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Decapitate The Dead

2025/5/21
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Scared To Death

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Dan
专注于加密货币和股票市场分析的金融专家,The Chart Guys 团队成员。
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Lindsay
创立并主持《All Ears English》播客,帮助全球英语学习者通过自然和实用的方式提高英语水平。
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Lulu Marie
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Dan: 我今天的故事是关于爱尔兰都柏林圣米坎教堂地下墓穴的木乃伊。这个地方在过去的500年里一直是超自然活动的温床。我将讲述教堂的历史、木乃伊的形成原因以及与这些木乃伊相关的超自然现象。圣米坎教堂的地下墓穴里有六个墓穴,空气干燥,墙壁由石灰石砖制成。里面有数百具木乃伊尸体,其中最著名的是四大天王:修女、小偷、十字军和无名氏。这些木乃伊的形成原因尚不清楚,但最有可能的是地下墓穴本身的石灰石墙壁吸收了水分。在1994年、2019年和2024年,教堂的墓穴遭到破坏,导致超自然现象变得更加恶意。自2019年以来,最常见的现象是一个高大的黑影出现在教堂附近。人们还说,如果你晚上经过教堂,你会听到一个孩子在教堂前门后面呼救,但当你靠近时,它会变成一个成年男子在笑。在2024年的纵火袭击之后,人们声称看到了从墓碑和教堂窗户后面窥视出来的脸。这些实体可能是被破坏激怒的灵魂,也可能是一些利用墓穴作为通道的非人类的东西。也许当维京教堂被夷为平地,圣米坎教堂取而代之时,当地人害怕的事情确实发生了,一些不圣洁的东西被召唤了出来,并最终显现出来。

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Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath no hollow, 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 Annabelles. I'm Dan. Hello, Dan. I am Lulu Marie. Hello, Lulu Marie. Do you guys know that's Dan's new nickname for me? Lulu Marie. Because her middle name is Marie. It is. And down south, it just feels like, you know, like people combine their names, you know, like Mary Lou. People have a lot of two name first names. Mm-hmm. Tommy John, you know, whatever. It's like, it felt fitting to like Lulu Marie. It feels very Southern Belle. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. I was into it.

So, yeah. Thanks for listening to our 298th episode, closing in on 300. Crazy. Lindsay has a quick summer camp announcement, and then we are into the show. All righty, here we go. Summer camp is around the corner.

You guys don't forget to include Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in your plans for the summer. If you're unsure of what camp is about or you want to ask questions of other campers, please join the Summer Camp Facebook group. It's really chill in there. People are so welcoming and it's a direct reflection of exactly how camp is. So if you have any questions or are on the fence, hop on in there. And by the way, some people have already bought tickets and been like, ah,

Ah, shoot-ski-poot-ski. I can't make it anymore. So sometimes in the Facebook group, you can get a little deal on your tickets as well. So highly recommend that. And then off of that, I would also like to say that next week we will share our charity announcement. Yes, yes, yes. And that's all I've got, Dan. Well, thank you, Lulu Marie. You're welcome, sir.

How many fan-submitted tales of true horror do you have this week? I have three tales this week. My first tale is a beautiful story of a young spirit hanging around long after their death.

Then my second tale takes us to a possible ghost in an apartment that can only be seen from outside of the apartment. Huh. It's very interesting. Yeah. A little head scratcher. And my third and final story, I think, is one that we can all relate to. Could watching scary movies at home invite something in?

Oh, if that's the case. You did it at our house. A lot of people are in danger. My first of two tales today covers the lore and supposed paranormal encounters associated with Dublin, Ireland's St. Mikan's Church and the dead bodies that reside in the crypts beneath it.

Then we will venture over to Lake Pleasant, New York, learn about some rumored murders associated with one of the town's founding fathers and the hauntings associated with those deaths. Okay. So when you're socked up, feeling safe and cozy, I will begin. Well, before I reveal this week's socks, I just want to say that for the last two episodes, Dan and I were in New Orleans, and so we were recording in a remote location down there.

And while I had my socks with me, I didn't have notes. So I just wanted to say thanks to Drew Sensing in Nashville for my Christopher Walken socks that I wore two weeks ago. And then last week was Scooby Dooby Doo.

And I would like to thank Megan or Megan, James and Alma for those. And now this week, these socks, these are so fun. I mean, somebody clearly understands who I am because these are magic mushroom socks and they're super fun and psychedelic. And I would like to thank Zach and Danny for bringing these to the Nashville show. So cool. So many awesome fans. Thank you so much. Keep the socks coming. I love it. And that's it.

And I love when you said Christopher Walkensocks. It's like, what a perfect name for socks. Walkensocks. Walkensocks. Oh my God. He could have his own brand. Walkensocks. I mean, he's doing VO on commercials already lately. I think, what, like Miller Lite? He's like their spokesperson? I know, but remember we had a whole debate and I was like, is it him?

It is him. It is him. Did you look it up? No, but I know it's him. I know it's him because he was in a Super Bowl ad for Miller Lite. Oh, he was? Yeah. And then we watched it. And then like, and now he's doing like VO on others and they can't, that would be some kind of copyright breach for them to just copy his voice. Conversations that happen in Dan and Lindsay's house. We went on and on for a solid 20 minutes about like,

Sometimes somebody sounds like somebody else, but they don't say, he never says like, this is Christopher Walken and I'm supporting Miller Lite. So it's like, can a VO actor mimic a known voice and,

In a commercial without getting in trouble. The debate went on and on and on. Yeah, I'm guessing that they would get in a lot of trouble for a very recognizable voice. There are some people like Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken. Yeah. Yeah, we could go down a whole rabbit hole. But it's like, ah, their voice is so distinct. Everybody knows it's them to try and sneak that in there. I bet you get sued. But let us know. Let us know. Maybe there's a lawyer listening who's like, nope, you can totally do that. I'm going to ask a friend of ours who's a voiceover actor. Okay. And see what she says.

Okay, well, I'm going to get started. Let's go. Every week for the past six years, we have willingly plunged into the most foul depths of the unseen world to catch glimpses of the paranormal horrors that reside there. And I think it's safe to say we have covered a lot of creepy stuff. Bloodthirsty cryptids, body-snatching aliens, black-eyed children, homicidal hat men, unholy poltergeists, shadow people, wraiths, demons, ghouls, banshees, doppelgangers, and so much more.

But there is an entity, a species of the paranormal, so to speak, that we almost never encounter in our adventures here on Scared to Death. And that is the mummy. But that's who we visit today. Today, we are venturing into the crypts beneath St. Mikan's Church in Dublin, Ireland, to meet the perfectly mummified corpses that dwell within. It's a dark, macabre, and eerily beautiful place that for the past 500-ish years has been an alleged hotbed of paranormal activity.

Up until 1994, that paranormal activity was rarely hostile, but then something egregious happened. And then it happened again in 2019. And once more in 2024. And now, interestingly, the supernatural phenomenon witnessed in and around the burial vaults of St. Micah's church is almost exclusively malevolent in nature. But before I get into all that, I want to tell you a tiny bit more about the church and its strange origins. Starting in the year 1095 CE,

when Norse Viking settlers first built a Catholic chapel on the site. For a little over 400 years, the Norse structure served as the primary Catholic church for the surrounding community. However, in the wake of the British crown's violent invasion and colonization of Ireland, in the 1600 St. Micah's church, its parishioners and thousands of other Irish Catholics were forced to convert to Anglicanism.

Cut to 1685, and the majority of the original Norse chapel was sadly torn down, and the St. Mican's Church as we see it today was reconstructed in its place. It is one of the few churches in Dublin built upon an original Viking foundation. Since 1685, St. Mican's Church has undergone minimal renovations. Walking into it is very much like walking into the past. In nearly 350 years, it has barely changed at all. So maybe I exaggerated a bit when I said 500 earlier, but it sounds better.

It's located in Dublin's District 7 on the north side of the River Liffey, tucked between an uber-modern corporate office building and a recently renovated law firm. The church has a cruciform architectural layout, meaning it was built to resemble the shape of a cross from what's seen above. But with its imposing stone tower, dark-age battlements, Corinthian-style columns, Gothic windows, and mortared boundary wall crawling with fringe moss, it looks more like a medieval fortress than a house of worship.

Around the back of the church, there's a narrow cemetery with a few dozen graves. Most of the people buried there passed away in the early 1700s, but they are not the dead we're here to meet. You see, the corpses in St. Micah's graveyard have long since decomposed and rotted away. All that's left of them are their dry, brittle skeletons. The dead we seek endure a much different fate, and they reside in the arcane dark below. They reside in St. Micah's crypts.

There are six crypts beneath St. Mikan's, and each has its own designated entrance, a perilously steep and uneven stone stairwell, which is insulated from the world of the living by a set of rusty metal cellar doors. Once you descend the stairs into the territory of the long dead, the first thing you'll notice is the air. It will feel as though it has been sucked out of you. The damp Irish humidity you left above ground is somehow unable to fully penetrate the depths of the crypts.

Everything below is dry and covered in dust. The second thing you'll notice is the walls. They are desiccated in gray, made of impenetrably thick limestone bricks. They aren't closing in on you yet, but they will. The tunnel before you is narrow and confined, and there's no light at the end of it. Above you, there is a barrel-vaulted ceiling made of the same gray stones. As you venture deeper into the crypt, you'll find the death chambers.

Some are separated from the main passageway by forbidding iron gates. Some are fully exposed to anyone who happens to pass by. All of them house the dead. It's nearly impossible to count the number of coffins in the vaults. There's just simply too many. Some are arranged in neat rows of three. Others are crammed together like puzzle pieces, the corner of a chamber or in the corner of a chamber or along the main passage. While others still are stacked precariously on top of one another in piles so high they literally touch the ceiling.

