Episode 328: Your Urban Legends LXXVI - Add Your Name to Join the Club!
/Listen, kids love to join clubs. Even if it means potentially selling their souls to the ghosts haunting their homes. Also an abandoned gym, a mean ghost teacher, and Amanda becomes a Victorian ghost!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of pregnancy, child endangerment, and death.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends journaling at a bar!
- 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
- Skin Deep by Marie Blanchet, a great selkie novel available in English and French!
- Digital Folklore podcast, which you can check out in your podcast app now!
- BetterHelp is an online therapy service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
Find Us Online
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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. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
ERIC: And I'm Eric.
AMANDA: And this is Episode 328. Gangs back together, hey everybody.
ERIC: Bang, bang.
JULIA: Did you guys miss me last time?
ERIC: We did.
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: Hmmkay.
AMANDA: Especially, you talked about Boston and I thought you would have given a great perspective.
JULIA: I had such FOMO listening to that episode, I was like no. I was like— I was like responding the way I would have responded if I was there, like let me in. Let me in.
AMANDA: Oh, sorry.
JULIA: It's alright. Mischa was a delightful co-guest/host for y'all and I'm glad that they were here to keep up my spooky banter.
AMANDA: Hell yeah. But we have a backlog of checking in with y'all spooky houses. Any—anything happening here and the tail end of winter, in either of your— I don't know pipes or attics or basements?
ERIC: Pipes doing great, no explosions.
AMANDA: Good.
ERIC: I love it. That hasn't happened before, so not exactly surprising, but excellent to continue not happening. I mean, it was like zero degrees around Christmas. So—so I mean, it was a bit concerning then.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Attic, roof, working. Unlike last winter, so that's a big improvement.
AMANDA: There you go.
ERIC: We've also waterproof the basement, has not had enough rain. It is raining today, but haven't had enough rain to see if the system is working or not. But overall, I have no current complaints for the house.
AMANDA: Love to hear it.
JULIA: We love to hear it. My house is fine. I bought a new plant, it's been so unseasonably warm here that my daffodils started coming up in like mid-February. And I'm like no, shhh, go back to sleep, it's not time yet. But their— they're fully awake.
AMANDA: Get back into your blanket.
JULIA: Yeah, these poor things they don't know. They don't understand that climate change is hurting them in this way.
AMANDA: That's fair, that's fair.
JULIA: Amanda, how was— how was your apartment? Any— any rooftop situations, any garbage issues that are being solved?
AMANDA: No, we've kind of displaced the family of rats that was living under the unused restaurant outdoor seating in front of our apartment, which is good.
ERIC: Great. We'd love to hear that.
AMANDA: Yeah, whenever there's a one of those like unseasonably warm days in February or early March, it's like all the bugs wake up. And so there are a couple like winter drunk flies, just like flying around the apartment that they were clearly sort of hibernating you know, or like asleep or whatever, stun by the cold. And now that it's warming up, they—they really just want to like get in the mix. And so I've gotten pretty good at killing flies with a spatula, and it makes me feel like an assassin and a superhero every time I do it. So that's—that's the latest here.
JULIA: I really liked the way you described those flies as like kind of like zombies. I'm into that, I'm into like supernatural ghosts of flies being like I died in the winter, but now it's spring and so I must arise.
AMANDA: Exactly. Curious too, we haven't examined seasonal effects of ghosts and you know, how kind of seasonality maps onto hauntings on the show before. Which feels like you know, maybe a lens that we should look to.
JULIA: We should. If you have a seasonal haunting, please write in and tell us about it.
AMANDA: Apart from just like seasonal affective disorder, and also the inherent sadness of the holidays, those we got covered. But yes, if you've noticed, ghost awakening around the time that you know, spring does, I want to know.
ERIC: Or if your seasons in your spice rack are hot. If you have any seasonal haunting.
AMANDA: You know probably they're expired and probably have lost lavender flavor, so it's a good idea to buy smaller quantities of spices.
ERIC: You do need to keep that stuff fresh and up to date.
JULIA: Yeah, I—I just like I'm very curious if you know, ghosts are affected by time like we are. That's all, that's all I want to know.
AMANDA: Same. But speaking of wanting to know, what did listeners brought us in the last month? What are—what are the stories that we're going to unpack in this episode?
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I have a nice chunky one to kind of get us started for the first half of the episode would you guys like that?
AMANDA: Hell yeah, dude.
JULIA: So this comes from Archive, they/them and they titled this email maybe selling my soul to the ghost on the stairs?
ERIC: Maybe selling it?
JULIA: Maybe, not sure. So they write, “hey, Spirits team, I finally started listening recently after months of my friend telling me how great your podcast is.” Sidenote, tell more of your friends how great this podcast is.
AMANDA: Nailed it. Do it again, and again, and again, until they listen.
JULIA: “And have been marathoning episodes nonstop for the past few weeks. After listening to most of your urban legends episodes, I thought you all might be interested in hearing about the ghost that haunted the stairs of my childhood home, and how I might have accidentally signed away my soul to her as a child. Anyway, here's my story.”
AMANDA: You guessed, right.
JULIA: “The house that I grew up in was an old Victorian-style house built by two brothers in the early 1900s. One of two identical houses the brothers built beside each other in the riverside town of Belvedere, New Jersey. A full four floors if you included the finished attic and stone dungeon of a basement. It was placed directly across the street from a playground. Had a large flower-filled yard and was filled with little accents of vintage charm, like crystal doorknobs and hand-carved banisters.”
