Episode 155: Your Urban Legends XXVIII - Stay Ignorant!
/This episode became a debate over an important topic: do you ignore the ghosts or confront them? In this accidental case study we discuss the problem with mirrored closets, spooky home renovations, Shorts Ghosts, and the decision to just… go to sleep when ghosts come to call. For the record, 75% of you are Team Ignorance.
This week, Julia recommends Bring it On, Ghost! Aka Hey Ghost, Let’s Fight. You can check out our new studio and read how we built it in this blog post. And back the Cryptids, Creatures & Critters: A Manual of Monsters & Myth fundraiser today!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about surgery, animal attacks, smoking/vaping, insomnia, home invasion, child death, mental illness, drunk driving, and car accidents.
Sponsors
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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.
Amanda: And this is Episode 155: Your Urban Legends XXVIII.
Julia: Editor Eric picked the subtitle for this episode and it is a point of contention among all of us right now.
Amanda: You will see why we ran a Twitter poll, we're going to tell you what it's about later but just know that stay ignorant one.
Julia: Yeah, it's shockingly you would think that our listeners would learn something, anyway I'm still mad about it.
Amanda: Clearly get to keep going for another three and a half years so that they learn what we need to be putting down.
Julia: Learn from their mistakes. Yes, absolutely.
Amanda: Well, do you know who would never make the mistake of staying ignorant in our haunting?
Julia: Is that our new patrons?
Amanda: Oh new patrons, Tasha, Joanna, Yana and Tess welcome.
Julia: They join the ranks of our fantastic supporting producer level patrons Philip, Julie, Hannah, Alpha Dogs, Deborah, Molly, Megan, Skyler, Samantha, Sammy, Josie, Neil, Jessica and Phil Fresh, as well as our incredible amazing legend level patrons Morgan, Emily James, Beam me up, Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, ala, Cody, Mr. Folk, Sarah and Jack Murray.
Amanda: The patrons on horse really are leaning into the joke names. So every time I hear beam me up, Scotty I'm just like, thank you so much.
Julia: Yeah, I was like, we could just say, Bea up but I want the full name. The full name full joke.
Amanda: You know what, Julia, this is a very natural Segway as opposed to the ones that I forced every week. Because a longtime patron and friend of the show, Eldritch rich is currently running a Kickstarter that I think a lot of our listeners would really enjoy. It's called Cryptids, Creatures and Critters: a Manual of Monsters and Myths. And it's like illustrated kind of guide to all those kinds of critters and it looks beautiful.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely. And you can find a link to that Kickstarter campaign. In the episode description.
Amanda: It closes on Friday, November 22nd. But even if you are listening to this in the future, you can go to that same link and they should have information on how to get the book.
Julia: Heck yes. Amanda, can I tell you about something else that I'm very excited about?
Amanda: Oh please.
Julia: It's my recommendation for this week. So as you might remember, I recommended a while back a Korean comedy called Oh My Ghost.
Amanda: Yes. We watched a couple episodes together. It was wonderful.
Julia: Yes. Well, I found another one. It's available on Netflix and it's called, Bring It On, Ghost. also known as, Hey Ghost, Let's Fight.
Amanda: No, that sounds very good.
Julia: So it's about a ghost with amnesia who teams up with a guy who can see ghosts and gets paid to exercise them in order to become a ghost fighting [inaudible 00:02:34] and also their roommates.
Amanda: Extremely good Julia, extremely good.
Julia: I just I'm a sucker for a roommate falling in love true, but also they're ghosts.
Amanda: We are going to have to watch that together when we are road tripping to Austin. Spirits is doing the live show the day before my birthday on February 27. Oh my god, I'm so excited.
Julia: Yes, I'm very excited. Never been to Austin. I've never been to Texas in general. So getting to fly down-
Amanda: Me neither.
Julia: There with all you all, it's going to be so much fun.
Amanda: And we are building in a little bit of time to do a little bit of sightseeing. So we would love your recommendations as tonight's on cocktails mostly and also breakfast related foods like breakfast tacos and other kinds of breakfast. Breakfast and breakfast derivatives.
Julia: I mostly just won't tacos, breakfast or otherwise.
Amanda: I know, oh my God, I'm so excited. Yet it's February 27, we are going to do like a double headliner with join the party. So if you're fans of either show or both come on over one ticket price you get to see two shows. We're going to have a little bit of merge, we're going to do like little meet and greet make sure we get the chance to see everybody, our multi crew VIP members will get a chance to have a like little, private reception with us before the show, and we couldn't be more stoked. So go to multitude.productions/live to get tickets now.
Julia: Also, while you're on our website, checking out how to get tickets to our Austin show. You should also check out the fact that our studio is available for rent now. It's very, very exciting. We had a studio warming the other day, it was fantastic. We had drinks from shaker and spoon there that were excellent. And it just like it goes to show one our studio sounds fantastic as you can hear, and two, it's just cozy. It's really, really cozy.
Amanda: It is cozy, and it's been like a river of love over many months. We put together a blog post describing how we built it, what our budget was all of the very challenging aspects that come with having an office in 100 year old pencil factory. So we made a blog post that you can get linked to in our resources section, or click on over to that studio link and rent this dude.
Julia: Yeah. Speaking of how cozy the studio is, it reminds me of the cocktail that we had for this episode, which I kind of stole from you, Amanda, because every time I go to your apartment, it always smells really nice because you always have aromatics, simmering on a pot in your kitchen. And so I took your recipe of aromatics and added them to mold cider and then spiced it with some spiced rum because that's how I like to do.
Amanda: Yeah, it was a very fun variation on what Eric Silver and I usually do, which is buy what we think is enough cider and then it's immediately gone the moment anyone comes to whatever party we are having. So it was delicious and I enjoyed the variants of having some rum in there.
Julia: Thank you.
Amanda: Well, thank you for listening to all of our exciting announcements, it's been a couple weeks here in Multitude and we couldn't be more excited to now fight with editor Eric over ignorance versus knowledge in hauntings. With that enjoy Spirits Podcast Episode 155: Your Urban Legends-Stay Ignorant!
Eric: I have a mini surgery watch.
Julia: Oh no mini surgery watch, okay.
Eric: Mini surgery watch. I feel like every episode for like the past five hometowns have been surgery watches. Henry had a small growth and it is benign.
Julia: Yay.
Amanda: Yay.
Eric: So all good. Everyone's good. I went to an orthodolice as well, but I'm getting a second opinion because he goes, "I don't know." He's, "Sometimes if your teeth are just need regular braces to show them up, it's easy, but your situation isn't easy because your jaws bad.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: So maybe you want a second opinion." I was like, "Well, that's great."
