I'd Like to Make a Reservation
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Sometimes words seem so unnecessary.

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Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath come, or one that lieth dead in the desert, or a ghost unburied, or a demon, or a ghoul, whatever thou be until thou art removed, thou shalt find here no water to drink. Thou shalt not stretch forth thy hand to our own. Into our house enter thou not. Through our fence break through thou not.

We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared to death. Welcome to Scared to Death, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts, and Annabelle's. I'll put a spell on you. Oh my god, Elvis? Is that you? No. Hey, Dan. Hello, little...

Throwback to last week, Lindsay. Two quick pieces of housekeeping, and then we are into the episode. Recording this episode, just before we pick the winner of the 2024 Bad Magic Sticker Street Team, we will announce the winner of the $200 Bad Magic Merch Credit next week, thanks to everyone who has participated. I have seen lots of pictures online of our stickers all over the place, and very thankful. It looks like a lot of you have had a lot of fun. Good job, guys, and good job not getting arrested doing it. Okay? All right. So...

What's my announcement? Well, if you've been following along, then you know that we are in giving tree mode. So here's your final reminder that next week on Monday, November 18th at 12 noon Pacific time, you can sign up if you are looking for some assistance this holiday season. All of the information about how this works and the breakdown of it is on our website, badmagicproductions.com. Just scroll a tiny bit and look for the giving tree. If you are in a position to support

the Giving Tree additionally this holiday season. All that information is there as well, but very quickly. You can purchase Amazon gift cards and send them to us with the recipient email address being GivingTree2024. So that's GivingTree2024 at BadMagicProductions.com. We are asking for your help if you're able to. That would be wonderful. We are looking to help 30 families this

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raked it in. You've sent in upwards of over $10,000 worth of additional funds. And Dan and I are honored that we would be able to make that additional contribution. So please help us get there. And again, all this will be in the episode description, or you can read this information on badmagicproductions.com. Aha. Whoop.

Whoop, whoop, whoop. Okay, story time. I have two today, and there's a bit of a theme for both of them. Yes. A theme of mystery. Like...

What kind of mystery? You have to find out. Oh, okay. The first story, a modern encounter claim that is really hard to describe without revealing a spoiler. I'll just say that a guy made a last-minute reservation to a restaurant that he had never been to before, and his experience there was very unsettling. Okay. That's kind of fun. Mysterious. Mysterious. And then my second story deals with a village that supposedly just poof, just vanished in Canada almost a century ago now.

Is it nothing more than an urban legend or perhaps something all too real and very disturbing? Where did everyone go? Again, a mystery. We were just talking to some other fellow podcasters. We'll be sharing a guest appearance we made coming up here soon. But I was like, you can't just poof. You

You can't poof. People can't just poof. Poofing's not okay. Like, I got really upset about poofing. So I'm less than thrilled that we're going to talk about a place that poofed. Yeah. I don't like it. No. And you said you have one story, but a very good story. I have one large Ouija board story. All right. And it is told from the perspective of two teenage girls. And it just, I don't know if I just find myself, you know,

Perfect.

Um, and then, and then I just, uh, wanted to say really quick, actually just a recommendation. I just finished season two of it's a couple of years old sci-fi, uh, horror series called, um, channel zero. And it was a season two. It's like the no end house is I think the name, it's like an anthology series. And if anybody's looking for just for some extra content, something a little outside the box, it is, it's weird, but,

The whole show so far, I've only seen the two seasons so far, I guess, but like they're both pretty weird. I'd say weirder than scary, but definitely unsettling in moments, scary in moments and just really interesting. And I think it's harder and harder to find unique content because so much has already been done that I would recommend it. If you're like, you know what? I just, I'm tired of, you know, the same kind of themes that I've been watching for a while, the same types of stories. I want something really different and new. I would recommend checking out that Channel Zero Season 2. Yeah.

And if you want something very lighthearted but somehow made me sob hysterically at the final episode of the season, nobody wants this with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. And it is not my typical type of show to go for, but we were traveling to New Orleans recently separately, and a girlfriend of mine was like, oh, this is such an easy show. And...

It's pretty great. Okay. So there you go. Two sides of a coin. And in keeping with our strange tradition, what kind of spoopy socks are you rocking this week? Oh my God. These are like rock and roll, glow in the dark, skull and bone socks. Nice. With a little bit of purple glitter. Those are cute. They are cute. Okay. Now it's horror time. Okay. Horror it up.

Uh, no setup for this first story today. We're just going to dive right into an account posted by an anonymous guy whose worldview, uh, very shaken in the most unsuspecting of places. Time now for the tale of I'd like to make a reservation. Start off. I want to say, I'm sorry if what you're about to read is complete and utter nonsense. I'm going to try my best to make it coherent, but to be honest, this just happened to me a few hours ago and I'm still pretty freaked out.

And I also might be a little high right now. So that could play a role in my writing abilities. What I'm trying to say is I'm going to attempt to get this all out as clearly and concisely as possible, but you'll have to forgive me if some of it sounds a little crazy. What happened was crazy. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe I'm just paranoid. Maybe I have undiagnosed schizophrenia or one of those other brain diseases that make people suddenly start to see shit. I really don't know. Anyways, here's what happened.

It was about 4.30 p.m. I was smoking a little weed, playing video games on my PS4, hell divers if anyone's curious, when my wife got home from work. For context, my wife is a preschool teacher and I'm an editor for an online sports journal. Not gonna say which one because I don't want my boss to find out and then fire me for mental incompetence or psychic delusions or some shit.

Since my job's remote, I can basically work wherever I want. Which means most of the time when my wife Lily gets home, I'm either playing video games or watching TV or smoking weed or maybe on rare occasions reading a book. I don't know why, but I feel like so far I'm coming across as kind of an asshole. I promise I'm really not. At least I don't think I am. I guess that's something for other people to decide, but I think my friends and family would also tell you that I'm not an asshole too. I hope I'm getting sidetracked.

But I feel like it's important for you to know that I am a good husband. Since Lily spends all day every day chasing grubby little kids around an underfunded and poorly run preschool, and I get to write articles from our couch whenever I feel like it, it's my job to cook dinner every night and keep the house clean. Stuff like that. Some of my friends make fun of me for acting like a, quote, housewife. But some of my friends are also douchebags. So who cares what they think? It's 2016, dudes. Guys can cook risotto in full clothes and unload the dishwasher and shit. Get over it.

Anyways, that's me and Lily's dynamic. She's my whole world, so I try to do whatever I can to make our lives together as comfortable and secure as possible. Sometimes I slip up, just like everybody does once in a while, but still, I feel pretty bad about it. When Lily got home this afternoon, I was just a teensy bit high and also beating the shit out of this alien in Helldivers. I had my headphones on, so I didn't hear her come in, and I didn't really notice she was there until she was standing directly in front of the TV, waving at me, all irritated and stuff.

I pulled off my headphones, my character had just been mauled by an intergalactic bug anyway, and got up to give her a hug. "'Hey, baby,' I said. "'How was work?' "'God, it was a total nightmare,' she grumbled and slumped down on the couch. I sat down next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. She snuggled up closer to me and my heart just melted. Before I could ask what happened, she spoke up again. "'But whatever, it's over now. "'Did you make that reservation at Salt?' Guilt crept over me. "'Oh, ah, fuck. "'Oh, I'm so sorry, honey, I forgot.'

She had been telling me for weeks, but for some reason, it completely slipped my mind. Her mom, Shannon, was in town for a conference and wanted to meet us for dinner, and Lily had asked me like six times if I could make us a reservation at this fancy new restaurant called Salt that her mom really wanted to go to. I quickly snagged my phone off the coffee table and pulled up the restaurant's website. I'll call them right now, I said. Honey, there's not going to be any tables left. They're probably totally booked by now, she mumbled. She looked so bummed out. I felt awful. I'm sure they'll have something, I assured her. They didn't.

She was right. They were totally booked. The snotty hostess told me so like three times over the phone. At this point, Lily, who was rightfully pretty pissed off, told me that she needed to shower and get ready. And then I just needed to get us a reservation somewhere nice. I spent the next 15 minutes Googling restaurants near me and calling the ones that looked the most fancy schmancy. And not a single one of them had any availability. I thought for a second that maybe we could go to Salt and just join the waitlist.

But then I thought about sitting next to Lily's mom on some tiny pleather booth while she made side comments about how nice it would have been if he would have had a reservation for 45 minutes to an hour and promptly dismissed the idea. Eventually, I came across this old-timey steakhouse on Google Maps called Hilltops. When I clicked on the little icon, all that came up was the name of the restaurant, its address, opening hours, and phone number. There was no website, not even a link to a Facebook page like some restaurants have. But there were a few pictures and about a couple dozen reviews.

It had four and a half stars in total, and from the pictures, it looked like a pretty upscale place. Kind of like a 1930s speakeasy. Dim chandeliers, red leather booths, tin tile ceiling, antique paintings, bougie velvet drapes, and those little vintage lamps with tassels on the tables. Basically, it looked expensive, so it was perfect. Lily's mom would love it. I clicked on the restaurant's phone number. Immediately, an AI voice informed me,

The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and dial again or ask the operator for assistance. Fuck. I checked the number and it was correct. I reentered it, tried again. This time it actually went through and after just three rings, someone on the other end picked up. I waited for them to say something, but they didn't. All they did was breathe. More annoyed than weirded out, I said, Hi, I'd like to make a reservation for three people at 6 p.m. tonight, please. The person on the other end responded by inhaling sharply at first.

and then slowly. I remember that specifically because I was so grossed out by the sound of them sucking in air, all quivery and like sensually too. And I pulled the phone away from my ear. Uh, hello? I said again. Tonight! They whispered briskly, like I just said something scandalous. It was a man's voice, I'm pretty sure, but it was kind of high-pitched and weird, so it's hard to say. Yeah, tonight, I continued. Do you have any availability? I asked. The creepy dude moaned breathlessly.