A few of the coffins are beautiful, adorned with wooden carvings of flowers and rivers and Irish mountainsides and such. These ornate coffins have copper plaques bearing the name of the dead within. But the rest of the corpses in St. Micah's crypt, those whose coffins have no memorial plaques, are anonymous. And they forever will be now, as all of the church's records regarding these dead were sadly destroyed in a fire back in 1922. Some of the coffins are intact, but most are not.

And these are the most terrifying ones. Over hundreds and hundreds of years, the wood of these coffins has splintered, broken, collapsed, or simply disintegrated entirely, revealing the bodies within. The bodies interred in the crypts are not like those buried in the cemetery because these bodies are still here. They have not fully decomposed. They have not rotted away. They have been mummified. But no one seems to know exactly why or how. Normally, if a dead body has not been embalmed, there are four stages of decomposition.

The first stage, autolysis or self-digestion, occurs within three days of death. It is when the muscles stiffen and the internal organs rupture, blister, and begin to decompose. The second stage is bloating, and it typically occurs between three and five days after death. This is when the gases produced by the decomposed organs cause the body to inflate like a putrid balloon, sometimes expanding up to twice its original size.

Next comes stage three, active decay. Within 10 days of death, the muscles and soft tissue liquefy and leak from the body's orifices. The teeth and nails begin to dislodge from the skull. The skin begins to crack and release internal gases. And the corpse turns from green to deep red as insects such as maggots are attracted to the decomposing tissue and they begin to feed. The final stage of human decomposition is skeletonization.

Within anywhere from a month to a year after death, everything will have wasted away into nothingness as soft tissues continue to break down and be eaten, leaving only the underlying bones behind. That is what happens to the human body when we die. And that is what should have happened to the corpses interred in St. Mican's crypt. But it didn't. The internal organs of St. Mican's mummies are still entirely intact.

shriveled and dusty yes but still they are there obviously non-functioning but comparatively undefiled by decay and unspoiled by rot their skin now leathery and hard is also intact their decrepit frames and sunken skulls are still swathed in it their teeth and nails are still firmly lodged in their gaping mouths and on their fingertips and even their dehydrated veins remain visible under sheaths of rigid skin they have been exceptionally well preserved but how

There are a few different theories, but none of them have been proven conclusively. The most likely is that the corpses were mummified by the crypt itself. The walls of the crypt are made of limestone, which has the unique property of absorbing moisture. Also, the soil surrounding the crypt might have a high percentage of oak in it, which is also known to dry things out. Whatever the true cause of the mummification may be, one thing is clear. St. Micah's crypts, in St. Micah's crypts, the dead have been denied the right to rot.

There are hundreds of mummified corpses interred in St. Mikan's vaults, but by far the most infamous are the Big Four, the Nun, the Thief, the Crusader, and the Unknown. Together, the so-called Big Four lay side by side in a single crumbling death chamber in the main vault. Or they did, more on that later. The lids of their coffins have completely disintegrated, so the entirety of their withered bodies are on full display. Like most of the corpses in the crypts, the Big Four are anonymous.

However, based on the conditions of their bodies and their coffins, as well as information passed down from priest to priest at St. Micah's, we do have somewhat of an idea of who they might have been in life. The thief earned his nickname on account of the fact that both of his feet and his right hand are missing. They were cut off sometime before he died 300 years ago, likely as punishment for stealing, and the skin around his wrists and ankles is still in tatters from the severing.

It is believed that later in life, the thief converted to Christianity or perhaps even became a priest. Otherwise, he would have never been buried beneath the church. His body bloated aggressively after death, likely before he was put in the vault. And because of that, instead of clinging to his shriveled up insides, the skin covering his chest and stomach is inflated. On the far left of the chamber is the body of an old woman. She is the nun, and she died around 400 years ago. Of the big four, her facial features are the most well-preserved.

To the right of the thief is the unknown. She too is a woman, though smaller and younger than the nun. She rests atop a raised casket with her stunted arms crossed over her chest. Her petite facial features, small ears, gaping mouth, high cheekbones, deep collarbone, and a long veiny neck are also entirely intact. Laying in the middle of the other three mummies is the crusader. It is believed that in life he was a soldier who either died in the fourth crusade over 800 years ago,

or returned to Ireland and died shortly thereafter. In the mid-1900s, scientists tested the crusader's remains and found that the mummified corpse was, in fact, a little over 800 years old. What's so strange about that is that St. Micah's crypt was only built 400 years ago. How he got there, where he was before, and how he became mummified before is a complete and utter mystery. What we do know is that in life, the crusader was six feet, seven inches tall.

which would have made him a true giant back when he lived. Despite this, he was buried in an average-sized coffin, and in order to make him fit, his legs were broken at the knees and folded beneath him. Although the skin on his face, neck, thighs, pelvis, and arms are still shrink-wrapped to his petrified flesh, the withered skin of the crusader's torso has deteriorated almost completely, revealing his mummified small and large intestines, gallbladder, pancreas, some arteries, and some muscles.

Up until very recently, for reasons I will reveal, the Crusader's left forearm stretched outside of the confines of his coffin, as if reaching out to the living. Dating all the way back to the Victorian age, visitors were encouraged to shake hands with the Crusader for good luck. All right, now that we know how St. Micah's crypts became overrun with mummies, it's time to explore rumors of these mummies being haunted and hear a few firsthand experiences of the horrors endured within. Time now for the tale of

Decapitate the Dead. The crypt has always whispered. Not groaned or screamed or spoke, but whispered. Quiet, low voices muttering in your ear so close you can almost feel their hot, humid breath. Documented records of reports of disembodied voices incredibly date all the way back to the 1600s, when the crypt was first built on the ruined remains of the Nordic church.

There were rumors back then that the destruction of the original place of worship would incite some unholy thing to take root there and bring a curse upon the ground. For many, many years, that would not seem to be the case. But now the church does seem somewhat cursed. Maybe it just took longer for that holy, unholy thing to reveal itself, as you'll see, when I share accounts of what some have claimed to encounter in recent years. For centuries following the construction of the new church,

There were reports of ghostly whispers muttering incomprehensible messages, of phantom hands grasping longingly to living, and of cold gusts of wind somehow sweeping to the underground vault. According to our research, never do these reports allude to malignant paranormal entities, just the presence of the paranormal itself within St. Mikan's crypts.

But that began to change in July of 1996, when a group of local teenagers broke into one of the smaller church vaults and wrought havoc and destruction upon the dead laid to rest there. In the first death chamber they came upon, the kids found a pile of six coffins from the 1600s stacked atop each other. After violently dismantling the precariously situated pile, they used a crowbar to wrench each of the coffins open, and they removed the mummified remains within.

They then, for reasons unknown, scattered them across the floor and stomped on them. In addition to destroying human remains, this also made it impossible for church authorities to figure out which body parts belonged to which coffin.

Navigating their way through the vault with flashlights, the angsty teens went from chamber to chamber, heaving withered and brittle corpses from their places of rest, dismembering them, desecrating them, peeling back their leathering skin, snapping their crisp ligaments like wishbones, and digging into their splintering torsos to see their mummified organs and veins. Some of the bodies they laid waste to had been preserved so well by the conditions of the vault that their facial expressions were still discernible,

One of these corpses, the youngest of the vandals later admitted, looked like it was smiling at them. Scared him so terribly, he said he thought he was going to vomit. When the teenagers came across fresher corpses that were not quite as fragile, instead of dispersing fragments of their body parts across the dusty floor, they hurled them at the walls of the main corridor to see how a mummy would shatter against the limestone.

Although it was never confirmed, newspapers at the time suggested the teenagers most likely broke into the coffins in hope of finding some buried treasure in one of the caskets. They did not. They did, however, find the kid-sized coffin of a four-month-old baby girl who died in 1838, according to the plaque on her coffin. The baby girl's mother, by the way, died 20 years later and was laid to rest in the coffin directly next to her, which was also destroyed by the vandals.

Upon discovering the child's mummified remains, the teenagers wrenched her small head from her tiny body, took it into the graveyard, and proceeded to kick it around like a soccer ball. As bad as that was, their last act of desecration was the most dreadful. Using old rags and paraffin, which they had brought with them, the vandals set fire to a stack of wooden coffins and fled the vaults.

Because of the lack of oxygen in the vaults, the fire smoldered for a full 24 hours before a clergyman, Canon David Pierpoint, noticed it seeping out from the cellar doors the following evening. While waiting for the fire brigade to arrive after discovering the horrors in the vault, Canon Pierpoint immediately began dragging what mummified human remains in broken coffins he could reach out of the crypt in an attempt to save them from the flames. But it was no use. Of the 80 bodies that were interred there, only six were saved.

The rest were either completely devastated by the vandals, burned to ash by the smoldering fire, or flooded by the fireman's water hose Luckily, the damage was confined only to that vault The other five underground tunnels and the bodies within them remained unharmed Following the break-in, the church permanently sealed off the destroyed vaults and restricted public access to the rest From that point forward, you could only see the mummies if you purchased a ticket for one of the scheduled tours

Now protected by heightened security measures, the dead have remained relatively undisturbed for the past nearly 30 years, but the living that have visited them have not. In 2006, a British woman who we will refer to as Mary posted a series of blogs on MySpace recounting her recent vacation in Ireland. They were fairly non-conspicuous posts, mostly about the beer she drank and the museums she visited and the people she met. However, at the very end, she added this. So all in all, a great trip.

