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

We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared to death.

Welcome to Scared to Death, Creeps and Peepers, Roberts and Annabelles. I'm Dan. Hello, Dan. I'm Lindsay. Hello, Lindsay. Hello, sir. I don't know what I'm doing. That is nothing. That is all just nothing. I think you have one announcement, and then we are into stories. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, you made it to the end of February, y'all. Congratulations. Yeah.

All right. Well, better late than never, as promised, this month we are donating to help those in the aftermath of the fires in not only L.A., but also Altadena and just the surrounding area. We spoke with our friends who live there to figure out what was the greatest need and where could we have the most impact. And we're going to be talking about

And after much discussion, we actually landed on the Pasadena Humane Society. You know, even though the fires have been contained and, you know, there's just so many effects going on and there's so many different ways to help, but there's so many people whose animals were home alone and just ran, just booked it, right? So they're helping reunite animals with their owners when possible. A lot of those animals suffered burns and smoke inhalation and just a variety of things. So...

A thousand plus animals have gone through the doors there already, and they're really in need of some help. So we are, you know, huge animal lovers ourselves. Just can't imagine going through that with Penny and DeeDee.

So we've donated $11,000 to Pasadena Humane, and we're putting another $1,250 into the scholarship fund. And there will be more info coming next month about the scholarship fund, so stay tuned. If you'd like to learn more or donate, you can go to PasadenaHumane.org. Awesome.

Yeah, yeah. I was having crazy deja vu there. We've been recording so many episodes on both shows to get ahead, and I've just been deep into content. And I'm like, did I already hear you say this on this show? Or did I say this on Time Suck? You said it on Time Suck. Or did I read it? I guess the worst case scenario, you guys, is that Dan and I are living in an alternate universe where we have told you this many times. And if so, we super apologize. We're like stuck in some back room somewhere. I don't know. Send help.

What true paranormal horror tales submitted to mystoryatscaredtodeathpodcast.com by our awesome fans are you sharing this week, Lulu? Okay, well, my first story is super strange and super fun. It's a Ouija board tale unlike any other Ouija board tale I've ever told. Okay. A homemade Ouija board.

It's just so odd. It's really, wow. Okay. And then my second tale is one of my all-time favorite fan-submitted UFO stories. Wow. You know, I don't love a UFO story to begin with. I don't love aliens. It takes place in Ohio, which also makes it near and dear to my heart. But there's something about it that is both unsettling, but also I'm able to separate myself from it, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I'm excited for both of my stories. They're both tragic, but also scary. My first tale, the disturbing story of an exorcism that took place in a small town in Australia in 1993. I'd like to preview more, but I don't want to give away any spoilers. My second story, an especially big one, lots of lore and modern encounters surrounding the abandoned Manteno State Hospital about an hour south of Chicago.

real life horror, and also paranormal horror. Okay, okay. So a lot of content for you today. All right, yeah, my stories are both really juicy and large, so this will be, hopefully, a big episode for you guys. Yeah, yeah, once you are socked up, I will jump right in. Well, I'm going to wrap up the month with these little bats.

Because I'm batty for you in this month of love. Sweet. I try. I try. I love you, too. I love you. Okay. So you're ready to go? Let's go. Here we go. Time now for the tale of The Exorcism of Joan Vollmer. A dark and extraordinary saga revolving around a middle-aged Australian woman believed to be possessed by numerous demons began in January of 1993.

when pig farmer Ralph Vollmer became convinced that his second wife Joan's body had been taken over by dark spirits. 55-year-old Ralph and 49-year-old Joan lived in Antwerp, a very, very small Victoria town with a population of just 63 residents as of the last census, and a full 220 miles northwest of Melbourne.

The little community was settled back in 1846 when two Belgians, George Shaw and Horatio Ellermanns, were granted use of 130,000 acres of land for sheep grazing. Thirteen years later, in 1859, two Protestant missionaries from Germany built a church and a mission for the local Aboriginal community. Then in the 1880s, the Eucalyptus Malley Oil Company began operations in the township, distilling eucalyptus oil from all the eucalyptus trees in the area.

Their presence brought numerous families into the area to work for the company. The first school would open a few years later in 1891, same year the town got a post office.

