The Redcap
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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, Robertson, Annabelles. I'm Dan. Hello, Daniel. I'm Lindsay Marie. Well, hello, Lindsay Marie. Yeah, I want to get really formal here. Lindsay Marie Faith Cummins. Thank you, Daniel Brent. Daniel Brent.

Today, we'll get into the stories here in just a second. If you want to stick around for the end of the show, I will play a little audio clip of me freaking myself out doing a solo Nightmare Fuel recording recently that we alluded to, I think, in the last episode. So funny. And yeah, Lindsay has a quick camp announcement and then we'll set up today's show. Yes, I do. Okay, gang, have you sorted out your summer travel plans? Do you know what you're doing? Do you know where you're going? Well,

Well, are you coming to Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp? Well, let's figure it out. Okay, let's get there. Be there. Do it. Get over to badmagicproductions.com. There's a big banner there that says Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp. It has all the information there. And listen, I'm not being hyperbolic. Summer Camp is a game changer. It is a life changer. It's fun. It's fun.

And it is... Very special. It is very special. And I promise you, if you're looking for new friends, if you're looking for the love of your life, if you're looking to make a baby, if you're looking for... I mean, people have gotten pregnant there. There's options. There's options for everyone. But truly, truly, truly, when I tell you, when we tell you that it is a game changer, we mean it. And if you're just looking for a break...

from the world, whatever that means, come September, you know, it's a great place to do it. It's going to be mostly weird, friendly introverts. Many people came solo last year. Most people come solo. Yep, and they find people real quick. And yeah, it's just a kind group of people. Yes, very open, very loving, very supportive. We don't all look the same. We don't all believe the same. But what we do do is we open our arms and our hearts to each other all weekend long. And it is just...

It's one of the most incredible things. And if you're looking for some more non-biased feedback, you know, not from us, please join the Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp Facebook group. Ask questions. Email me. Like, I'm really happy to point you in the right direction. We can accommodate food allergies. I mean, all the things. I've had any number of questions. So please come. Dan and I are excited to meet you, to hang out with you, to maybe sing karaoke with you, to have some drinks with you. And...

We just want to remind you that, you know, we are there to restore your faith in humanity, which is exactly what that weekend does. So join us at our little hippie compound this September. Head on over to badmagicproductions.com for all the info. Yes. Yes. And now what true horror claims have you chosen for us from those sent into my story at scaredtodeathpodcast.com? And just remember at summer camp, we do do a live scared to death. I have three stories this week. My

My first story, the person who sent it in entitled it Walking the Space Between the Veil. And I think that that is a great elusive descriptor. So I'm going to leave it there. But that story takes us to Louisiana, which we love. And then my second story is a strange incident with some roommates.

who maybe a roommate was home alone, maybe she was not. And then my third story takes us to Denmark. Oh, cool. Yeah, for a situation on a city bus. Oh, okay. That's very specific. Yes. I like it.

My first, I also have three stories today. No way! Six, ooh, six stories. Ooh, six, six, six. My first of three is the tale of Scotland's Red Cap. This is, I got unusual stories I picked on purpose today to shake things up. Okay, let's do it. This is a monstrous and murderous little goblin of a creature with horror lore going all the way back to the 14th century.

And then next we will head to Serbia and talk about the horror lore behind the very strange rock formations of Devil's Town. Okay. And the surrounding area. I don't know anything about Serbia. Okay. And then finally, we will explore the lore surrounding what might be early America's most famous haunting, the story of Wizard Clip, West Virginia. That's a funny name. And the story explains where that name comes from. It comes from the haunting. Okay.

Okay. Wizard Clip. Yeah, three very weird stories today that I'm excited to tell. Honestly, Wizard Clip sounds like a...

Well, it sounds like a basketball team. I think there is a basketball team. Clippers. There's the Clippers. Well, there's the Wizards and there's the Clippers. Yeah. So my brain just went there really quickly. Like it's some move that they do on the court. No basketball in that story. All right. Fair enough. What spoopy socks do you have for today's recording? Well, in honor of one day behind St. Patrick's Day, I have fuzzy shamrocks. Nice. Yeah. Just so cute.

Now, this one, I think this one will come out the week after St. Patrick's Day, right? Doesn't it come out the 18th? I don't think so. Did Lindsay put the wrong date on her? I think Lindsay did because I think... Oh, you know what? I think...

No, you are right. Yes. Okay. You are right. I was like, oh no, I really screwed up. No, that's right. I was losing track of where we are with these. It's hard. We record ahead, you guys. We're always trying to record ahead because in nearly six years of Scared to Death, we've never, ever, ever missed an episode. And so part of the recording process is to sometimes record multiple episodes in a week, right? So that we can, so this week we recorded the 11th and the 18th, those episodes. We never,

We never want to leave you hanging, and that's always our goal is to make sure the content is good and out on time. But you know how it is when you're living life. We're proud of not missing a week. Yeah, you guys know how it is when you're living life, and you're like, wait, what day is it? When is my birthday? How old am I? Where do I live? It's that kind of feeling. Okay, here we go. You got your St. Paddy's Day fuzzy socks, and we're just going to jump right into this one. All right, Dan, let's go. Time now for the tale of the red cap.

Ye had need to talk care how ye dispute the existence of fairies, brownies, and apparitions. Ye may as we'll dispute the gospel of St. Matthew. We done a believe in the gormel fantastic bogles and spirits that flay light-headed folk up and down the country, but we believe in the apparitions that warn o' death, that save life, and that discover guilt.

So goes a popular Scottish quote attributed to a peasant only known as Barnaby, recorded by William Henderson for his book Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders that came out in 1879. In this book, Henderson chronicles almost every custom and ritual from the area, an area that's also his homeland, from superstitions around birthdays, marriage customs, celebration of local holidays, to funeral rites.

And he also covers other less anthropological topics. Topics like famously haunted locations, local witchcraft practices, and disturbing supernatural entities. And one of those entities is the Red Cap. According to William Henderson, the Red Cap is described as a, quote, "...short, thick-set old elf with long prominent teeth, skinny fingers armed with talons like eagle's,

Large eyes of a fiery red color, grisly hair streaming down his shoulders, iron, a pike staff in his left hand, and a red cap on his head. He is cruel and malignant of mood and resides in spots which were once the scene of tyranny, such as border castles, towers, and peel houses. Quite the creepy little monster.

Henderson also wrote that when travelers take refuge in his lair, he flings huge stones at them, and if he kills them, he soaks his cap in their blood, giving it a crimson hue. He is unaffected by human strength, but can be driven away by words of scripture or by the brandishing of a crucifix, which will cause him to utter a dismal yell and vanish in flames, leaving behind a large tooth. Numerous sources refer to this creature as a murderous goblin.

And yes, according to legend, the red cap's hat is supposedly red because it is saturated with human blood, the blood of his victims. As Henderson said, they live in ruined and abandoned castles and forts in the borders. That is the border between England and Scotland, especially ones where battles and particularly grisly events occurred. And there have been indeed been many grisly events in the border, also known as the borderlands. Back in the 14th century, the borderlands displayed all of the characteristics typical of a wild frontier, lacking any real semblance of law and order.

Cattle rustling, feuding, murder, arson, pillaging, all common occurrences. After a while, even many well-meaning persons simply surrendered to the allure of this violence. After all, why plant crops if they're just going to be burned before they can be harvested? A profession associated with this lifestyle rose up, a kind of sanctioned outlaw known as the reaver. And reavers came from every social class, from laborers to peers of the realm.

The reaver was typically a skilled horseman and fine guerrilla soldier, a man practiced in the dark arts of arson, kidnapping, and extortion. And for many, there was no real social stigma attached to being a reaver. It was simply an accepted way of life in a violent and lawless land.

Reaver raids were planned like military operations. They often involved gangs of armed men, and the fighting could last for days. More modest raids might involve no more than one man on a short moonlit ride, a quick plunder from a small farm, followed by a dash home for breakfast.

Although the reaver carried a variety of weapons, including sword, dagger, and axe, his preferred weapon was the Langspear, a.k.a. the Borderlands. These fierce fighting men dominated the Borderlands all the way until the 1600s. With the exception of the Scottish Highlands, the Borderlands were the last part of Britain to be brought under the rule of law. And so perhaps the idea that a malevolent, murderous, goblin-like entity would make its home in this murderous land makes a certain kind of sense.

There are all sorts of old tales of the Red Cap. The most famous, and perhaps the most disturbing tale, involves Lord William de Sully. There's actually two versions of the story of Lord de Sully and his Red Cap, also referred to as his familiar. In both versions, Lord Sully seems to have been an exceptionally unpleasant man, even by the standards of many of his unpleasant contemporaries.