There was only this one very weird thing that happened near the end. It was our last day in Dublin before going to Galway, and we decided to go to St. Mikan's Church to see the mummies in the crypts. There was another family in the tour group with me and Sam, an American couple with a toddler boy who kept his face buried in his dad's chest the entire tour. Honestly, I would have done the same if I could have. It's really creepy down there. The mummies are on full display, and the tour guide even had to shake the hand of one of them named the Crusader. Even though it made me nervous, I shook his hand first.

It wasn't flaky and cold and dead like I expected. It was warm, almost like a living human hand. The dead people were really creepy, but they weren't the weirdest part of the tour. The weirdest part happened when we got inside the second crypt. Sam and I were halfway down the tunnel slash hallway, and the Americans were standing at the entrance, listening to the tour guide talk about the coffins in the first death chamber. Sam and I heard it at the same time. It was the sound of a little kid crying, soft and high-pitched and coming from somewhere in the crypt.

It was faint, but also clear and kind of echoey. I don't know how else to explain it. Confused, we both looked back at the Americans and the tour guide, thinking the sound was coming from the toddler. But they were all looking at us, equally confused, none of them crying. Even the toddler's head had popped up and he was looking down the tunnel at us with the same wide-eyed bewilderment as his parents. I don't know how long the five of us stood there, staring at each other, four, maybe five meters apart, listening to the wailing.

mama dada there's baby down there little boy yelled pointing at us i shook my head thinking he was accusing me of being the crying baby we quickly realized with not a small amount of horror that he was pointing behind me at the very end of the crypt i turned to look where he was looking he was right the sound was very clearly coming from the dead end of the long crypt and i swear to god it sounded like it was getting closer instantly i started backing up

I didn't realize that the tour guide had come to meet us where we were standing and accidentally backed up into him. Seeing his face was the worst part. He was middle-aged and a member of the St. Mikan's parish, and he looked scared. Sam said something like, "'Is Sunday school happening above us in the church right now or something?' Which was kind of a stupid thing to ask because it was Tuesday, but still, I hoped the tour guide would say yes. "'No,' he said, eyes completely fixed on the other side of the vault. Mixed with his terror was some sadness I didn't understand.'

The crying was getting closer and louder. I was starting to panic. The dry air was making everything worse. I felt like I was being suffocated. I looked back at the Americans. The toddler had struggled his way out of his dad's grip and was now running towards us, shouting, "'Coming! Coming!' Instinctively, I moved to the side to let him barrel past. He plunged into the darkness of the vault quicker than I have ever seen any kid that young run. When he got to the end, he practically leapt inside the death chamber and disappeared from sight."

his parents took off running shortly behind him yelling for him to come back the tour guide also spurred into action running after them all i was frozen sam i think started to walk that way as well but i held him back mumbling something about how i wanted to get out of there he agreed i was embarrassed and i'm embarrassed to admit it now but as soon as he said yes i practically broke into a sprint towards the exit overwhelmed with his fear that the cellar doors would slam shut and we would all be stuck down there with that crying baby

Back above ground, we paced around for what felt like forever, until the tour guide and the Americans finally emerged too. The little boy was having a full-blown meltdown, kicking and screaming and struggling against his dad, reaching for the vault. "'She lonely, dada! She lonely!' he cried. We ended the tour early. The tour guide still looked freaked out, and the American's toddler was still ranting about a little girl the rest of us couldn't see, and I'd had my fill of mummies. "'So, scary, right?'

Has anybody else been to St. Micah's? Anybody else heard something like that? I am me, or comment if you have. There were 27 comments beneath the archive post. Most of the comments were about the eerie things that they had heard about St. Micah's from friends or experienced themselves.

Many commenters attested to hearing the sound of a crying baby inside the vaults. One anonymous commenter said the sound of the wailing child followed him outside the vault and continued to follow him for months afterwards, always coming from the end of a long hallway or the other side of whatever room he happened to be in. One user who claimed to live in Dublin wrote this. I see there are some people on here claiming that the crying sound comes from the ghost of the four-month-old little girl whose head was kicked around in the 90s. I don't think so.

It's not a human baby, and it never was one. It just wants us to think that. Fast forward to February of 2019, when St. Micah's crypts were targeted for violence again, this time by a man named Brian Bridgman. One evening, Bridgman used a set of crowbars to force his way into the largest of the church vaults. The steel doors he had broken were discovered the following morning by a clergyman who expected to find the crypt in utter ruins, just like it had been in 1994. But it wasn't.

All the coffins were where they should have been, and all the mummies, from what he could tell, seemed to be as much intact as they had been the day before. All of them except for one. The Crusader had been decapitated. His body had been flipped over, and his head had been seemingly ripped from his neck. Archdeacon Pierpoint, same man who had witnessed the destruction of the small vault in 1994, spoke of the break-in, saying...

These are people who have been lying at rest for years and years, and to have them desecrated in such a sacrilegious way is so distressing and disturbing. I can't put it into words. I'm quite disgusted. Not only have these individuals desecrated the sacred crypt, but they have destroyed these historic mummies which have been preserved in St. Micans for hundreds of years. A month later, the head was anonymously returned to St. Micans. It was wrapped in a plastic bag from Tesco and left on the front of the property.

Four months later, the police were able to track down the thief and arrest him. Why did he do it? He told the judge that sentenced him to 24 months in prison that he had blacked out on a combination of alcohol and Xanax, and he'd woken up in the crypt not remembering how he got there. He said, I thought I was dreaming. It wasn't reality. He then claims to have blacked out again, and the next time he woke up, he was on a park bench in Dublin next to a bag with two skulls in it, the Crusader's skull and the head of some other mummy.

He then felt guilty for what he had done, returned the heads, even though some sources just mentioned one head, with a note that said simply, Sorry, rest in peace. What a wild and costly night for Brian. Although it seemed like the crypts would be shut down to the public for good following that, after the crusader's head was restored to his body and additional security measures were installed, a year later the church started to offer tours of the crypts once again, and once again the debt would pay for that.

At 4 p.m., June 11th, 2024, a man named Christian Toppeter snuck into the main vault in between tours and set it on fire. The 39-year-old lived just 200 meters away from the church in a hostel. And why did he do it? He didn't really say. His lawyer said he was an addict who was remorseful, ashamed, and embarrassed, and recognized the impact of his actions.

Although the flames only blazed for a few minutes before the fire brigade arrived, it was enough to wreak insurmountable destruction yet again on the frail bodies of the mummified dead. Three of the mummies were obliterated completely by the fire. The mummified corpse of a man who was buried alive 150 years prior, the 300-year-old body of the nun, and most devastatingly, the 800-year-old remains of the crusader. The rest of the mummies in the vault were all damaged to varying degrees from either the fire itself or the deluge of water that put it out.

Tapitor was arrested less than an hour later and sentenced to six years in prison. Immediately following the attack, the church once again stopped giving tours to the public. However, without that revenue, St. Micah's was unable to pay for the upkeep required of the 833-year-old church, and as of a few months ago, it shut its doors to the public entirely. Not just the doors to the crypts, but to the church as well. The old, supposedly haunted church now sits vacant.

Steel cages have been placed around the entrances to the crypts in order to prevent another break-in. So far it's worked. The living have been successfully kept out. But the dead, on the other hand, have perhaps not been fully kept in. Like I said earlier, ever since St. Micah's crypt was built, there have been countless stories about the ghostly things witnessed there. And for a long time, those ghostly things reportedly were never evil, never sinister, and most importantly, they never left the crypts.

But ever since the Crusader was decapitated in 2019, things seem to have changed. It's as if something was unleashed. The haunting has expanded, spilled out of the vaults and onto the church grounds. It has bled into the nearby graveyard and the street, infecting inhabitants of the neighboring buildings and grasping at passerbys on the sidewalks.

According to our research since 2019, the most common paranormal phenomena now witnessed at St. Micah's is a tall, shadowy figure seen looming near the southeast side of the church. People have described him online as having the uncanny appearance of an emaciated man with a sort of gloomy halo of fog or perhaps smoke smoldering around his silhouette.

According to a few witnesses, the figure will not bother you unless you stop and stare at him. If you do that in a series of jerky, irregular movements, he will reportedly make a beeline across the churchyard towards you, his left arm raised and reaching in your direction, as if asking you to shake hands, or as if preparing to grab and attack you. So far, no one has stuck around to find out exactly what would happen.

In the past five years, people have also started saying that if you walk past the vacant carcass of St. Micah's at night, you will hear a child calling out for help from behind the church's front gate. But the closer you get to the gate, the less it will sound like a child crying and the more it will sound like a grown man laughing. And if you choose to move closer still, whoever that man, whatever that thing is that's waiting for you on the other side, it will stop calling out for help and will start calling to you by name.

And after the 2024 arson attack, there has reportedly been another surge in paranormal sightings on the grounds of St. Micah's, most of them from people who claim to have caught a glimpse of faces. Gaunt, gnarled, and human faces peering out from behind gravestones and church windows, between the bars of the gates, and over the church's ancient boundary wall.

On one paranormal discussion board, someone who claims to work at the software company next door to St. Mikan's described the faces as a sort of an optical illusion that you can only see in your peripheral vision. If you try to focus in on one of them, they will disappear completely. Who are these entities that now seem to haunt St. Mikan's? Are they the souls of those interred in the crypts, angered at having been so violently disturbed from their eternal sleep on multiple occasions now?