Amanda: Yeah Jake after the last episode, the last hometown's episode came out he goes, "What's wrong with Eric's mouth?" I was, "Wait what's happening?" Because he just asked that with no context. And then he was, "Oh, is it bad? His teeth don't meet in the back." And then I was, "Yeah." He opened his mouth and showed me his teeth also do that and he's, "Yeah, when I was 13 they wanted to break my jaw and then so back together again." And my parents laughed and said, "No."
Eric: Yeah, that by orthodox that's say, "Jaw surgery is too far." He's, "Your jaw used to be really best up to get into those spooky bones and break them and reset up." That's usually step two, five.
Amanda: Jake then told us that story at the [inaudible 00:07:02] Live show, which was the right energy to go into a [inaudible 00:07:04] Live show with.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: I was going to start this episode by telling everybody that I had the great pleasure of watching both Scooby Doo and the Witches Ghost and Scooby Doo and the Cyberspace Chase this weekend, which was extraordinarily fun.
Julia: Those are two very different Scooby Doo movies.
Amanda: They were and I have to thank you Julia for making me watch such wonderful movies as we do during the movie night because I feel like I'm now ready to embrace and rediscover what I have not seen before.
Julia: I'm so glad you get to experience the full joy of Tim Curry being the Stephen King insert.
Amanda: I was, "Why did they get Tim Curry to play this mild mannered Velma love interest?" And then I was, "Oh that's all right. That makes sense."
Julia: Got it.
Amanda: This stuff is saying, if you feel to follow our Spirits Podcast on Instagram, you got to do it. It's great. Normally is Julia who runs it, but sometimes I do a little story take over and it's great.
Julia: I do love when you story take over.
Amanda: Well, speaking of stories everybody, who has a creepy urban legend for us in this wonderful month of November?
Julia: Well, I have two options for you. I can either go with Dead End literally or Bear Ghost.
Amanda: Bear ghost.
Eric: Bear ghost or [crosstalk 00:08:20] good. I want... Are you doing both of them?
Amanda: I'm doing both them.
Eric: That's very-
Amanda: It's just which way [inaudible 00:08:27] first.
Eric: And I feel we should end the episode itself-
Amanda: With the Dead End.
Eric: With Dead End.
Amanda: Got it. Okay.
Julia: Yeah. I like that.
Eric: So let's start with a Bear Ghost. You'll be book ending this episode.
Julia: All right, so we're going to start with Ghosts Bears, Bear Ghosts, and then surprise Bigfoot.
Julia: And so this is sent in from Ali. Oh, Ali was the one that wrote in about the spooky pod con experience about their hotel were being haunted.
Amanda: Yes. And somehow Ali's still alive, which I really appreciate.
Julia: Well, alive enough to send us another email. So they start with, I live in a mountainous vacation destination where in probably between a half to two thirds of the houses are vacant most of the year because they are second homes or vacation rentals for the summer crowd or the winter folks. My family care takes for a nice dude who lives in the Bay Area most of the year and sometimes the guy lets us more specifically me and my friends stay there on occasion.
Julia: It's three stories, the first floor having a few bedrooms and also a garage, the second being the main living area with a balcony on either side of the house. And the third floor being a loft area. The pros to this are the house is right up against the national forest. It's right above a private pier and it's a more hidden location where we don't see the annoying hetero crowd from my high school wandering around vaping. Choice-
Amanda: Extremely accurate. Oh, you're great writer.
Eric: I recently just as a quick interlude, saw some teenagers smoking, and it was so weird.
Amanda: Wow!
Julia: Oh, kids.
Eric: I was, "You're supposed to be vaping. Please don't do that either." But it was so weird to see young people smoking. I was, "Oh, we solve this in our lifetime."
Amanda: I know.
Eric: And that vaping happened, but it was very strange, and I've seen it a couple spots in the exact same spot by the Cool Hipster Coffee Shop Cafe and like downtown of my city.
Amanda: Well, apparently polio is also back. Get your kids vaccinated. Vaccines are real, help everybody else, help people with cancer, please get vaccines.
Julia: God, please just take care of your bodies. Anyway. So the cons are it is an empty three story house with huge windows in the living room that makes it feel like the whole sky is watching you. Or rather that a random person might watch you from the balcony while another person sneaks up the stairs from the siloed first floor. As with any house that sits alone, its resting sounds can be a bit spooky at first because you're not used to them yet, but the sounds of seven rowdy but polite girls filled the second floor as we decided it was totally spooky. The least spooky of the floors.
Julia: We sat around the TV watching Black Panther and playing Fuck Marry Kill, I looked over to see one of my friends staring at the landing on the second floor and asked what she was staring at. She responds, she heard footsteps moving around on the first floor. More specifically by the front door, she heard the sound of heavy shoes, which was then assumed to be snow boots, stepping around the entrance and then the familiar sound of a person hitting the boot against a surface. A stare a wall the door to knock some of the snow off the shoe.
Julia: What in the goddamn we collectively saying so many words because it is the end of May, meaning we're in flip flops, and I know for certain that I locked the doors and no one else with a key was expected. I assume it's my dad, not because he's a prankster. He just forgets to announce himself quite often. And my husky dog is still fully asleep on the ground in front of us. So I shout out, full horror movie style, "Hello!" to no response.
Amanda: Oh no.
Julia: I moved to the landing with my gang watching intently and top of the lungs shouting hello again. One of my friends turns off the movie and everyone starts to look at each other expecting me to do something as the resident boss bitch. So resident boss bitch grabs the paintball gun that we use to scare off bears. Don't y'all linger on the bears just yet, we got shit to take care of right now. You know so well. And I shout out, "I have a weapon and we're coming down." Of course, I make everyone come with me because I'm not splitting the scooby gang. Correct. Good choice.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: We explored the downstairs finding everything exactly the same as it was with the door separating the downstairs rooms locked. The garage doors locked, the front door locked, no snow, no boots, no nothing. Amanda staring at the ceiling, not looking pleased.
Amanda: No, don't like it. I was actually trying to think of situations in which hearing footsteps would be pleasing and it's reassuring. Maybe if you thought someone died and then they did it and you're excited about that. But even when, my partner comes home-
Eric: Even then, they thought, they've got to the jump into zombies before, Oh, they're not dead.
Amanda: I live on the second floor of a house and no one comes up the stairs besides people who live in my apartment so you might want my partner comes home, I'm just, I mean, probably him could be a burglar who the fuck knows every time. I'm just, "No might be my love, might be a killer."
Eric: I did just scare Kelsey like a few days ago and she probably would have appreciated some footsteps in that case, she just looked at me and said, "Why?"
Amanda: Okay. Is Kelsey the kind of person that we would yell at during your spirits episode? We're just standing there as the ghost approaches?
Eric: I know, I don't think so. I think she's handling it well, most episodes.
Amanda: All right, just making sure.