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: “For a couple with two young children like my parents were when we moved in, on paper, it must have looked like a dream. Unfortunately, they might have wanted to look a bit further than paper and actually visited the house before they signed the lease, because the first time they walked up the stone path to the front door, their new neighbor, a kind old lady named Mildred, who lived in the twin house next door, called out from where she was sitting on her porch rocking slowly in an old weaker rocking chair. You know, she said that house is haunted, before slowly standing from her chair and shuffling into her own home leaving my parents in shocked silence.”
AMANDA: If I am lucky enough to get old, I'm doing this shit all the time. I love it.
JULIA: Even if it's not true, even just like lying to your new neighbors being like, you know.
AMANDA: Yeah!
JULIA: That place is haunted, burned down years ago.
AMANDA: Yeah, exactly.
ERIC: Yeah, why not? Why not? Have a little fun.
JULIA: Yeah, we can't blame old people for lying, it's fine. “As it turned out though, any potential ghosts that might have been haunting our house took a bit of a backseat to the problems the actual house itself post. As I mentioned before, our house was old and unfortunately not very well maintained over the years. Water damage was clearly evident in the ceiling of the kitchen and down the walls adjacent to the now-enclosed chimney, leaving poorly installed wallpaper to bubble and peel. The hardwood floors were scratched and creaky, the thin original windows did little to keep heat in or out. And when combined with an ancient faulty boiler resulted in a near constant chill year-round.” Definitely wasn't the ghosts that were bringing the chill. No-uh, definitely not.
AMANDA: Julia, would any of these factors have been a deal breaker for you in your house-hunting process? I feel like this is kind of close to you know, close to your experience, close to home.
JULIA: For me personally, no. For Jake, absolutely.
AMANDA: Fair.
JULIA: That was the problem. I wanted one of these like beautiful old historic homes with all the little vintage details and stuff like that, and then Jake would be like, the boiler doesn't work Julia, we can't buy this house. You know, things that you could potentially fix, but would cost a shit ton of money and a housing market where it's already wildly expensive. You don't want to spend money on that kind of stuff, so.
AMANDA: Yeah, like that first one you guys really liked, and then they were like, um, inside all of the walls are terrible wires that you have to replace immediately, and then you're like, hmm, I don't think so.
JULIA: You know, when they first built houses and they put electricity in houses, they still have those wires in the walls and they're still hooked up for some reason. And Jake was like, no.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's wrapped in moldy cloth, does that work for you?
JULIA: No. [8:12] Archive continues “at one point, an old cistern tank in the back yard collapsed creating a sinkhole that consumed our hot tub, and in which we found two creepy gnome statues that later disappeared. But that's a story for another time.” It's a lot— it's a lot in that statement.
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
JULIA: “With the house itself cold, creaky, and falling apart in places, it was kind of understandable that no one really noticed some of the more paranormal occurrences until we had been there for several years. Before things started getting PROPERLY SPOOKY,” both of those capitalized in a way that makes it seem properly spooky.
AMANDA: You read it perfectly Julia, that came through 100%.
JULIA: “PROPERLY SPOOKY in my house, there were several signs that there was probably something going on. According to my mom, she often heard a ball bouncing in the hall outside her bedroom at night when we were kids. And once I heard footsteps in the middle of the day no less, so clear when home alone that I thought someone had broken in. Several times I thought I heard someone call my name, only to turn and find no one. My dog had a weird obsession with staring at our stairs, and one cat had the habit of sitting stuck still on them staring unblinkingly at us at night, which honestly could just be normal cat behavior. And on one occasion, a broken motion sensor Halloween decoration activated in an empty room. All of this, however, paled in comparison to the series of full-bodied apparition sightings that happened when I was about 12 or 13.”
ERIC: Oh boy.
AMANDA: I was gonna say, I know it was first, but like even hearing a ball bouncing is so specific and I guess like heating pipes could be pinging, but you would notice that correlation pretty quickly like that's a very distinct sound.
JULIA: Yes, absolutely. I feel like a lot of— I don't know if it's store ways that we've personally heard here on the podcast, or just a lot of horror genre in general really likes the idea of a toy activating, or a toy being used without a child around. And the bouncing of a ball really does it for me in that sense, where it's like, it is a little creepy to have a ball kind of like bounced out of a shadowy corner with no recipient in sight, you know?
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
ERIC: Yeah.