Then a railway station was built three years later in 1894. Grain elevators followed a decade or so thereafter as farming in the area became more common. The town peaked in the 1930s and 1940s with just a few hundred residents, but then with the railroad having become less and less important as more and more people were driving to their jobs, as harvesting eucalyptus oil stopped thanks to China being able to sell it for less, the population declined. Local schools closed due to low enrollment in 1981-1982.

and the town was now a shell of its former shelf. But still, a few remained. A couple of dying churches still cater to the dying community's handful of residents, like Ralph and Joan Vollmer. Early in 1993, in the middle of another hot Australian summer, Ralph told some friends from church that a group of evil spirits had taken hold of his wife.

that they were making Joan dance outside in the moonlight, speak in a profane manner like she had never done before, act, quote, like a prostitute, and not just behave like a pig or a dog or make the noises those animals make, but actually take the shape of them. Afraid for his own safety and for he and his wife's souls, when Joan also allegedly became violent, Ralph tied her down to their bed. When she broke free of her restraints, when he couldn't take her screams and insults, he locked her in their basement.

And then, when he felt like he was going to lose his mind hearing her hysterical screams and violent threats all through the night, on January 26th, he called upon a neighbor to help him. 31-year-old Leanne Reichenbach came over to see for herself what was going on, and she was immediately terrified of Joan. She seemed more animal than human to her. Not knowing exactly how to help her, the pair then called on their spiritual leader, a 78-year-old Lutheran woman named Leah Clugston,

who after a lengthy conversation informed Vollmer that his wife was demonically possessed, that no less than 10 different demons were living inside of Joan's body, and that she would need an exorcism. Ralph and Leanne will now tie Joan down to a chair and deny her request for food and water so as not to feed the beasts inside of her, per Leah's instructions. And they started praying nonstop for the demons to release their hold on her soul. This was how a four-day exorcism would begin.

Tied down with their own stockings in the excessive summer heat, Joan continued to beg for food and water, to scream, to struggle against her bonds. Her husband and their neighbor would continue to refuse to aid her. They truly believed it was not Joan they were speaking with, but demons, clever demons instead, and they would not fall for their deceptions.

After hours of not making any progress in ridding Joan of the demons, Ralph and Leanne decided they needed more help to oust Joan's spiritual oppressors. And later on this first day, they called in another local church member to join in on the exorcism, 28-year-old David Klinger. Dave will help them strap Joan down further. He'll also take the lead in this unsupervised exorcism.

He leads the group in prayers as Joan fights and screams and speaks to them in different voices that no one had ever heard her use before. She swore at them, she threatened them. And then at some point, Dave begins to slap Joan in the face, repeatedly, in a misguided attempt to summon the demons, to force them to face God's commands for them to obey and to leave Joan's body. Her husband, Ralph, does nothing to stop, protest, or even question Dave's aggressive methods. He'll later say that he felt that Joan was no longer his wife.

but that instead she was, quote, "...an evil spirit that needed to be dealt with." For three days, the trio will carry on in this manner. Three long days of prayers, three long days of attempting to cast out the demons they believe still possess Joan, three long days of continuing to deny her food or water. After three days of what many will later view as nothing more than torture, the group felt that they had rid Joan of all but two stubborn demons...

Two strong male evil spirits, Ralph would later tell reporters. And now the group of three brings in a fourth to help them finish with the exorcism. They call on 23-year-old Matthew Nusk, an assistant greenkeeper at a golf course in a neighboring town, a young man whose mother believed he had, quote, special spiritual powers. Nusk believed, or excuse me, Nusk blessed some olive oil and ordered the members of the exorcism group to douse themselves with it to protect themselves from Satan's power.

Then he took several boxes of cling wrap, circled the house seven times with it, sealing doors and windows, quote, against demons. Nusk also instructed Ralph, John, Leanne, and Dave to start smashing Joan's most prized possessions with a hammer to destroy her flower beds and most of what she grew in the greenhouse. All of this was done to disrupt any lurking demons kept nearby by her pride and vanity.