Julia: So we decided to sit outside on the balcony in the full sunlight with a view of the most of the property, feeling much safer and playing cards against humanity. A good plug for cards against humanity, but then fucking bears. My dog goes off the rails because there's a baby bear on the other side of the State Park fence, 50 feet away from us up in a tree higher than the second floor that we are now on with the mama watching below.
Julia: My dog races down the stairs and towards the fence and I'm forced to chase after to keep my dumb ass baby from getting got by the angry mama bear. We have to go inside because bears and we also feel super unsettled I start playing king princess on my phone to release the tension.
Amanda: So good, fucking King princess though.
Julia: I haven't heard of them before, they good?
Amanda: Yes, King princess, If you like tableau if you'd like kasha, if you'd like Lord, you got to add King princess to your rotation.
Julia: All right, tip. What do you do when you're alone by the woods on a private drive surrounded by bears and possibly an intruder? Well, I guess DND because we played for four hours straight after which we called our parents and let them know that everything was okay.
Amanda: For now.
Julia: My dad says will be over soon with pizza dinner. So yay. So after eating, we start settling into bed with my dog and my dad nearby just in case. We lay in a cluster in sleeping bags under this huge ass universe gazing windows, we decided we're going to finish the movie to help exhaust us more and at the end to we're sitting there, turning off all the things and so on. When clear as day, from the darkness of the third story, we hear something, a woman's laugh deep hardy and far off, like through a door.
Eric: That's not a bear.
Amanda: It's not, not even a mama bear.
Julia: We all look at each other and someone asks, "Did you hear that?" And all but one of the girls who was falling asleep agreed to hearing the exact same thing. We lay down and attempt to fall asleep telling each other ghost stories encrypted tales until we couldn't anymore. And tee, we all woke up. So the happy ending. The next morning, we went to leave a note in the guestbook, adding in how very haunted their house seemed to be when I saw on the first page, this couple who came through for a weekend hunting Bigfoot.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Sadly, all the entry reported was more bears, but they said something about heading to Oregon. Maybe I'll write another email, Bigfoot experience in my area as this email has already been long enough. And that is from Ali.
Eric: Here's a pro tip.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: If you're with a bunch of people, and you hear something strange, don't ask if anyone else heard it.
Amanda: Why?
Eric: Just convince yourself you didn't hear it. And then no one heard it.
Amanda: A bold choice.
Eric: It's strutting your sound, the sound that actually didn't happen until it has been confirmed. So you could just go, "Oh, must have just been a weird door creaking must have been literally anything else." But once everyone else is, "Oh yeah, that was weird." Now you're dealing with something.
Amanda: Now weird. That strikes me as an extremely Midwestern response.
Eric: I'm not saying this is all cases. If your cars make it a weird rattle. So what if they're like, "Hey, what's that about?" But this instance ignore fully, fully ignore.
Amanda: Still think it's a bold choice. I think it's bold to be, "It's probably not a bear about to break into these giant windows. I'm not going to worry about it."
Eric: Think about how much better everyone else left that night if the first person was, "Was that a creepy lady laughing?" And everyone just kind of eventually went, "Must have just been something else." But they all confirmed it for each other, which means now they're all sure a creepy lady is going to murder them some point in the middle of the night.
Julia: I don't know. I feel more validated. I don't want my friends to be, "Nope, didn't hear anything. You must be crazy."
Amanda: Yeah, it's some gas lighting shit. I hate... I mean, it's-
Eric: No, but that can't happen if you just don't say anything. That's the key. Don't know... I'm not saying if they say, "Did you hear something?" Lie if you didn't hear something, I'm saying, no one to say anything if you hear. No one even asked the question, did you hear something creepy?
Amanda: So just ignore the problem. Got it. Okay.
Eric: Yeah, but it didn't turn out to be a problem. It's only a problem if you all recognize it as a problem.
Amanda: All right.
Eric: But the first step to admitting this problem, realize there's a problem. So if there isn't a problem, don't admit it.
Amanda: Okay. All right.
Eric: That's simple logic. Don't apply this to anything else in your life-
Amanda: Just cursed.
Eric: Other than spooky sounds, to be very clear.
Amanda: Okay. Sounds good.
Julia: To be clear, I endorse investigating a problem. If it happens in a place you know, like at your house, for example, maybe it's that your building has a gas leak, just happened to be. Maybe it's that, there is a pipe that is broken and if you deal with it, now you won't flood out your bathroom, and also your downstairs neighbor. There's pros and cons. Spooky home renovations.
Eric: [inaudible 00:19:08] Once again, my point always spooky [inaudible 00:19:11]. Always spooky [inaudible 00:19:12].
Amanda: I think pipes are pretty spooky all of the time.
Julia: Now pipes are spooky. It's true.
Eric: True, no that's true.
Julia: Would you like to hear some spooky stories from another place that has, wild nature and critters, Australia?
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: This comes from India. And she writes, Hey guys, I wanted to write in for a while but never felt my stories were spooky enough, but I decided I'll let you be the judge. As many other listeners, I've never been a big believer in ghosts. I think there's usually a healthy mix of other explanations for whatever it is that I've seen. But there have been a few times I haven't been able to entirely explain what has happened. To preface I'm also a lifelong Insomniac, so I regularly wake up very alert three or so times a night. Same in here. One of those times I was staying at my parents place in Ravens cliff road on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.
Julia: Can we talk about how good that Eva is just for a second?
Amanda: Oh Julia, we are definitely going to be like the witches of Ravens cliff road one day.
Julia: Can we write, adult supernatural romance novel titled that?
Amanda: I love it so much. I'm already on chapter two. Come join me.
Julia: Great.
Amanda: Perfect. This is a fairly new house I was staying in a small town about 40 minutes or so from the big meaty base in Jervis Bay, which just sounds I'm saying our friend Jarvis his name in a strange way, which makes me nervous.
Julia: Jarvis?
Amanda: And maybe my first year of university I was home visiting my family when I woke up in the middle of the night facing the mirrored closet doors. Before I get into what was creepily the mirror doors. Can we all agree, mirrored closets? No.
Julia: Well, so they're usually added two rooms in order to make them seem bigger, right?
Amanda: Yeah, but you can-
Eric: I'm a big fan of a mirrored closet. My grandmother had a mirrored closet hallway.
Julia: Yes and we[inaudible 00:20:52]
Amanda: Yeah, we [crosstalk 00:20:53] scary. No, it's bad.
Eric: Yeah, it was very... No, very good.