JULIA: “As a child, it was a rule in my house that guests weren't allowed upstairs. Namely, because it was extremely messy and my mom didn't want people to see that. This was a well-known rule, and all of my friends knew they weren't allowed upstairs, which is why my friend, let's call her H was confused when she saw my other friend, will call her V run past the living room and up the stairs to the second floor through the reflection of the mirror she was looking in. Quickly, she ran back to tell me. There she found me starting a fire in our fireplace with V at my side helping. H explained what she saw. But seeing as V was clearly next to me outside and not upstairs, we brushed it off. She insisted she saw someone with long dark hair, and some sort of white dress run up the stairs, and it had to be V because she was the only one in the house that had such hair. Now thinking that she was trying to mess with us, we double down on our disbelief. Me, because I did not want a haunted house, thank you very much. And V probably because it would take much more than a ghost to scare her. A brief aside about V before the next bit. V, even at the age of 13 seemed fearless. When we watched horror movies, she was the one we all clung to, and she was the one to check scary noises at night for us. And the one who just silently raised an eyebrow at the actors who jumped out in haunted houses. In short, I was fairly certain that there was nothing in this world that could scare her unless it posed an actual threat to her safety. Then one day when I had left her in the foyer while I was gathering my pool bag in my room, I heard a loud nope, before hearing her sprint up the stairs. She burst into my room wide-eyed and hurriedly explained that while she had been looking in the mirror that reflected the stairs, she saw movement over her shoulder. When she turned around, a large shadowy mass loomed over her from the door to the closet under the stairs. Trying not to freak out, I rather desperately, asked if maybe she had seen the reflection from a passing car, which she denied, insisting that whatever she saw was far too large, far too dark, and far too humanoid to be a passing reflection. Cautiously, we made our way downstairs peering over the banister, and found nothing. The foyer was empty, my dogs lazily napping in the adjacent living room. Despite being more confident that we must have been mistaken. We still left quickly, speeding up as we descended the stairs. A few more weeks passed and once again, I had my little gaggle of friends over for the night. We stayed up late watching movies and playing games, eventually settling in a massive blanket and sleeping bags in the living room floor. Sometime after midnight, I slept peacefully, but the next morning my friend are claimed that her rest was much less peaceful. According to her after settling back down after a trip to the bathroom, she felt someone watching her. Looking around to see if someone else was awake, her eyes were eventually drawn to the stairs. There on the landing was a girl, pale with long dark hair and a white dress just watching her unblinking. After a few minutes, she slowly walked upstairs and out of view.”
ERIC: No. Nope. Absolutely not.
JULIA: “I've heard it been said that while twice is a coincidence, three times it's a pattern. And the pattern I was seeing was this. Clearly, my friends were trying to fuck with me. A pale girl with long dark hair and a white dress, could they make a more stereotypical creepy ghost girl. We'd all watched both The Ring and The Grudge together and I was not going to fall for their prank, not when they couldn't even bother to come up with an original ghost to quote-unquote "haunt" my house. All of this I told my dad a few weeks after the last sighting, complaining about how they all insisted that they really saw something. Now my dad had always been skeptical when it came to the paranormal or supernatural. He needed hard evidence to believe in something and in his eyes, no such evidence had been provided for ghosts. So he nodded along as I explained how all my friends saw something on the stairs laughing as I complained about how unoriginal my friends were with their ghost, then freezing when I described her appearance. Slowly he turned to me and asked wait, so that wasn't you?”
ERIC: What suggests it would be that like what—what—what evidence has been provided? It's like oh, I thought it was you. Why—why at all?
JULIA: Why, why would you think that dad? Please, do I resemble a ghostly child to you? What's going on?
AMANDA: It's bananas.
JULIA: “For such a seemingly innocent question, it sent chills down my spine instantly. I asked what he meant and he explained that the previous Saturday night he was sleeping on the couch when something woke him up. Tired and vision blurred from the dark and his lack of glasses, he saw someone in a white dress. Far too short to be my mom or brother, walk down the stairs, stand at the bottom and stare at him for nearly 15 minutes—”
AMANDA: What?!
JULIA: “—Before turning and walking back up the stairs out of sight.” That's a long time to just be like why is this child staring at me? Did you try to talk to them? What's up?
AMANDA: I know. I was gonna say like parents have a lot of patience to you know outlast a tantrum or you know, sleep train their kids, but 15 minutes is a long time for your kid who creepily stares at you while they're supposed to be in bed and be like, alright, this is— this is fine.
JULIA: Yeah. “He had assumed it had been me trying to scare him. But as I told him then that last Saturday, I had been at a friend's house for the night. Neither of us quite knew what to make of this realization. Now I will say my dad has a rather dark fucked up sense of humor. For example, after showing me the movie IT as a child, he would point out street grades asking me if I want to go search for sewer clown.”
ERIC: What?
JULIA: “So it could have been easy to brush this off as him once again trying to fuck with me.” That feels like something my dad would do, so I—I don't blame This person at all.
AMANDA: Julia, I was watching Seinfeld over the weekend for really like the second or third time in my life. And I was like, man, when—when did I encounter this? And I'm like, oh, watching Julia's dad watch Seinfeld in her house growing up, was the only time I've ever encountered Seinfeld.
JULIA: That's true. He's been watching a lot of Seinfeld recently, and it's been a kind of a delight to watch him just like giggle to himself watching it, so. “However, the look on his face when I told him that I hadn't been home that night was one I had never seen before. There was no mirth in his eyes, no carefully blank faces, he tried to hide his grin. Instead, he looked almost apprehensive, like he was trying to find an alternative explanation for what he saw, but was coming up blank.”
AMANDA: Scary.
JULIA: “With four separate sightings of something on our stairs, an old memory returned. Like many houses, the hollow space under our stairs had been made into a closet. And while we use the front portion on a daily basis for coats and shoes, because of the way that the stairs were shaped, this closet was deep. Using the entire hollow the stairs provided. At the time we use the deeper part of the closet for storage, but as a child, it was always my personal hideaway, partially because it was easily accessible, and partially because covering the walls was writing from other children who had lived in the house over the past 100 years.”
ERIC: No.