Tonight, tonight, tonight. Sends shivers down the spine, doesn't it? Excuse me? Can you just tell me if you have any tables available, please? I was pissed off and weirded out, but also still kind of high and very determined to make it up to Lily so I didn't hang up. A table for three? The guy purred. He sounded amused. Yes, I said flatly. And that will be for you, your beloved, and your whore mother-in-law, is that correct? Suddenly I felt very, very cold. I was so confused and so angry.

I didn't know why I didn't hang up. I wish I would have hung up. Instead, all I did was stutter. What did you just say? You're a whore of a mother-in-law. She sends shivers down your spine, Andrew. His voice was different now. Stranger. There was this vile, perverted edge to it. I felt like I was going to cry. I started to yell, you fucking piece of... The piercing dial tone cut me off. I stood there in the living room with my jaw basically on the floor, my mind swimming and my buzz fading. Listening to that awful beep for what felt like a million years.

Then abruptly it ended and another voice sprung through. Hi, this is Amanda at Hilltops. Thank you for holding. How can I help you this evening? The perky girl exclaimed. Uh, I wasn't just talking to someone else, I croaked. I don't believe so, sir, Amanda replied. I'm the only hostess here at the moment. So would you like to make a reservation? My head was spinning. I assumed that, well, someone else's phone line had, I guess, bled into mine or something. I think that happens, right? I said, yeah, yeah, I guess.

I gave her all the info and she told me they had a great table available for that evening at 6 p.m. And that she looked forward to seeing us soon. Or at least she said something like that. I was so pretty distracted trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. When she hung up, I didn't know what else to do. So I just went to go get ready for dinner. It didn't hit me for some reason, probably because I was a little high. How he knew my name or that I was coming to dinner with my wife and mother-in-law.

I found Lily curling her hair in our master bathroom. She was wearing this really sexy white top and blue jeans. She looked absolutely stunning, but was also still pretty upset with me. I told her I got us a reservation at this great steakhouse, and that I was so sorry again for forgetting to call Salt earlier. She said it was totally okay and that she forgave me. She just had a bad day at work and was still in a bad mood. Even though I really wanted to, I refrained from telling her about the creepy phone call.

I figured she'd had a hard enough day, she didn't need to know that some perv had called her mom a whore, especially because I never would have talked to that perv if I had just made the original reservation like she had asked me to, like she had asked me to like, I don't know, six, ten times? I hated myself. Anyway, the bottom line is, I didn't tell her what happened. I just trimmed up my beard a bit, took a quick shower, and put on a polo shirt that Lily's mom had gotten me for Christmas last year. Pretty soon after that, we were picking up Shannon at her hotel and driving to the restaurant.

I won't bore you with the details of the car ride, partly because it's not super important to the story and partly because I wasn't really listening to anything anybody said. I was too busy thinking about that weird guy on the phone. I was second guessing my idea about someone else's call bleeding into my phone call. I had thought more about it and realized that maybe I hadn't heard of that happening. I just kind of made it up. Also, if he hadn't taken my call, how would he have known my name? So now I was thinking that he was at the restaurant again.

And they must have some kind of caller ID, which would make sense. Also, no matter what Amanda, the hostess said, when I called the restaurant, that guy picked up. So does that mean he was at the restaurant somewhere? How could he answer their phone if he wasn't? But even that doesn't explain how he knew who I was going to dinner with a lucky guess, maybe. But on the very first guess, I doubt it. There's no way that when there's a party of three, it's usually a guy, his wife and his mother-in-law.

I had a really bad feeling about that guy. And now I was driving my wife and mother-in-law to the exact place that pervy fucking creep probably was just because what? I was worried that my wife would be even more disappointed in me. And because my mother-in-law would be so as well. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone forgets to do something sometimes. I was really starting to panic and trying to figure out how to tell them that we had to go somewhere else, that I'd messed up again when Lily pointed ahead and said, there's a restaurant. You can pull over right there, honey. Looks like they have a valet.

because I'm a coward, I guess, I pulled over and handed my keys to the valet. I told myself that just because you talk to someone at a restaurant, that doesn't mean you'll actually see them when you get there. So before I knew it, we were standing in front of the hostess stand at Hilltops, waiting to be sat. A few moments later, a blonde girl popped up behind the stand. Thank Christ it wasn't a weird guy. And she asked us what name the reservation was under. Oh, uh, Colby, I answered while scanning the dining room behind her.

I was searching for, I don't know, some creep touching himself in a corner booth or something. Right this way, said the hostess cheerfully. Things were fine. Things were totally fine. All weirdness with the guy on the phone aside, the restaurant was super nice. Lily's mom was pleased. She only made one passive aggressive comment about how much she had been looking forward to the bacon wrapped dates at Salt she'd heard so much about. But after she tried the lobster salad, she pretty much shut up about it. I felt like I had dodged a bullet. I couldn't stop thinking about the guy.

Took everything I had not to tell my wife and Shannon about him and see if they thought he was a ghost, which is what I was starting to think. At least I was feeling better and better about not running into him again. The evening was going really well. Lily was in a much better mood. Shannon was actually being pretty fun to be around. I almost spit up my wine from laughing hearing her talk about this one bitchy woman from Connecticut she had met at a conference. By the time the waitress brought us our entrees, I'd basically forgotten about the weird phone call. After I scarfed down my filet mignon, since we were paying, I figured I might as well splurge a little.

I excused myself to go use the restroom, but then I couldn't find any signs for the bathrooms anywhere. So I had to go ask Amanda, the hostess, where to go, which is always kind of embarrassing. She very kindly and apologetically informed me that because the building was so old, the bathroom was a little bit of a trek to get to. What I had to do was go downstairs to the restaurant's private dining room, which would be empty, then through this little corridor behind the bar stand, then down another much more cramped flight of stairs with much steeper steps. And once I reached the bottom, I would see the toilets at the end of the hallway on my left.

I nodded like I would remember any of that after having already forgotten a step or two and thanked her for the directions. In response, she gave me a massive gummy smile and chirped, Also, it's a little chilly down there, just so you know. Then she did a cartoonish shivering gesture, rubbed her forearms up and down and trembled, furrowed her brows and whispered, Uh, thanks, I mumbled while I quickly walked away. As I descended the first staircase, I thought again about the guy from the phone, how he'd asked me if my mother-in-law had sent shivers down my spine.

I felt nauseous. I shook my head as if to shake the thought out of it and tried to focus on finding the bathroom. Eventually, I did, despite not really remembering any of the directions Amanda the hostess had given me. The restrooms were at the very bottom floor of the building, at the end of this long, skinny hallway with black and gray geometric floor tiles and dark hardwood walls. It felt so... vacant. I know that's a dumb thing to say, because I was alone, so obviously it was vacant.

but it also felt hollow, like a graveyard, like an abandoned gas station or a strip mall parking lot at night, just lifeless. Besides how cold and damp it was down there, the two things I remember most about the hallway was the chandelier and the dead elk mounts. The little chandelier was dangling from the ceiling in the middle of the corridor, and it appeared to be the only source of light in the place. It was a crystal one, like the kind they had in the dining room, and it gave off this dull orange glow, but that's not why I remember it.

I remember it because it was swaying like a pendulum, side to side to side, like someone had just swatted it right before I walked in. As it swung gently back and forth, the shadows it cast undulated and lurched. It looked like the walls themselves were bulging, dilating, then deflating ever so slightly. The effect was sickening. The other thing I remember about the hallway was the stuffed elk heads, one of which was mounted directly above the door to the men's room, and another one was above the women's, about four feet apart."

The way they were positioned, really erect and tall, made it seem like they were looking down the long hallway at something right behind me. The heads weren't attached to any wooden frames, or whatever they're called, like you normally see with that stuff. It just looked like the stump of the elk's thick, severed necks were just grafted right onto the wall. But that's not what freaked me out. What freaked me out was their mouths. They were open, like they were screaming.

Their snouts scrunched upwards, baring their yellow, blunted teeth, their brittle little jaws unhinged and gaping unnaturally wide. Nothing but blackness inside. I don't know, maybe that's normal, to position the mouth of a taxidermy animal like that. I'm not a taxidermist or a hunter, so how the hell should I know? Still, it freaked me out. But for some reason, in addition to being completely disturbed by these things, I also felt compelled to look inside the elk's mouth after I came back out of the restroom. I know that sounds gross, but I don't know, I just had to. Sick curiosity, I guess.

Even though I'm about six feet tall, the Elks were mounted really high up on the wall, too far for me to just be able to peek inside. So I grabbed my phone out of my pocket, pulled up the camera app, switched the flashlight on, and stretched my arm up above my head so the lens was pointed directly into one of the Elks' screaming mouths. Then, I took a picture. For a moment, the Elk's head looked like it was glowing from the inside out. Looked like it was about to explode. Its glass eyes flickered with the flash of the camera, like it was alive.

Slowly, I brought my hand back down to look at the image. Now, like I said, I'm not a taxidermist, but I do sort of know the basics of taxidermy. And by that, I mean, I know that the tan skin of the animal is molded over a mannequin shape like its body or whatever. I saw it on a YouTube video one time. So what I was expecting to see on my phone was an indistinguishable fragment of the interior wooden frame, maybe some wires, stuff like that. Instead, what I saw was flesh, pulpy, wet, living flesh.

Tendons, veins, saliva, a throat. I could hear my heartbeat quicken in my ears. My whole body felt clammy. I looked up at the elk above my head and I screamed. It was looking at me now. Its face was still frozen in the same position, mouth open, teeth bared, but instead of lifted high up in the air, its neck was craned steeply downward like it was reaching for me. Terror-stricken, I started to back away, my eyes still fixed on the elk, and almost immediately I tripped over my own feet and plummeted to the ground.