Or are they various manifestations of something else entirely? Something that was never human at all? Something that was not buried in the crypts, but used them as a passageway to the living, a door to the other side? Maybe, just maybe, when the ancient Viking church was razed to the ground and St. Mikan's built in its place nearly 350 years ago, the locals were right to be afraid.

Maybe some unholy thing was summoned by the act of destruction, just as they predicted it would be. And maybe for hundreds and hundreds of years, that unholy thing was confined to the crypts, hiding and waiting until another act of destruction, and then another, and another, finally seemed to have awakened and revealed it.

It's an interesting little place over there. Mm-hmm. A lot of history there. Yeah. So creepy. Like, what is it with people wanting to go in there and destroy it? Yeah, I don't know why three people at least now felt drawn to do that. Yeah, and I— Well, actually two people and then a group of teens. Yeah, and I feel like there's probably more lesser incidents that just, you know, wouldn't maybe be reported on in the same way. But it made me wonder if the crypt itself kind of calls them—

if they feel drawn to destroy. I don't know. I mean, the teens, I could actually see, you know, being a destructive youth at one point myself, like this lure of like a rumor gets passed around or whatever, or they convince themselves. I'm like, you know, I bet they were buried with treasure.

I bet they were buried with gold and stuff. And then these kids are like, you know, who cares about these old bags of bones? Let's go in there kind of like almost like Goonies style. Yeah. Let's go down there and get some treasure. Okay. But that's not what they, they just took it so far. It's like. And I think what happened then probably is, well, I guess they brought stuff.

They brought stuff to burn things, so they wanted to destroy things as well. But I bet they also just got caught up in they're down there, you know, you're starting to desecrate these things, and then you just get caught up in the mayhem and just start taking it further. I guess I just don't understand. Yeah, I think a lot of, I think, yeah, a lot of...

I mean, probably some women too. I mean, I think it's more of a male thing for whatever reason that goes through this destructive youth phase. Yeah. But it's like, I know so many guys who went through, you know, a year, couple years, whatever, when they were teens of just wanting to just be vandals, just wanting to destroy, break, you know, death, you know, just fucking graffiti, just deface things. Yeah. Yeah. It's so foreign to me. My brother wasn't like that. Like my male friends weren't like that.

I don't know. So it's just, it's like, I'm like, why? Just fucking why? Just rage against the world. I guess. My goodness. I do like the note from the decapitator.

Sorry. Rest in peace. Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. That's really funny. And they handed down some decent sentences. I mean... Yeah, two years. That's no joke for that guy. I know. A lot of people will really hurt a living person and get far less than that. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, four years for the other guy? Or was it six, maybe? It was six for the other guy. Yeah, I mean, that's... Two for the decapitator and six for the other guy. But, like, wow. What a night you had on your... Oh, my God. I know. I was thinking that. I actually wrote down to talk to you about that. I'm just like...

Of just like, can you imagine getting as high and drunk as Brian Bridgman and just, you know, waking up from a blackout in a crypt under a church and then you black out again. And when you wake up next time, you got two skulls in a bag. I would be so freaked out. I can't believe he turned himself in also because it doesn't sound like they had a lead on him. He didn't turn himself in. He dropped the heads off. He dropped the heads off. That's the same thing as turning yourself in because there's no way that you're...

dropping off those heads without either A, hoping you get caught because you just feel terrible or B, getting caught. Yeah. Yeah, maybe he just wasn't thinking about like the cameras and stuff around there. Cameras, fingerprints, where the bag came from. Like there was... Yeah, he clearly had a guilty conscience because like the smartest thing to do at that point if he wanted you to get away with it would be either just...

Well, I was going to say like mail it, but no, that wouldn't just like just toss them in the garbage can and move on with your life. I mean, yeah. Burn them, you know, like talk to no one about them. Tell no one that story. Tell no one. And I also had a conversation point just really quick about,

regarding the thief corpse missing a hand and two feet. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I know that was a common thing back in medieval times of, like, cutting off somebody's fingers or hands, especially in, like, the Middle East. But feet? Feet I hadn't heard, but, like, I mean... It makes sense. Yeah, but then I was just thinking, like, yeah, it does make... I mean...

I mean, you definitely make it harder for you to get away with stealing things. But I was also thinking like if you're already in some kind of place where you, I mean, people always want to say like, oh, well, they just don't want to work. Well, maybe some don't want to work, but a lot of times people steal because they're unable to get a job or

or they convince themselves they're unable, whatever. Yeah, or they have a job, but they don't make enough. Right, right, right. There's a lot of circumstances. And I just think, like, if you already were in that situation when you had both feet and both hands, and then you lose two feet and a hand, aren't you more likely to steal? You would think. Right, because you have more limited job opportunities. My God. Oh, my God. The whole story was weird. All the people there, like, involved in it, it just all feels very, very, very strange. Do you want to see some pictures? Sure, I'd love to.

This first one is the front of St. Micah's, just a Wikipedia. Okay. Not what I was picturing at all. This next one is the graveyard behind the church. And I love that super modern tech building right next to it. Right next to it. Mm-hmm.

Uh, this is the, uh, the big four pre-capitation. It's just so crazy. Pre-decapitation, sorry. I know what you meant. Uh, to think about the, uh, the crusader with his hand hanging out so people could shake his hand. Right. Yeah, that's what, and being so tall, man. Uh. I know, this is so weird to see these bodies in these caskets, just like thinking about the circumstances. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm just freaked out by like his big bubbled chest. God. This next one. This is the Crusader. Please cremate me. Please. I mean, that is crazy that like 800 years. I know. And there's still skin on the skull there. Yeah. And not properly mummified. Not mummified in the way that we think of mummification. Yeah. Nobody, you know, took their time. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's so crazy. This is another just different shot of the big four.

Uh, line side by side now, man. And then this one, this is a torched, a torched mummy skull post fire, obviously.

And this is one of the vault entrances. No way. I'm not going down there. I know. It's crazy. It's those like metal doors that just down this concrete steps. Ground uneven in crypt. I know. Please take care. I know. I noted that little sign as well. And I just thought that stuff always cracks me up. And it's just so crazy that you have to put up a sign like that to reduce the chances of litigation where some idiot could go down into an ancient crypt and

trip on the uneven ground and be like, I wish someone would have told me that the ground was uneven in a crypt. It's like, if you're too stupid to understand that the ground is going to be uneven in an ancient crypt, then you don't, you shouldn't go outside. You don't deserve to be in the crypt. You don't just stay in your house. Just stay home. Always. Uh, the next one. Um, but you know, it's sign cracked me up recently. So hard. Uh, your mom and grandma and aunt, uh,

were in town gambling at the Coeur d'Alene Casino. And I don't know why, I was like in stitches. I was laughing so hard when you went into the restroom. One sign, first sign says, no illicit drugs allowed.

In the bathroom. Yeah. And then the sign underneath it said, please park your scooter here. And I don't know why the combination of those two things. I was crying. I was laughing so hard. So I was thinking like somebody on a scooter doing illicit drugs in the bathroom at the Coeur d'Alene casino. Like it just, what is going on in that bathroom? Keep your drugs and scooter out of this bathroom. So funny. So there's just a skull down there in the crypt. Is it gold teeth?

No, just the lighting. And then one last one, just one of those tunnels. Yeah, the tunnels are pretty, but like the idea of being in said tunnel freaks me out. Okay, that's all. Okay, well, that was fun.

Yeah. So that's my big story. That was, I just have a little one now, but do you have any questions about it? No, I think, I think we covered it all. Okay. Well, let's. I think I'm good. Oh, I know what I was thinking. Uh, there was so much like baby talk and weird strangeness that I wrote down the servant guys watch the servant. Yeah. We're only, we finished season one. We just finished season one. And so we don't know how well it's going to end. Reviews are good though for season four. So it gives me hope.

But it is odd. But odd in a good way. Like it makes you want to keep watching. You're just like, what the hell is happening in this story? Yeah, there were so many moments when you were telling this story. I don't want to tell you guys what happens in this TV show, but there's some baby stuff. Yeah. And this crypt made me think of that. I was like, oh. Okay, let's head to a haunted former house in New York State. Okay. Okay.

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so that you can focus on the important conversations and decisions of today. UnderstandCancerTogether.com, helping you navigate life with cancer one moment at a time. Thanks for listening to our sponsor deals, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you heard something that appealed to you. Now, here we go. In 1815, Philip Rhinelander, pretty cool name, decided to build a home on 300 acres of land passed down to him by his older brother in modern-day Lake Pleasant, New York.

Lake Pleasant founded in 1812, just a little tourist hub with mostly seasonal homes, small village with a year-round population of less than 1,000 people, and located in part of the scenic Adirondack Park in northeastern New York State. And although you will find no mention of him on the town's Wikipedia page, Philip Rhinelander is considered to be one of Lake Pleasant's founding fathers. He once served as the town's assessor, commissioner of schools,

overseer of highways, election inspector, and even town supervisor. He also helped a great number of families settled in the newly established town. And he also may have been a cold-blooded killer and an abusive and murderous husband who was never caught and punished for his horrible crimes. Time now for the tale of the Rhinelander Estate Haunting.

Philip's opulent home, which quickly became known as the Rhinelander Estate, was one of the most prominent and noteworthy properties in the early days of Lake Pleasant. The magnificent estate had gardens, orchards, livestock, stables, a barn, mills, a servant's house surrounding a grand mansion where Philip lived with his wife, Mary Colden Hoffman.

Philip had moved Mary from New York City to live with him in the mansion, and in their new home, they would have both a son and a daughter. Their life must have seemed so ideal by many of their neighbors and lake-pleasant visitors, and maybe it was ideal for Philip, but it might have been hell for everyone else. Philip was highly esteemed by many in the community, but certainly not by all.