Amanda: Oh God. All right listeners way in, please tell me that I'm not wrong. Well, I think they're creepy because in this case as India rights, I can very clearly make out in the classic tours, a man standing next to my bed and looking down at me. He was wearing pale pants and a button down shirt and had quite short, dark blonde or brown hair. I wasn't bothered at the time and figured I was seeing some kind of ultra effects from a dream. So was over. It occurred to me as soon as I did that, I should probably check to make sure it wasn't a real person creepily lurking in my room. So I turned back over and check that no one was there, and the door to my room was still firmly shut. I lived there for at least two years before going off to university and nothing had ever happened like that before. My parents still live there and nothing's happened since except some footsteps in the corridor outside my room when no one else was home.
Julia: India no. Bad.
Amanda: Both of these things are very bad.
Julia: I know when you wake up sometimes you're a little disoriented and you just, "Oh, yeah, all right. I was asleep, now I'm not. Let me try to go back to sleep." But just be aware of your surroundings my friend. Be aware.
Amanda: We're worried for you. The second spooky event happened at the share house I was living in with three of my uni friends. An old sturdy brick house in a country town called Bathurst. That is quite historic from the gold rush era. I'm sorry, that first is also extremely good!
Julia: Yes, no that's the rival town for the witches that are in our romance and awful.
Amanda: Yes, that's novel two was, The Witches of Bathurst. Which I realized might be pronounced Bathurst. But here we are.
Julia: It doesn't matter. This is better.
Amanda: And then in the third book Julia they team together to fight off like evil warlocks from somewhere else.
Julia: I'm into it.
Amanda: Bathurst is I'm going to decide to call it is historic from a gold rush era. As a side note, the house was freezing cold in winter. I had a bottle of hair serum that used to freeze solid just sitting in my bedroom closet.
Julia: That's just oil though. That shouldn't freeze?
Amanda: No, it should.
Julia: It shouldn't freeze like that.
Amanda: We've been living there for a few months with no hiccups, when I woke up one night around 3:00 AM and saw a headless little boy in striped pajamas, walk past my bed, then vanish as he reached the closet on the other end.
Julia: What is wrong with your closets bud?
Amanda: No.
Julia: What's wrong with your closet? Stop it.
Amanda: I don't think we've had a headless ghost before. Obviously the headless horseman, but I don't think we've had like a headless... This is like mixing of three different scary things, children, striped pajamas, which are extremely scary in horror movie context and headless people.
Julia: Yeah, I don't recall any headless ghosts, as far as I can remember, but we've done so many haunted of legends at this point.
Amanda: Well, don't worry. India says I wasn't spooked at the time but managed to dismiss it as something I was just seeing.
Julia: India.
Eric: See.
Julia: India, no.
Eric: See?
Julia: No, no, no see.
Eric: Exactly, the right call.
Julia: This is what we should not be doing.
Eric: This is my turn on the show. It's [inaudible 00:23:49] everything.
Amanda: It's a bold move product.
Eric: This is my new persona.
Julia: I hate IT.
Eric: It could door it all.
Julia: I hate it so much.
Amanda: Listen, unless a surgeon is telling you, you have to deal with it. Schneider says, "Ignore it."
Eric: No.
Amanda: Maybe a month or so later my housemates and I were hanging out in the backyard and two of them are playing cricket. So Australian, my friend Elliot managed to hit the ball under the foundation of house, which could be properly accessed through a small gate if you crack down some picturing a sub basement type thing of space. It was when we were appearing under the house that we saw a small picture frame placed up against the far wall. It was the only object under the house.
Julia: No, no.
Amanda: It was a painting of a woman in a wedding dress standing alone.
Julia: No.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Oh god.
Eric: It had incredibly creepy vibes to say the least.
Julia: No, shit.
Amanda: And none of us could figure out why it was the only thing left under the house. Needless to say one of my housemates was later pranked with the photo when he found it under the cover of his back.
Julia: That's so mean.
Eric: Now that's terrible.
Julia: That's really mean.
Eric: But don't worry, India didn't was not involved in that because she writes, I wouldn't touch that painting with a 10 foot stick.
Julia: Good, smart.
Amanda: You would live in a house over it.
Julia: Just say she [inaudible 00:25:11] stuff, right?
Amanda: I would move.
Julia: So far.
Amanda: This is moving levels of creepy for me. The third book event occurred when I was overseas in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was at a popular hostel that looked like it might have been converted from a church, in the older part of town near the castle.
Eric: Did you say a popular hospital?
Amanda: Hostel.
Eric: I was like a popular hospital.
Amanda: Speaking of which, I would love to hear you all scary youth hostel stories and not like interpersonal crime because that's horrible, and I hope no one's experienced it. But any hostel spooking I would love to hear.
Julia: I wouldn't personally.
Eric: I'll tell you.
Amanda: Address them to me a frequent stare in hostels. All right, so in this one in Embrun, I was staying in a four bed, female dorm and you can sense the theme here woke up as usual sometime in the middle of the night. They were to skylights overhead and through moonlight, I could see a figure at the far end of the room away from the door where everyone else had dumped their luggage. I could very clearly make out the figure of someone wearing a hoodie up over their head, baggy pants and they appear to be looking down at a phone. Though in hindsight, there was no light shining back onto their face.
Amanda: My adrenaline was racing immediately not because I thought it was anything supernatural, but because I thought a man and somehow gotten into our room, and I was worried he could see me half sitting up in bed looking at him. I could see the other two girls in the dorm in their beds, but I was trying to rationalize that it could be the girl in the bunk above me checking her stuff or something. As I was thinking this just watching the figure very closely, it walks alongside my bed toward the door until it passed inches from my face.
Eric: Too close.
Julia: Too close.
Eric: Just before the door I saw it disappear in a strange heat wave like effect.
Amanda: Like the mirage you see on a road on a really hot day. It was weird and wavy, and distorted, and then it vanished. I was so freaked out. I had to step outside into the fluorescent lit corridor, so I could remind myself that I'd probably imagined it. But I've never felt so awake in my life because while I was watching it, I was convinced it was a real physical person in my room that shouldn't have been there. It was the only time I've been afraid of something I've seen and it hadn't even looked at me.
Julia: That's horrifying. I don't like that at all. And I think it's worse to when you're like in a place you're not familiar with.
Eric: Totally.
Julia: That seems to be the theme so far of this episode, which I-
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I appreciate when we accidentally pick a theme.
Amanda: Me too. Well, India it sounds like you have a strong tolerance for creepiness I respect that in a person, and she signs off with, please keep doing what you do you incredible land mermaid so much love from Australia.
Eric: That's so many different scary thing.
Julia: Yeah, too many.
Amanda: I'm not a believer, but here's all the spooky things that happened to me. Creepy. Glad you're right, India, and I wish I was as brave.
Eric: I have a museum spirit story.
Amanda: Is this the one that was titled Eric safe? It sure was. I left it just for you.
Eric: Thank you. I appreciate that. This comes to us from Pax and they write, Hey spirits team. I work security at an art museum and have some kind of creepy kind of cool stories I thought you and the lovely listeners might enjoy. They all surround a gallery where we keep our renaissance artwork all donated by one Uber wealthy couple who never seem to have actually left their collection behind even in death.