Nusk said that he had identified the demons living inside of Joan as, quote, the spirit of filth, a mother and daughter demon named Princess Joan and Princess Baby Joan, and legion, a multitude of powerful demons, the Bible says Jesus Christ, once exercised from a possessed man. And then at 4 p.m. on January 30th, the fourth day of the exorcism, Nusk took the ritual in a decidedly more violent direction. Nusk now began to beat Joan repeatedly about the head.

smashing her into a wall, instructing members to sit upon her, sit on her weakened, food-deprived body as she begged them to stop, as she begged for her life. Thinking this was nothing more than demonic trickery, the group would not relent. They moved her body back into their bedroom for one final battle.

To rid Joan of her final demons, the group of four applied enormous pressure to her stomach, sitting on her, pushing down upon her. They were crushing her internal organs, moving their weight along her body in an attempt to literally squeeze the demon up and then out of her mouth. Finally, as they pushed down on her neck, her husband Ralph will later report, quote, she was hissing and frothing and they, they as in the final demons, came out with a groan. It was over.

They had bested the forces of darkness, or so they believed. In reality, what happened was that the pressure applied to her neck became so severe, Joan's thyroid cartilage was fractured, and that caused her to suffer a fatal heart attack. Joan Vollmer finally died after four days of torture, and as her body went limp, the group that included her husband rejoiced. They had won. They had defeated Satan and his demonic minions, and now they waited for Joan's imminent resurrection. The group placed her bruised and battered body

Matthew Nusk informed them she would arise the following morning as her normal, restored, no longer demonically possessed self. The next morning came and went. Joan did not move. A full 48 hours passed, and still no resurrection had come. Ralph now called a local Baptist minister, asking if he would come over and offer them further spiritual guidance. When this minister arrived, he found the group calmly eating lunch together,

as Joan's body lay still and stiff just 10 or so feet away, covered in flies, bloating and beginning to decompose in the 105 degree heat. The minister then called a doctor and also the police. Three days later, Ralph Vollmer will hold a funeral for his wife, Joan. And at this funeral, he will joyously proclaim that in a matter of minutes, Joan will miraculously rise from the dead, a living testament of God's providence.

When she does not do that, when the dirt is tossed atop her coffin, the reality of what has happened finally begins to sink in, and Ralph begins to break down and sob. The results of an autopsy will be revealed a few days later. The true nature of Joan Vollmer's death will lead to numerous arrests. The police will charge Ralph Vollmer, Leanne Reichenbach, David Klinger, and Matthew Nusk with Joan Vollmer's manslaughter. But then a magistrate will find that there is insufficient evidence for them to stand trial.

However, the Victorian director of public prosecutions will overturn that decision and a trial will still be held. And Leanne Reichenbach and David Klinger will be found guilty of the manslaughter of Joan Vollmer and of falsely imprisoning her. Her husband, Ralph, will be convicted of false imprisonment and recklessly causing injury to his wife. Matthew Nusk will only be found guilty of false imprisonment. Leanne will now be ordered to serve only four months in prison. David Klinger jailed for just three months.

Both Ralph Vollmer and Matthew Nusk will walk free, their sentences entirely suspended. The police officer in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Paul Sheridan, will later say it was the weirdest case by far that he had ever investigated. He told the Herald Sun tabloid that the four who conducted the exorcism fully believed they were doing the right thing in trying to exorcise demons.

He said all four were quite happy to talk about the bizarre, dangerous and painful things they had done to Mrs. Vollmer and how they truly believed she would come back to life after they had forced the demons from her body. Sheridan said that highlighted that highlighted just how far out of whack they were with reality. Joan Vollmer's relatives denounced Ralph and his religious cohorts, saying that Joan had never been religious before and that she died at the hands of the extreme group's extreme beliefs.

They and many others were shocked, outraged, disgusted with how light the sentences were that Joan's killers received. Following the trial, Ralph Vollmer returned to his quiet life of pig farming, continuing to live in the same house of whores where he'd watched his wife die before moving within a year. During that year, he met his third wife and the two of them moved to Queensland. The house where Joan died was sold, then resold several years ago, but it has remained empty. No one else has dared, it seems, to live there since Ralph left.