Allegedly, Philip brought Mary to the Rhinelander estate to essentially imprison her and keep her under his control. He was said to be an extremely jealous and abusive husband and almost never allowed her to leave the property to go into town and mingle with outsiders. All of that, of course, meant Mary was miserable. She was lonely and hated feeling isolated in the Grand Mansion, and she soon wrote a bunch of letters to her family down in the city, but then became more depressed when she didn't hear back. Then one day she discovered why she had never heard back.

Philip had never sent the letters. Philip had instead burned every single one of them, further cutting her off from the outside world. Then, in an act of defiance, Mary befriended a peddler who agreed to mail future letters for her. And when Philip found out about that, this peddler supposedly mysteriously vanished. Locals speculated he was thrown down a well on the property. Allegedly, many of those who tried to befriend Mary against Philip's wishes went missing, and some were later found dead near the Rhinelander estate.

Philip may have also killed or had others kill some of his servants. One day, the dead body of the Rylanders' washerwoman was allegedly found along the shore of nearby Elm Lake. Mary would pass away in 1818, and there were rumors that Philip denied her access to a doctor when she was sick and on her deathbed because he had poisoned her. Outwardly, Philip appeared to be devastated by the loss of his wife. He lived alone in the mansion for the next five years before returning to New York City, where he would die February 21, 1830.

Before he died, he hired two caretakers to maintain the estate in his absence, an Englishman named Thomas Wayne and a local American man named Isaac Page. Wayne would work at the Rhinelander estate until 1828, and reports of paranormal activity inside the mansion would originate around this time. The most well-known of the Rhinelander estate's ghost stories would come from the caretakers themselves. For instance, Thomas Wayne once invited a guest to sleep in Mary's former bedroom.

And that visitor would claim that during the middle of the night, he was awakened from his sleep by the sound of a woman sobbing. And when he opened his eyes, he saw the ghost of the crying woman floating towards his bed from across the room before she vanished. He couldn't sleep for the remainder of the night, and he left the next morning.

On another occasion, Thomas said a worker was sleeping in the same room. When he was awoken by the sound of rustling skirts, he opened his eyes, saw a woman now brushing her hair in the mirror, and before she disappeared herself, he noticed that she had no reflection. Some other visitors who slept at the mansion, while the caretakers still lived there, reported phenomena such as hearing a man's boots storming up the staircase, but finding no one there when they investigated it.

One visitor claimed to have witnessed an apparition passing through the hallway before disappearing into the wall of the boarded-up fireplace. The daughter of the caretaker, Isaac Page, claimed to have once watched some candles float through the air when she stayed in the home as a young woman. She and her father searched the house, ironed pokers in hand as they looked for an intruder, but could find none. Thomas and other members of his family would also claim they saw the washerwoman's ghost wandering the property day and night on several occasions.

After the two caretakers left, the mansion was boarded up, and stories of what they and others had supposedly seen, rumors of the home's haunting, led to a number of curious people trespassing and breaking in. Some of the trespassers claimed they saw a spirit in the second floor window. Others said they heard the faint sound of infants crying. One individual who broke into the house swore they saw a floating candlestick moving up and then down the staircase. Who was holding it? The ghost of Mary Rhinelander? Or the spirit of someone else possibly murdered by her husband?

The Rhinelander estate remained unoccupied for several decades until 1875 when it burned down in a suspicious fire. A group of loggers claimed they spotted a man leaving the scene of the fire, but that person was never arrested and charged with arson or even identified. Today, all the remains of the Rhinelander estate is burned and weathered ruins.

Still, thrill-seekers will trespass and camp within wet little remains of the old foundation walls of the home, and they continue to claim they hear odd noises or see objects or apparitions floating through the air. One group of campers reported witnessing a spirit walking out of the lake. Another claimed they saw a figure of a woman in the woods.

If the stories about Philip Rylander's murderous ways are true, the grounds of the former estate could be haunted by the spirits of any number of those allegedly killed on the property. People whose murderer was never brought to justice, with the most infamous being the spirit of his wife, who possibly died thanks to his last terrible act of exerting his destructive control over her. I hope she haunts him. Her spirit haunts his spirit? Yeah.

I would love that. A little spirit battle. I know. I'd like to hear more stories about that. I mean, I feel like in some movies and stuff, I've seen that play out before where there's like a ghost haunted by the ghost of another, which is a cool thing. Yeah. Yeah. I doubt that we would ever have stories like that here because... Well, you'd have to have somebody who would claim to witness both the apparitions, would witness one apparition. You know, actually, I think we have had a story here of

It was like, was it a Ouija? Did it revolve around a Ouija board where one spirit was asking for help from another spirit? I can't remember, but it sounds there's something there. Yeah, maybe. But I just love the idea of like...

than like pranking each other and just taking it really far. Yeah, yeah. Where did their kids go? I want to know. It's like they had a boy and a girl. I just didn't pursue it. Just didn't feel like... Oh, okay. It wasn't a lot of details, I remember. I think... I want to say the girl died... Well, no. Did the girl die young? I want to say the girl might have died young in early childhood in the...

And boy lived onwards, but I'm not totally sure. I was like, help your mom. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of biographical information on them. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Well, do you have photos? I have three photos. No pics of the Rylander estate, you know, just due to how long ago the home burned down. Yeah. But here's an aerial view of part of the lake itself with some homes around it so you can get a feel for the area. Oh, it is pretty. Very pretty. Very heavily wooded. And this is one of so, so many lakes in the area. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's everywhere up there. Kind of reminds me of like Minnesota even. Mm-hmm.

Uh, here's a sign near the former site of the Rhinelander estate, just marking where it was. Rhinelander. Uh-huh. I, I thought you were saying Rhylander and I was like, like Heather Rhylander? Oh yeah. Rhinelander. Rhinelander. Yeah. Philip Rhinelander.

All right, buddy. And then... Naughty pants. And then this is one more photo here. This is just all the remains of the former home whose ruins have almost entirely been reclaimed by nature. Just some old foundational stones. Like, you can see, like... Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I don't see anything. Yeah. If you, like...

all that brush and stuff around. You could see some little edges and things, I'm sure. Okay. But there's not much there. It is fascinating how quickly nature just like... Reclaims. Reclaims the land, yeah. I love it. Mm-hmm. Nature's like, fuck you all. You keep fucking up this planet. I'm just gonna take it back. Mm-hmm.

All right, Dan. Are you ready to be a good listener? I am. I got my red Layla and I'm ready to go. Hey, red Layla. You, me, Layla, pineapple. Pineapple's still here, guys. I need another sunny hipper to, to, because pineapple's head keeps popping off. Oh, man. I know what it may be. Okay, let's go.

Time now for the tale of Midwestern goodbyes. To anyone that does not reside in the Midwestern states of the U.S., a Midwest goodbye is a phrase used for how long it takes to leave a gathering. It is never just, well, this was fun. We look forward to next time and departing. It usually starts with one person saying, well, goodbye.

Better be going. Accompanied by a slap on their knee or thigh. This is not the actual departure either. It proceeds to move from sitting to standing to the front hall to the garage to the driveway by the car and finally an actual goodbye.

which is a process that roughly takes anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. If it sounds exhausting, it's because it is. But if you grin and bear it, it's because it's the Midwest nice. With that background info out of the way, let's dive in.

When I was really little, maybe four or five, it started to happen. I would see and even interact with people that weren't really there. It wasn't all the time, just glimpses here and there. Sometimes a shadow from the corner of my eye. Sometimes it would be a toy left out that I knew I had put away when I cleaned up my room. My young mind didn't think too much of the notion, just accepting it as a fact of life.

When you are that young and learning how to experience and interact with the world, anything can be seen as normal if it occurs enough. December of my seventh year, my family was living a few hours away from our aunt, uncle, and cousins. We were fortunate enough to still see them multiple times a year. Myself and my two siblings went about our blissful day of youth with no responsibilities to our names. Especially at such an age, school doesn't hold the weight it will in the following years.

Every waking hour was filled with arts and crafts and playing. The three of us, although different in ages and interests, still found connection in make-believe and play. It was just another afternoon of playing, though something was different. On this day, our cousin joined us. She was very close in age to the youngest of my siblings, about a week apart.

We continued to play, running around the house, building towers as high as we could with those cardboard bricks. If you've never had the pleasure of playing with them, they're essentially thin, hollow cardboard bricks that look like cartoons with their brightly painted, primary colored rectangles adorning the sides.

We were having a blast, and I distinctly remember my cousin's signature bright blonde ponytail swinging as we ran, her light-up sneakers flashing with every footfall. That day, she was wearing her favorite dress, a dark green velvet dress that she had worn to her school pictures, and since then, it was hard to get her out of it. Our shrieks of laughter were interrupted when my mother walked into the room,

tears streaming down her face. She tried to say something, but instead gestured for all of us to come and sit in her room as she had something important to tell us. Confused, my siblings and I looked at each other and then followed her. The three of us sat down on the carpet and looked up at her, our innocence shining through. I glanced out the door to where my cousin was standing. She was still smiling at me. I gave her a smile and then turned my attention back to my mother.

She looked at each of us in turn and took a deep breath before telling us that our aunt and cousins were in a bad accident. Our aunt was hurt but would be fine. One of our cousins had some scratches but was otherwise unharmed. But our youngest cousin, I could hear her voice crack as she tried to find the words to explain to her young children what had happened.