He is said to have murdered many of the feudal peasants who worked his land, to have raped and taken whatever else he wanted, to have kidnapped, abused, and murdered children. One version of his story is rather ordinary and light on details. The story of a Scottish noble named William de Sully who fought during the wars of Scottish independence. And as he fought for Scottish independence, William de Sully was involved in some sort of conspiracy against Robert Bruce, King of the Scots. Some say he wanted the Scottish crown for himself.

He was arrested, confessed his treason on August 4th, 1320, and was sentenced to life in prison, but then died or imprisonment. Not that they had prisons back then, but then died less than a year later, April 20th, 1321, under mysterious circumstances. So very likely murdered in captivity. The other much more detailed and supernatural version of the story is the one we'll focus on today.

The story is based largely on a popular ballad that was in turn based on earlier oral histories, which referred to de Soully as a very powerful lord, warden of the south and of the west marshes, who ruled from Hermitage Castle, south of Selkirk, and very close to the border. And according to legend, he was a very cruel landlord, something certainly far from unheard of in feudal times, where the majority of people toiled in poverty and fear, while a small minority lived in luxury and comfort.

But D'Souly took his cruelty further than most of his peers. He was allegedly well-versed in the dark arts that included conjuring demonic entities. There are rumors he kidnapped children and used them in disturbing ways for his sacrificial rituals. Local peasants could never prove it, but when their children disappeared, according to the old stories, it wouldn't be long before the Lord emerged from his castle, rosy-cheeked and looking a bit younger, a bit stronger than before, his face plumper, his eyes more alive and more alert.

And all of his bloody and cruel tendencies and his experimenting with the occult led to DeSouli conjuring a little monster called Robin Redcap. And Robin Redcap made an offer to DeSouli. While thou shalt bear a charmed life and hold that life of me, against lance and arrow, sword and knife, I shall thy warrant be.

In plain English now, the goblin told Lord de Sully that in return for his support and free reign of the land around Hermitage Castle, it would give the nobleman almost complete and total protection from any mortal harm.

No one would be able to hurt or injure Lord de Sully unless they bound him with a three-stranded rope, a three-stranded rope made of sand. De Sully agreed. And now he had nearly nothing to fear from the peasants, he began to abuse more frequently and more ferociously than before. Desperate for an end to their torment, the peasants would soon seek out someone who could help them, a man known as Thomas the Rhymer.

His true name was Thomas, or Sir Thomas de Ercildun. Oh my gosh. Sir Thomas de Ercildun. And he was a laird, a.k.a. a minor lord, and reputed prophet from Earlstown, a town near the borders. Allegedly, he had received his gift of prophecy as a present from the Queen of the Elves after spending seven years with her in her own land. After he returned to this realm, he accurately predicted the death of King Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 AD.

saying on the morrow afternoon shall blow the greatest wind that ever was heard before in scotland he also predicted the scottish rule of britain by king james the first which would happen 300 years later saying that britain would be ruled by the child of a french woman that would be mary stewart who was raised in her own mother's native france and was briefly their queen consort this thomas came up with a solution to the peasants troubles he made a three-stranded belt made of lead for the tenants a belt that was hollow and his hollow cavity could be filled up with sand

The villagers brought this belt back to Lord Desuli's land and launched a massive attack on his castle. The Lord was unprepared, and they managed to overpower and capture William and bind him using this special belt. Finally, he was at their mercy. And what would they do with him? How would they enact their revenge? Well, according to legend, on a circle of stones, they placed the pot. On a circle of stones, but barely nine. They heated it red and fiery hot, and the burnished brass did glimmer and shine.

They rolled him up in a sheet of lead, a sheet of lead for a funeral pall. They plunged him into the cauldron red and melted him, body, lead, bones, and all. And now Robin Redcap, William's familiar, was nowhere to be found. Where had the goblin gone? Some would say the creature disappeared, never to return. Others would claim that the Redcap had stashed an enormous treasure at Hermitage Castle, and from time to time he would now return to check on it and kill anyone who disturbed or took his gold.

According to a third legend, the Red Cap has stayed busy keeping Dusuli's spirit under its control ever since the Lord's death, only allowing him to haunt the living once every seven years. As crazy as all this sounds, many have believed over the years that Hermitage Castle is indeed shrouded by something supernatural. In 1896, the English author, newspaper editor, and pioneering investigative journalist W.T. Stead would say that a dark strangeness still lurked in Hermitage Castle.

He wrote, And he wrote,

I must have been there an hour or more when suddenly, while the blood seemed to freeze down my back, I was startled by a loud prolonged screech above my head, followed by a noise which I could only compare to the trampoline of a multitude of iron-shod feet through the stone paved doorway. This was alarming enough, but it was nothing to the horror which filled me when I heard the heavy gate swing on its hinges with a clang, which for the moment seemed like the closing of a vault in which I was entombed alive.

He then lay motionless, quote, utterly crushed by terror. Finally, after a few minutes, he managed to venture over to a doorway to see if he had indeed been locked in. The door was shut and he knew it hadn't been before. He wrote, I can remember to this day the tremor which I experienced when I laid my hand upon the door and tried whether or not it was locked. It yielded to my hand and I have seldom felt a sensation of more profound relief than when I stepped across the threshold and felt that I was free once more.

He felt strangely enough like he had managed to come back from the dead, writing, Of course, looking back upon this after a number of years, it is easy to say that the whole thing was purely subjective. An overwrought fancy, a gust of wind whistling through the crannies and banging the door closed were quite sufficient to account for my fright, especially as it is not at all improbable that I'd gone to sleep in the midst of the haunted ruins. But still a nagging thought would remain.

had a spirit dragged him under. And which spirit? Was it Dusuli? Or his familiar, Robin Redcap? Well, he didn't claim to see this creature others have in recent years. On the subreddit Humanoid Encounters, a Scottish poster six years ago submitted the following. This is a very early childhood memory. I can't recall my exact age at the time, but I'd estimate I was around five or seven years old. Unfortunately, I can only recount a small specific point in the story, but nonetheless, this is what happened.

I was in my parents' bedroom, crying in fear, as I witnessed what appeared to be a very short, malicious-looking, fair-skinned goblin wearing a pointed red cap. It simply stood on the end of the bed, laughing maniacally at me. My mother was trying to calm me down and had no idea why I was so hysterical, since she couldn't see or hear anything. So seemingly, only I was able to see this entity. That's all I can remember, sadly. I have absolutely no recollection of what happened after that, and I never saw this being again.

It's very strange. Very strange. It's another odd little monster tale from centuries ago. Yeah. Well, it just makes me think, I mean, we have on the desk here. A little goblin. Yeah. A little gnome. And it's like, generally we think of gnomes as being like, oh, cute little garden creatures. Or not. Yeah, this one. Maybe they're naughty. Yeah. The folklore around this one is that it's very malevolent, very murderous. It wants its gold. It wants to go collect and hide treasure. But it's not.

and wants to kill anybody who tries to take it i liked that uh delucy desouly desouly desouly so maybe he was eating children drinking their blood to keep himself looking young uh-huh i was like what are you tom hanks i know it's all like the modern yeah it's like that that everything stories of that have never gone away well what do they say like everything old is new again totally i was just cracking up i was like oh yeah he found the adrenochrome or whatever i was how

I'm having a good chuckle inside myself. There are people worried today that powerful folk are taking their children and torturing them and sacrificing them in rituals to keep their youth going. Here's the thing. Yeah. There are so many people that go missing every year that we have no trace of. True. Okay.

I know I will bring up when I talk to people about this, I'm like, yeah, but they've literally never, there's never been evidence of a massive satanic or a cult ring. That you know of. Uh-huh. And that's always the answer. It's like, well, yeah, because they're so good at hiding. Well, they're real good because they've been getting away with this apparently in secret for thousands of years. You know what? If they are, good for them. Never concretely caught. Good for them. If you could keep a secret that long, honestly, I'm like, all right, well, whatever. Then I guess you're getting what you deserve. Yeah.

Obviously, I'm joking. I know. I have a bunch of pictures. There's cool pictures around this, which is actually one of the things that drew me to the story. Some cool artwork. This first one... Oh, my God. That thing is so creepy. Yeah. It's like a doll. It's like a carved doll that...

like a recreation of Robin Reddick. She's 3D. Okay, you guys. In a little case. It's like kind of has like a rat face. What's the rat's name in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Shredder. Shredder.