AMANDA: No. No.
JULIA: “Little drawings, conversations carried out decades apart, and other writings telling their names and when they lived there were scrawled in various childish handwriting.”
AMANDA: Incredible history, incredible patina. Normally I'm all about that, I'd tear out that wood immediately. No way that's—that shit living in my house.
JULIA: “At the time, I had thought this was the coolest thing, particularly because of one of the most faded and presumably oldest writings which were claimed, add your name to join the club, followed by a list of about seven or so names.”
AMANDA: No!
JULIA: “Which I happily added mine too.”
AMANDA: Aaaaaah! [laughs]
JULIA: “Looking back, adding my name to a list of other children's names in a creepy little closet when some of the other writings included shhh, and don't let HER hear you.” Her being capitalized, might not have been a good idea.
AMANDA: Oh boy.
JULIA: “Unfortunately, that particular bit of wisdom did not occur to me until years after the fact, as I sat in the back of the closet staring at my poor life choices, realizing that the HER mentioned in several of the writings might still be on the stairs above my head.”
AMANDA: Mm-hmm. Incredible.
JULIA: “Now I don't know for sure if whoever was on the stairs was related in any way to the creepy writings underneath them. But I figured it was creepy and stare related, so I might as well go and investigate. I pushed aside shoes and coats, shoved boxes of board games and old cookbooks aside to crawl back into my childhood hideaway. It was so strange because now as a teenager, I could recognize that this little closet was creepy as fuck. It was dusty and dark, the only light coming from my phone and through one or two thin slivers where the boards on the stairs were slightly loose. The walls were an off-mint green with water damage, leaving tear-like stains that dripped in streets through the writings. On the far back wall, there was a hole in the plaster that you could peer through with a slight space between the inner and outer walls of the house. And the floors were worn like they had been the busiest part of the house. Despite all this, I wasn't afraid. In fact, I felt calm like I had finally returned home after a long trip. I took my time taking pictures of the writings, wanting to show them to my friends and see if they had any thoughts on how they might relate to the ghosts on the stairs. After maybe an hour I crawled back into the light of the rest of the house. Of course, after I shared all of this and the pictures with my friends, they unanimously decided that I had quote, “signed away my soul to the ghost on the stairs.” “ Anyway, I hope you guys have a lovely rest of your day. PS. I took more photos of all the writings inside the closet before we moved, and after writing this, I decided to try and find them to maybe send them with my story. But after going through all my files on three different laptops, I can only find two of them. The other photos I took of the rest of the house that day are still there, but of the closet, I only have a picture of my final message. A poem I wrote about leaving places you love. And one that says people can hear you here very easily. The second one when I tried to copy it onto a thumb drive to bring over to my newer computer, gives me an error message that says the properties cannot be copied and then crashes the upload. PPS not related to the story, but as I was writing this, my cat gave birth to six tiny little kitten beans, and they're all very cute. Best—
AMANDA: Woah!
JULIA: —Archive.”
ERIC: Wow.
JULIA: This story has everything.
AMANDA: This email has everything, baby.
ERIC: It really does. It really, really does.
AMANDA: Oh my God, I don't know where to start. Those photos are haunted. You did sign your name away to the devil, and you're not allowed to— or the ghosts on the stairs. And you're not allowed to take photos of that contract. And certainly, Julia before you said the photos didn't exist, I was thinking to myself, do I want to receive those photos? And I was about to say, don't send us those photos. Like I know that our email is a cloud storage box owned by Google, but like, I don't want that shit anywhere near me.
JULIA: I want it, I want the photos give them to me, give them to me.
AMANDA: Oh, incre—take a photo of the photo maybe. But I—I don't need the original file.
JULIA: Yeah, maybe you can take a photo of it on your old laptop, And then send it to us that way.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Please. and thank you.
AMANDA: Yes, or like an artistic rendering. Like, you know, like a court image.
JULIA: Like a court document.
AMANDA: Were we can't—yeah, we can't— we can't take photos, but we can have a very quick pen and ink, you know, watercolor painter.
JULIA: There's nothing quite like trapping a child by say add your name to join the club.
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: Children love adding their names to lists.
AMANDA: I loved writing my name in shit. I was convinced I'd be— I'd be president one day and I was like, you know what if I write my name in this book that I then donate to the library, and then later a kid opens up, you know, or like an old person opens up a book on their bookcase, and they're like this was owned by the President. It was a fantasy I had that I thought about as if it was certainly going to happen.
JULIA: I don't disagree with you. I think it might still happen, you never know.
AMANDA: Thank you. Thank you. That's an incredible story Archive, thank you so much.
ERIC: Unbelievable stuff. Truly some unbelievable stuff in there.
JULIA: Just real good. It's a real good shit. Four different confirmed sightings of this ghost in the course of like two years, pretty good. Pretty solid.
AMANDA: Anybody else feeling like we need to refill after that one?