Our family had experienced a tragedy. There was an extremely unfortunate accident. Three of my family members were in the car and on the way to school. My aunt was driving with my two cousins in the back seat. There was a patch of black ice on the road. When a school bus stopped in front of them, my aunt was unable to stop their vehicle. I don't want to get into too much detail about the rest of the scene, but I'm sure you can figure it out.

If you are unaware, the front and back end of a school bus are made with concrete in order to be safer for the children on board. And although it protects its occupants, it can make being outside the vehicle rather dangerous.

Out of the three family members in the car, my aunt fractured her neck and was covered in scratches. My older cousin was lucky enough to walk away with just a few nicks here and there. The same couldn't be said for my youngest cousin. Her body was too young to survive all of the trauma her body was put through. She was rushed to the hospital and put on life support. The medical staff tried everything they could.

My siblings and I, being so very young, were not included in the very detailed conversations about what had happened. But after all their work, they couldn't do anything more, and she was pronounced dead. Her parents made the hard decision to donate her salvable organs. Although we lost a precious member of our family, she was able to help others.

Even at that age, I was no stranger to loss and grief. However, my siblings were about to experience that heart-wrenching sorrow for the first time, trying to navigate what it means in a young mind. My mother gathered her words and said that our cousin was hurt pretty badly, that the doctors did everything they could, but they couldn't wake her up.

My mom shared that a few hours ago, the doctors had told our aunt, uncle, and cousin to say their goodbyes. She began to dive into what death was, but I couldn't focus on her words. I looked at my mother in confusion. Our cousin was fine. She was playing with us just moments ago. She couldn't be hurt somewhere else if she was visiting with us. I glanced once more at my mother consoling my siblings before looking out into the living room.

From where she stood, the light from the window at the front door framed my cousin's bright blonde hair. The velvet dress swallowed the light wherever it creased, but shined with the afternoon light where it could hit. I tilted my head in confusion as I looked at her.

My cousin offered me a smile, one half-reaching her eyes. Her face told me that she knew something I didn't. Her small hand gave me a wave, fingers wiggling, then she turned around and ran out of sight. I stood up and I tried to find her. My mom called for me as I raced out of her bedroom. I searched through the whole house and in all of our favorite hiding spots—the unfinished basement, under the Christmas tree, and so on—but she was nowhere that I could find—

I stood in the living room, confused. My mother finally walked out of my parents' room, siblings in tow, and asked, "'What are you doing?' Her voice rasped me from crying for so long. "'She was here. She was here, playing with me.'

My mother, not fully understanding what my young words were trying to tell her, assured me that yes, our cousin had visited before and played with us, but that she was gone now and wouldn't be able to come over again. My mind couldn't comprehend what she was saying, but even then, I knew this wasn't something to push. I nodded along, trying to convey that I understood.

What my mother didn't understand was that just because someone leaves this world doesn't mean that they can't come back to play, even for just a bit. Because, in true Midwestern fashion, the first goodbye is never the real goodbye. Wow.

I love that story. So sweet. I know it is so sweet. So sad. So sad, but also like, yeah, so sad. But if she lives on and wherever she was running off to after she waved goodbye. Yeah. Maybe it's a really good afterlife type place or. One can only hope. Yeah. I did not know that about school buses. Did you? I didn't either. And I wanted to like, I'm so curious. It's gonna like stick with me. I wanted to like look that up. I'm like concrete. Cause I'm just trying to picture like, how was that woven into an automobile? Yeah.

Well, I guess if you think about the back end of a bus where like the seats stop, there tends to be a gap between where the seats stop and then there's like a space and then there's the back door. So maybe in that like rear bumper area, it's fortified. Yeah. Like maybe not like made of like whole like concrete, like pouring concrete the way we think of it, but maybe some like hollow bricks, almost like a cinder block or something.

Yeah, I don't know. Like, just, you know, quick little AI thing. Maybe some buses were made that way at one point. This talks about, like, heavy steel and tempered glass, but I don't know. Oh, yeah, maybe it's changed over the years, you know, to be more modern and maybe have a little bit more resistance. Not resistance, like flexibility, so that if a car does hit it, it's not just immediately smushed to smithereens. I don't know. Yeah. I know that was not a funny story, but that Midwestern goodbye. Oh, my God, the knee slap? Well, yeah.

Gotta get going. Yep. That resonated so much. So hard. And also just like the long, overly polite goodbye. Uh-huh. It's always annoyed me a little bit. Yeah. But as I get older, it annoys me more. I'm like, just leave. Oh. And also like when I, you do it more than I do. You will like stay and keep like giving people hugs and stuff. Uh-huh.

Once I've given somebody a hug and said goodbye, it feels so awkward to me to still be there that I'll just start heading for the door. That's not true. We just have a 25-minute goodbye with your family. When?

with your folks. But not because of me. I didn't say it was because of you, but you didn't say like, okay, bye, and then make it, you held court talking. You were talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. You know what? It's true. It annoys me, but I guess it depends on who it is. Like my grandma Betty is going to get more leeway than most people. But it also is annoying. It still annoys me where I'm just like, why can't we just say goodbye one time?

Everybody gets a hug. Love you. I'll see you soon. And then go your, go, just leave. Okay. I want you to stop hanging on. I want you to start working on that because, because you are, I'm never the one who instigates it. Okay. I don't. Okay. You think I do? Uh huh. When? You just get like, if we're with a group of friends and we've gone out to dinner and it's like, all right, man, love you. Bye. And then you like make your way around the group. Then you go back to the first person and you start, you just get sucked back in. Yeah.

Everybody does. It's just human nature. It's like, oh, wait, but I want to tell you one more thing. Like the last friend dinner we had with Courtney and Isaac, you know, I don't know, like eight weeks ago. Yeah. It's like we had dinner. We talked, we talked, we talked. And then we were like, leave the restaurant. And then we were like saying goodbye. We were in like a driveway. And then it was like, oh, wait, but one more. And like talked for a few more minutes. Just human nature. Yeah. Because like, I think if we're,

My opinion is that if we're having a good time, we actually don't want the good time to end. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're not as bad as, I don't think we're as offensive of like, it could take hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is the like, you know, in the house goodbye, and then if they walk you to your car and-

Yeah, maybe I guess. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe I am guilty of it then sometimes. And then other times I am annoyed by it. Yeah. Where I'm like, I'm tired. Two things can be true. True. Exactly. I'm tired. I want to leave. We said our goodbyes. Why am I still here? Stop trying to keep me here. Right. Stop trying to hold me hostage. Exactly. All right. You ready for story number two? I am. Let's go. Hello. Hello.

Absolutely love the podcast and thought I would write in with my own story from about two years ago. I had just moved recently to a renovated apartment building. On the first four floors were offices, while the remaining nine floors of the 13-story building were apartments.

I was one of the first people to move in. My apartment was a small 600 square foot studio. There were no rooms other than the bathroom. It was a complete open concept. My apartment was on floor five. And at the time, there was only one other occupant on my floor. They were still renovating floors six and up. So for about a month or two, it was only me and this other resident in the building.

Some weird things had been going on, but nothing too serious. Mostly odd electrical issues. And one time, the building security guard had insisted he heard voices and loud crashing sounds coming from the floor's laundry room, even though myself and the other resident denied any involvement. My apartment specifically had three or maybe four large windows that faced a very busy street. My building was in the middle of downtown.

There was a live music venue right next door, and the concerts usually lasted until 2 or 3 in the morning, which meant a lot of people would congregate on the sidewalk below my windows on nights there were shows. One Saturday night, around 2 a.m., when I was already in bed, I was woken by a bit of commotion outside. It sounded like a lot of panicked yelling and a few people shouting, "'Call the police!'

Thinking it was just a fight between drunk concert goers, I tried to fall back asleep only to be awoken about 15 minutes later with the very loud and aggressive knocks on my door. It was the police. Apparently, they had received a lot of calls from a lot of people outside on the sidewalk claiming that a, quote, woman was shouting for help and that it was specifically coming from my apartment. A

According to the calls, a blonde woman, I'm a brunette, was sticking her head out of my window, crying and shouting for people to call for help. I suggested that maybe it was coming from the floor above, that maybe someone broke into the still under construction apartments above me and the people on the sidewalk were mistaken. They checked the floors above and below me, but there weren't any signs of intrusion. It didn't take long for them to check my super small apartment and realize that I was safe and there was no one else there.

Everyone was understandably confused. Upon second questioning, the concert goers, there were about 15 to 20 people outside at the time, insisted that the woman was shouting from my window. Plus, the other resident in the building living there was on the opposite side, their windows facing the other direction.

I never figured out what happened that night, and the only history I could find about the building was that it used to be an emergency safe house for domestic violence victims. Women who were undergoing imminent threats could come here at any point in the middle of the night for protection and then would be brought to the actual shelter the next morning when it reopened. That said, I couldn't find any incidents reported in the paper about anything specifically happening here. I was surprised.

super freaked out and moved out at the end of my six month lease. Thank you so much for the podcast every week, Christina. Thank you, Christina. That is two things I thought about with that story. One is I'm always fascinated with like buildings, like, okay, like a Missoula above the Wilma where, where there's, you know, like the concert venue below. And then there's all these, you know, apartments or condos above. Yeah. And I always think like, okay, on one hand, if you were young and you really love going to concerts, um,

That might be really cool or you love to be out late and kind of party to live right there. But also it could really suck to like how good is the noise deadening? Like how much of the sound bleeds into your apartment, which would suck, or the noise of people leaving concerts and going to concerts. And you know when you go to like look at the apartment that you're going to apply for, you're asking like, okay, how's the sound? And they're going to say, oh, it's great. It's great. There is no way to truly know until you have to sleep through your first concert. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I've never known anybody who has lived in one of those specific units before. Yeah, me either. Yeah, so that was cool just to hear what that experience could be like on some level. And then the other thing, that would really suck. I mean, it just happened one night, it sounds like in this instance, but I was like, oh my God, what if...

