growl? Okay, I'm just gonna say deer.
JULIA: I don't think deer growl.
AMANDA: Huh.
JULIA: I don't think they make any sort of noise.
AMANDA: Or like a, like a huffing? I have no idea.
ERIC: They probably huff.
JULIA: Yeah, they're going like [huffs], like horses, but they don't whinney.
AMANDA: Right.
ERIC: I have no idea. So here's what Eric presents as the logical answer. "The next morning, Q looked into the sounds and surmise that they must be a raccoon"
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Ooh.
ERIC: You were very close. Amanda is very close.
JULIA: Friend of the night.
AMANDA: Yes.
ERIC: "Apparently raccoons can make some very weird sounds. And maybe these raccoons were fighting over some food or something. I've attached a video of some raccoon sounds to hear how bonkers they are. (I think it has all the right sounds in it, you might need to skip around to find the growling. And if you can't find it, there's probably some other raccoon growling videos out there.) So yeah, I hope you enjoyed all these stories. And I hope that these tales chill you to the very core with their terrifying mundanity. Stay creepy, Stay cool. Stay logical, Eric. (another one.)"
JULIA: Do we want to hear some of the raccoon noises? Do you want to click through and hear those weird noises?
ERIC: Let's listen live.
JULIA: Okay.
ERIC: This is a good-titled video. Raccoon sounds like twirling cotton candy, raccoon noises at night, and then in (new 2020)
JULIA: Yeah.
ERIC: They just released a new raccoon sound everybody and here they are.
JULIA: They drop that new raccoon track
AMANDA: It's the new drop. Yeah, I preorder it and got it on cassette.
JULIA: Alright, I'm playing my raccoon voices now.
ERIC: Sounds like a bird.
JULIA: Ooh, that's not what I thought a raccoon would sound like.
ERIC: No, no.
JULIA: I also like that it has facts come up. Raccoons are about as big as small dogs.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: I'm gonna click around a little see if I can find other noises.
ERIC: There are some of the wide range, of Raccoon sounds here that I'm, I'm hearing.
AMANDA: I'm really entranced by the thumbnails, there is one called mobbed by raccoons and then (25.) There's one that says Amazing Facts About Raccoons, and the thumbnail is a raccoon looking like it's about and to catch a football and its hand is circled. Wow. A lot happening here.
ERIC: This is a part of YouTube that people like to ask about. Like weird parts of YouTube, since I do a lot of YouTube stuff. And I always used to say elevator reviews–
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: –as you're saying that is like that. There's a corner of the internet that you really got to just kind of stumble upon. But now I'm kind of fascinated by wildlife animal sound videos and how they are titled and thumbnailed and all of that. Because these are just amazing, interesting titles and ways of like framing like extremely like simple nature facts essentially. I really liked that.
AMANDA: Good stuff. Well, thank you, Eric (the other one) another one for coming through, and thank you, everybody, for sending in your Logical Answers. Listen, the books are not closed on Logical Answers,s. So if you have some, if you come across some, if you realize you are the ghost of, of current children in your hometown, please send them in. We have a the whole email filter set up for them to put it in a special tag. So we love these and we want to read more in the future.
JULIA: Yeah, I want more of the, I was the ghost the whole time once, or it was I who started the Urban Legend.
ERIC: Yeah, I love those origin stories.
AMANDA: It really never gets old.
JULIA: Especially the ones that stick 17 years later. I still can't get over that tree one, that's so freakin cool, man.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Alright listener as well. Whether you're the ghost or the tree is the ghost or you just been telling tales. Remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
[theme]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!
Transcriptionist: Kristianne
Editor: KM