It reminds me of Dark Crystal. There was this old early 80s movie. I think early 80s. I wasn't born yet. It's like David Bowie was in it. It's like very odd, strange. It might have been a musical. I haven't seen it since I was a kid. Hilarious. But there were these creepy little puppets in it. Okay. Like that look a lot like this actually. Yeah. Yeah. So this sort of this thing is like a weird like rat-esque face.

face, big ears, the red hat, like a very long...

The nose is sort of like a violent looking toucan nose. Like I don't know how it's been long. The fingers are what creep me out. The skinny little guy wearing medieval clothing with like a pike little staff weapon he's holding in his right hand. Yeah, go on over to Scared to Death Podcast on Instagram and you will immediately see what we mean. Okay, so this next one. Wow. Yeah, exterior shot of Lord Desulis' Hermitage Castle.

where Robin Redcap was allegedly conjured. And construction on this thing began way back in 1240 CE. And this is a somewhat recent photo? Yes, yeah, recent photo. You can see like those little people standing beneath it for scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's massive. There's a sheep there.

Can you zoom back out? Yeah. It's beautiful. Just completely out by itself, not in a town or anything. Well, I mean, that makes sense that that's where they would do sacrifices. And then this next one, just that interior courtyard where I imagine that author laid down and had his nap. I found numerous photos of the same interior courtyard. Okay.

And then, finally, this is just a really cool red cap illustration from manualofthemacabre.com. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a little modern rendition interpretation. Could be a little gremlin. Mm-hmm. But he's also kind of cute. Uh-huh. He's just a yellow guy. There's a lot of illustrations around these red caps because, and I don't know exactly which world, I can't remember off the top of my head, but they...

They're in D&D campaigns. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, like Dungeons & Dragons. It's one of the many, many foes you can encounter. Dun, dun, dun. And that's it.

Well, that was fun. I actually really loved that. Yeah, it's interesting just to see what people were scared of, you know, in years past. Yeah, well, like what we continue to build on. Exactly. Exactly. The origins of a lot of our, you know, creatures and tales from today. Yeah. So you ready to leave that strange Scottish legend and hear some equally strange folklore from Serbia? Goodbye, Scotland. Hello, Serbia.

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What if I told you that right now, millions of people are living with a debilitating condition that's so misunderstood, many of them don't even know that they have it. That condition is obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. I'm Dr. Patrick McGrath, the Chief Clinical Officer of NoCD. And in the 25 years I've been treating OCD, I've met so many people who are suffering from the condition in silence, unaware of just what it was. OCD can create overwhelming anxiety and fear around what you value most, make you question your identity,

beliefs, and morals, and drive you to perform mentally and physically draining compulsions or rituals. Over my career, I've seen just how devastating OCD can be when it's left untreated. But help is available. That's where NoCD comes in. NoCD is the world's largest virtual therapy provider for obsessive compulsive disorder.

Our licensed therapists are trained in exposure and response prevention therapy, a specialized treatment proven to be incredibly effective for OCD. So visit nocd.com to schedule a free 15-minute call with our team. That's nocd.com. Thanks for listening to our sponsor deals, creeps and peepers. Devil's Town is a rock formation of about 200 earthen towers on Radin Mountain in southern Serbia.

The Devil's Town rock formation consists of 202, to be precise, earth pyramids or towers ranging from just six to 49 feet tall. Scientists say they were created by intense volcanic activity that occurred millions of years ago. However, some locals attribute the towers to supernatural origins. Time now for the tale of Devil's Town.

It seems as if the entire area has been marked for violence from the beginning. The name of the nearest village comes from the Turkish word for blood. The area beneath Devil's Town is called the Helguli, an area also shrouded in mystery. There are numerous mine shafts that date all the way back to Serbia's medieval era. In the 13th century, the king of Serbia brought in Saxon miners to develop the kingdom's mining industry. And today there are the remains of four mine shafts from this time in the Helguli.

But only one 800-meter-long tunnel has been surveyed in modern times. The rest have been deemed too dangerous to enter, and no one seems to know what creatures or spirits might be lurking in those dark, unexplored tunnels underground. The area is also known for its two natural springs with an unusually high mineral concentration. One is called the Red Well, and the other is called Devil's Water because of how extremely acidic it is. So many nefarious names in one little place.

The entire Radden Mountain region is full of dark, ancient folktales, some of which have direct ties to the origin story of Devil's Town. According to legend, Radden Mountain was once inhabited by fairies, and the people living in the foothills were pious Christians who lived in harmony with these magical beings. It has been said that the devil despised their peaceful coexistence, and in an effort to bring chaos and destruction to them, he sent a great storm to the mountain.

After the storm passed, the devil became a physical presence on Earth and enchanted the village water well, casting a spell so that anyone who drank from it would go insane, so insane they would forget their own ancestry, and very odd left turn here, they would end up entering into incestuous relationships with family members.

According to this lore, a brother and sister once drank from this well, forgot their sibling relation, fell in love, and began a sexual relationship. They eventually decided to get married, and a wedding party of 200 joined them for a ceremony at the exact spot where Devil's Town stands today. But the fairies living in the mountains now prayed to God to stop this unnatural union from being sanctified.

As the legend goes, during the ceremony, a great fire, described as a solar flare in some sources, struck the site of the ceremony, vaporizing the surrounding forest and turning the bride, groom, and their 200-person wedding party into stone pillars. And some now believe today that inside the 202 rock formations are the trapped souls of these doomed townspeople. Visitors who come to Devil's Town are warned to never take anything from the cursed site, or they too might be turned to stone.

Another legend claims that a witch once lived on the mountain and was willing to grant wishes for a favor to be cashed in at a later date. And anyone who tried to trick the witch or hide from her when their favor was called due were turned to stone or buried beneath a stone tower. According to this legend, on the quote, shortest night ever while the falling stars fill the stream and the mighty moon shines the sky,

A red sun will emerge to melt the towers and free the trapped souls, but only so they can finally repay the witch or risk further torment. In addition to all this ancient folklore, many in the area today believe the mountain, nearby villages, and mines around Devil's Town to be very haunted. Some say that at night you can hear the ghosts of dead miners crying out from their abandoned mine shafts deep beneath the earth.

I love that.

It's just an eerie little geological site with a bunch of nefarious names and strange lore attached to it. It's beautiful there. I wanted to put a whole bunch of pictures of Serbia in general. There's so many places in Serbia where I'm like, oh my God, how is that real? Really? Oh yeah. I literally know nothing about Serbia. Like crazy lagoons and hot springs of like the brightest blue water. Huh.

Where I'm like, is this photo been altered? But then you look in like videos. I'm like, nope, it's that bright blue. Wow. Like just like just the minerals, I guess. But really pretty like waterfalls and just interesting geological formations. Do you want to go to there? I do. Okay.

from TripAdvisor.com. This is the strange rock formations of Devil's Town. So there's 202 of those? Mm-hmm. 202 varying heights of all those little towers there. I was quite proud of myself when you said, started to talk about the solar flare and their 200 gas. I was like, oh, I can do math. 202. I know what's going to happen. This is just a closer photo, you know, a little closer view of those towers. Yeah, they're just weird rock formations. It reminds me of like Fraggle Rock or something.

Like, oh, you don't know that cartoon, do you? I know Fraggle Rock. Oh, you do? Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I can't remember what the little guys in Fraggle Rock are called right now, but all the little dozers. The little dozers are always working on mines. They're mining stuff down in Fraggle Rock. And this looks like some of their habitat. Yeah, it does. I want there to be little mushroom caps on the top of all those and be like a psychedelic kind of look. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then this is from Natanya. NatanyaTravel.com. This is the entrance to one of those medieval mine shafts. Do we know what that sign says? No, we do not. I think it says just mining. Oh, something. Mining pain. I don't know what that's supposed to... Pajapako, Akoha. Yeah, I don't know what the Serbian... Mining pain. Okay. Yeah, there's a little entrance there. I don't know anybody from Serbia. I...

Serbia is just like really, I'm like, what is Serbian food? What does Serbian people do? Like, I just am so out of connect with Serbian people. I don't, there was like a friend of the friend of, uh, back when I was in college who was from Serbia. Okay. And I, that's what I remember when I remember learning about like, uh,

Bosnia and Serbia warring with each other and like, you know, the conflict there. But but I don't know much. Even that I'm like, I feel very not well versed in that. Yeah, I know roughly where it is. You know, Bosnia, Bosnia, Serbia. What is it? Herkesevina, Croatia. They're all in the same kind of like area of southeastern Europe. Yeah.