You lived in a highly public area like that. And this apparition does just keep showing up. Isn't antagonizing you, but it's appearing in your window like a woman in distress yelling for help. It's like,

There's no way the police showing up are going to be like, oh yeah, that's just a ghost. It does that sometimes. Like, yeah, right. We're gonna have to search your place again. Well, and think about like, what I thought about was that, okay, the building was under construction. So it's just Christina and this one other person. Yeah. And like, she moves out six months later. But what happened?

Yeah.

you know, whatever. And they're like, eventually they're just gonna be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Sure. But then the building fills up with people and now you can't write it off in the same way because it's not just Christina and Joe Schmo living there. It's like, now you have a building full of people so now you have to answer every call and check every,

Can you imagine week after week, night after night, knocking on every door? Like, yep, it's just me again. Sorry. We got the call. Because the one time they don't. Yeah, exactly. They get in so much trouble. So much trouble because something could seriously be happening. And what if they don't come to any understanding? What if they just think like you have to be hiding something? Oh.

Oh, my God. We keep getting reports that there was a woman seen in your window calling for help. Where are they? Like, I would think that eventually at least some of the officers would think, like, this guy's a serial killer or this girl or whatever. Sure, sure. Or this person's being abused and they're hiding it. Yeah, something's going on. They're not going to believe in all likelihood unless they see the operation with their own two eyes. Yeah. They're not going to believe ghosts. So you are just screwed. You have to just leave. Yeah, well, I'm proud of Christina that she was able to. Right. Because it's like...

Just your sleep is going to be so fucked up for so long. Oh, yeah. Not worth it. Yeah, that wasn't really... I can't think of an equivalent story like that. I love a new type of story. Yeah, I just love this idea that, like, wasn't bothering her. Nope, she didn't even see it. Nope. So had the police not knocked on her door? Because I guess that's another thing, too, is, like, how many times were people leaving that venue seeing something, but, like, not...

Hearing the apparition call for help. Yeah. Just seeing some woman that maybe appears like she's like dancing in the window. Maybe she's like flailing around. She's partying after the show. Exactly. Yeah. Meanwhile, Christina or whomever lives there is none the wiser. Yep. Just, uh,

blissfully ignorant ah that's the best scenario yeah that there's a ghost in their own window that's the best scenario until christina goes to a show and oh and then looks up at her own window that would suck yeah oh my gosh okay one more yeah all right let's go hello beautiful people this literally just happened in the last 24 hours i'm trying to type this while it's fresh when i should be saging the hell out of my house

I recently made a list of horror movies I'd never seen and decided to start with the catalog of Mike Flanagan. I fell in love with him after seeing Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass.

While I was searching Hulu, I came across a movie on my list, Oculus. In short, the movie is about a mirror that tries to kill people. Despite what happened during and after watching it, I really enjoyed the movie. Now, before I jump into the story, I want to acknowledge that my husband is the best spouse in the world. I wouldn't hesitate to throw down with anyone who says theirs is better. Girl, we gotta fight.

I work full time to provide for the family, go to school full time, but I will burn myself out before I let my husband or kids ever feel second to school or work. My husband Matt's job is to take care of me, our kids, the house, my parents' house, and our dogs. He makes sure I eat, sleep, and relax so I can kick ass at work, school, momming, and wifing. He literally does everything and I'd be dead without him. He is the happy thought that makes me fly.

Now the spooks. Let's set the scene. I'd had a rough day at work and wanted to disconnect for a bit. After dinner, my hubby and I snuggled up in bed to watch a movie. I lit a candle on my nightstand, the same candle I've lit every night for several weeks. Our cheap Walmart mirror we've had forever hung on the internal wall just to the right of the foot of our bed. And our two dogs, Ziggy and Murdoch, snuggled into our legs.

In the beginning-ish of the movie, a dog on the TV started barking, causing Murdoch to go on red alert and bark at the TV. Not uncommon. The dog on the TV stopped barking, but Murdoch kept going, and his focus turned from the TV to the mirror.

The fur on his spine stood straight up and the barks turned into deep growls. I tried to calm him down, but he was not letting up. He jumped out of my arms and onto the floor. He stood back on his hind legs and put his two front paws on the mirror, barking and growling.

Matt and I exchanged nervous glances, and then I yelled for the kids to let the dogs outside. We snuggled back in to watch the movie, but then became distracted by my candle crackling. It had never done this any of the other nights I'd lit it. The loud, almost scary crackling continued throughout the movie. After the dogs were outside for 30 minutes, I yelled for the dogs, I yelled for the kids to bring the dogs back inside. I yelled for the dogs to bring the dogs back inside.

Yes, you yelled for the dogs to bring the kids back inside too. Ziggy laid on the ground at the foot of the bed. Murdoch laid on the bed close to my legs, no longer barking, but still staring at the mirror. Once the movie ended, we talked about how much we liked it and the hotness of Katie Sackhoff. She is so fucking hot. I've worked with her. And Kate Siegel. We put the kids to bed and put the dogs in the living room.

I watched Critical Role on YouTube to lighten the mood before going to sleep. And at about 1 a.m., I was awoken by our bedroom door opening. The door sticks. Anytime it's open, you'd loudly hear it scrape against the frame. Matt was still awake, playing his DS. He instinctively said without glancing, Lily, what do you need? When our daughter didn't answer, he rolled over to look around and saw no one.

He turned his attention back to his DS, and I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. Hardly a minute passed when we felt the mattress depress between us at our feet. What the fuck? I yelled. Matt jumped up into attack mode, but there was no one there. We confirmed we felt the same thing and then checked to make sure human and dog children alike were in their designated spaces. I was far too tired to give a shit, so I went back to bed.

A few hours passed when loud footsteps on the laminate floor at the end of the hallway woke me. It's just the dogs, I said in my head. Then I heard, very clearly, my husband right outside our door saying, Okay. Okay.

I assumed he'd caught our son playing video games in the middle of the night. I pulled my blanket up, rolled over, only to find Matt asleep next to me. I flipped over onto my back, straightened my body, closed my eyes, and repeated in my head, go the fuck away, go the fuck away, this is my house. You leave or I'll make you leave. I must have fallen asleep saying this mantra because I blinked and it was 7.30 a.m. My alarm was going off, telling me it was time to get back to hell. I mean, back to work.

I woke up, turned on my work phone, and walked into my office. Another busy day full of meetings awaited me. Around 9 a.m., I had a break in my schedule, and so I woke Matt up to tell him about some work things. Once he actually woke up, he asked me about the night before, and we both recounted the same story. I don't know. Maybe tonight we'll watch another Mike Flanagan movie and see what happens after I do some cleansing. Of course. Much love, Stephanie."

Thank you, Stephanie. Stephanie, you're a brave bitch. I would not be watching more horror movies after my dogs are like practically trying to go through the mirror after watching a movie about a mirror and then thinking you hear your daughter, but not. Then something crawling on your bed. Then having a strange, like, I don't even know, like a doppelganger-esque encounter. Too many things, Stephanie. Too many things. There's not enough sage for that shit.

I do like Mike Flanagan. Oculus. We watched that. I think we watched that when we were watching horror movies and rating them here. I think that was one of the ones. Oculus. Okay, because I remember talking about Katie Sackhoff. I wasn't going to Google it. There was no way. Katie Sackhoff. Because you said you worked with her. I have no idea who that is by name. You might when you see her. Battlestar Galactica.

I never watched that show. Okay. Well, then I can't help you. Katie Sackhoff. And it's like S-A-C-K-H-O-F-F, like Sackhoff. Oh, okay. I don't know what I – I probably just recognize her from Oculus. Yeah. Honestly. Okay. Well, all right. Girl is fit. She is. She's very fit. She's so fit. A little bit nuts, which is, you know, comes with being hot. Like if you're hot, you're just a little bit nuts. Okay. Fair. Fair.

I don't know anybody who would disagree with that. Truly. Truly. You're a little bit nuts. You're hot. Okay. See? There you go. It tracks. This is weird to say, but our daughter Monroe, she's pretty hot. And she's a little bit nuts. She is. She's beautiful. She had prom this last weekend. And she was like, I mean, she's always beautiful. But fucking knock out, stop you in your tracks, gorgeous. And she's a little nuts. Well, teenager. Teenager.

But also. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Also Monroe. I mean, look at her dad. You're hot. You're a little bit nuts. I'll take that. You know I think you're hot. Thank you. I think last night I said to you, and I quote, just like the rest of you, your breath is a little hot, so I'm going to roll over now. I don't like breath in my, I don't like air in my face. I have like a weird thing. That was a nice way of saying that. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a fun story though, huh? That was. All those stories were great. I really liked your stories. Well, thanks. I liked your stories better than my... Not that I didn't like my stories, but I liked your stories more. Well, thanks. I liked mine more too. Okay, fair. Some weeks are just like that. It's the ebb and flow of storytelling. Exactly.

Do you want to thank some Annabelles? I do, Dan. Thank you. And we'll be sharing next week. We're going to do a little special highlight on this month's charity. So it'll be a longer charity announcement next week. But I'm really excited to share it with you guys. Really special to me. Just a special experience of presenting the donation. But we couldn't do it without the support of our patrons. So big thanks to our Annabelles who are able to support us every month at the $10 level. Frankie.