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
ERIC: Definitely.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
AMANDA: Hello, hello conspirator, welcome to the refill, and welcome in particular to Hailey, who has carved some dollars out of your real human budget to support our work and this podcast, and the joy that we hopefully bring you every single week. It means a lot to us that we've been publishing a weekly podcast for going on 123-7 years now, more than 7 years, which is nutso. And we are so grateful for your support making it happen. We truly—would not have a podcast without you and we so appreciate it. Thank you as well to our supporting producer-level patrons Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Kneazlekins, Lily, Megan Moon, Nathan, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi. And our legends, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Ginger Spurs Boi, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty. Now you may not know that one of the perks that our higher-level patrons get is a Tarot vibe check every solstice and equinox, which we're coming up on the spring one. Julia does a Tarot reading in both audio and photo and written form, for all of us to kind of guide our season to come. And to those legend-level patrons get their own custom personalized Tarot draws just for them. We are so excited to do this, as I've been getting more into Tarot as you heard me say last week. I have really been enjoying these in particular and looking forward to the one to come. So if you want access to our Tarot vibe check for the spring as well, as the ones that Julia's done in the past, I think 2 or 3. You have a lot of stuff to enjoy if you join patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Now as I keep telling you all about the habits that I'm developing and trying hard to keep, one of them has been journaling. I am one of those people who has tried to journal my entire life and partly because I have hand problems and find writing more than a couple pages at a time really painful. It's something that I haven't read really gotten into, and journaling on a computer frankly doesn't feel the same. Now, one thing that helps me is writing in cursive, which feels very old-timey, but I do because it requires fewer like contractions of my hand. But also taking time and taking breaks, and like feeling truly relaxed and like I'm in a people-watching mood is sort of a creative mode that I find sort of self-reflection comes more easily to me. And I tried recently journaling at a bar and it fucking rocks, y'all. I love it. And I'm going to be doing it more and more hopefully on like a Friday or a Saturday evening. I'm going to aim once a week because I think every day is a lot for me, as I start to journal and like have a drink and spend some time by myself at a bar journaling, and thinking about what I'm doing in my life. And if listening to this podcast is part of a contemplative or pleasurable part of your week, it would mean so much to us if you would share the show. I recently joined a new Discord and when I was introducing myself I mentioned I was a podcaster, everyone's like oh my god, what kind of podcast you make? And so I shared some info about Spirits and Join the Party that the two shows that I work on most often, and someone was like oh my god I listen to Spirits, so hi, shout-out really nice to meet you. And that is exactly the kind of situation and scenario that we would love your help sharing the show. If you are in a group text. a Facebook group, a Discord server, you know where maybe it's like a physical note board that's not a word, the board that you can post things on cork board, at you know your workplace and you are allowed to post things, share it, the word about the show. It is hard to build audience for a podcast, especially one that's been just like running for a long time where the story is like local podcast, keeps doing good work and people enjoy it. You know, like it's— it's really we depend on you all to help us grow the show and bring new people in to enjoy the 300 some episodes that we have made so far. So if you could please do one thing to help the show this week, text somebody put it in the Discord, put it in your group chat, put it in your Facebook group and tell them why they would enjoy the show. Thank you. Speaking of things I enjoy in podcast I work on, Join the Party is well into our third full-length campaign. Julia and I play plant and bug people who are pirates out on the Great Salt Sea trying to figure out what happens after the waterfall and the center of our fantasy world dries up. It is so fascinating, and if you don't know anything at all about D&D or tabletop role-playing games, don't worry, we teach you everything you have to know in a mere 10 minutes. Seriously, it'll give you so much appreciation for these games as a way to tell epic stories, which is what we're doing now. But that's not your vibe, we also have a modern superhero campaign, it was Campaign two. Our first campaign was a high fantasy story that begins at a gay wedding. And then over the summer, we did a shortened Monster of the Week game where we played adolescent camp counselors at a weird and wild and Monster-filled summer camp. It's seriously so good, and I'm so proud of the work we're doing over there. So search for Join the Party in your podcast app and pick one of our seasons to begin or go to jointhepartypod.com/start for a full explanation of all of our campaigns. We are sponsored this week by a wonderful book from a Spirits listener, who by the way, discovered Spirits while researching for her book by writing the words Selkie and podcast into the Google search bar. And Marie Blanchet here, the author of this book lets us know that listeners of Spirits will specifically enjoy her book because it plays with more than one myth that has been covered in the podcast, and uses them in a fun and fresh way. So this book is about a Selkie, who is sent to the shore by her clan to investigate after several of her siblings have been killed and their pelts stolen. But her mission is derailed when she meets two very charming strangers whom everyone in town seems to be falling in love with, including maybe the protagonist. It sounds so good. It takes place in a small town on the edge of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, and it's actually available in both French and English. So if you are somebody who speaks and reads French, hey, you should check out Skin Deep. The tagline of which is badass, one selkie, two strangers, three murders. Incredible, right? This is a queer, supernatural, romantic suspense and it comes out. Hey, it just came out this past weekend on March 18th. But you can get either a paperback or an e-book as well as read more about the book, and about Marie's work at blanchetmarie.com/en for English. Or leave that off for French. Please click the link in the show notes and check out all about Skin Deep. Thank you Marie for advertising with us, and we hope you enjoy Skin Deep. We are also sponsored this week by a new podcast called Digital Folklore. This is a fusion of audio drama and narrative documentary, exploring how our online expressions and culture are actually folklore themselves. They cover everything from scary stories to cat memes, sounds like very compatible with the stuff that we do. The hosts' Perry Carpenter her and Mason Amadeus, create an immersive worlds through sound design, storytelling, voice acting, interviews, and scripted narrative. All of that comes together as Perry, Mason and their guests examine expressions of internet culture through the lens of folklore. It is basically they say an interview show for people who'd rather be listening to an audio drama. And there also may be a little bit of hidden fun for super observant listeners that they point out. So it sounds like there is so much to explore and to enjoy over at Digital Folklore. So go ahead and plug Digital Folklore into the podcast app you're in now. That's Digital Folklore, and make sure you follow, and listen and subscribe and do all that good stuff. And finally, we are sponsored by BetterHelp. It often feels like my brain and my inner world are sort of like a half-remembered urban legend from childhood, right? Where I'm like, oh, some of this feels familiar. Some of this yes, I remember. Some of this I know how to deal with, but a lot of it is often kind of just beyond my grasp. I'm like, damn, how am I 31, and I am still like, figuring out. What feels like all these basic things and something that my therapist and I talked about is, you know, being more forgiving and understanding of myself, as I realized that you know what, like, learning about myself and my brain, and what makes me happy. And how I tend to react to things is just part of life. And it's something that's never going to end because you change every single day, and every single day and week and month and year in your life. And especially when I was finding it difficult to access therapy near me, when I couldn't find anybody who was taking new patients and somewhat convenient to me, and had appointments when I was not working and was somewhat affordable. Even here in New York City, there's 8 million people and no therapists could see me. It was absolutely baffling, and I relied on BetterHelp as a way to keep doing therapy, as I was figuring out a more long-term solution for me in person. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, BetterHelp is a really useful tool that you may want to consider. So discover your potential with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/spirits today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHELP.com/spirits. And now let's get back to the show.