Are you ready for one more weird paranormal tale? I have a weird question. Yeah. In that TV show, Perfect Strangers. Oh, was Balki from Serbia? No. Or was he Bosnian? I feel like he was one of those. I can't remember. It's been so long. But I think you're right. He's from that part of the world, I think. Okay.

Not that that's correct in any way, shape or form, like a fair interpretation of the people there. But yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. In the 1770s now, a man named Adam Livingston moved from Pennsylvania to a 350 acre farm northwest of what is now Middleway, West Virginia. But back then it was not called West Virginia because there was no West Virginia. The state had yet to be divided.

And he had inherited this land after his father had passed away. And according to an account of Adam's life written in the 1949 book, The Mystery of the Wizard Clip, Livingston was eager to move to Virginia and inhabit his father's estate because he had recently experienced a series of terrible misfortunes on his property, such as his cattle inexplicably dying and his barn burning down.

He hoped he'd be able to put this bad luck behind him, but then things took a very strange turn years after he moved to this new location. Time now for the tale of the Wizard Clip Haunting. The events that would follow the Livingston family's move to West Virginia would become one of America's most famous ghost legends and would later be referred to by Reverend Alfred E. Smith, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Review, as the truest ghost story ever told.

In 1794, Adam Livingston was visited by a stranger. There was a raging storm outside and the man looked gravely ill. Adam let him in, offered him shelter for the night. The man was sure he was about to die and he asked Adam to call a Catholic priest to give him his last rites. Being a devout Lutheran, Adam was not fond of the idea of a Catholic priest coming into his home and he either outright refused to call the priest or told the man he could not find one, whether that was true or not.

The man then indeed passed away that same night, while the storm still raged on outside, and Adam, feeling guilty and ashamed he had not honored the dying man's final wish, quickly buried him unceremoniously on part of his land. The next morning, Adam was awoken by an almighty bang on the door. "'Fire! Fire!' came cries from the farmhands.'

rushing outside in his nightclothes adam was astounded to see his barn ablaze the second barn he'd lost a fire now completely engulfed in flames made no sense there had just been a storm the ground was still wet the wood should have been far too wet to burn adam set about gathering everyone he could to help put out this fire and once they had with the ruins of the barn now smoldering adam remained puzzled over how it all began he never would get a concrete answer

But soon he would barely think of the barn as he would have other confounding and more pressing events to wonder and worry over. The barn fire would be the first in a long line of strange occurrences. The Livingston family started hearing strange noises, like the sounds of phantom horses galloping through their house in the middle of the night. A number of the family's plates and other crockery would seemingly leap from the cupboards and shatter upon the floor. More alarming, numerous burning logs were witnessed jumping out of the fireplace.

Their money started to disappear, even though there were no signs of anyone having broken into their home. Most disturbingly, a number of their geese and chickens were found decapitated. And then the clipping began. The entire family, and whoever happened to visit them, would hear a loud clipping sound throughout the day and night. It reminded some of the sound of a large pair of shears or scissors, the sound they make when they forcefully shut clothes and cut something. And indeed, many things were being cut.

After the sound began to be heard, the family found various items of clothing, pairs of shoes, bed linens, and miscellaneous leather goods cut to pieces. Even stranger, they often found the fabric and leather with a crescent moon shape cut out of it. Even clothing that had been stored away or literally locked up in a chest would still end up getting cut. More upsetting, some clothing was clipped while people were still wearing it.

Wouldn't take long for the people living on the Livingston's land to attribute all these odd occurrences to a haunting. And news of the haunting, of course, spread quickly around the area. Initially, before the actual clipping, Adam tried to shrug off any attribution to the supernatural, believing tales of ghosts to be pure nonsense. But once he began to see the fabric inside his household cut to ribbons in front of his eyes, he had to admit that something strange and wildly unnatural was happening.

One of the many people who witnessed the phenomena of the cutting, cutting always accompanied by that strange clipping sound, began to refer to it as the Wizard Clip, and the description stuck. The entire village of what is now the town of Middleway became known as Wizard Clip, and residents began to be referred to as Clippers. Soon people from all over the state, and even sometimes beyond, began to visit to try and see or hear the magical clipping for themselves again.

One man who came to witness the phenomena firsthand was wearing boots, and they were allegedly snipped into, quote, an absurd, useless coil of leather and boot sole while he was wearing them. The Jesuit priest Thomas Mulledy, a distinguished academic, the founder of the College of the Holy Cross, and one-time president of Georgetown, came to investigate the paranormal claims and wrote, quote,

Everything that was cut was cut in such a manner that they could not even get a small patch that could be of any service. The things being cut in the form of a half moon, boots, saddles, etc., all were cut to pieces. He could come up with no earthly explanation for what was happening and what he himself had witnessed. In 1797, a woman went to the house to see the wizard clip for herself, and a man named Father Galitsin, another curious priest who had come to investigate the phenomena,

later recounted to a friend of livingston in 1839 what happened to her being one day at a tea party in martinsburg an old presbyterian lady who was of the party told the company that having heard the clippings heard of the clippings that was going on at livingston to satisfy her curiosity went to livingston's house

Before entering the Livingston house, she took her new black silk cap off of her head, wrapped it up in her silk handkerchief, and put it in her pocket to save it from being clipped. After a while, she stepped out again to go home. Having drawn the handkerchief out of her pocket and opened it, she found her cap cut into narrow ribbons. We'll hear more from Father Gallatin in a bit.

Adam Livingston, sick of living in a house of curiosities and wanting to return to some semblance of a normal life, sought the help of a Lutheran minister who flatly told him he could not help him. He then sought out a Methodist preacher who did offer to help. This pastor and some members of his congregation visited the Livingston house and were promptly driven away by a, quote, shower of stones thrown at them by invisible hands. Adam turned next to an unnamed German faith healer, some man referred to in sources as a conjurer,

But this conjurer refused to help him without receiving payment first. And Adam, fearing he was nothing more than a snake oil salesman, refused to give him that money. Worried that he would never find an end to his family's troubles, afraid that nothing would get rid of the strange spirit haunting the Livingston home, Adam had a strange dream. He dreamt that he was climbing a very tall, very steep mountain, clinging to roots and bushes so as not to fall back down it. And as he climbed, he heard a voice say, This is the man who can relieve you. And he saw a man above him dressed in a robe.

The Robe of a Catholic Priest. And then he awoke. He shared this dream with a friend of his, Richard McSherry, when Richard convinced Adam to call upon a priest. The McSherrys were a, quote, distinguished Catholic family. Mrs. McSherry informed Adam that there was no priest living in the area, but that a priest would be holding church at a house in nearby Shepherdstown the next Sunday.

Adam came to the Catholic service that following Sunday, and when Father Dennis Cahill appeared at the altar, Adam exclaimed, Adam spoke to Father Cahill about his troubles, begged him for help following the service, and Cahill reluctantly agreed to visit his home. Father Cahill decided to bless the home, and he sprinkled holy water throughout the house. Then, just before he left, a sum of money that had previously disappeared was found lying on the door sill at his feet.

Following this blessing, the paranormal activity stopped for a short time, but then returned, and things eventually were every bit as bad as they had been before. Adam then reached back out to the Catholic Church, and soon another Catholic priest, Father Dmitri Galitsin, who we heard about earlier, came to stay at the property and observe the activity. Dmitrius A. Galitsin was an interesting man. He was the son of a Russian prince and Prussian countess who lived from 1770 to 1840, and

In 1795, he became the very first ordained priest to have completed all of his Catholic instruction here in the U.S. Galitzin became a prominent missionary to the young nation known as the Apostle of the Alleghenies. He worked at the Conowago Chapel in Pennsylvania, but traveled to Maryland and Virginia. In the fall of 1797, he was assigned to travel to Middleway to investigate this peculiar Livingston case, and he would spend three full months in Middleway speaking with everyone involved.

Interestingly, he initially did not believe the Livingstons. He thought they were working some sort of scam, but a few weeks into his stay, he, quote, was soon converted to a full belief of them. Galitzin wrote a report to his bishop, John Carroll, about what he now called the Livingston haunting. This document has sadly been lost, but Galitzin would later recount the story in some other of his writings that have been preserved. After Galitzin observed the haunting, Father Cahill, the priest who had originally blessed the Livingston home, returned to the farm.

Father Cahill and Father Galitsin now both said cleansing prayers and celebrated Mass in the Livingston House. And according to reports, the Livingston House shook with, quote, the rattlings and rumblings of innumerable wagons. And then after Cahill finished performing the Mass, it seemed like the paranormal activity had stopped. But then, strangest of all, a spirit reportedly appeared before the priests and spoke and confessed to murdering a previous resident of the home.