Amanda: Oh, so they're haunting the collection? Yes. See, there's no free stuff in this world. They donate their art to you, but they stick along.
Eric: When I first started working at the museum, other security people would tell me that the place was haunted. But being on the fence about the existence of ghosts, I took everything they said with a grain of salt, assuming that it was just a part of some hazing ritual. That is until I started having my own experiences in the gallery The most common experience that nearly everyone I know had was seeing a man in old fashioned clothes think 1940s or 50s walk from one gallery into another when we know for a fact there was no one there. The first few times I experienced this I walked into the gallery space going into the room where the figure had been going too only to find the space empty. Although sometimes I would hear footsteps creek on the wood floor behind me.
Julia: Too creepy, don't like that.
Eric: What... Up until this moment, I thought they were working night security. And I was, "That's super weird."
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: On one memorable occasion, it was the start of the day and I was in a nearby gallery. When I walked into the gallery that all this spooky stuff happens in the coworker I was relieving was two steps away from abandoning her post a fire able offense ship.
Julia: Oh, shit.
Amanda: Oh no.
Eric: The poor woman was visibly shaken and nearly in tears. When I asked her if she was okay, she recounted to me a very familiar story about seeing a man an old fashioned suit walking from one gallery to another, and when she went to investigate found no one there but the self portrait of Rembrandt on the wall.
Julia: Oh shit.
Eric: Another weirdest experience I have was one day when I was posted in the gallery and another security person was taking an inventory of the artwork. When I walked in the gallery with a man is frequently seen, I smelled the faint aroma of lilacs. It wasn't super strong, just the right amount to be pleasant as if someone was wearing perfume had just passed through. When I asked the person in the gallery next to mine, if she was wearing perfume or if she smelled but I was smelling, she said, "No."
Eric: Joining me she immediately smelled what I was talking about, only for it to completely disappear a moment or two later, oddly enough, since I moved to work nights at the museum, so I'm going to keep the artwork from escaping and turned to dust when the sun rises. I haven't had any further experiences well in the galleries at least. What does that mean? That's the end of [inaudible 00:30:58].
Amanda: Maybe in the collective's or just like in life, we talked about this I think the last hometown's or maybe a couple of before.
Julia: But smells and hauntings-
Amanda: Oh yeah.
Julia: Are particularly creepy to me.
Amanda: To me it's like-
Julia: It's just something about the extra senses throws me off.
Amanda: Yeah I feel like it's easy in life to miss here something or your eyes are like fricking seeing the whole world upside down and then switching us like eyes are fallible in lots of ways. But for me a smell is evidenced like it is coming from somewhere for sure. And it's much harder to smell things at a distance and it is here to see things from a distance. So I think to me, my animal brain is like, "Oh, if I can smell it is really close. Not close to touch necessarily, but it is like, within attacking range of me."
Julia: That's your monkey brain talking?
Amanda: That's what I'm saying. Well, speaking of smells, let's follow this delicious mold cider smell back into the kitchen for refill.
Julia: At the end of this week I've been thinking a lot about how I used to doodle in class in high school in college.
Amanda: That's true. It was pretty beautiful. You're good doodler.
Julia: I'm an okay doodler. And I was thinking like as much as I love to kind of do my art just like pen and ink on paper, I really want to learn how to do things on the computer. So this week, I signed up for a class on skill share called Digital Illustration, learn how to use procreate and procreate, seems really intimidating to me as a person who is not an artist, but the class made it so easy to pick up and it just, I feel like I'm making things better than I've ever made things before in general.
Amanda: Oh, that's lovely.
Julia: Yeah. And it's all thanks to Skill Share. Skills Share is an online learning community for creators that now has over 25,000 classes that are there to fuel your curiosity, your creativity and your career. You can take classes and anything from like social media marketing to mobile photography, creative writing, and even like me illustration. Whether you're looking to discover a new passion start a side hustle or gain new professional skills, Skill Share is there to help you keep learning thriving and reaching your new goals we're heading into the new year go start thinking about those like New Year's goals and whatnot.
Amanda: Yeah if I wait, you can start today.
Julia: Yeah and now you can get Skill Share premium for two free months by going to skillshare.com/spirits2.
Amanda: That is a fully featured free trial of Skill Share premium at skillshare.com/spirits2.
Julia: That's skillshare.com/spirits2.
Amanda: We are also sponsored this week by the comfiest sweater vendors there are, it's Stitch Fix Julia, and several times over the last few weeks since it's beginning chillier, I've worn cute sweaters that people compliment and I am like thanks its Stitch Fix. I want to like carry on their business card because truly whenever I wear statement pieces that I get from them, people compliment me and it feels really nice because it is incredibly easy as well. Stitch Fix has a like online quiz where you kind of give them like thumbs up and thumbs down on items that you do and don't like so they get a sense of your style.
Amanda: You can let them know what brands you already love, how those things fit you if clothes tend to be like too long or too short or too wide or too narrow in certain places and it really helps them to send you items that they know are going to work for you. And folks in the UK, Stitch Fix is now available there as well. So all over the US and the UK, they have solutions for femme and mask clothing and for kids. So whether you're shopping for you, for someone you love or you want to kind of switch it up and get different styles of clothes like there you are Stitch Fix is for you.
Julia: And the best part is there is no subscription required so you can pick between automatic shipments or you can only get pieces when you want and the shipping exchanges and returns are always free plus that $20 styling fee is automatically applied towards anything you keep in your box.
Amanda: Their Customer service is great and that's really important to me because, you try something on you may or may not love it but if you end up loving everything they send you in your box you can get 25% off all of your purchases when you go to stitchfix.com/spirits to sign up.
Julia: Hit that stitchfix.com/spirits.
Amanda: Thank you Stitch Fix, that's stitchfix.com/spirits. We are also sponsored this week by ThirdLove. Now this is a bra company that has a fit finder quiz online, which helps you find the right fit for you. You're like shape of your breast for example matters as to how bras fit you it's not just a numerical size so they help you identify the right fit for your body. They also have a perfect fit promise meaning that you have 60 days to wear whatever bra you buy to wash it like really put it to the test in your daily life not just when you try it on out of the box or in a fitting room and if you don't love it, you can return it. They then wash it and donate it to somebody you need.
Julia: Yeah and ThirdLove has more than 80 sizes including their signature half cup sizes. I'm a half cup I never realized that until I try it on my ThirdLove bra and it's just 1000 times more comfortable and better fitting for me than any other bra has been in the past.
Amanda: So head on over to thirdlove.com/spirits to find your perfect fitting bra and get 15% off your first purchase.
Julia: Yep, that's thirdlove.com/spirits for 15% off today.