My phone went flying from my hand, skidded across the tile floor, made this awful piercing sound as it did. I fumbled after it, and when I finally managed to get a grip on it in my sweaty, shaky hands, I bolted down the hallway. Before I took the sharp turn into the stairwell, I took one last look over my shoulder. The elk were back to normal. I stared at them, completely out of breath. My chest was heaving. I thought my heart was going to burst. I opened my phone and clicked on my camera roll. The most recent picture, taken just a minute earlier or less, was of nothing. Just shadowy, indistinguishable blackness.

I felt paralyzed. I walked up the shallow steps, staring at the picture on my phone screen, thinking of the insides of the elk. I opened the heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs and entered the private dining room. And as I rounded the corner behind the bar stand, I walked directly into someone. He was this really tall guy, maybe in his 40s or 50s. He was wearing a suit, a really nice one, I think. I thought maybe he was the owner of the restaurant. Sorry, I mumbled with my head down, trying to avoid eye contact. He didn't say anything. He didn't move either.

It was so uncomfortable, because where he was standing, he was blocking me from getting back into the restaurant. Finally, I met his gaze. I can't tell you exactly what he looked like, because I couldn't process his face. I know he had one, but it wasn't an amalgamation? I think that's the right word. It was like the features of his face were shifting, changing, ever so slightly, undulating like the shadows cast on the walls by the swinging chandelier. He bent down so his mouth was right next to my ear. Send shivers down your spine, doesn't it? He purred.

I couldn't move. I was frozen like that goddamn taxidermy oak. With his lips practically pressed against my earlobe, he gasped, sharp and hard. It made me flinch. "You're the worst kind of cold," he whispered. Then he abruptly maneuvered his way around me, swung open the door I had just come out of, and disappeared down the stairs after shooting me a final little sick, amused glance. "That's it. That's the end of my story. There's no resolution. There's nothing more to say." "You're the worst kind of cold? What the fuck does that even mean?"

I went back upstairs, tried to act like I hadn't just talked to what? A ghost? A monster? A demon? A weirdo? I paid for dinner, told Lily and her mom I had a stomachache. And I haven't talked much to either of them since. When we got home about an hour ago, I went straight into my office to write this.

I don't know what just happened to me. Is it over? Honestly, I feel a bit scared. No, that's bullshit. I feel pretty terrified. Right now, my phone says I have three missed calls. One is from Shannon, one is from Lily, and one is from Hilltops. Why would my wife or mother-in-law call me? I was just with them. I'm in the same house. Why would the restaurant call me? It has to be that guy, right? Or that thing, whatever it is. So do I just not answer my phone anymore? I can't not answer my phone forever.

So weird. So weird.

Also, like, it just has that air of relatability, you know, of like, oh, fuck, I forgot to make a reservation. Like, my in-laws are in town. Hurry up. Like, whatever night it is, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, trying to get a 6 p.m. dinner reservation anywhere. Anywhere decent. Yeah, it was rough, rough, rough, rough, rough, rough. And...

Now, obviously, I know that there's so many people who are not going to know what I'm referencing, but I was thinking of Wolf Lodge. Oh, yeah. A steakhouse here in town that very sadly burned down a couple months ago. But because it's like this like, oh, it's not fancy, not in the least bit, but it's like old and dark and there's taxidermy everywhere. And I was like, oh, funny. I don't know. What do you think it was or is? Or do you think that was his name Colby? Colby, yeah. Well, then why do you call him Andrew?

Wait a minute. That is a great question. Did I just, well, you know what? I don't know. That is a great. Am I crazy? Because I thought maybe like Colby was like the last name or something. Like I was like, okay, Andrew Colby. Oh, you know what? It might be.

Because I guess a lot of people do make reservations under the last name. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he referenced himself. Yeah, but I think you're right. Because when he checks in for his reservation. Yeah, he pauses and says like Colby for the reservation. So yeah, must be an Andrew Colby. Which makes sense because when I check in for our reservations, I always say like Cummins. Yeah. Yeah. Because I can never remember which one of us called to make the reservation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, what do you think? Yeah.

I don't know. It's just, I liked it. It's just an interesting, just creepy, weird little story. Just to think about putting yourself in his position and having someone just say the weirdest shit to you and just inappropriate stuff when you're making a reservation to a restaurant. But also they somehow know who you're going with and they know your name. The name thing, I mean, wouldn't freak me out as much because of caller ID. Right. Yeah, that part didn't freak me out at all. I was like, okay, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was the...

How could he know that he was going with his mother-in-law? And why is his mother-in-law a whore? There's something about that that's just... I mean, I'm not saying that she is. There's something about the tone of the voice and that choice of words. Uh-huh.

Like he didn't say slut or like didn't call her, you know, any other derogatory term. Yeah. There's something about whore that just felt like, oh, really uncomfortable. And the little weird phrase of sending shivers down your spine, doesn't it? And like the voice that you were doing. He said he had a weird voice. And I was like, oh, God. Because that would make it more uncomfortable too if the voice just sounded like somebody just messing with you or just unhinged. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It made me think of long legs for some reason. Oh, yeah. Just like very strange. But yeah, I was just thinking like, okay, that would be a great kind of practical joke to play if you worked as a host or hostess at a restaurant. Yeah. And like you worked together, you know, like if there were two, you'd be like, okay, I'm going to put this guy on quote hold and then you do a creepy ass voice. Oh, my God. If it was like your last week.

Like, you don't care about getting fired. Oh, how is anybody even going to find out you're doing this? Well, I guess if you were joking about it, you know, people say like, oh my God, I did this funny phone call and it got back to the owner. You could be easily fired. Yeah. But I could see that being something like that I would have done my last two weeks of working like jobs when I was, you know, younger. Oh, God, it'd be so funny. So funny. Okay. People who work in hospitality, let's find ways to mess with people calling to make reservations. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, because you get put on hold a lot. Yeah. And that would be such a funny thing. So like, yeah, the first person answers, says something crazy, puts the person on hold. Second person, when they take the customer off of hold, acts like they were never on hold. Exactly. And just play it really straight. Because you would, if someone did that to me, I would start to question myself. I'm like, was I on hold? Yeah, or then I would start to think like, oh, that's like a...

funny. The justification I would make, I'm certain, is like, oh, it was just recently Halloween, and maybe it's like instead of hold music, like elevator music, maybe they just had this funny little thing playing, and it just happened to say, like, my name, but like, oh, maybe. I would come up with a lot of long stretches. I mean, if you really wanted to do the joke thoroughly to somebody, it would have to be like, you, I mean, this is probably not going to ever work out, because you'd have to

Okay, have your significant other set up a reservation for you at a restaurant where you also know the hostess.

and somebody else there. Yeah. Like they'd have to be working that shift. A lot would have to go into it. It seems very impractical actually. If you knew everybody, because then you could have the person like know the name, know some background, because then they could say stuff like, oh, you're going to be with your mother-in-law, you know, blah, blah, blah. They would know that information to use it against you. I don't know. This is a very, it's just a weird little story. The creepy voice. And then the fact that like when he went to the bathroom, I don't know what I thought was going to happen with the taxidermy, but I mean, yeah.

Yeah, that's strange that he's all like, you know, muscle, sinew, bone. But then I was like, well, that could just be his imagination or, you know, just kind of... And Amanda the hostess was weird too. Yeah, she was. Also...

Because this is how my brain works. I'm like, that's not plausible to have a bathroom down there like that because now you're not ADA compliant. Uh-huh. And that doesn't work, so. I know, I know. But then I was expecting him to come back upstairs and then like Lily or Shannon say that they needed to use the restroom. And they found one on that same floor or something, right? Exactly, yeah. I was expecting there to be like, almost like it was like a Matrix glitch or something or like he was like popping in between universes. Like something wasn't. Yeah.

Yeah, like the restaurant itself, entities there were just messing with him. Yeah. Okay, a couple pictures. This first photo is of a taxidermy elk head with the mouth open. I am beyond not a fan of taxidermy. Yeah, you're not. I don't know if it's like just not growing up around it. Just all of it is creepy.

I appreciate it when I'm at a museum. Let me say that. Like there, what is it like the science museum in LA? They have like a giant woolly mammoth or like that. I'm like, okay, that is incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This I'm like, I don't need to see what your dad killed. Uh, this next one, a pretty weathered mounted deer head. Somebody said they found in an abandoned building. Uh, and this pick was posted on the oddly terrifying subreddit. Oh,

Oh, what is that? It's just, it's been out in the elements. So it's this deer mount. It's disgusting. But most of the skin or the fur, I guess, has like fallen off of its skull. And it just, oh, it looks something like out of a horror movie. It reminds me of Yellow Jackets. Yeah. Yeah.

That was like weird in that opening sequence where we see them wearing strange like ceremonial, I don't know, animal parts. Looks kind of awesome in a very dark, macabre way. I don't think it's awesome. I think it's disgusting. I just am expecting like maggots to fall out of it. You know, it looks very disgusting. There's a whole subgenre of horror taxidermy.

This next one, some kind of alien monster busting out of an undead goat found on the awful taste but great execution subreddit, which is a really funny subreddit. Yeah, I mean, that's really cool artwork, actually, I think. Yeah, that's wild. That is so effing gross.

Ugh, okay. Enough. And then one more. Some kind of four-horned demon goat called Balthazar, created by Zone, which is Z-H-O-N, Zone Creations. I don't even want to. It's like a goat, but it has fangs. Okay, that doesn't look that bad to me. That I can handle. Yeah. Mostly because all of its flesh is intact. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Okay, so that's all I got for creepy taxidermy stuff. Okay, great. Creepy but kind of cool. I mean, is it cool? I don't know. I think it looks pretty cool. I love taxidermy mashups where they just take different animals and just put their pieces together and make new creations. What do you love about it? I don't know. It just looks interesting to me. Say more. I...