The spirit said that it couldn't rest until it had made restitution and the man had received a proper burial. The spirit also allegedly revealed the location of the man's body on the property. And according to reports, a large number of people witnessed this body being disinterred, blessed, and then reburied. A cross was placed over the grave with the message of, in memory of the unknown stranger, 1797. And now, all the clipping and similar activity would cease. But the haunting still was not over.

Soon the Livingston family began hearing what they called "The Voice." Months after the wizard Clip had left the family, they often heard a quote "consoling voice" that would remain with them for the next 17 years. The voice first came accompanied by a bright light that woke up Adam in his sleep. The voice told him to wake, call his family to him, and pray. And the voice prayed with them, even led them in their prayers. This voice continued to instruct them in the Catholic faith.

The Livingston family came to believe that it was the voice of a former priest, which eventually led them to fully convert to Catholicism. Father Cahill continued visiting the family, learned about this strange voice that was teaching the family about the Catholic faith. The voice would order the family around, shouting, The voice would instruct the family on Catholicism. The voice would sometimes shout, I would even shame family members who did not give proper confessions.

Some of Adam's children claim they sometimes saw the ghostly source of the voice. And the voice also told Adam that if he persevered, he would see its true source before he died. Throughout the next 17 years, there were many unexplainable events surrounding the voice, and the voice made several predictions that came true. Adam Livingston eventually converted to Catholicism and donated 30 acres to the diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in 1802. The land he donated was originally called Priest's Field.

Livingston moved back to Pennsylvania before he died and stayed in contact with Father Galitsin for the rest of his life. Adam Livingston died in the spring of 1820, and some sources claim that Livingston never received his official last rites because his illness came on so suddenly. Or maybe he did receive those rites, just not from the living, but instead from the source of the voice that converted he and his family to Catholicism. Perhaps those rites were part of the promise to see the true source of the voice before he died.

Priestfield later became the Priestfield Pastoral Center, a Catholic retreat center. The first director of Priestfield was appointed in 1978, and the retreat center still honors Adam Livingston's generous donation to this day.

I have to ask you one really not important question. Sure. How is K, you were saying Cahill, is it C-A-H-I-L-L? Yeah, and there's- Cahill. There's two pronunciations. I looked that up and they say that there is Cahill or Cahill. You can go either way. I had an eighth grade teacher whose last name was Cahill. So the whole time you were saying that, I wanted to just scream, Cahill! I mean, yeah, it might be that. It's probably, it doesn't matter. It does not matter. But isn't that funny how our brains hone in on things? Okay.

Great story. Super fun. Love the lore. I was having this thing of like, what a way to get somebody to convert to Catholicism. I know. I have to admit, it reads like a Catholic propaganda piece. A little bit. It reads like, because the whole story is that they're having these problems. But then. And then all the problems go away when they finally leave Lutheranism.

and convert to Catholicism. And even this Catholic priest ghost instructs them in the Catholic faith because they don't have a church there yet. And then he donates all of his land to the Catholic church or, you know, a bunch of it afterwards. Yeah, to the diocese. I mean, who knows? But I'm like, okay, pretty clever if that is the case. I did like that. I was like, okay, that's actually a very funny idea to, for 17 years, torture your family with a voice.

and the voice tells you what to do. Can you just imagine what you could get your kids to do? Oh, yeah. For 17 years. So for basically the entirety of the time that they're living at home before they go off...

to do whatever is next in life for them. Yeah. They just like hear this voice that tells them like, load the dishwasher. Right. Do your laundry. Oh, yeah. Respect your elders. Like, I just was dreaming up really funny ways to torture your kids. Yeah, yeah. It was great. It was great. I have a few photos. Okay. This first one, just a sign commemorating the site of the wizard clip haunting in Middleway, West Virginia, courtesy of the Middleway Conservate.

Oh, my gosh. Conservation? Conservancy. Oh, okay. I always want to add an extra syllable in that word. This sign is planted in Priestfield. The original Livingston home is now long gone. Okay.

And then this photo of the monument to Adam Livingston at the Priestfield Pastoral Center still today. Found that picture on Atlas Obscura. Just so you know, at the beginning of the story, I thought that you said that this happened in 1978. Like, I know. But I was like, wow, this is very recent haunting. And then he started telling it. I was like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah. I just misheard something.

And then this last photo, a little sign with a crescent moon and a little wizard staff looking thing on it. No, those are scissors. Oh, I couldn't see it as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure are. There's two handles. You're right. Quite frankly, it looks very phallic. It does. Scissors and a little crescent moon and a number. Oh, is this part of like a tour? Yeah.

Well, it's not part of a tour. I don't know what the number means. I couldn't figure that out. But there are signs like this on little buildings all over Middleway, West Virginia. All with the crescent moon and the... The clips. The clippers? The shears? Yeah, the shears. It's just some kind of nod to the wizard clip haunting. It feels like... Okay, because this one has the number 44 on it. Maybe there's an audio tour you can get and it's like, go to 43 now. Exactly. Yeah. But I couldn't determine that...

concretely. How dare you spend more time? Oh, and then finally, one more just goofy photo of a modern wizard. Yes. Who was, maybe still is, but he may have passed, but was for many years a local celebrity in Sutton, England. And this would just post on the What The Fuck subreddit. Oh my God, I love it. But apparently this guy just hung around Sutton for many, many years, dressed in different wizard attire and talking like a wizard and

What a fun existence. Yeah. And everybody, like there was a bunch of people in the, I found a YouTube video on him as well. And in the comments are people like, oh yeah, I used to see him all the time or he's coming to my shop or he's coming to my cafe. No one has a bad thing to say about him. I love it. He's a kind, benevolent wizard. That reminds me of like Sunset Boulevard Jesus. Did you ever meet him? I saw him. Oh, he was great. I saw him but never met him. That's awesome. He was great. And it like is, sadly, I think I heard,

That during COVID, I think he contracted COVID and died. Oh, that sounds familiar, actually. Yeah. But Sunset Boulevard Jesus was great. Yeah. I loved him. I know there is something really fun about local characters like that. Yeah. Especially when they're just nice. He was just nice. Yeah. And I don't know if Sunset Boulevard Jesus ever...

I never heard him, oh my God, like evangelizing or like trying to like... It was just that he 100% he was wearing like the like Egyptian type lace-up sandals. He had a staff. He wore the white robe. He had the long hair. But I'm like, what do you do all day? Yeah, true. I would only see him sometimes. Right, right. And in my mind, I just wanted to... You clock in, clock out is your Jesus persona? Well...

What I always wanted was that he had like a very normal, stable desk job. And then this was just like his fun thing that he did. Unwinded. And he just like maybe even didn't believe. He just did it because he had this specific look that, you know, further perpetuated white Jesus. Just a cosplay that's just going for years and years. Great.

I imagine him wearing that to like one time he went to a Halloween party and people were like, you know what? That's really good. And then he was like, all right, let's see how far I can take it. Sure. Sure. I love when people do stuff like that. I don't know if you saw this guy. I know we got a lot more stories to tell, but there was a guy I saw a few times in West Hollywood just driving through. Yeah. And he was always on a bike. Oh. And he would wear a very high little skirt. Oh. But he wouldn't wear underwear.

And it was something. It was just his cock and balls just bouncing all around as he pedaled his bicycle down the street. I did not see him, but I was very familiar with Robertson Boulevard, the guy that roller skated up and down the street regularly. Like, that was his shtick. And it turns out many years later, I heard that he was a...

It was very sad. Like, he was mentally ill. But, like, had had some minor fame doing something. And it was like, okay. And then his mental illness kicked in. And then this happened. But he just, like, lived it up. There was a guy in Venice Beach who used to roller skate with a boombox on his shoulder for decades. Do you remember Magic Sticks? Oh.

Oh, yeah. I loved that guy. I love a good character. Yeah. I love a harmless character. And then I also hope very much that like they have some sort of safe place to find refuge because it's more often than not a mental health situation. I just hope that at the end of the day you have somewhere that you get to go home and have a little shower and have a little food and just like whatever existence you're living in, that it's great. Yeah. And that you're safe.

Now you have a cruise announcement and then we're off into your stories, I believe. That is correct. So you get your Layla ready. Okay. And, you know, she's coming on the cruise. Okay. So purple Layla's coming on the cruise. Guys. Let's not, let's not designate purple. Let's say Layla's coming. I don't want to forget and get in trouble.