Amanda: Join me and find out that if you are properly fitted there truly is a perfect bra for everyone that's at thirdlove.comm/spirits for 15% off today.
Eric: I have a spooky story titled, Doppelganger Scare the Shit Out of Me.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Yeah. I love it. We've done a couple of doppelganger ones. And I'm very excited that we're getting more.
Amanda: Very good.
Eric: This comes to us from Liker, I'm not a fan of horror movies, but I love horror stories. I like reading, them hearing them and telling them so I have many stories I want to tell you guys but when I was thinking, which ones to actually type out, I realized I have a few involving doppelganger.
Julia: Oh shit.
Eric: Let's start with my own personal experience when I was a child, I always seem to think of it as my mother. I didn't clearly see its whole profile because it was just passing through the hallway going into our room, but it was wearing white shorts and a white shirt and clearly a female. So in my head, I knew it was my mother. So I raced after her. But when I got into the room, no one was there. Being a child. I just didn't think too much about it at the time, the second encounter was almost the same. I saw it walking into the hall race after it and it was an empty room. But that time, I remember thinking something was not right. I started to get scared. I ran back into our silo but as I was running in the hallway, I saw and felt like I had ran through a wispy lacy, soft white cloth.
Julia: Oh no.
Eric: Something like a veil material.
Julia: No.
Eric: It touched my face and I was just shocked and stopped in my tracks for a few seconds. I remember thinking of looking back, but nope, I was smart for once and decided to just run the fuck out of the house.
Julia: Proud of you.
Amanda: Good choices. I can't remember a time where someone described a ghost wearing shorts, and it really pleases me. I'm so delighted by the idea of like shorts ghost.
Eric: Just ghost in some knickerbockers?
Julia: Just like some booty shorts.
Amanda: Either booty shorts or like per hour ghost fashion. Short pants means kid and something about it is not like creepy childs, Robert the doll, like sailor outfit, but it just seems to me like I don't know, needs like so vulnerable like, "Oh you're still a kid in your short pads." Knees are so vulnerable that's going to be the caption for this episode.
Julia: They are.
Eric: The second story was told to me by my favorite aunt Angie. It happened in the same house when her youngest sibling was still in college, and they were sharing a bed. So one night, Angie woke up around midnight and got a glass of water. She got back in bed and hugged her sister who was facing the other way. When she was on the verge of sleeping, she suddenly remembered that her sister was in her classmates house doing research for a paper.
Julia: Nooo!
Amanda: Nooo!
Julia: And she even called earlier that night to remind her not to cook for her. So she stopped hugging her face the other way got under the covers to move as far as it allowed her without falling from the bed and was only able to sleep when it was almost morning having goosebumps this whole time.
Amanda: Oh no! I hate that. I hate it so much.
Julia: Oh God I hate that! I hate it.
Amanda: See, but what did I say? If you ignore the problem, the problem solves itself.
Julia: No! You just don't sleep for the rest of the night!
Amanda: Or your whole life.
Eric: Okay, so last story. This happened in my last job. My coworker was filing all the docs and reports from our sales agents, when he saw the manager of food accounts coming up from the pantry. He called for her and asked about the reports of agents under her but she totally ignored him and just went out assuming to go into her office on the third floor.
Amanda: Disobedience among the staffs, spooky.
Eric: He found it odd that she was known to be friendly and she was not really quiet when, he called her. Just after she went out of sight, the phone rings and the same manager was on the other side. Talking about the reports my office mate was just a moment ago. And that should be impossible because the offices were on the first floor and the sales were on the third floor.
Amanda: So we couldn't have like run next door and made the call. That makes sense.
Eric: And at that time for almost a month, the elevator was not working. My office may even joke that she must have run fast, but the manager just told her she hadn't been in our office that day yet at all.
Julia: What?
Amanda: Nooo!
Eric: And I swear this is true because even I got a glimpse of her when he called her that time. That's it. I have more but I feel like this has become so long. Maybe I'll tell you next time if you want to hear more, stay creepy., stay cool. Lots of love from the Philippines.
Julia: Okay, question-
Amanda: Like that, we need it.
Julia: Question for everyone. I feel like in most of the stories in which we see doppelgangers they don't really interact with people they just kind of look like someone and then like go about doing their whatever their thing is.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: What do we feel is the purpose of the doppelganger? What is the motive of the doppelganger?
Amanda: So I think of the doppelganger in the sort of, referential sense. I don't think about the true doppelganger, I think about in life you're like, "Oh, man, that person looks just like my aunt and that's so wild and blah blah" And the person is just going about their daily life, ordering a Starbucks, driving whatever. But I don't know, in my mind, it must be some nefarious purpose like they have been grown or made or summoned in order to commit identity theft to, complete a ritual and user DNA fo bad purposes.
Julia: I like to hear your opinion here is doppelgangers is doing the white collar crime of the supernatural world.
Amanda: I mean, how many times have we seen movies were clones are grown in order to have organs harvested or eye and fingerprint identification and stuff like that.
Julia: Which is not how that works if you grow a clone they're going to have different fingerprints than you because the fingerprints are based on you pressing your impressionable hands against the stomach of your mother's womb.
Eric: Wait, is that true?
Amanda: Terrifying and I want to know nothing else about it. Julia, please. I was talking about clones I guess, grown in the lab[inaudible 00:42:27].
Julia: It's why identical twins don't have-
Amanda: No Julie don't want to know it. Nope.
Julia: Identical finger prints.
Amanda: No more.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: The more I learn about pregnancy, the more I'm like, "Oh God."
Julia: And I believe Europe with your story.
Amanda: I sure I am. I would love to tell you some very true encounters with child spirits from Nicole.
Julia: Oh boy. Here we go.
Amanda: Hey, I'm Nicole, and I'm from Oklahoma. I first located your podcast after I had one of several spirit encounters. I wanted to learn if what happens to me happens to other people. I see child spirits.
Julia: Surprise you're not alone.
Amanda: My first one occurred when I lived in Italy with my mom. We rented a much older house. My little sister was about three years old and one day she asked me if she could go downstairs and play with toys. So I grabbed her hand and walked her down the stairs and we spent about an hour playing together. After that hour, I started walking back up the stairs and I looked down to realize my sister was no longer there. I ran upstairs frantically and asked my mom where she was. My mom replied, "Nicole, she's sitting on the sofa right here and has been for the past hour." And fat is when I lost my shit and told my mom the story. Me, I was to stay, for the rest of the summer, I lived upstairs and didn't go back downstairs once.
Julia: That's horrifying.
Amanda: It's really extended unlike the last story, which itself was so creepy, it's not just like a passing view of somebody.
Julia: And this is an interaction too like this is where we are talking about doppelgangers don't interact, but this one did.
Amanda: It was very bad.