I don't know. Like, why do you like a certain painting? You know, like, why are you drawn to certain things? I don't have, like, I couldn't give you a solid answer. I like beauty. I don't know why certain things. Actually, I haven't analyzed, I guess, to, or it takes so long, I feel like I'd really need to think about it and get back to you. Okay, that's fair. So, I don't have a quick answer. Okay.

The only thing I ever want taxidermied is not even really taxidermied. I'm going to take Penny and Gigi after they die and dip them in gold and make them little like lion stanchions. Yeah. We've talked about that. But that's different. That's like silly. Remember when we were in New Orleans and we walked by that one little gallery a few times and had the creepy dolls with the eyes too far apart? No. They were in the back of the gallery. We were just peeking through the window at them. Yeah.

And you're like, ooh, those are creepy. It was these dolls and they- I think it's right next to or like on the same block as that like really beautiful lingerie shop. It is, yeah. Yeah.

But I'm like, that kind of stuff. I'm like, ooh, that's really cool. It's really unique. It draws me in. Yeah. I just find it's really a lot of creativity there for them to do it. And I think that's probably why I like interesting taxidermy pieces, like mashups. It's just the creativeness of it all. Okay. I can appreciate that. And I like good, I don't know, spooky stuff. You ready to move on from one mystery to go explore another? Beyond ready. Yeah.

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Thanks for listening to our sponsor deals, Creeps and Peepers. And here we go, our next mystery.

Lake Anjakuni is located in the Kivalik region of Nunavut, Canada. Those are like, you weren't even speaking English. I wasn't really. What did you just say? Inuit terms. Oh, okay. The largest, northernmost, and most sparsely populated region of Canada. That's what Nunavut is. The least populated area in the world outside of Antarctica. Dang. Yeah, the capital city, biggest urban area, if you can call it that. Iqaluit has less than 8,000 people.

The entire territory has around 40,000 people. It's like nothing. Yeah, and it's massive. Lake Anjikuni is in the southern end of the region, less than 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle, one of several lakes along the Kazan River, and is surrounded by rocky outcroppings. Historically, Inuit people have used the waterways for fishing and trading there. The Lake Anjikuni, and Lake Anjikuni, happens to be the setting of one of Canada's biggest unsolved mysteries.

Time now for the tale of the vanishing village. In late 1930, a journalist from the town of The Paw, Manitoba, reported that the residents of a small Inuit village just off of Lake Anjakuni had disappeared. As in, all of them.

In November of 1930, a fur trapper named Joe LaBelle, described as a roving trapper of the barren lands, stopped by the village as he had many times before. The village was one of several on waterways in the region that had welcomed fur trappers who came to Canada's far north for generations. And now LaBelle found that the entire village had been abandoned. He could tell something was wrong right away when he'd approached.

He called out a greeting, but no one answered. The only living creatures he saw were two starving sled dogs who literally crawled towards him. Oh my God. Weak from hunger, desperate for food. Throughout the village, he found creepy signs of daily life, strangely and suddenly interrupted, such as unfinished shirt with needles still poking through them, and untouched and charred meat hanging over fire pits, as if someone had started to cook, but left before it was finished and then it just burned. LaBelle told the following to the journalist from the PAW.

Its tents, made of caribou skins, were still standing. Inside were hides, clothing, cooking utensils, even rifles. There was no sign of violence, no sign of trouble. The place was simply empty. LaBelle admitted that the abandoned village made him nervous. He said, "...there were six tents made out of skin. I'll admit that when I went in the first tent, I was a little jumpy. Just looking around, I could see that the place hadn't known any human life for months, and I expected to find corpses inside."

but there was nothing but the personal belongings of a family. A couple of deer parkas were in one corner. Fish and deer bones were scattered about. There were a few pairs of boots and an iron pot, greasy and black. It had been there so long it was all rusty. The whole thing looked as if it had just been left that way by people who expected to come back, but they hadn't come back. I went outside and looked over the rest of the camp. I tell you, I was puzzled. I figured there had been about 25 people in the camp, but all signs showed the place hadn't been lived in for nearly 12 months.

As I strolled about, with those two walking skeletons of dogs following me, I found the other tents in a similar state. Then, without prompting, LaBelle recalled stories she'd heard of an evil spirit known as Tornrark, a spirit who, quote, has an ugly man's face with two long tusks sticking up from each side of the nose. The natives live in fear of Tornrark, and they wear charms to ward him off. I thought about Tornrark and had to make an effort to put the picture out of my mind.

The Tornrark is a monster thought to be related to the Inuit god of Torngarsook, a god of the sky and elements and underworld, sometimes described as a mischievous, shape-shifting demon-slash-spirit worshipped by people in Greenland and northeastern regions of Canada. An entity typically depicted as a large polar bear, sometimes with a human arm or arms, a creature of immense strength, capable of controlling the weather and the behavior of animals.

LaBelle returned to the lake, wondering if the entire village had drowned somehow, even though that idea seemed impossible unless they had all committed a mass suicide. At that point, he claimed to have found something that terrified him, a disturbed grave. He said, "'The stones had been pulled off of one side and there was nothing inside the cairn at all. I had no way of telling when it had been opened or what had been done with the body it once contained, and I couldn't figure out why it had been desecrated.'

Labelle was certain that an animal hadn't disturbed the grave because the way some of the stones had been so carefully removed. He spent the entire afternoon looking around the village. He fed the starving dog some fish from the lake and then moved on, refusing to spend the night there. He claimed that he visited over a dozen other tribal camps before returning to town to trade his furs, and that no one living in any of them knew anything about the abandoned village. When he told them what he'd seen and asked what they thought could have happened, many blamed the evil spirit, Tornrach.

LaBelle reported what he found to the Northwest Mounted Police, who conducted a search of the area, but also could not find the villagers. The police estimated the village had been abandoned for at least eight weeks. One theory was that they had died in a blizzard while on a caribou hunt, although it was considered very atypical that all the women and children and any elderly tribe members would have gone on a hunt.

Adding to the mystery, another tribe living about 150 miles north of the abandoned village adopted a 10-year-old boy who had wandered into camp with no explanation a few months before LaBelle found the abandoned village in November of 1930. No one from the surrounding villages claimed to be his guardian. It was reported that both the boy and the tribe were reluctant to talk to any journalists or authorities, and no one was able to gather any useful information from them.

Further adding to the mystery, an Inuit man named Saumek was brought to a hospital on Manitoba's Hudson Bay Railway for treatment of frozen legs. Another Inuit person who spoke his same dialect asked about the abandoned village, and he refused to talk about it. But he did mention the demon Tornrark. He was offered liquor in hopes that he might talk if he got drunk, but he refused to take a sip, a single sip.

According to some accounts of the story, while searching for the lost villagers, police officers saw mysterious lights in the sky over the lake. And they weren't northern lights. Instead, they were described as pulsing blue lights. This report led to the theory that the villagers were abducted by aliens. So what happened? Maybe nothing. It is possible that this entire story is nothing more than urban legend.

The story first appeared, not in Canada, but in a November 27, 1930 issue of the Danville Bee, a newspaper in Danville, Virginia. The article was written by journalist Emmett E. Kelleher and stated, Somewhere, somehow, the endless desolation of Canada's northern barren lands has swallowed up 25 men, women, and children. After the article was published, the Northwest Mounted Police received several inquiries about Trapper Joe LaBelle's story.

In January of 1931, Sergeant J. Nelson from the PAW filed an internal report that was later made public, and he wrote that he could find no foundation for this story. Skeptics have pointed out that Joe LaBelle claimed he was a seasoned trapper, but records show that might not be true. Sergeant Nelson wrote that LaBelle was a trapper in the area, and that he had obtained a trapping license that season, but it was his first license, and he questioned if LaBelle had any real experience in the territories.

However, it was not uncommon at all for trappers not to get their trapping license, just like poaching was common back then. Also, Emmett Kelleher was known for exaggerating stories, but not for totally fabricating them. And he was an experienced journalist. The story of Canada's vanishing village was mostly forgotten about until it was published in the 1959 book, Stranger Than Science by Frank Edwards. Since 1959, it's been printed in a variety of publications and the story has certainly been exaggerated.

For example, in the 1983 book, World's Greatest UFO Mysteries, the population of the village was increased all the way up to 1,200 people from 25. And new details regarding the police encountering the trapper and his two sons who saw a bullet-shaped UFO in the sky heading towards the abandoned village was added. Other sources claim that an entire graveyard was disturbed, rather than just a single above-ground grave. So was the whole story fabricated?

Well, perhaps Joe LaBelle really was telling the truth about what he saw, and his story has been discredited by many in recent years because of later writers trying to exaggerate what was already a pretty unusual tale. If an entire village really did disappear, was it due to a natural disaster, a mysterious illness, an alien abduction, or supernatural or perhaps even demonic activity as many Inuit people seemed to have believed back in 1930? Nearly a hundred years later, it all remains a mystery.

That's so weird. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if there's any truth to the story, it's another strange one of just a massive disappearance. Yeah, I mean, that detail that like, well, okay, this journalist could have just completely made it up. That immediately, I'm like, oh, let's just go with that. But it is strange where it's like, um...