And now in the years following Joan's death, the house has gained a reputation for being incredibly haunted. Boarded up and unoccupied for over three decades, the former Vollmer home has become a popular place for terrified teens to visit on dares in the middle of the night and for trespassers fascinated with the occult to hold seances. Most enter through a hole kicked through one of the walls years earlier. The verandas have been taken off. The kids get into it from time to time, says Ivan Pollock, a long-term Antwerp local who knew Joan and her husband Ralph.

They're all scared of it. The people who own it don't want to live there. They feel it's not right. Why isn't it right? Why do so many people claim to feel the air thicken and the temperature drop substantially when they enter this building? Why do they claim to see moving shadows, pairs of glowing eyes, to hear voices whispering generally unintelligible things to them? Why are their minds reportedly filled with dark and deplorable thoughts, compulsions to hurt, murder, rape, and more?

Did Ralph and the others recklessly kill a woman who, if anything, just needed psychiatric help and not an improvised, unsupervised and violent exorcism? Or were demonic forces somehow actually at work in Antwerp, Australia in 1993? And do those forces remain? What the fuck? Right. I was getting so angry. Yeah, it's a crazy story. I moved the mic away from my mouth, but I was over here doing a lot of like, what the fuck?

He's getting so mad. I mean, when you begin any story with a quote, unsupervised exorcism, that's it. I'm like, oh, this does not end well. Because it is, if I, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but I believe that...

Okay, in the Catholic Church, you can't just have like, you know, priest Smith come over and perform an exorcism. It's like he's got to come over, do an evaluation, go back to the diocese, take it up the papal ladder, if you will. Yeah, there's a lot of steps. Right. It's like so unsupervised. This already feels so dangerous. When you get to non-denominational churches. Oh, yeah. But Lutheran. All bets are off. Well, they spoke with the Lutheran. They spoke with the Baptist Lutheran.

I smoothed out some details just to not like bog things down. I will say the Lutheran woman that was their spiritual advisor, she was kicked out of that Lutheran church.

These people had also been kicked out of an area church. Aha. So they were like outsiders amongst outsiders. Okay. Okay. This is, that's a little bit helpful. I'm glad that I asked. Okay. And I would just say on this, my thought is like, okay, let's go with the possibility. Demonic possession is real. Exorcisms are real. The way this exorcism was done, I don't care if she was riddled with demons. This was wildly irresponsible. Okay.

wildly inappropriate, violent, cruel. You're just getting this young assistant greenkeeper. I know. I literally wrote this down. This 23 year old kid. Okay. This idiot. Kyler is 19. Yeah. I wouldn't trust him now to do an exorcism. And I sure shit wouldn't trust him in four more years from now. Right. Absolutely not. He's a child. Yeah. And I will say like, as exorcisms have evolved, uh,

you know, like, um, and, and the Catholic church is like, you know, uh, the world expert in exorcisms. Absolutely. If I really thought we needed an exorcism, anybody, any of our loved ones to the Catholic church, I would go a march. Well, they're the only, you know, like, um, Abrahamic religion that has done extensive training and study over the years. And I'm saying this as a, from a non-religious point of view, but they have, I mean, it just

is a fact. Yeah, it's part of the whole system. Yep. They, you know, it's, there's not many trained exorcists, you know, in the world within the Catholic, but they have to go through like, you know, a lot of scrutiny and, and,

Their first go-to is to refer people to psychiatrists. They try to, like, push it towards the medical realm for as long as possible. And there's still debate, even within the Catholic Church, within different orders, if demonic possession, as it is shown, you know, in movies and with – is even a real thing. Sure. You know, it's – but it's like, yeah. And then when it is done, you know, now there tends to be, like, a doctor nearby. It's very, very controlled because –

of many mistakes like this made in the past. Oh my God. So insane. I was just like a 23 year old. Are you kidding me? I wouldn't trust. I would not trust 23 year old Lindsay to do a whole lot of anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Shit. Not 23 year old Dan. Yeah. Oh my God. Sure. Shit. Not perform an exorcism. Um, the sentencing on this is also outrageous. Outrageous. I am so,

So furious. And it was fascinating to hear the police officer involved saying that this was the lightest sentencing or such a bizarre case and that they were so happy to talk about it. Yeah. And just I wrote down like just because you believe that you're helping someone doesn't make it true. Oh, yeah. I can say that I believe that water is actually good.

oil. Yeah. Gasoline. And I can put it in my car. Yeah. It doesn't magically do what it's supposed to do. I can believe a lot of things that doesn't make it a fact. What's that idiom? It's like one of the ones I like the most. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Absolutely. Do I think these people probably had good intentions? I actually do. I bet they actually did.