AMANDA: We are back everybody. What are you drinking recently?
JULIA: Here's the thing I got very into the Netflix cooking reality show Drink Masters.
AMANDA: Oh isn't it good Julia, I really liked that show.
JULIA: It's very good. And I was like, I can't make the cocktails that they're making on the show. But I can make cocktails like I shouldn't be infusing more things. I should be making more simple syrup, I should be having fun. So I recently made a cilantro-infused gin. And I've been making a version of a martini with that. And I think it's really fucking good.
AMANDA: Hell yeah, dude. That sounds so good.
JULIA: I've been calling it like the gentleman's Martini because I think it's just very fancy and nice and herbal and——
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: I sub in a little bit of like Lily Blanc, and a little bit of green Chartreuse, And it's just like, fucking delicious.
AMANDA: That's fancy, good job.
JULIA: So easy too. It was just two days of cilantro. You know, very, like loosely chopped in some like, you know well gin, and then you strain it, and now I have Cilantro Gin. And you can do that with anything. So easy.
AMANDA: Hell yeah, man. You're inspiring me because I had some cranberry juice leftover from like a party we had that I was doing with like Mezcal online, which is just a cocktail I really love. I don't know if there's like a name for it, you know, or proper proportion. But it's a flavor combo that I really love, and I have some frozen cranberries in my freezer left over from Thanksgiving. So I would love to maybe make a cranberry syrup or shrub or something. So maybe I'll be doing this uh—this weekend.
JULIA: I also did that too, Amanda. I made, I had frozen cranberries left over from Thanksgiving and I made a cranberry Rosemary syrup and it is really good with like whiskey drinks and stuff, would highly recommend.
AMANDA: Ohh, hell yeah. [33:53] for your proportions. You got it, that sounded weird. But your recipe, you know what I mean?
JULIA: You can— you can hit me up for my proportions.
AMANDA: Eric, how about you what's good in Ohio right now?
ERIC: [34:05] Ohio? Absolutely nothing. [34:07] literally like five times in the last month.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
ERIC: [34:10] But I mean to Julia's point about whiskey drinks, as I've said I'm drinking generally less and mostly just kind of buying nicer bottles of whiskey. So I did go back to my liquor store and pick up the regular— a bottle of Westward whiskey. It is not as good as the stout cask, I will say. I think the stout cast is better, which makes sense because it is like $20 more, so perfect.
AMANDA: Fair.
ERIC: And then I also splurged a bit on a nice bottle of McClellan.
JULIA: Ooh.
ERIC: Some fancy Scotch you know, I'm only drinking like one drink on a Friday or Saturday night a week, so I figured you know—
AMANDA: Make it nice.
ERIC: —what helps with that is buying something really expensive, because then you feel bad if you go through it too quickly because you're like, I've—I've spent that much money and it only lasted me so long.
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
ERIC: So if you spend a lot of money and stretch it out over a two-month period out a bottle, you save money in the long run potentially so, and also your liver. So, all in all, a good experience, and you have the luxury to buy expensive whiskies or alcohols of your choice. They're good. They're very good. So I highly recommend it, If you can do it.
AMANDA: Hell yeah, dude.
JULIA: I'm of the mind where it's like, I'm trying to embrace them more like you should use all the nice things you have, like when you want it and not just like, save it for a special occasion and stuff like that. So your theory does not work for me, Eric, because I'm like, I'm gonna use that good olive oil. I don't care. Like I can just go get more, like it's fine, who cares?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Life is short. So I like that theory for people who have more restraint than I do.
ERIC: But also like good olive oil is something you—I mean, if you're cooking a lot, good olive oil, something that's worth having, and splurging often on something like that.
AMANDA: Yeah, we live near a Lebanese-like grocery cafe called Edy's Grocer in—in Brooklyn, And they have like a spice and also olive oil clubs, so they, you know, sort of like it's almost like growlers like you know, you can bring back the glass jar that it came in and then they refill it for cheaper.