I guess, I don't know. People make stuff up for all kinds of reasons, but it's a weird story for somebody in Danville, Virginia. I know. I know. But also. And he, and he, and he did correctly identify a trapper that was registered up there. That's also odd. Yeah. No, there are definitely details that I'm like, uh, I don't like how much credence that offers to the tale. Uh,

But yeah, that's a new, was it torn work toward turn? Let me, I have to look back at my notes to see how to say it correctly. Yeah. And without ever having heard that word and have definitely torn rock, definitely never seeing it, uh, hard to pronounce, but new, a new thing to be afraid of. Yeah. Yeah. A new demon, a new, uh,

entity. Yeah, it sent me looking it up. It sent me into a little rabbit hole on the web of looking at Inuit mythology. And I didn't realize that they had an entire pantheon of gods. Oh. You know, kind of like Norse mythology. Specifically the Inuit or just... Inuit. Okay. And just I'm always like, oh, yeah, it's like every culture has their gods. Yeah, that's true. What I often like take for granted with Native American or American Indians is that like each tribe

tribe has their own set. You know, because I think like

I collectively mash them together in my brain as just like a collection of people. Right. Like, and then I'm like, oh yeah, but Lindsay, just like, and I understand like this sounds ignorant, but it's just like when, when people say like, oh, Americans, I'm like, right. I'm just thinking about like a group of people, but then, but then you break it down. Right. And it's like, well, you have, you know, you have, uh, Catholics, you have Christians, you have Baptists, you have Methodists. It's like within, you know,

the Native American culture. It's like, you have Inuits, you have all these different tribes. I couldn't even name them all. And within each tribe, you have a different set of gods, beliefs, traditions. It's like, oh, yeah. And sometimes they'll carry over from...

One tribe to another in like a related group of tribes, you know, like just like they're like Germanic folklore. But there was lots of different Germanic tribes and they had like, you know, the variance from one tribe to another as far as their beliefs. Same thing in, you know, North America. Kind of like, I guess, like language trees, like the romance languages of like English, French and Italian and Spanish and all that.

There's similar things in, you know, Asia, Africa, North America, where it's like, okay, these eight tribes are part of this language tree and part of this like cultural kind of group. But yeah, growing up, I didn't think of that either. How like, you know, in Africa, there is a incredibly diverse group of different tribes. Totally. They speak different languages. A lot of them hate each other. Yeah. Just like in Europe, you know, there's all these different tribes that have all these different types of languages. Historically, they've hated one another. Same goes for Asia, the Middle East.

you know, South America, just the whole world. Yeah. But I think like growing up over here, the way we were taught, they were just referred to collectively. Yes. So you're kind of conditioned to think of them collectively. It's like, oh, Africans.

Right. It's like that's just as vague as Europeans. You know, it's like a Welsh person, pretty different than a Latvian person. Yeah. You know, same diversity in Asia, Africa. You know, we'll think like Chinese. There's a whole bunch of indigenous people that speak, you know, a variety of languages that happen to live in the area collectively known as China. Let's start a new podcast where you teach me things like that that I don't know. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, there is so much stuff. It would be so fun to do like an anthropological type like podcast where you just travel around the world and like, okay, here's these like each week give a breakdown of like, here's what's up with these people. Here's their basic beliefs. Here's the kind of language they speak. Here's their cultural values. And you could make

thousands of episodes. Like there are hundreds of tribes just in Papua New Guinea. Right. Well, and what I, yes, that would be incredibly awesome. And those kinds of studies and deep dives are fascinating to me on so many levels. But I just was thinking on like a very basic level, just stay in America and just talk about all the things that like, oh, you know, like the podcasts that already exist of like stuff you should know. Yeah. Man, if you just took a

the history books that we use that are not conclusive, that are not all-encompassing because, you know, you're only in school, you're only in the first grade and they're teaching you first grade history at a first grade level and then, you know, but then we build on that, we build on that, then we get to high school and still, it's just like, okay, like I grew up in Cleveland. Mm-hmm.

And like, you know, like I lived in Cuyahoga County. That is very obviously a Native American or American Indian name, designation, whatever the appropriate term is there. But it's like, I couldn't tell you two facts about it. I couldn't even tell you, is it the Cuyahoga tribe? Like I actually...

I actually- Is it Cuyahoga? Cuyahoga? Right. Like, I actually don't know. And I think that like that kind of stuff is just so fascinating where it's like, you know, but you're just, you're like gliding through. It's like, yep, yep, yep. I just got to get through this so I can get on to college so I can get on with my life and have my career. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there is so much fascinating information in the world there. And history itself is so fascinating where even, you know, what we've all been taught in school, I mean, there's that thing of like,

his story history and it's like can you trust all these ancient sources oftentimes not yeah so we're like relearning a lot of history now where we're finding out that like as we get more archaeological evidence and discover more writings by people you know there's like a bunch of ancient Roman writers and Greek writers was like oh that dude was full of shit yeah and we just accepted what he said is fact for like

thousand, you know, 2000, 3000 years. And then when you look at some extra evidence that comes in, you know, contextually, you're like, oh no, that's not true at all. Yeah. But this, this other stuff was more true. Yeah. It's, it's all fascinating. Yeah. I just read a really cool, um, article off to show to you later about, I think it was like a 50, 50 year ish study about Christopher Columbus and like really like who he was and like, not a good dude.

Beyond that, just like where he actually hailed from and his family. And it's like, I actually want to say that they think he was, because you said Latvia, it struck something in my brain. I'm like, I think, no. But anyway, but I was just like, what? Like this is, but a very long study, like someone, a group of, you know, people really trying to get to the root of it. Scientists, anthropologists, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, wow.

So cool. Yeah. Anyways. All right. I have a few pictures associated with this story. Sorry about that weird mid-show history discussion. That was a weird segue. This first one, a pic of Inuit villagers standing on the shore of Lake Njikuni. I just cannot fathom the will and grit and strength of a people who live in such quiet

Freezing, cold, barren conditions. It's crazy they're able to even survive in these areas. But they figured it out. Uh-huh. Humans, we are, it's amazing what we can adapt to. We are such an adaptable organism. God, so wild. This next one. I'm just cold looking at them. I'm like, I don't, you know, because they don't have like hot hands.

Hot hands and all these modern things. I'm so weak. This next one, some tents of some Inuit villagers living on the shore of Lake Anjakuni. That just looks so awful.

Even the modern cities in this area now, it's like the buildings remind me of shipping containers. Oh, yeah. You know, because it's too cold to build via traditional means. Yeah, you can't like dig down into the dirt. Now, you usually just ship up these like big metal structures or they figured out how to like, you know, prefabricate all the parts, ship them up there, kind of assemble them almost like they're building these Lego towns. Yeah. Well, they might.

even actually be shipping containers because there is like a huge movement of repurposing actual shipping containers. Yeah, some are and some are just much bigger versions of those. Okay. And I think they just assemble this big frame so you can create enough warmth inside to actually customize it. Good Lord. Yeah, it's wild. This next one, a screenshot of where Lake Anjikuni is just on a map. So where I've circled it in red, I mean, it's up there.

And this, there are villages much higher north, like up towards that Northwest Passage where you're like, you know, equivalent to like, oops, you know, the top of Alaska, like up past Fairbanks and stuff. You're way up there. Honestly, when I look at that, I think like, oh yeah, I forget how huge Canada is and all the shit that is up there.

Yeah. And the upper half or two thirds really of Canada is very sparsely populated because it's just so far north. It's just so cold. So cold. Yeah. Tundra is hard to build on. Yeah. Yeah. But how crazy is that? Yeah. Because it's really not that far away. You know, I mean, it's just right there.

And then one more. Couldn't find an illustration of the demon Tornrark, but here's an illustration from oldworldgods.com of the Inuit god of Tornrark. That makes me think of Narnia. Yeah, that's a badass illustration. Yeah, that's really cool. Very cool. And that's all I got. Okay, bro. Man, my brain is swirling about history and Canada and other cultures. Cool.

What a world. And they all have their horror. They all have their supernatural tales. Yeah, and their gods and deities and folklore. Okay, do you have a Layla over there? I do. I'm going to go red today. Red Layla. Okay. Well, I am excited to share with you this one really good Ouija board story. Let's go, dude. Homemade Ouija boards work just as good.

It was fall in New England, and I was in my tween era, when my best friend Anna and I hatched a sleepover plan to convince our strict parents it was a good idea. We would casually float the request early in the week to give them ample of time to consider and so as to not appear too eager, as that would arouse suspicion.

We'd then promise to do extra chores for the week, get all of our homework done, and get along with our siblings. If we accomplished all of that, then surely we would be allowed to have a sleepover. We hustled all week, stayed on our best behavior, and if any fighting happened with our siblings, we made sure it was while our parents weren't home and with a lot of bribes to stay quiet. Much to our surprise, the plan worked and our parents agreed.

Times had been tough with my Anna and I as of late. She had been making friends in school that were in another clique, so we hadn't seen each other the way we used to when we were younger. The promise of too much popcorn, staying up late, school gossip, and 80s horror movies ran through my mind as I grabbed my overnight backpack and began throwing in everything I'd need. Toothbrush, deodorant, pajamas. Anna and I needed this bonding time, and we were ecstatic our plan had worked. It was a

Even though we had been spending our time with other friends, we connected in a way we didn't with anyone else and had missed that very much. I threw my Jansport backpack over my shoulders, grabbed my pillow from my bed, and said an enthusiastic goodbye to my parents as I headed out the door and up the road to Anna's house. Luckily, she lived close by. It was just a short 10-minute walk in the brisk New England air.

Orange, brown, and yellow leaves crunched underfoot as I approached the front door of the white, ranch-style home and gently knocked on the dark green door. It flew open immediately. Anna had been eagerly waiting for me as soon as I had called her ten minutes earlier on my landline that I was walking over. We gave each other a big hug and stepped inside, careful to remove my shoes as Anna's mother considered any dirt in her home as an act of war.

It was mid-evening at this point, and they had just finished eating supper. Being done with chores for the evening, Anna and I raced down into the basement. Her parents had remodeled recently to make more room for her and her brothers. Instead of having the bedroom right next to her parents, which was not ideal for late-night sleepovers discussing boys...

Anna now had her own bedroom suite that covered half the basement, complete with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. I was so, so jealous. I hadn't even seen it yet and was thinking this just made the sleepover even better. We'd be in an entirely separate section of the house without her parents able to hear our juicy school gossip. We could stay up as late as we wanted.

We headed down the stairs in the dark as the light switch was at the very bottom. I couldn't help feeling the standard level of unease as one does entering a basement in general.