You know, because like numerous of them came over there. They all seem to agree. I mean, there's groupthink and other psychological phenomenons. But it's like, I don't think this was a case of let's kill Joan. No. Well, okay.

Except I am... He got married quickly afterwards. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, and that's his third wife. And I'm like, where's his first wife? And where's his third wife now? And is this a whole shtick that Ralph does? He marries a woman. He spends some time being married to her. Pulls her into his theological beliefs. And then convinces his legion of believers that his wife is possessed. If he has done that...

I will say I highly doubt that the other two marriages ended in death because if they did, oh, what a big media story that would be. Unless he's like constantly changing his name and I mean – Yeah, I don't know. It could be hidden. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Do you want to see some photos? Oh, I guess. Yes.

um okay so this first one this is a picture of joan oh not long before she uh she died she looks so hearty mm-hmm hearty yeah she does but she does like she does yeah strong yeah she just like i don't know my family's germanic and she just reminds me a lot of my family yeah yeah broad-shouldered full face happy go lucky like i don't she reminds me of my dad's side of the family yeah which is polish but still uh this next one this is ralph at her funeral you dude

Uh, this next one is, uh, another one of the exorcists, David Klinger with his little boy. They're leaving a Melbourne court right after being found guilty of manslaughter.

Uh, this next one is Leanne Reichenbach with her husband, John leaving court. I just hate all of them. So this, and then, then here's the, the, the leader towards the end, this young groundskeeper. That's the 23 year old. Why does he look like he's about 45? I don't know. Matthew, Matthew mask. And then finally, that's the, a recent photo of, of the house where this all went down. I'll board it up and you can see that hole where people sneak in there in the back. Yeah. It's like, I don't know if the house is haunted or if that, you know, but it's,

It's certainly not in good shape and it would certainly give you the ick. Yes. You know, going out there at night. Yeah, I can see it definitely getting your imagination going. And this is such a rural area. I mean. Yeah, that was the other part that was like, you know. Yeah, but it's out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it really plays into it. Oh, Joan, I'm sorry. Yeah.

Intense, intense, intense. So sad. It is. It is. Well, enough of that. Well, this next story. It only gets better. I can only go up from here. Is that what you're going to say? It's going to get worse. Okay, great. You ready to move on from some definite real-life horror and maybe paranormal horror to more, even more intense definite real-life horror and maybe paranormal horror? I will say, just to wrap it up on this one. Oh, yes. It is entirely possible that

that this house is incredibly haunted and that it was haunted when Ralph and Joan moved into it and it slowly seeped into their psyche and it took over and and then she was possessed yeah I mean it is possible and it is possible to also perform exorcisms without killing the person I know I know just yeah no matter what's going on with the person don't do it like those people did before we move on to more scares we need to take a quick in-between story sponsor break

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Scared. That's MeUndies.com slash scared. Code scared for 20% off. MeUndies. Comfort from the outside in. Thank you for listening to our sponsor deals, creeps and peepers. Manteno State Hospital is the name of a massive former psychiatric facility in rural Manteno Township, Illinois, about an hour's drive south of Chicago.

It opened nearly 100 years ago in response to overcrowding at other state asylums in the Chicago area. The first 100 patients were transferred to Manteno in December of 1930. The facility was welcomed by local residents for bringing much-needed jobs into the area right as the Great Depression was beginning. The hospital initially housed all of its patients in eight separate two-story cottages, a unique, pretty cute layout compared to the other Chicago-area institutions.

Mantino also had a farm on site to rehabilitate patients through what they were calling work therapy. And at first, it was wonderful, quaint, idyllic. But as the patient population grew, as the accommodations and staff were stretched thinner and thinner, conditions deteriorated. A tuberculosis ward was added in 1937 and hundreds more patients were brought in, despite a shrinking budget that led to staffing shortages and despite the additional patients pushing the facility past its maximum capacity.