JULIA: That's cool.
AMANDA: And so we've been using like good sumac, like good Zatar you know, good dried mint stuff like that, I really enjoy it.
JULIA: Just use your good stuff, you know. Like if you have the opportunity to use it, use it because if you don't use it, sometimes it'll just go to waste.
AMANDA: 100%.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Well, would you like to hear a urban legend hot off the presses from Morgan, she/ her, titled hometown logical answers, a haunted breezeway, and a reoccurring childhood nightmare, Oh, my!
JULIA: Oh, sure would, sure would.
AMANDA: Let's do it. Morgan writes, “hey, Spirits, fam, I have been marathoning on your episodes, and when I heard your call for new hometown logical answers, I knew I had a wite in. I'm a scientist who has had many spooky experiences that unfortunately, I was too stubborn to leave unsolved. The cherry on top was when Julia asked if anyone had a reoccurring childhood nightmare in Episode 306, and I have one I think you'd enjoy. But first, the logical answers.”
JULIA: It's my fault, blame me. I'm so sorry. Also, sorry. This is a complete aside before you get into Amanda.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I saw another person online, not even related to Spirits stuff, just like stumbled upon it either on like Tumblr or Instagram, I saw someone who had a hat story, a hat man story. And I was like, oh, no, I've released him into the ether, it's not good.
AMANDA: You may or may not have done so, and I think some you know, viral Tumblr post by Spirits talking about it may— may do the trick.
JULIA: We'll have to talk about one of these days.
AMANDA: So Morgan writes, “I grew up in a small town, 200 people in the whole town small.”
ERIC: That is—that's more than small.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: “Because of that my town had an elementary school, and then everyone went to high school in the next town over. Right next to the elementary school was a spooky rundown gym. Back in the day, this gym was used by the high school boy's basketball team for practice, because the girl's and boys' teams had practiced at the same time, and obviously couldn't use the high school court the same time because... I guess that's how you get pregnant?”
JULIA: Hmm, interesting.
AMANDA: Extremely funny in reminiscing of my childhood, it's great. “But by the time I was a kid, the gym hadn't been used in about 20 years and had fallen into disrepair. There were vines covering the outside, it was missing more windows than not. And we were pretty confident it didn't have a roof anymore. Although since we were just kids and couldn't really get up there, we didn't know for sure whether or not the roof was there. Now because this was a small town, not many people left. And a lot of our dads had been on the last few teams to use this gym for practice.”
ERIC: Interesting that all those dads have kids now. All the basketball, I guess.
JULIA: Maybe it didn't stop the children into the pregnancies like they hoped.
AMANDA: True, that's true. “One thing all of our dads told us was that their coach was hard-core and mean. He would make you run laps if you were even a second late to practice. And if he knew you had a date after practice, he makes sure practice ran long.” Everybody's against pregnancy in this town, I guess.
ERIC: This isn't [39:03] Footloose, except for its basketball instead of dancing.
AMANDA: So true.
JULIA: The basketball stopping them from getting pregnancy, opposite of the dancing in Footloose.
ERIC: Oh yes.
AMANDA: “He was the kind of coach that thought he was running an NBA team. And fun true story, the coach was also the bus driver and once left his own son behind because his son was late getting to the bus stop.”
JULIA: Oh my gosh.
ERIC: Geez.
JULIA: Too hardcore.
AMANDA: “Naturally, when us kids heard spooky sounds like things falling and crashing coming from the abandoned gym. We started to make up stories of the poor basketball player who the current coach worked so hard, he died. Now the players' spirit is doomed to practice for all eternity. And the strange sounds must have been him running laps crashing into bleachers, maybe dribbling a ball. I don't know. The fact that our parents told us not to play around the abandoned gym, probably afraid we would like step on a structurally unsafe floorboard or get tetanus or something.” Sure. “Just lended authenticity to the idea of the spooky gym ghost. Now you may be wondering, did the coach really work a player to death? Was he tried for his crimes? How would a ghost dribble a basketball? As far as I know, the coach never killed anything other than his players' love lives, and there was no ghost in the gym.” But all of you and your friends Morgan say that they found a way, they found a way. “One day when cleaning out some of his old things, my dad found a key to the old spooky gym. Yes, my town was so small and trusting that the players all got their own keys to the gym, so they could practice anytime they wanted to. And my dad apparently never gave his back.”
JULIA: Sometimes you just forget to give keys back. Like I still have keys to a store I used to work at. I think I still had keys to like Amanda's old apartment at one point. Like I just— I have keys to everything.
AMANDA: Yeah, we had like a cup of just miscellaneous keys in our apartment. And Eric one day was like we really have to figure out if any of these are useful [40:56]. And I just don't throw them out. But I did label them as like not useful/don't know what they're doing. “So my whole family curious if it still works decided to try it out. We went over to the gym and found out that no one had changed the locks in the last 20 years. What we saw was indeed pretty spooky. A basketball court warped by rain, a collapsing roof, bleachers overgrown with grass. Then something made a loud squawking sound and flew faced first into a window. The ghost was not in fact a basketball player, but a very happy clumsy family of owls, who made the abandoned gym their home.”