Anna's basement in particular had a reputation for being creepy. It was only partially finished with concrete walls and floors, half-finished stairs that really were just wood slats on a frame, an unfortunate regular sighting of brown recluse spiders, and large cast iron wood stove that looked like it ate children burning on one side of the room.

Her previous cat, Flower, had had a habit of coming down to the basement, sitting in one spot, staring at the ceiling, and meowing for hours.

After a flower passed, they'd gotten a new cat, a Maine coon named Leo. He also did the same thing. Same spot, staring at the same place in the ceiling, and just meowed incessantly. I shivered a little as we passed that spot and approached a heavy wood door under the stairs. We walked through, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, Anna's room was the complete opposite of the dark, dingy basement we had just walked through—

Wood floors covered in bright, funky, multicolored carpets, white walls covered in boy band and kitten posters, and rows of shelves lined with knickknacks and books greeted me as I entered. An old tube TV sat on top of a stand across from a big bed with a giant purple comforter and a wooden frame. I loved it.

It was every tween girl's dream. I couldn't believe her luck. She'd even had the rainbow beaded curtains at the entrance to her walk-in closet. I made a mental note to discuss future plans for my own bedroom at my home with my parents. Right away, after I walked into the room, Anna reached around me and pulled the heavy wooden door shut.

We have to keep this closed all the way, Anna said. Otherwise, it just swings open and slams into the stairs. My mom hates that. If I leave it open, the wood stove makes my room like a hundred degrees. So just keep it shut, okay? Okay, yeah, sure, I said.

I had barely dropped my stuff off on the bed before Anna pulled out her box of movies from under the bed and we began to sift through for the right one. This box was legendary as her extremely strict Catholic parents didn't actually realize what kind of movies were in it.

We discussed our options of classic horror movies from some time before settling on The Candyman. A favorite of Anna's I had never seen before, and with the promise of a good spooky film, we decided it wouldn't be complete without a giant bowl of overly buttered popcorn. Anna headed upstairs and with a, I'll be right back, closed the heavy door behind her and with a thud and a click, it closed.

I could hear her walking up the stairs, heard the basement door open and close, and could hear her footsteps in the kitchen above my head as she made our favorite snack. The floors seemed to be pretty thin down here, and all the sound traveled down to where I was standing.

I decided to spend the few minutes I was alone at her desk, flipping through our favorite notebook we used to pass back and forth during class in middle school, laughing at some of the ridiculous ideas and conversations we had scribbled down. Thank goodness no one ever found this. I think I would have died of embarrassment. I was focusing on the notebook when all of a sudden I heard the doorknob to the bedroom door rattle and begin to turn.

I looked up. The heavy door was swinging back slowly and then made a sudden, abrupt stop about three quarters of the way open. I stared at it, puzzled. Didn't Anna tell me it had a habit of slamming into the stairs? I could hear Anna upstairs in the kitchen bustling around, talking to her mother. And her brothers weren't home either. They were camping with their dad that weekend. I continued to stare.

And then all the lights went out. I heard the audible click of the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. Anna's bedroom light was still on, but it did nothing to illuminate the dark space beyond the partially open door, even when it should have.

It was as if the light wanted to spread out into the first few feet or so of the basement past the door, but the darkness had swallowed it. A sense of pure dread and terror like I had never felt before began to bloom in my chest. I did not move a muscle. I barely breathed. I strained my ears as hard as I could, listening for any movement, strained my eyes, staring as hard as I could to make out any shape, any movement, anything at all.

The wood stove was burning, but where was the dim light it usually cast? Was something blocking it? It was the darkest black I'd ever seen. I could still hear Anna upstairs with her mother, chatting, the microwave humming. I still hadn't moved an inch. I don't know how long I stood there staring into the darkness. All I knew was that everything inside of me was screaming not to look away, because I knew if I did, something would come for me. I felt as if

I felt as if I were being toyed with. I felt amusement coming from the darkness at my crippling fear. So I kept staring. I don't think I could have moved even if I wanted to. Every cell in my body was screaming. I stayed there, staring, staring, staring. Finally, after a while, what felt like an eternity, I heard the basement door at the top of the stairs open. "'Why is the light off?' Anna asked. A massive wave of relief washed over me. Whatever was holding my gaze in the darkness was suddenly gone."

Anna walked down the stairs, calling my name as she went, and finally, thankfully, turned on the light. I was gripping her wooden desk chair so hard my knuckles were white. All of my breath came out at once when I saw the basement lit up and nothing but Anna standing there. I hadn't realized I was holding my breath. I sagged with relief. "'What's up? Are you okay?' Anna asked."

"'Did you turn off the light when you went upstairs?' I asked. "'No, why would I do that? It's creepy as hell going down in the dark,' Anna said. "'The light turned off and the door opened by itself. It wasn't funny,' I said. "'I really didn't do anything, I promise.' "'The door opened by itself?' asked Anna."

Yes, I don't understand how, but it did. The door handle turned by itself and then it swung open. Then the light went out. It was terrifying. Don't leave me down here alone again, okay? I said, still stressed out from the whole thing. Okay, okay, I won't leave you by yourself again. I'm sorry, said Anna, looking at the door with an odd expression on her face. I could tell she wanted to believe me, but seemed unsure about the whole ordeal.

I was all too glad when she shut her bedroom door tightly and started to set up the move me. In the brightly colored room with the lights on in our pajamas, stuffing our faces with popcorn and gossiping through an old movie, I started to forget about the light shutting off by itself and the door opening on its own.

Some time later, as the credits rolled and the movie ended, I figured it was time for more gossip or maybe a session of making fun of our peers' yearbook photos, which was a personal favorite activity of mine. Anna had something else in mind. Do you want to see something really cool? Anna asked me. Uh, okay, sure, I said, thinking it was another feature in her new room.

I made this last week with Tiffany. You know Tiffany. She's on the cheer squad. My mom let her sleep over last weekend, said Anna. An image of Tiffany immediately formed in my mind. I did know Tiffany, and I didn't like her very much. I thought she was stuck up and a troublemaker. And I was jealous that my best friend had a sleepover, and even more surprised her parents allowed a girl like that to come over.

Despite that, I was curious what Anna was talking about, so I got up and walked over to her desk where she was standing. Sure, what did you guys do? I asked, trying to play it cool. There was a gleam of mischief in Anna's eyes as she opened her desk drawer and pulled out a piece of cardboard with some writing on it.

What is that? I asked warily. I thought I recognized it, but I wanted to give Anna the benefit of the doubt. It's a Ouija board. We made it last weekend. See this spot here? That's our blood. It was Tiffany's idea. She brought a knife and had us like cut our fingers. See mine here? It's still healing. She said it would make it way more fun if we did it that way. I looked at Anna's bandaged finger. I hadn't noticed it beforehand. My heart sank and my gut twisted. I

I never trusted things like this, never found them interesting, never tempted to try one out. I've watched way too many low-budget horror films at this point to know better. Putting blood on it, too? No way, no thank you. I stared at it, looking at the alphabet written in my best friend's loopy handwriting and the dark smears at the center of the cardboard. Do you want to try it with me? Anna asked eagerly.

Anna, I really don't like that. Like, at all. And I don't want to touch that. You shouldn't have put your blood on it, I said, starting to get really nervous. Don't worry. Nothing even happened last weekend. It's a total fake. We tried for like hours and nada. We got nothing. Anna tried to reassure me. I don't care. I'm not touching that thing, I said. Fine, Anna said with a sigh of relief and an eye roll. But she could tell I wasn't budging on this.

If you don't want to use the board, do you want to see a ghost at least? Anna asked me. I couldn't tell if she was serious or not.

"'Uh, okay, but what do you mean?' I asked nervously. "'There's a ghost in the basement. "'You might see him at night around 2 or 3 a.m. "'He comes down the stairs and goes over to the spot my cat meows at,' Anna explained. "'And then suddenly there was a loud bang. "'Anna and I jumped out of our skin, looking up at the ceiling. "'Girls, it's almost 10! Keep it down! "'I want the lights out in half an hour! Understand?' "'Anna's mom shouted through the floor.'

We were being quiet, talking barely above a whisper, but I guess the floors were thinner than I thought.

Okay, what if we watch another movie or two, see if we're still awake, and if we are, then we can go see your ghost, I just said to Anna. I didn't really expect to see anything, and we'd probably fall asleep before then anyways. Okay, deal, Anna whispered excitedly. We spent the next few hours whispering quietly about school drama and watching one old scary movie after another. I was hoping Anna would forget the request and just go to bed, but at about 1.30, she said...

So, you ready to see the ghost? Uh, yeah, I guess if you like really want to. I mean, it won't come near us, right? I asked full of apprehension. We're going to kind of like sneak up on it. It's really cool, I promise. Don't worry, Anna assured me.

"'Oh, well, okay. But if anything happens, I'm running,' I tell her. I don't have any shame of being a scaredy cat. I was also on the cross-country team and knew I could hightail it all the way to China if I needed to. "'Okay, let's go,' Anna said. She jumped out of the bed and grabbed my hand, leading me towards her bedroom door. We opened it slowly. The lights were still on in the basement, so it wasn't the horrible, creeping dark it was earlier. I suddenly started to feel uneasy.'

"'Okay, in order for this to work, "'you have to go stand by the wood stove "'and I have to turn off the light,' Anna explained. "'Wait, we're turning off the light? "'I don't know about this, Anna. "'I really don't like it down here.' "'I said, fear creeping into my voice. "'Don't worry, there's like a little bit of light "'that will come from the wood stove, "'and I'll be with you,' she said, "'heading toward the light switch across the room.'

"'Uh, okay, I guess if you're sure,' I said, trying not to show how scared I was. She reached the light switch and turned to me. "'Okay, ready? Three, two, one!' Anna whispered, shouted, and raced over to me as soon as her hand flipped the switch. She reached me a second later, and we stood quiet, still in total darkness. I waited, and I waited some more, and I'm not sure how long, but what felt like several minutes, and then I turned to Anna. "'Where is this thing?' I asked, barely a whisper. "'Where?'