Sarah M. Group, Tracy, Sam Farnsworth, Lori Grenke, Aaron Ives, Sam Brown, Cassandra Kaiser, Jan Stewart. One word, all caps, LAW. LAW. LAW. LAW DOG. Nope. LAW. Just LAW. Yeah. Don't fuck with the LAW. Okay. I have a... How's that song go?

I fought the law and the law won? I was going to say, I fucked with the law and the law won. That would also be fun. That's the uncentered version. Carry on. Okay, so I will think in this one, I guess this person wanted to test my pronunciation and I'm pregnant this wrong. So it looks like Asha. Asha Cole. It's not. It's Asia. Well, Asia, get mad at your parents. Yeah, they don't know how to spell. Because they fucked your name up. Yeah.

They could have spelled it A-S-I-A, which is how the word Asia is spelled. But instead they went A-S-H, A-S-H like ash and added a ya. But now I get it. I'm like Asia. I know Asia. It's almost a phonetic. Totally. I will say I don't care like not in a careless way, but I don't care like at all at all about mispronouncing people's names anymore. Like at all.

You've said that here. Oh, have I? Yeah. Because of all the like various like pronunciations and different like... And it's because, yeah, like various pronunciations, but also it's like the Ellis Island effect, the Americanization of names changes things. People will change their own surnames sometimes. What?

Well, no, not first name, surname, like their actual family name, like make it a little easier for people so that things get altered. But then also there's no when people like in this country are like the parents get to name a kid. There's almost no rules. No, there are no rules. Well, I think there are some there are some weird laws. I remember a long time ago where you can't like name your kid like fuck dick.

Like, like there are like actually like against like, uh, cause somebody did that. So there are, yeah. Somebody named her kid shithead and stuff, but like legally. And so some States I believe do have laws were like, no, you can't like give your kid profanity for a name. Do you know the urban legend of like, I mean, I heard this growing up, uh, that there was a mom who had twins and she named them Arangelo and Lamangelo. No, I don't know that. And that is lemon jello and orange jello.

I don't think it, I say urban legend because I don't actually think it's real. And I believe that I told somebody that and they were like, hold on a second. I heard that story growing up too. And like opposite ends of the country. I remember when I was doing like lots of meet and greets and signing like, um, you know, uh, things for people after the shows. And, you know, I'd always ask like, what's your name? And, uh, I'm like, I'm gonna need you to spell that. And then a lot of times I would ask if it was exceptionally unique. I'm like, what's the story there? And I, more,

More than once, many more than once, people tell me that their parents were essentially illiterate.

and didn't know how to spell. And just like, that's the letters they fucking threw down there. But like the people would like, yes, sad, but also the kid who gets that name. I remember every time like those people being like kind of rolling their eyes and be like, yep, now I'm stuck with it. Like a little annoyed. Well, you can change it. And I do, I love when people would come through the meet and greet line with like very interesting names. And like you kind of already got the vibe like, oh, your parents were hippie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. And they'd be like, oh, yeah. And it turns out there was like a big story behind it. You know, about, oh, my parents got, you know, one time before they were pregnant with me, they got super fucking high and they had this vision and then they said, well, we have a kid.

kid. I had a roommate in college, no middle name. I made him show me his driver's license. I didn't believe him. Flash Gordon, like the superhero. That's fucking awesome. First name Flash, last name Gordon, spelled exactly as a superhero. Why not? And he was so weird. I love it. I actually love that because that's not that weird of a name. It's kind of weird. I've heard worse. No, I've heard worse. Yeah. So Asia Cole, Kelly Jensen,

I love the Sir Reginald Rumpus. That's great. And I like this one even more. Oren the Jewish Necromancer. Okay. All right, Oren. Yeah. Alyssa Grimm. Brie Ruggles. Ashley Ryan.

STD for Alex Delgado, baby. That's funny. There's a story. That is hilarious. And they wrote STD, like could be sexually transmitted disease. But they're called STIs now, so. I know, yeah. But I think people of my age or around my age, older, still go STD. But like for Alex Delgado, who is Alex Delgado? Anyway. Please send us an email. Tell us more. Trashpandacoot, all one word. That's great. And there's the story behind this one. Brumpotungus. Brumpotungus. Okay.

Brumpo Tungus. I feel like somebody's a butt licker. It sounds like I would love, I hope Brumpo Tungus is a birth name. I hope someone's legal name is Brumpo Tungus. I don't feel like. Mr. Tungus. Tungus, but Brumpo? Maybe. I've heard a lot of crazy names. Brumpo? Brumpo Tungus.

Now I picture somebody being very offended and be like, yeah, it's a common name. It's a family name. They're from another country. And we're like, oh, shit. I've never been to your country and I didn't know. Well, listen, if I'm wrong, I'm sorry. And you can feel free to make fun of my name as much as you want. Oh, yeah. I have no shame. I don't care. You know what? And that's also why I feel comfortable with that because I got my- Because our last name is Cummins. Oh, yeah. So it's like, and you know what? And I don't care. Yeah, make fun of my name. It's a weird last name. Cummins. Cummins.

Coomans. Coomans. Lots of Coomans. Do you want to do some spoopy shout-outs? I do. First, a spoopy shout-out to all of our fans. Thank you so much for the biscuit recipes. As previously mentioned, Dan and I were out of town for a bit, so I have not gotten to make any of them. But I have about 12. That's awesome. Yes. So I have them all saved. I am going to go through them one at a time. I haven't decided if it would be hilarious to set up a GoPro and record myself because I'm a disaster in the kitchen. It's really funny.

Um, but in some way, shape or form, I will report back. And my hope and my plan there is that at least a couple of them are good enough to share, maybe more than a few, maybe all. And then I can ask for like another, like, you know, recipe, this recipe that we've talked about a scared to death cookbook. Yeah.

Maybe we're cooking it up right now. I love it. All right. Now, for real, spooky shout out. To future Christine from past Christine, congratulations on completing your second master's program. All the late nights and eye strain finally paid off.

Awesome. Don't forget what a strong and stubborn bitch you are. You're going to kick cancer's ass. Remember to rest, that it's okay to ask for help sometimes, and your thyroid was an overdramatic asshole anyways. You didn't need it. Oh, we've got a friend who's had their thyroid removed, and I have lots of thyroid problems with nodules and all the things, and you will, in fact, be okay, Christine. We're thinking about you. We're cheering you on. Yeah.

to Ariah from your mom, Deja, who's one of our fabulous moderators. Happy birthday to my beautiful creeper. I'm so proud of you. You are my world. You brighten everyone's day just by being in it. Can attest, have seen many photos of you being real sweet, real cute.

To Ethan from Hannah, happy fifth anniversary. Thank you for being an amazing husband. Here's hoping the next five years are just as crazy and full of love. I love you beyond limits. And then for our last spoopy shout out of the week, the very, very special shout out to Marissa from Kenny. Time now for the tale of the rest of our lives. I love you so much. Our weirdness matches each other perfectly. Will you marry me? Wow.

Please report back. Yes, please do. Yes. Kenny was so sweet to email back and forth with. You're just like really diligent, really on it, really thoughtful. Love this. I think that's our second or third spoopy shout out marriage proposal. Yes. Rooting for you, Kenny. Rooting for you, buddy.

Get that Brumpo Tungus on. Uh-oh. Give her a little Brumpo Tungus, and then she'll say yes for sure. What if it is a real name? Well, hopefully they have a good sense of humor. We already apologized once. You're making it worse. I think if somebody is named Brumpo or Brumpo Tungus, they have a pretty good sense of humor. Well, if they don't, life is probably quite hard for them.

That's our show. Thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror. You're a nut. I love you. To mystory at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. You can email us for everything else at brumpotungus at info at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. Thanks to Logan Keith for scoring today's show. Thanks to Brumpo Tungus for the comedy. Thanks to Heather Rylander for organizing the My Story emails. Thanks to book editor Drew Atana for polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thanks to Molly... What? I have one thing I forgot to tell you. What? Um...

people were saying that they thought it'd be, I just thought of this right now because I was looking at Christopher Walken. I was looking at my Walken socks. They thought it'd be really great if Christopher Walken made an appearance with DJ Honey.

Oh, man, I haven't thought about it in a while. Sorry, guys. It just came on me right now. And if I didn't say it right this second, it would be gone forever. Thanks to... Rumpo Tungus Walken. Thanks to Molly Box for finding the first story I told this week. To Olivia Lee for finding the second. We're on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany episodes and more at Scared of Death Podcast.

Also have a private Facebook group, Creeps and Peepers, full of fellow horror lovers. Big thanks to the All Seen Eyes moderating the Creeps and Peepers group.

uh, enjoy your nightmares, creeps and peepers. If you get a chance, uh, set your dial to, uh, a one Oh 5.7 Charlotte's adult contemporary hits DJ honey. Not sure about the dial. It's been a while since I've been on the radio, but we have a new song from Christopher Walken called Broombo Tungus. Everyone's bumping the Tungus. Uh, hope you love it. It's going to be great. Oh, I

Damn it, I tried to jump into Christopher Walken there too, but that was too much improv for me. Oh, that was so good. Enjoy my new track. Enjoy the Brumple Tongues. Everyone gets the rumpus with the Brumple Tongues. Hope you were scared to death.

If spirits threaten me in this place, fight water by water and fire by fire. Banish their souls into nothingness and remove their powers until the last trace. Let these evil beings bleed through time and space. Evil may pass through but have no home here within. Scared to death. Just say goodbye. One time. Everybody gets a hug. Love you. I'll see you soon. And then go your... Go.

At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. Visit capella.edu.