Julia: Don't like that.
Amanda: My next child spirit story happened not too long ago. It happened three months ago or so. And I was at the store with my mom and stepdad. We walked up to this man who was looking at flower. He was talking to a little girl who was telling him what to pick. The older man was mumbling and telling her to behave because she was jumping around and really excited. My mom kept talking to the guy and I just walked away. When we got home at night, though my mom said that she wished she would have asked him over for dinner. When she said that I was like, "We would have had to invite his granddaughter as well though." My mom quickly asked, "What do you mean his granddaughter?" And I said, "There was a little girl he was talking to. She was jumping around."
Julia: Jesus.
Amanda: My mom answered, "Nicole, he was talking to himself the whole time. That's why I felt bad and wanted to invite him over." So that also really scared me and I spent the rest of the night crying. There are just so many details that seem like a real person but that is the terrifying part.
Julia: Don't like that. Don't like it at all.
Amanda: Thirdly, I bought this little canister to use as a memory box. It was a cheap kind of two Dollar thing that we used to hold cookies and I found it at the thrift store. The picture on the front of the canister was a little boy and a little girl playing. Now I see that it's extremely sinister by the way. I'm just like no Nicole. No one plays and not children together.
Eric: I think people do stuffs like that.
Julia: No. No, no, no.
Amanda: After about a week of having it. I remember waking up and seeing a little boy crouching at the foot of my bed with a bowl like haircut. I was completely still.
Eric: Man. I was like what is got to be in that bowl?
Amanda: What's in that in the bowl bar?
Eric: It turns out, it says, "Head." Because it's a bowl hair cut.
Amanda: Bowl cup. That would be a very good Halloween punk costume, a bowl cut.
Eric: Yeah. Oh, that would be very good.
Amanda: It's very good. Well, Nicole says, I reacted by staying completely still and just looked at him. Then I turned over in bed and acted like I didn't see anything.
Julia: Why is this... Come on people.
Amanda: Stop proving Eric[inaudible 00:45:56].
Eric: This was not like-
Amanda: It was not chosen, no.
Eric: A planned thing by any means at all but, it's great to be proven right.
Amanda: Julia for the pole this week, can you say like, "Hey see something spooky middle of the night? Do you get out of bed or roll over and say nothing?" And let's see-[crosstalk 00:46:17]
Eric: Do the correct thing. I'm just saying, when if you watch a scary movie and you're like, "What if the things are in the room with me?" Don't you just like close your eyes?
Amanda: No.
Eric: I should say quite recently though. I did check the attic with a butcher's knife.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Eric: Sometimes you're just like, got to be, but that was more like there was probably a squirrel in the attic. So there was definitely like something up there.
Amanda: Something there.
Eric: And so that that was more of me double checking the security of my house. I was not worried about any anything spooky.
Amanda: So few days after seeing this little boy, my mom walked into my room and said, "Nicole, there's a very negative energy here." My step dad is really familiar with spirits as well. And he walked in and added, "Nicole, there's a very negative energy in here, but it's an innocent negative energy."
Julia: That... No. No, no. I'm sorry. That's not how that works.
Amanda: This is before mind you I told either them about my experience in that room. We just kind of prayed and hoped that God would get the child out. I thought the boy was gone until my boyfriend made a comment to me. He doesn't believe in the supernatural. So it really threw me for a loop whenever he said he saw something. In this case, he said, "I had a really weird dream that there was a little boy in your room standing at the foot of your bed watching us." I never dreamed so I thought it would be something to mention.
Eric: I never dream ever.
Julia: Jesus, Amanda you're like that, you don't remember your dreams, right?
Amanda: No rarely. Well, at this point, I was convinced it was the canister I had brought obviously that brought the little boy in. I threw it away and luckily I haven't had any more encounters with the little boy.
Julia: I was hoping for something like, "Oh yes I remember buying it and it's a little boy and a little girl playing on it and then when I threw it out the little boy was gone."
Amanda: Well, I'm very glad that you managed this situation in the proper way Nicole, debatable because he just turned over what to sleep, but all right that you finished the situation with a good choice, which is throwing outside, destroying that canister.
Julia: It's all we can ask for.
Amanda: Julie didn't go any better to just throw it out or destroy it because I can see a spirit like exacting revenge on you if you destroy their vessel. But if you just kind of pass along, but it's someone else's problem.
Julia: I think you have to Jumanji it.
Amanda: I haven't seen that film. What does that mean? I think that means you have to like-
Eric: You haven't seen Jumaji?
Amanda: I know. I know.
Eric: There's a lot of pop[inaudible 00:48:46] that. I'm fine with someone not saying, but Jumanji?
Amanda: Sorry bud. I'll solve that.
Eric: How do you not see Jumanji?
Amanda: Sorry bud. Okay, so meaning that you have to take it, put it somewhere either throw it in a river or bury it. And then people like 40 years later can rediscover it, but it's not your problem anymore. Okay, that checks out. All right, Julia, do you want to deliver to us the dead end of this episode?
Julia: Yes. So this story comes from Darien and she is titled it the, Dead End, literally.
Amanda: Yeah, in the summer of 2012, my family moved to a house with 20 acres on a dead end. Just to clear things up. My mom has owned her own businesses for the last 20 years and we also fostered animals, birds, cats, dogs, horses, you name it, my mom fostered them. So when we finally found a location big enough to hold all of us, we took the chance. Originally, the building and surrounding acres were an archery range, which after a few years, shut down and was replaced by boat storage, but that didn't last long either.
Amanda: The building itself had been empty for five years and was owned by the bank when we bought it so all of the windows and entrances had been all boarded up over and to even get in was a hassle but once you did, hoo boy! The police was a wreck after being left alone for so long. Items from the previous owners were still strewn around the buildings, bows and arrows, life jackets. We even found a wreck of an old boat hidden in the tree line.
Eric: Oh! What I like about this is, anyway it's that the boat people did it clean up the archery stuff ones they had purchased it.
Amanda: It was extremely [inaudible 00:50:27].
Eric: It is like I fuck it.
Julia: Most concerning an old birch military uniform from World War II, we found slightly buried in the garage.
Eric: That's a lot. There's a lot of things happening there. First off, old military uniform, not something you just find usually-
Amanda: No.
Eric: Except like in your grandfather's closet. Second burnt, okay it was attempted to be destroyed, but was not fully destroyed apparently. Also, buried.
Amanda: Slightly buried.
Eric: Slightly. What a half measure is being done here? And I don't like it.
Julia: So Darien continues. This place was super creepy. Okay, we didn't have electricity in the place for three weeks the lower story of the house didn't have windows and was just one massive concrete room. Your flashlights being wouldn't reach for more than a foot because the darkness swallowed it.
Amanda: Nooo!