"'Shh!' Anna shushed me. "'We were waiting for someone, and we just kept waiting. "'My head was on a swivel, looking all around me, "'at the ceiling, over my shoulder, to my left, "'to Anna on my right, then back again. "'I repeat this pattern several times, "'losing my patience and getting bored.'

I turned my gaze to the stairs. I wish I never looked at the stairs, because that's when I saw it. I didn't say anything, not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't. I was paralyzed with fear. I watched it form, an eerie pearlescent color, slightly glowing, forming a shape as it moved down the stairs. My eyes didn't stray from it once. I didn't even blink, I don't think.

I was trying to see what it was as it developed more and more clearly. As it got to almost the bottom of the stairs, I felt Anna stiffen beside me. I knew now she saw it too. We were both watching it frozen in horror, barely breathing. The form took its most clear shape as it neared the bottom of the stairs. An old man, hunched over, his arms pulled up near his chest and the hands hanging limp at his wrists.

His hair was nothing more than a white wisp. I couldn't see anything below the knees. Maybe there was nothing there. I don't know. All I know is it finally reached the bottom of the stairs and it came around the railing and it angled its body so it was looking straight at us. Right in my ear, I hear Anna barely whisper, terrified, Did you see that?

And that was all it took. I bolted, fear leaping into my throat, driving me to get away as fast as I could. I left Anna behind and sprinted to her bedroom, a sob building in my throat. I grabbed the door, I threw it open and launched myself inside, whirling around to see if Anna was behind me.

She was. Only this time, that overwhelming darkness from earlier that evening was also behind her. I screamed, close the door, now! Anna grabbed the handle and began to tug the door shut, except the door wouldn't close, at least not all the way. Something on the other side was tugging it back, the door wobbling as Anna tugged one and then something tugs the other. Was it stuck on something? Anna looked back at me, tears in her eyes, face completely drained with color. Help me, help me, help me, close it! It's pulling it back!

it back help me and a screaming now we're both in tears I jumped up and grabbed onto the door handle as much as I couldn't get a grip on it with Anna holding onto it as well I could feel it it's not that the door was stuck it was being pulled from the other side Anna and I looked up at the same time into the crack of the door it's still open showing the basement and for the second time that night I wish to God I hadn't looked

A shape, tall, towering over us and the door, but very clearly the shape of something was on the other side of the door. We both screamed and yanked the door as hard as we could, and finally it shut with a loud bang. Anna and I fell backwards, landing in a crying heap on the floor.

Anna jumped up again and immediately pushed the lock button on the door handle. What the fuck? What the fuck was that? I half yelled at Anna. I don't know, okay? I've never seen that before. I don't know what that was. I've never seen the ghost even that clearly. I don't fucking know, okay? Anna cried. Well, I don't know. I'm going home. Fuck this, I said angrily. No, you can't go out there. You

We sat on the floor, barely breathing, heavily crying, not saying a word. I wanted to go home immediately, but a part of me knew I'd have to go past that thing to get to the light switch and up the stairs, and there was no way in hell I was doing that, and I couldn't leave Anna either. We looked up at each other, Anna with a puzzled look on her face, and her ear turned towards up the ceiling. "'What? What is it?' I said."

Nothing. Literally nothing. Why isn't my mom screaming at us to be quiet? Didn't she hear us? We were freaking out, Anna says. I felt nauseous. Why didn't Anna's mom hear us? We were screaming our heads off at one point, and she heard us whispering through the floor earlier, for Christ's sake. What the hell? I look at Anna's pale face, and a cold sensation of dread made me shiver. What do we do? I asked, terrified, wanting out of this house more than ever. I don't know.

Maybe we should just try to go to bed. Maybe we just had too much popcorn and we watched too many movies. Anna said, Anna, you know that's bullshit. We did not watch too many fucking movies. It was the Ouija board you and Tiffany made. Guess what? It worked. And now there's something in here with us. You need to get rid of it. I said angrily.

Oh my god, I didn't even think, like, I mean, nothing happened last weekend. Everything was fine, okay? I just, I thought it was just a stupid joke, Anna said. Joke or not, clearly you guys brought something through. I said, okay, well, like, what?

Like, what do I do? I can try burning it. Anna said, no, I said. The movies say never burn a Ouija board. You have to like bury it or something. Well, we can't bury it until we get out of here tomorrow when it's daylight. Anna replied, looking at the door with a terrified expression.

I know. Okay, we're just going to have to tough it out. We'll stay close and we'll try and get some sleep. Whatever's going on, it's just on the other side of the basement, right? So we'll be okay over here if the door is locked. It can't get to us, I said, more trying to convince myself than Anna. Okay, let's just try to go to bed, Anna replied.

We both knew no one was sleeping that night, but we needed to try and at least calm down. Whatever it was that was trying to get in here, it couldn't. So Anna and I were in the clear. I mean, at least that's what I kept telling myself. We brushed our teeth in total silence and got into bed, ready for a sleepless night. I wasn't so jealous of Anna's new room anymore.

"'Okay, you ready for me to turn out the lights?' Anna asked, standing next to her light switch. "'Are you crazy? We're going to sleep in the dark? Hell no!' I half shouted. "'I have a nightlight right there. Don't worry. It's plugged in next to my desk. See?' Anna pointed for me. I nodded my head at this point, completely exhausted, knowing full well as soon as she turned off the light, I was going to sleep under the covers anyways. I prayed this thing wouldn't come into the room.'

Anna flipped the switch and darkness swept into the room. The plastic yellow nightlight is glowing brightly enough. I feel less afraid for a moment until I look at Anna. Behind her, reaching nearly to the ceiling, is the shadow thing. It was back, and this time it was in the room with us. Anna, behind you! Anna didn't look. She just ran and jumped into bed with me, screaming. We yanked the covers overhead. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? We

We both shouted. We were crying hysterically again. Every fiber of my being was filled with pure terror. I'd never known you could be this afraid of anything. "'We have to turn on the light,' Anna said under the blankets. "'No, no, no! I am not leaving this bed!' I said, crying hysterically."

"'I'm just gonna do it,' Anna said. I didn't respond. I couldn't. I was crying too much. I felt Anna fly out of bed next to me, screaming as she went. A click and the bedroom light was back on and I could see through the blanket faintly. I slowly pulled the covers back. "'It's okay. It's gone. I don't think it likes the light,' Anna said, breathing hard. I sat up, looking into every corner of the room. I couldn't be sure at this point.'

"'We're leaving the lights on, okay?' Anna said shakily. "'Fine by me,' I replied, still crying and hyperventilating. "'Anna turned on the TV and put on a Disney movie. "'She climbed into bed with me and looked up at the ceiling, "'her face pale, scared, looking at me. "'I think it formed some kind of like bubble "'or like a cone or something around us. "'Like, why hasn't my mom heard us screaming? "'How did it do that?' "'I looked at her terrified and shook my head. "'I don't know, and I didn't want to find out.'

Despite my best efforts to keep my eyes wide open, staring everywhere around the room for a hint of anything abnormal, I somehow fell asleep. I woke up to sunlight streaming on my face in from the tiny square cellar window in Anna's room. Anna was already awake, waiting for me. I could hear morning breakfast sounds in the kitchen above us, pots and pans banging, drawers opening and closing. Without a word, both of us got up and went to leave what we had naively thought last night was the safety of Anna's room.

We opened her heavy bedroom door and slowly crept into the basement. Bright sunlight was shining into the room, illuminating every creepy nook and cranny from the night before. Everything appeared normal as we walked out into the space. Anna and I looked at each other but didn't say a word. We headed upstairs with Anna in the lead.

As we were climbing the stairs, I couldn't shake the feeling I was being watched, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I refused to look back, afraid of what I might see. I learned my lesson enough times last night to not look when you know you shouldn't. We walked into the kitchen to Anna's mother making us pancakes. "'Did you girls have fun?' Anna's mother asked. Anna and I exchanged look."

"'Mom, you didn't hear anything weird last night?' Anna asked. Anna's mother's demeanor changed quickly to suspicion. "'No. Why? Should I have heard something, girls?'

"'No, no, no, no, no. We just watched a movie that freaked us out. That's all.' Anna replied quickly. Her mother gave us a weird look but went back to making pancakes. I didn't feel much like eating. After pancakes, I made a quick excuse about my mom needing me home, like right away. Normally, I'd try to stay as long as I could to hang out, but I couldn't stand another moment in that house. Anna walked me back downstairs and I packed my bag faster than I had the night before when I was excited about the thrill of popcorn and movies."

Anna, listen to me. You need to get rid of that thing. Today, I whispered, looking at the desk where the Ouija board was. I will, I will. Don't worry. As soon as my mom goes out for groceries, I'll be burying that thing as fast as I can, she replied. I nodded, satisfied. Okay. See you at school tomorrow?

"'Yeah, I'll see you around,' Anna said. I hauled ass out of there as fast as I could without arousing suspicion from Anna's mother on the way out. I practically ran home just wanting to be in the relative safety of my own house."

Anna and I never mentioned that night to each other and I never slept over there again. Anna would call me, however, and would tell me she didn't think the shadow had left her after she buried the homemade Ouija board. She said it had been visiting her in her dreams, giving her horrible nightmares. On more than one occasion, she had been woken up to the feeling of being strangled. Anna told me those times she saw the shadow over her bed.

Over time, Anna became more withdrawn. I thought at first it was normal teenage angst, like they tell you in health class. Her eyes started to have a constant darkness to them, underneath her eyes an almost purple from a lack of sleep. I felt terrible for her, unable to sleep, plagued by nightmares. I thought that would be the worst of it. I was wrong. The next year, Anna started cutting herself, started carving words into her arm like fuck up and worthless. Her

Her mother had her committed a few weeks after she attempted to take her own life. I was devastated by the news. She used to be a bright, bubbly girl who loved dance and boy bands and silly school gossip. Now she was someone I didn't recognize anymore.