Okay, that's fair. That is fair. Well, maybe someone will bring us a purple Layla. Okay, so guys, so in case you can't make it to summer camp, for whatever reason, maybe summer is too busy, maybe September and getting up to, you know, Pennsylvania is just, you're like, ah, that just doesn't work in my life. But,

But maybe November out of Fort Lauderdale works for you. You can get all the details about seeing a live scared to death at sea with other content creators, us, Sinisterhood, last podcast on the left.

Could they have, like, picked a wordier name? I like it. I want to chat with them about that. See if I can get them to make some adjustments. But anyways, if you are looking to join us there, you can go to crimewaveatsea.com slash scared and get all the details. Make sure you get your fan code so that they know that you're coming to see us. And, you know, get out of the cold, dark months of November. And don't forget, my birthday is in November, and it's, like, right before my birthday. Oh, boy. So, like...

I don't know. We could just have like a little celebration. Okay. Are we ready for horror? Yes. All right. Here we go.

Well, hello. I adore y'all's podcast. Thank you. I'm generally not into scary things, but since you use crystals and such, I feel protected. My mother is German, like from Germany, born and raised, accent and all. And my father is from Louisiana, Creole to the bone. Oh, boy. Makes for a fun household of differences. My parents were young, pretty no-nonsense type of people. We never talked about the occult.

I grew up in Germany, and as a people, there's not too much ghostly superstition, despite very old castles, homes, and grounds. There are some tales of witches, gnomes, and the like, but it's quite subdued.

We didn't watch any scary movies in our home, and I didn't know about strange things until the X-Files in my teenage years, which came out even later in Germany. I'm now dating myself. My story starts with a visit to the United States, to Louisiana. It was always great to be around the multitudes of cousins and extended family. It was carefree times of reuniting and family warmth.

Whoever's house you visited, something was cooking in a big pot, smelling fantastic, and you'd best not ask what was in it. Just enjoy the deliciousness exploding your taste buds.

On this trip, we visited my great-grandparents in the middle of the bayou. My five cousins, me, my parents, aunties, uncles, and grandparents were all there. I couldn't understand most what anyone was saying as they were speaking in Creole French, of which I understood about five whole sentences. But my cousin spoke English, which I understood better, so I was not bothered. The house smelled of garlic, gumbo, old wood with swampy undertones."

and it was hot as the blazes when I decided to go inside and get a drink. My mon-mom, great-grandmother, with her wrinkly face and almost white hair, was sitting on the couch following my every move with her hard gaze. I wasn't entirely creeped out, but certainly unsettled. My older cousin came up behind me and whispered, you better keep moving so her eyes don't settle on you, and grinned ear to ear.

I continued to get my drink and joined everyone outside on the porch. The day was another of great adventure and fun. We found turtle shells, seashells, a plethora of lightning bugs, and various other things out in the swamp, including some strange scratches on the house stilts that looked like frantic stick drawings.

That night, my mother told me that my great-grandmother was a healer for the poor, assisted in birthings, and could read omens. She had foretold that I was to be a little girl when all the doctors said that I was going to be a boy. None of my cousins had great aspirations to go back to our great-grandmother's house anytime soon. They told me of mon-mom cursing the bad cousins, so my enthusiasm was curbed as well.

Fast forward to our next trip to the United States a few years later. One of the family visits was to go to our great-grandparents again. My cousins were in school, and so I was on my own, exploring while the adults conversed in Creole. I understood English a lot better this time, but still no Creole. With a wave of memories of the last visit coming back, I felt compelled to look for the strange stick figure drawings once again. I had my handy-dandy notebook with me, so I might draw some of my findings in it.

As I was jotting things down, I was suddenly overcome with the feeling of being watched. I scanned for animals. We were in the swamp after all. Snapping turtles, alligators, snakes, and all the like are common. However, I saw nothing. I returned my drawings and making my way around the stilts of the house. Waves of unease came and went. I could still hear my family talking, which made me feel safe.

I kept on going, picking up random shells and things on the ground, doodling more of the stick drawings I had found.

I felt a hand on my shoulder suddenly. It was my dad, and he looked frantic. Apparently, everyone had been looking for me for the last hour, calling for me with no response. I had heard nothing but the ambient chatter of critters. Everyone was relieved to see me once we were in the house again. Everyone, that is, except mon mom, who was staring daggers into me. I was already uncomfortable for causing the commotion and apologized endlessly.

That night, I had horrible, hazy nightmares of nothing I can remember. I woke up drenched but blamed the heat of the South. I noticed a burning sensation in my hands that simply would not go away. By the second day, I told my parents about it, but there was nothing to be seen, no discoloration, no rash, nothing. I was told to drink more water.

Time became stilted, and I frequently felt like I was walking sideways. As in, instead of walking on the floor, I felt like I was walking on the walls. When I looked into the mirror, my eyes, normally dark brown, looked electric blue. I felt the need to eat very hot peppers. My body felt spastic, like it needed to move its limbs at all times but in no rhyme or reason, while my hands still felt on fire.

My mother noticed my discomfort and we went to the ER where nothing was found to be wrong. But there was so much wrong. Whenever I looked at people, their faces would grow gray and elongate. Their eyes would turn dark and then sink into big black sockets. Their mouths would contort into grimacing horrible smiles or screams without sound. I began to stare at the ground because it was so scary to look at everyone. I was sobbing at what I was seeing.

I tried to go to sleep early. My parents told my family I was jet-lagged. The darkness that I had hoped would help did exactly the opposite. I saw floating gray people with empty eyes, elongated limbs dancing all around. Some looked directly at me, coming close, almost caressing me and grabbing me.

I was also contorted with my limbs becoming longer, the burning sensation in my hands actually turning into flames on my hands, the light doing nothing to keep the black-eyed things at bay. I was screaming in my sleep when my parents and grandparents gathered around me, their faces gaunt and gray as soon as I looked at them, their eyes slowly turning into those lifeless black tunnels. I heard my grandmother say, "'No doctor can help this child.'"

I felt as though I was sinking into the wall, being pulled by a huge hand. All color was draining from the world. It became silent, and I was surrounded by the scary, dark, long people dancing closer and closer to me. I was being pulled at for hours, occasionally hearing my parents' voices, but they were just so far away. It was faint, but I heard the figures chanting something with their contorted, gaping maws.

Something grabbed my still-burning hands, finally cooling them for the first time. I followed the cold. It was surrounding my body. It became brighter in the darkness, and the gray things moved away from me. I heard a voice. "'Open your eyes.' I obliged and opened my eyes, squinting, expecting to see more gray figures. It was the hard face of my mon-mom, very close to my face."

The smell of garlic and sage came rushing into my nostrils. Color was returning.

She said something like, you know, un fantôme and everything returned to normal. Time, walking, seeing in color, seeing people's actual normal faces, everything was okay. And I've never since been back to my mom's house nor experienced anything like it. I know now to never ever copy down symbols I don't know. And never again do I want to walk the veil between what is and what is not.

Laissez le bon temps rouler, let the good times roll, and Guttnacht, Nikki, who is of two worlds. That was a crazy story. Strange, right? One quick little detail. Mon mom, M-O-N-M-O-M? I think so. She wrote it both ways, but more, and I was like, oh. But then I was thinking Creole French, so I leaned into mon mom, because I did look up

great-grandmother. It just seemed, that seemed more correct. I hadn't heard that, like, descriptor for grandparent before. I was like, that's cool. Yeah. But then I was like, I wrote it on so many things. I was like, non-non, mon-mon, mon-mom, mon-mom, mon-mom sounds right. They had it written as

mon mom and mo mom and I was like mon mom sounds right mon mom sounded more correct to me again with that French and then I'm since Nikki was saying that she was raised in Germany you know it's kind of hard when you start to mesh together various languages

Yeah, what a wild kind of upbringing where it's like, yeah, Creole is so specific. So you got like a French hybrid, but like French-English hybrid, but in America. Uh-huh. And then with like German-German, like living in Germany. Yeah. Still in like, what a mashup of cultures. Yeah, I bet Nikki is a fascinating adult. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, that was very cool. And like, yeah, what a strange, it was like...

It's like her grandma snapped her out of an acid trip or something. Yeah, yeah. It was like a bad trip for a while. She was in there with people's faces. That's what it reminded me of, like people's faces not looking right and elongating and the color doesn't feel right. But then her grandma said those words and snapped her out of it. Yeah, and I couldn't, I also could not

quite interpret you. What I was imagining is that it was like French and English, Creole, like some, so I don't even know if Nikki knows, but she, it was the word you know, like yes, no. Yeah. Un, U-N-E-N-G.