Julia: And you had to feel along the wall to know where you were going. The nearest neighbor we had was just over half a mile away, or the commune down the road that everyone in our town says is led by a cult but that's a different story. I want to hear that story later.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: All in all, just eerie, especially after living in a crowded neighborhood for most of your life. At first, there wasn't really anything amiss. Just a lot of maintenance to be done, mowing the grass down, getting everything on boarded new paint the whole shebang. The dead end was kind of the creepiest part at first, the road ended rather abruptly and it followed along a major highway so the city had put up a reflective barrier at the end to ward off drunk drivers or people that thought the road was a ramp onto the highway. The road is kind of blocked in by a highway on the left and a deep creek on the right that ran under a driveway.
Julia: Anyway, since the building itself was just past the city line, the maintenance for the other city stopped mowing the lawn for about 40 yards away from the barrier, which stupid, bad idea. For a while the barrier wasn't high enough and people would just run into it and the city finally came out and put reflective barriers up high enough to clear tall grass but that took a few months of calling the city to complain. The grass had gotten super tall and covered most of the barrier and since we now technically owned the land, we were in charge of keeping it cleared. Needless to say, it was an enlightening experience as while we cleared the area in front of the barrier, we found a white cross wedged into the ground in front of the barrier.
Amanda: Oh no.
Julia: Turns out the barriers were put up after an old grandma named Rose had driven down the road thinking that it was a ramp on for the highway, but couldn't see the road and ended up crashing into the creek and dying at the end of our driveway. My mother is extremely superstitious and hypervigilant when it comes to this sort of thing. And it didn't take long before she started noticing weird things happening in the house. Mostly she found stuff moved around or heard someone walking around when we were all at school or work. On one occasion, she saw a tall woman with blond hair walked past her door and heard the front door to the house open and close.
Julia: None of us doubted her though she isn't the type to joke around about this sort of thing and we were all creeped out by the house. It was eerie. Looking at the glass sliding doors into inky blackness and just watching the shadows move. Now, our house was in general a beautifully orchestrated mess of things piled everywhere. When you have eight dogs, three horses, six cats and a handful of birds to look after, things tended to get set somewhere and forgotten about or tipped over. You get used to that after a few years. It wasn't long until everyone in the house started noticing things too.
Julia: I had been getting ready for bed one night and I was alone in the house with my parents out for dinner and my sisters visiting their respective boyfriends, I was already on edge. I had grabbed my mom's great Pyrenees, which is like a big white dog.
Amanda: Oh yeah.
Julia: Though like Newfoundlands but huge and had him in my room so I wasn't completely alone because fuck no, I was not living a scream moment ever. I remember being in the bathroom and brushing my teeth. The counter covered in my sisters, various lotions and makeup. There was this bottle of leaving conditioner with one of the pump heads that was tipped over on its side. But that wasn't my problem. It wasn't leaking or anything and it certainly wasn't rolling off the counter. The head stopping it from rolling anywhere. I bent down to spit out my toothpaste and I grabbed a towel to wipe my face and the bottle slowly went up right.
Amanda: Nooo!
Julia: I froze.
Amanda: It's creepier than falling!
Julia: It was a completely unnatural movement. No way does a bottle just sit up right.
Amanda: Nooo!
Julia: Not on a something had moved it intentionally. And it had been on the opposite side of the counter from the towel. So I knew I hadn't touched it, at least.
Amanda: Listen people, stuff falls many reasons. Stuff does not just stand up!1
Julia: So I just backed away until I was in my room with my dog and I shut the door.
Amanda: Oh boy.
Julia: After that the activity kind of ramped up, but it was never anything bad. Actually, it was kind of helpful. Any door that was left open would most of the times be shut by the time we came back. Cabinets, dryer, dishwasher, bedroom doors, the whole family started to relax a bit. Yeah, we had a ghost but they were super friendly as far as we could tell. Just try to make order of the happy chaos that was our lives by going and tidying up after us. It was chill. I take it back. That sounds fucking awesome. I'd love it. The creepiest thing, however, was my mom's parrot Snapper. Snapper was a highly intelligent parrot that could talk. Of course, she has to memorize content before she can repeat it back, but she knew what you were saying.
Julia: And she used it to memorize lines to have conversations with you. Now, Snapper wouldn't talk unless someone was in the room with her. You could probably guess where this is going.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: The walls in the house are pretty thin so I could hear everything that was happening in the living room, especially when my mom would go upstairs to feed the birds and grab her own lunch. So I heard Snapper talking and I figured nothing of it. My mom must have come upstairs to make lunch. After about five minutes, I get up to see if my mom wanted help only two around the corner and see that Snapper was facing the corner talking and my mom was nowhere in sight.
Amanda: Nooo!
Julia: It was then that I actually listened to what Snapper was saying, "Rose want Help? Help. Rose want help.? Rose help, help."
Eric: No.
Julia: In the most deranged, confused voice I had ever heard, and progressively getting louder.
Amanda: No Snapper.
Julia: Fuck no. We've had Snapper since I was very young, and I know everything in her vocabulary. Over the years she can learn new words, hell, she can even mimic my mother's laugh to a tee. But we never known a Rose. There's no plausible reason for her to know this name. I immediately ran for my mother, but by the time I brought her back upstairs, she had started whistling The Addams Family song.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Julia: Not cool. This is so scary. Have we considered that parrots are the most haunted animal? Much like spaghetti is the most haunted dish, parrots of the most haunted animal?
Amanda: Yes, because rather that, parrots are the most scary haunted animal to have around you. Because parrots on a normal non haunted day can be pretty scary given mimic abilities, but parrots are like the doppelgangers of birds.
Julia: Okay, [inaudible 00:57:55].
Eric: Isn't there a parrot that seem like a witness protection because it was snitching on people?
Amanda: It sounds like a great[crosstalk 00:58:01] if true.
Eric: I think that's a thing.
Amanda: I hope it is.
Eric: Listeners, google that and find out for yourself.
Amanda: This is a podcast not a research paper.
Eric: I recently saw some stuff about what the correct way to hit a deer it was all I could act so.[crosstalk 00:58:16]. If you all got caught, if you've never heard it-
Amanda: We weren't talking about hitting deer to be clear, it was involved in urban legend[inaudible 00:58:22].
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Darien also says if we want to hear about her hometown cult that we should let her know so this is me letting you know Darien I would like to hear about it.
Amanda: I would. Wow. That was terrifying.
Julia: Yeah. Now, I'm glad we ended on a solid terrifying note. It's always Michael.
Amanda: Oh, me too. I'm going to go working getting my heart rate down. But listeners no matter what kind of creepy haunted pets you have around and Darien I do want pictures of your animal menagerie. Just remember. Stay creepy. Stay cool.
Eric: Stay ignorant.
Julia: Nooo! Don't do that!