JULIA: I love [41:35] the image of a clumsy owl is so cute. Also, right? If you have an abandoned building, just in your town, whoever owns it, put [41:43] on there. Like, come on, what are we doing here?
ERIC: But how are kids going to have a fun time exploring it?
JULIA: Well, Eric you know.
ERIC: Julia hates fun. Breaking news.
JULIA: You break open a window. What do you want from me? Do it the hard way, Eric.
ERIC: Wow, okay, okay.
AMANDA: Wow. And Morgan has a second story as well. “So years after that when I was finally at the high school, a town over. We all knew that tunnels are haunted and skywalks might be safe, but this is a story of a haunted breezeway.”
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: “At my high school, there was a breezeway that led from the cafeteria to a back door of the main classroom building. And it was the path everyone took to and from lunch.” Now I had never heard of a breezeway until I like went to college because in New York it's not good enough of weather to have one, but it's like a covered walkway. It's like a–you know, a sidewalk and there's a roof over it, but no walls. So you know, you can walk between buildings in the rain.
JULIA: But the breeze can get through.
AMANDA: Exactly. “Next to the breezeway was the parking lot where all of the faculty parked. Now I'm not sure how common This is, but my school was incredibly strict on how loud you could be walking from class to class. If you made any more noise than was deemed normal by whatever teacher happened to be on duty that day, you could be in big trouble.”
JULIA: That sucks.
ERIC: That's so—
AMANDA: What the fuck?!
ERIC: —yeah.
JULIA: That sucks.
AMANDA: I have never heard of that.
ERIC: I feel like the loudest thing I've ever heard is a school hallway between [43:07]
AMANDA: Yeah.
ERIC: Although like thinking back, I've— I almost want to say they did try to institute something like this at a school that I was at. And I can't quite recall, but like it almost sounds familiar that this almost happened. But like you can't just get that many kids to be quiet while they walk and clos—lockers, lockers are being opened and closed.
AMANDA: So loud.
ERIC: That's gonna cause most of your sound right there.
AMANDA: “Now ours prohibited running, but that's more because—”
JULIA: Sure.
ERIC: Yeah.
AMANDA: “—there were exactly as many children as were deemed safe to be allowed in that high school at any given time. It was crowded.”
JULIA: Yeah. And they didn't want us to like fall in crack our heads open. I get it.
AMANDA: Right, right.
JULIA: You know.
AMANDA: No, I've never heard of this, Morgan. “But because we were kids, all rambunctious and riled up from lunch. Every day on our way through the breezeway back to classes after lunch, we made too much noise. And of course, every day a teacher would tell us to quiet down. One day, however, the teachers began getting some supernatural backup. If we were too loud, car alarms would start going off in the parking lot next to the breezeway and a very strong wind would blow through our hair. Obviously, this could only be the work of a teacher that had died, he had kids and hated fun.”
JULIA: I just love child minds so much.
AMANDA: I know it's a very good—a very good sort of headcanon here. “So this seemed to work on us. We started being much more quiet in the breezeway afraid to anger the ghost. A few weeks after this started, we were telling one of the more chill teachers about our breezeway ghost. When we mentioned the car alarms, she asked us which cars were going off. We didn't really know because we were kids and nervous and didn't really notice. So the next time we paid attention and reported back, that's how we found out that actually only one car alarm had been going off, and it was hers. She told us that right around the time that ghost is started haunting us, she started having issues with her car alarm. She even took us outside for a demonstration, where she yelled next to her car and the alarm started going off!”
ERIC: That's real broken.
JULIA: That's bad.
AMANDA: Right?
JULIA: Shouldn't do that.
AMANDA: “This of course doesn't rule out of the car might have been haunted but the breezeway we now knew was safe. Oh, and the strong wind, the breezeway is of course in a wind tunnel formed by the gym and the main classroom building. And all of this happened to be occurring right around tornado season when winds were strong.”
JULIA: Of course.
AMANDA: “The moral of the story is, if you want kids to be quiet, pretend there's a ghost and blow really hard in their faces?”
JULIA: Yeah, sure, makes sense to me.
AMANDA: And then Morgan included details about her recurring dream, but that is going to be for Patreon.
JULIA: No, Amanda, but I want to know.
ERIC: Julia, you'll get to hear it though, Julia.
AMANDA: You [45:44] here.
JULIA: But I want to know now!
AMANDA: Like two weeks from now. No, no you will, I promise.
JULIA: Fine, I'll allow it.
AMANDA: Well on my cliffhanger, we are going to bid you adieu for today. Thank you. I don't know why I'm ending the episode this way like I'm a Victorian ghost myself. But no, this was super fun.
JULIA: Amanda, did you have something to tell us?
AMANDA: I'm glad we're—I'm glad we're back together and thank you conspirators for sending in such tasty, juicy urban legends for us.
JULIA: They were tasty. They were delicious. Amanda, I will need a sample of your Victorian ghost voice really quick. Just like, just to take us out.
ERIC: Yeah, let's see how you can do.
AMANDA: [victorian ghost voice] Ohhhh, that's not an oyster fork, that's a mussel fork. Ohhh.
JULIA: And as you remember that advice from that Victorian ghost remember to 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 at Spirits Podcast 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 spirits podcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gives you access to audio extras with so much more, like recipe cards both alcoholic and non-alcoholic for every single episode, director's commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Spirits, you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits, we'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye.
Transcriptionist: KA
Editor: KM