F-A-N-T-O-M-E. I put it into like Google and search and I couldn't find anything closely related. I did have to make a change. When she heard her grandma say, open your eyes, that was written in French. But then when I was Googling it and trying to get a pronunciation guide, I

I couldn't quite, it wasn't quite right. So it was like that, again, the Creole and then, you know, what they say versus what you hear when you hear through another language is very challenging. Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. I like it. We got a lot of different kinds of stories today. I know. It's fun. Yeah, it's fun. Okay. Well, let's have a very English American story. Okay.

Hi, Lindsay and Dan. Hello. I love, love, love the show. Thank you. My name is Haley and I live in Colorado. I love scary stories and I think I would consider myself a creeper. This is the story of the time a ghost impersonated my roommate.

I've had a few paranormal experiences in my life, but not one that felt as personal as this one. This happened right before COVID started. I lived in a house with two other girls, and on this particular night, one of my roommates was working an overnight shift, and my other roommate, Lily, was going out on a Tinder date, leaving me home alone for the night.

It was a pretty typical night in for me, doing chores and watching some TV. I had been texting back and forth with Lily throughout the evening, talking about her date, the bar she was at, and how much fun she was having. The date seemed like it was going quite well. As it grew later into the night, I started to get ready for bed and realized I hadn't gotten a text back from Lily in a while.

I struggle with anxiety and I started to really worry about her. But I checked her location and she was still at the same bar and she had just posted a photo of some fruity drinks on her Snapchat story. I figured it was just my anxiety playing tricks on me.

Lily was probably having a great time and just not looking at her phone. I sent her one final text saying I was going to bed, but to call me if she was too drunk to drive home. I was only asleep for a couple hours when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. I sat up in bed, sleepy and groggy. Had I actually heard a knock or was I just coming out of a dream? A moment later, another knock and a voice came from the other side of the door.

Haley? It was Lily, and it sounded like she might be crying. A third knock followed by, Haley, please let me in. Please, I need you. My first thought was that my anxiety was right. Something bad had happened on her date. Please come in. My door's unlocked. I yelled.

I turned on my lamp, waiting for her to open my door. I sat there for a moment, expecting Lily to come in. But she didn't. I got up and opened the door, expecting to see Lily on the other side of the door. But all I saw was an empty, dark hallway.

Lily? I croaked. I was feeling very uneasy. I heard Lily's bedroom door gently close down the hall. What the hell is she doing? I wondered. I turned on the hallway light and went to her room. When I walked into her room, she wasn't there. My heart dropped. Where was she? She had to be home. If she wasn't home, who was knocking on my door and who the hell was talking to me?

I was so scared, but I decided I had to be brave and scope out the rest of the house. I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep otherwise. I looked in every room and looked outside for cars as well. Turns out I was all alone.

I went back to my room and checked my phone. Of course it was 3.05 a.m., meaning the knocking at my door probably occurred right at 3 a.m. I also had a text from Lily just a few minutes earlier. She said she had run into friends at the bar and decided to stay the night with them. I turned on all of the lights in the house and didn't sleep the rest of the night. Haley. Haley.

Oh, thanks, Haley. That find my, or whatever she was using to like track her roommate, Haley was using to track Lily. Yeah. Before like it happened in the story where she like, you know, looked and then she wasn't actually at the house. Yeah. I immediately thought of that, like how creepy that would be with like a doppelganger scenario. Oh, shit. Where you see somebody and you're like, I don't know if that doesn't feel quite right. Right. And then you look up their location and they're like across town. Oh, my God. How terrifying that would be. That would be awful. Truly awful. Yeah.

Yeah. God. Yeah. I didn't even think about Find My or like the various like Life 360 or all the various tracking apps or like Apple tags and like all these modern conveniences we have that are great, especially like as parents. You know, our kids have to have their Find My on so long as we're paying their cell phone bill. Right. So it's lovely. It's helpful when you don't hear back from them. It is comforting. Yeah. But in a...

horror doppelganger mimic situation. Another good scene for a horror movie. Holy shit. Yep, where the person's like, hmm, something feels weird. And they just happen to like, you know, the interaction with their roommate or their partner or whatever, friend. And then they look on their Find My and I guess at first you could be like, well, maybe it's glitching. Totally, because it does. It's not perfect. But that would, like if it just kept happening. Well,

If you did that, it showed them in a different location. And then later you're talking to that person and it turns out they were at that location when you also saw them there with like technology. Yeah. That would just be extra terrifying. Just extra evidence of the paranormal. Yep. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Do you want to go way back across and go to Denmark? Yeah, that's right. Denmark. And let me see if I can remember. It was on a bus in Denmark. That's right. Okay, great. Great.

Hello, queen and king of sucks and STDs, chicks and dicks, dudes and dudettes. I just listened to the Kooning poltergeist episode. The story with the police officer and shadow person reminded me of an encounter I had with what I assume was a shadow person. Also, English is not my first language, so sorry in advance for any confusions.

To set the scene, here's a bit of background. I live in Denmark and drive the city bus for a living. Our buses are all electric, very fancy buses. During the winter, though, the batteries have a hard time staying charged. We either conserve power a lot or switch buses several times a day and night to keep them running.

During December, I have the graveyard shift. This is mostly to accommodate partygoers and Christmas diners where a lot of Danes often drink schnapps and become very intoxicated. We take them home to the closest bus stop. Usually we have five or six passengers per route, but when we have no passengers, we shut off the lights inside to conserve power. My encounter took place on one such empty route.

I had just let out the passenger on the route and was heading back towards the station when I turned the lights off. As I glanced in the outside mirrors, I caught a glimpse in the inside mirror of someone standing in the back of the bus in the dark. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. This person was seemingly standing just behind my seat, just out of sight. I could see him on the security camera and in the mirror, and he was waving to the cameras. I

I immediately hit the lights, but when I looked, he was gone. I yelled out, hello? Down the aisle. I couldn't see or hear anything. Weird, but maybe someone was pranking me. I was sure the bust was empty. A bit paranoid, I left the lights on for a while, but eventually turned them off, certain I was certain there was no one there. I peeked in the camera and luckily I didn't see anyone.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I thanked Nimrod and good boy Bojangles. Eventually, I checked the outside mirrors again, and I could not stop myself from a random peek of the inside mirrors. And there he was, waving to the cameras. Holy shit. In spite of me being a bit spooked, I looked again, trying to figure out what I was looking at. It looked like a person, maybe a man, with his back to me while waving at the cameras. What was that?

Weirded out, I pulled into an empty bus stop, hit the lights, and got up from my seat to check the entire bus.

The bus was empty. And I checked everywhere, even under the seats. But no one was there. The coldest chill ran up my spine. I really wanted to get the fuck out. But I would probably lose my job if I did. I went back to my seat, and much to my own surprise, I turned off the lights. I guess I just wanted to get a better look again?

Maybe it was nothing and I had just had like a small quick stroke or maybe I really am a creeper. But there he was again on camera in the mirror waving. This time I took a good look at him. His limbs seemed a little too long and his waving was a little too energetic.

His facial features were obscured by shadows, but then a street lamp would illuminate his face or reflect in his eyes, and it felt like he was looking straight at me. I turned on the lights, looked again, and he was gone.

I hear you, Lindsay. I got the fuck out. Called my shift leader, told them I was switching buses real quick, and then drove with the lights on all night long and every night since. Fuck you, creepy bus-waving shadow person. I hope I never see you again. Sincerely, a creeper peeper bus driver. I immediately wondered, I'm like, I wonder if he or she could have reviewed that footage. Yeah.

Because the thing, you know, showed up on camera twice. You know, they referenced a camera, mirror and camera. I would, I mean, I say I would have like wanted to access the footage and looked into it, but I don't know if I would actually. Right. I think a part of me wouldn't want that confirmation.

Because then if like you saw it and it's especially terrifying, it's like it'd be hard enough without seeing it again to do that job. Because, you know, there's you can't always be obviously have to be looking ahead most of the time so you don't get in a wreck. And then just I would just carry that fear of like, is it behind me now? Is it behind me now? Especially when I was alone with the lights off, which makes sense with the, you know, conserving electricity. Yeah. I like that they said that they now just keep the lights on all shift. Whatever. Fine. Don't care. Cold weather, empty, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Yeah.