Things continued to get worse from there. Anna ran away from home constantly, was getting in trouble with the police on a regular basis, started using drugs heavily and fighting at school all the time. It broke my heart to walk by her in the halls, her eyes barely recognizing me as we passed each other. It was almost as if something else was inside her looking back at me. I started to become afraid of Anna. We drifted apart because of all of this and then I ended up graduating from another school.

Years passed and we reconnected down the road. Her family had finally sold and moved out of that godforsaken house. And she seemed like her old self again. And I knew in the back of my mind what had happened. Anna had been possessed by whatever came out of that Ouija board. I just know it. There was something inside of her from that sleepover and she wasn't the same for a really long time. She's lucky she survived it at all.

I've only ever shared this story with my husband, and even writing this out now is giving me chills and anxiety remembering it all. I know what I saw that night, and I remember every detail clearly. I met something evil that night, and I was lucky to walk away from it. Yikes. That is an intense story. I hope that story's not true. I don't want that story to be true. Why? Because of Anna. She's okay now.

Yeah, but I guess what she went through. Yeah, that's true though, but she is okay now. This is the thing. You say you want to have like a paranormal experience. Not that intense. But you can't control what's going to happen. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I think that's why I waver so much because I'll have moments where I'm like, okay, yeah, I could totally do this. I could totally do that. And then I read a story like this and I think, why? Why tempt fate? Like I'm happy, healthy. My family's happy and healthy. Like my life is good. Why? Why would I like even tempt fate? Yeah.

God, there were so many parts of that story that reminded me of my own childhood. Absolutely. Like when you're at a sleepover in somebody's place. Not necessarily that I slept in a basement. I don't think any of my friends' rooms were in a basement. Well, no, because you grew up in a trailer park. Like most kids... Oh, right, right, right. Truly, most kids lived in trailers. So there wouldn't have been basements. But, um...

But that feeling of like, you know, you're spooked. It's late at night. It's during a sleepover. And the room that you're in is safe, like your friend's room. Totally. But the thought of leaving the room is terrifying. Yeah. Like, I mean, this obviously like, you know, it's escalated where they're seeing the shadowy thing and the stuff's moving around and they can't like, they wonder why Anna's mom can't hear them up above. But I just got like, I was thinking like,

Wouldn't one of them have to go to the bathroom? She has her... I think you maybe just... Oh, I was spaced out when I was thinking about something else. Yeah, she had her own bathroom attached to her room. Oh, okay. I did miss that detail. Yeah, and...

God, there was so much in that story. I was trying to like stay focused, but I was like, my mind was going all over the place because there was just so much happening. Well, yeah. And I think like we just very quickly like revert to our own childhood memories of sleepovers. Oh, yeah. So I think that's why this story is so scary to me because it's like Monroe is still having sleepovers, you know, like and actually like at this age, this is the age when I started having like

a different kind of sleepover where it was like we we didn't need parents to fix us food you know it wasn't like it's not like a little kid sleepover where like you're going to a trampoline park and then you're going to you know suzy's house to have pizza and sleep over it's like yeah no you're essentially on your own yeah you know and this is when you get into trouble uh yeah um just uh not horror related but the tiffany the cheerleader uh-huh when of course her name was tiffany

When Anna is talking to the narrator about wanting to go – or having Tiffany recently to sleep over and everything and then the jealousy, that just like set me to my childhood where I'm like, I remember that age when you're just starting to get invited to sleepovers, you know, maybe like late grade school, junior high, going into high school, and you're watching movies and like your friendships are deepening. Yeah. And then every once in a while there's this curveball in the person you're with. There's reference like, oh, yeah, like last weekend, like when I was –

over at Lincoln's house and I just have in my mind like, Lincoln, why are you at Lincoln's house? Yeah. Why wasn't I invited? You're my buddy. We're friends. Why is Lincoln a better friend than you? Like just a weird jealousy. Actually, that makes me feel super like normal validated because I didn't think that that happened for boys. That kind of jealousy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was, it was me and Sarah and Amanda and it was just always like. Right, right.

There's always something happening. Yep. Yep. You're always worried about being the odd man out. And I frequently was. Yeah. Because the truth of the matter was, is I wasn't fucking cool. And I was trying so hard to be cool. Yeah. So much pressure. And Sarah was like the cool girl. And she wanted to be friends with me. And it was such, I remember like when it happened, it was such a big deal. Yeah. And then like along came Amanda and...

She ruined everything. That would be something too. I don't know if you had this in a bigger city, like if it would be the same, but our town was so small. Like when the new kid would show up, there was like this, if they were cool, if they were like a cool kid, pretty girl, like whatever there, it would just change the dynamic. Like you could see everyone getting a little uncomfortable, but

And, you know, it was like jockeying for kind of like power, like a new kind of power structure. Yeah. And there was this like worry that like what if this person comes in and then your friend all of a sudden is better friends with the new kid and now you're on the outs or you're trying to like vibe like you want to be the one showing the new kid around. Yeah. And then maybe you can't and then just feelings get hurt that way. It's funny like the social dynamics of just like a classroom. Oh, yeah. A class of kids. Yeah. Yeah. It is crazy. It is crazy.

But yeah, this story, I also felt like because of the age that Monroe was at, I can see Monroe doing this shit. Oh, yeah. I can absolutely. She loves horror movies. Yeah. She's not really scared by much. I can absolutely see her idiotic self making a homemade Ouija board. A little blood packed. Totally. Totally.

This is absolutely something. Monroe would, she wouldn't be Tiffany, but she would be like, she would be Anna. You know, she'd be like, okay, and I'll do it. I'm tough. Oh yeah. And I'll keep the Ouija board here. Whatever. My parents are like, fucking, they tell like horror stories on a podcast. They're not going to care. Monroe, Monroe, if you're listening, I'll kill you if you do this.

You won't have to worry about a ghost. I'll get you. That was a good story, though. Very intense. And I'm glad that Anna's okay. Yes, yes. And also, it makes sense, too, because we have talked about poltergeist activity and possessions really when you're vulnerable emotionally. Yeah, yeah. And in those teenage years with all the angst. It just, so many things lined up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, good submission. You want to thank some Annabelles? Sure, I would love to. Okay.

I would like to thank the following Annabelles for making our November donation possible, which we will be sharing in a couple episodes. Blaine, Aug, Tyler with no last name, Lilibeth, I love that name, Lilibeth Milam or Milam, Lilibeth Milam.

Ashley Seagraves, Liz, no last name, and Sarah Covington. Thank you, Annabelle's. Thank you. I would like to thank the following Annabelle's. Alex, Joshua Kennedy, Reese Ice, Abigail Bates. Ice, ice, baby. Reese, have you heard every ice joke? Caesar Mora, Red, just Red, Jesse Hibbs, Dolly Tampton, Randy Verberg, a.k.a. Raw Verb, lol, I'm a dork.

That's a lot going on. That's a hefty title. And Megan Taylor. Nice. I almost said Megan Trainor just because it's like, yeah, Megan Taylor. You thinking about all about that bass? I wasn't, but apparently. Your mom loved that song. She did love that song randomly. And she doesn't like reference music very often, especially newer music. Uh-huh. Not that that's new now, but when it came out, I just remember thinking like, that's so random that you just attached yourself to that song. Uh-huh. Oh, she made her so happy. Okay. And then I have several spoopy shout outs. Uh-huh.

To Danny from Danny, look at you. Despite all the odds working against you, you are crushing it. Why are you laughing? It's just funny, Danny from Danny. Oh. To Spawn, number two, from your mum Thor, with all her love, I hope your 13th birthday is just as wonderfully spoopy as you are. And I would like to say it was so lovely to meet this sweet family. They live up in San Francisco.

point. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they came down and went to Scarywood with us and they were just so yummy. They were so sweet. To Julia from Isaac, you are the most beautiful person ever. I love you so much. To Big Bear from Baby Bat Joe, thank you for being my biggest fan and supporting me and loving me more than all the chocolate chip cookies and Reese's in the whole world. Happy 42nd birthday. I can't wait to be your wife.

To Joanne from Joanne, happy 40th birthday to myself, the baddie witch. 39 was a rough one, so let's make 40 great. 40 is awesome. 40s are fucking incredible. I know everyone says it, but now that I'm there, I'm like, wow, they weren't kidding. To Lindsay and Mark from Jennifer, thank you for showing me the Scare to Death podcast. I can't wait to meet your precious little pumpkin that is due soon.

And to Matt from Nanny or Nani? Nanny. Happy 6th anniversary, baby. Through all the ups and downs of 2024, we're still making it happen. You're the best post-brain surgery nurse I could ask for. Damn, that's no joke. That is. I love you so much and can't wait to celebrate many more years together. Also, hey to Jamie13.com.

Aurora 11 and Scarlet 9, you are all now supposedly famous within the scared to death community. I like you kiddos and could...

and could not, she wrote and could ask for a better trio, but I think she meant to write couldn't ask for a better trio. Love you all. Or you could be really funny like me where like Dan will be like, I love you and I'll go, you're okay. You're okay. Good shout out to speak, you guys. And that is our show. Thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror to mystoryatscaredtodeathpodcast.com. You can email us for everything else at info at scaredtodeathpodcast.com.

Thank you to Logan Keith for scoring today's show. Thanks to Heather Rylander organizing the My Story emails, to book editor Drew Atana polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thank you to Molly Box for finding the first story I shared this week, and Olivia Lee for finding the second. We are on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany episodes and more. You can find our social media profiles at scaredtodeathpodcast.com.

We also have a private Facebook group, Creeps and Peepers, full of fellow horror lovers. Big thanks to the All Seen Eyes, the Creeps and Peepers moderators. Thanks for continuing to make our online community such a fun place. Enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye. Bye.

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