Yeah. I love the idea of a haunted bus. I mean, love the idea. I just like it as a different, like, oh, yeah. You know, there are people, like, in every city, in every state, I bet, in every

almost every country, like everyone can relate to, you know, city employee. You have to drive, you know, this large vehicle and it normally contains a lot of people, but like, you know, like a school bus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, like last shift of the day, you drop the kids off after like a, even sometimes, you know, they have the bus drivers for like a basketball tournament. Totally. Right? So maybe it's like seven, eight o'clock at night. Or later. Yeah, right? You got to take it back to the- In a way game, you can be driving back alone at midnight. Absolutely. You got to take it to the-

bus yard. I don't know what you'd call it. Or just back to the school or whatever. Drop it off and get in your car. Yeah. That would suck. How much would it suck? You think you've seen something on this bus. Yeah. You have to take it back to where like the bus station. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you have to get out and go to your car. I don't know what's worse. Staying on the bus with the potential of some sort of cryptid-y thing. Yeah. Or getting out of that bus and running in the dark to your car where there might also be something in the backseat of your car. Because that's what your brain's going to start doing. Yeah.

Yeah, we have had, when you brought up school bus, I'm like, oh yeah, we have over the years told several stories that involve a haunted school bus of some kind. Yeah. You know, like usually abandoned. True. Not like an active bus that's still being driven where you're seeing something. It's usually like, or if you drive the bus in a certain location, there's some lore there. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to think, I thought we had, man, very early on, maybe it was a train though, but I thought we had a bus story that,

where some, like an active bus full of people and they thought they saw something like crawling on the outside. But now that I'm saying that, I think it was a train. Oh, okay. Yeah. So many stories. Yeah. And I'm thinking of another story we told early on where there was a abandoned bus that

And like a bunch of like little kids handprints would appear. Actually, I think that was in Colorado somewhere. I think it was in Colorado. Yeah. Interesting. Aye, aye, aye. Do you want to do some shout outs? I would love to. And then just remember, gang, after the shout outs, Dan is going to play this funny clip of him scaring the living daylights out of his own self during a Nightmare Fuel recording. I would like to thank the following Annabelles for supporting us here on our show. Jodi Raznick.

Genie, Cosentino. It's Genie, right? If it's J-E-A-N-N-E.

J-E-A-N-N-E. Yeah, genie. Yeah, genie Cosentino. Yeah, like jeans. Like a pair of jeans. Yeah, yeah. Genie. Eunice. Like E-W-E. Like a sheep, I believe. Eunice. Oh, that's so funny. I read it as like ewnice. Oh, okay. Cheyenne Tool. Dylan Boltman. Eternal Dragon. And Corey Gamez. Or yeah, just G-A-M-E-Z. Gamez. Gamez or Gamez. Gamer. Gamer.

I love the name Cheyenne, by the way. I've always really liked that name. There's a Cheyenne. What's that song? Cheyenne. I think it's a Miley Cyrus song. Yeah. It's a pretty name. It is pretty. I would also like to thank the following Annabelles for the continued love and support on Patreon. We value your support so much. Thank you. Sarah Winter, Jemmy Wilds, Brittany Marie, Megan Law. Megan, I hope that you are. Megan Law. Yeah. I hope that you're a lawyer. Yeah.

a police officer, in the military. Superhero? Well, if you are any of those things, you are a superhero in my book. Okay, Rebecca Ashlock and Tony. And then I have a bunch of spoopy shout-outs this week, so settle in.

To Sasha from your creeper family, happy 37th birthday. Thank you for all you do for us. We wouldn't have a fraction of our memories or experiences without your hard work to organize our family. You're the best wife and mother. We love you. Here's to another year. To Dustin from Briseida, happy 7th anniversary. I love you so much, babe. To Melissa from Sean, happy birthday. To Tits McGee from Bean Sprout. I love these friends.

I haven't heard Tits McGee in like a hundred years. Classic. Classic. Thank you for being the best friend a person could ever ask for. You're truly my platonic soulmate in this life and every other. Thank you for everything you do for me and always being there for the big moments and the little ones in between. And a big thank you for growing my new best friend. I can't wait to meet her. I love you.

To JR from Amanda, happy birthday, awesome husband. Thank you for always being the very best. I love you the most and will always be so proud of you. Keep moving forward. I love you forever and always.

To my little rock star from Joshie, happy 10-year anniversary. Here's to 100 more. And if I die first, I'm going to chase you when you turn out the lights, which is like a very specific, hilarious. I love that. And last one, to Ellie Mae from your mom, Sarah. To my darling daughter, because we are so close, I wish you a very happy 14th birthday. Many happy returns.

I guess Sarah was saying that Ellie Mae, like jokingly, very likes very formal things. Okay. And then she adds, happy birthday, chicken. Lots of love. Aw, cute. Combination. Cute. All right, Dan, what have you got for us? Okay. So just a quick little clip here. Yeah, this is just to set the scene again. I, you know, record Nightmare Fuels by myself in the studio. I tend to come, you know, in the evening. And so it was a, actually it was a Saturday night.

because we had to fly out to see some friends early the next morning. So I'm here alone telling this second part. It was Moloch's Pact Part 2 and it's for anyone who has heard it, it's out now. You know, it's a demonic story about this satanic cult and what's going on in this little town. And, uh,

So it already like, you know, I feel creepy. Totally. In here by myself. I come in the studio. I turn off all the lights. The only light on is my computer monitor. But I'm sitting underneath these lights we used to use for when we had video. And they have these like thin, I think it's aluminum. It's like black. It's like a filament almost. It's like. It directs the light. You can like bend it around so you can like focus the light in a certain place.

And they've been there for years, never noticed, you know, thought of them really because they float quite a ways above her head. Well, one of the big panels, as I'm telling the story, came down and I feel it and hear it like bopping me on the head. And it's just a creepy sound. So I don't actually scream, but here's what happens. So I'm doing my voiceover by myself. After Lincoln left the room and walked back down the stairs, Chance quietly snuck out from underneath the bed. Oh, my God. Scared the fucking shit out of me. Oh, my God.

So funny. And I'm just by myself. Oh, man. Logan, if you're listening, one of the little light things. Oh, my God. The little metal aluminum light things just happen to fall apart a little bit, come apart and hang down and just hit my head.

And I'm laughing things off in that clip, but my stomach is like in my feet. You called me. You stopped down. You called me and you were like, you are never going to believe what just happened. Oh, I had to leave. I had to leave. So after that, I get up and then I have to walk to the room in the dark and I'm like still laughing, trying to keep it like, but in my head, I'm like, if I see something, I'm going to lose my fucking shit.

Like, and I'm convinced part of me is convinced that I am going to see something in the room before I turn the light on. I think it's that thing over my head. You don't know, but yeah, it's so dark. I don't know for sure. And then I got up, I confirmed, I came over and like ripped it down, tossed it on the floor. Then I had to turn on all the lights.

Go to the bathroom and like make sure no one else is in the building. Just like listen to some music like like do like a reset. And you said you didn't have your phone by you or anything either. So when you had to like get up from the desk to make it to the lights. I was watching in the darkness. Yeah. I mean, and it's only like seven steps, but seven.

Seven steps in complete darkness when you're full of fear is fucking terrifying. And there's a lot of things. I'm trying not to bump into the sound paneling. There's like old cameras still around. There's like the monitor still here. So like you're walking through. It's a little bit of a death trap. Yep. And there's all kinds of like room for shadows. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I see shadows all the time, even because we do still have the cameras in here should we ever need them again. And even when I'm telling a story, I can oftentimes see if you move, I can see your reflection out of my periphery.

in the camera lens. And it's always like, oh God, what is that? And it's like, it's literally nothing. So I got myself pretty good. Yeah. You don't sound as scared as I wanted you to sound. I know. I felt much more... I remembered...

I thought I yelled or something because I just remembered feeling so scared. Yeah. And then when I was walking around out in the other room outside of the studio, I was yelling then just like, oh my God, just like having those kind of yells. Like, oh Jesus Christ, just like getting it out of my system. Yeah. I think it's that feeling of like when you're at a funeral and people sometimes laugh, right? The emotion is so strong. It just comes out that way. So like nervous laughter. Exactly. You giggling at yourself. Yeah.

you know, yeah, it's pretty normal. And that, and that is our show. Uh, thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror to my stare, my what? My scary, my scary, my scary, my scary, my story at scared to death podcast.com. You can email us for everything else at info at scared to death podcast.com. Thank you to Logan Keith. Again, scoring today's show. Thanks to Heather Rylander organizing the, my story emails to book editor drew a Tana polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Uh,

Uh, thank you to Sophie Evans for finding the first story I shared this week. Olivia Lee finding the second and Sarah Finch finding the third. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Uh, we're on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany episodes and more at scared to death podcast. We also have a private Facebook group called creeps and peepers full of fellow, uh, horror lovers, horror lovers waiting to meet you.

Big thanks to the All Seen Eyes, the Creeps and Peepers moderators. And enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye.

Add Magic Productions.

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