The facility expanded in size over the next two years, and by 1939, Mantena was twice the size of nearby Kankakee State Hospital. It was expanded to now house a maximum of 5,000 patients, but the population had already surpassed that number by early 1939. And then during the summer of 1939, the institution was hit by an outbreak of typhoid fever. It began that August when several patients complained of diarrhea,

Doctors mistakenly reported their illnesses to the Illinois Board of Health as dysentery. The number of sick patients tripled the next day. State Welfare Director Archibald Bowen knew that many doctors did not recognize typhoid when they saw it, so he ordered the water supply to be chlorinated. And he sent a truckload of vaccines to the hospital, but it was too late.

Time magazine would report in October of 1939, quote, patients lay moaning in bed. Others whipped by mad fear, beat against the screen windows, grappled with attendants. Some of the attendants fell ill. All were panicky. Every night, kitchen boys and orderlies disappeared. Over 45 ran away in all. The epidemic had run its course by late September. In the end, 53 people were dead, including some employees and construction workers, and over 350 were hospitalized.

The cause of the epidemic was believed to be contamination of the local water supply by raw sewage. On November 13th, a grand jury indicted four individuals working at the hospital and charged them with, quote, malfeasance in office concerning the death of 53 persons and the illness of hundreds of others. Things would not improve after this. The Second World War began, and many of America's most skilled doctors and medical staff were reallocated to help with the war effort. And that meant that the best doctors that had been working at Manteno State were no longer there.

Meanwhile, the patient population, already exceeding capacity, continued to grow and grow and conditions worsened and worsened. There were an increasing number of reports of abuse and neglect, of patients attacking caregivers, caregivers attacking patients, and a record high number of escapees. Rumors of unethical patient treatment and medical experimentation abounded in the 1940s and 50s.

Patients allegedly underwent unauthorized electroshock therapy and lobotomies. And some sources claim patients were injected with malaria and given experimental medicines, perhaps as part of classified U.S. government programs without being first given informed consent. One particularly sad, well-documented case of a patient abused at Manteno State is the very tragic story of Jenny Polarski. When she passed away in her nursing home one September day in 1998 at the age of 79, she

few noticed or cared, as she had been a prisoner of Illinois state mental institutions for over 50 years. Jenny's parents had her committed to Manteno State Hospital in 1944 when she was just 25 years old. Why? Well, because she wasn't, as an adult woman, doing exactly what her parents wanted her to do. That's it.

Jenny had enrolled at the University of Illinois in 1941 with a major in chemistry. She was a gifted student. She would study for three years before a disagreement with her parents over where she would live resulted in them committing her to the asylum in 1944. Records from the early years are incomplete, but we do know in Jenny's initial evaluation, physicians noted she was neat, clean, and tidy.

Doctors also noted she was extremely quiet, but friendly and agreeable. Her initial evaluation resulted with the verdict, no signs of active pathology, but they didn't let her leave. Another early account has Jenny questioned by a therapist if life is worth living. Jenny replied, what I have of it is. Jenny asserted she felt normal, except for the stigma of insanity that comes with being a patient in an insane asylum. The therapist noted that Jenny kept repeating a statement during the examination.

A person that is 25 years old should be away from family entanglements. When asked what she would do if she were released, Jenny said she would like to have a job, get some new clothes and some books. She also indicated she would buy powder, rouge, other makeup, typical fare for a 25-year-old woman at the time. Several months later, Jenny was given an experimental version of hydrotherapy. The hydrotherapy used at the time involved plunging patients into bathtubs filled with extremely hot and cold water back-to-back for extended periods of time.

Not understanding why she was being given this treatment, Jenny's only words were, is life a farce? By August of 1945, Jenny had been given 40 insulin coma treatments. She was nearing her 15th session of electroshock therapy, in addition to the continued hydrotherapy routine. Her second evaluation was not nearly as positive as the first.

A physician wrote that Jenny was idle, rather unfriendly, does not mingle, occasionally talks in a very disagreeable way to other patients, no longer especially neat or clean. By the middle of 1953, Jenny had already received 187 electroshock therapies, averaging twice a week. She was transferred to the research ward now at Manteno State Hospital, where medical experimentation was taking place on mostly involuntary patients.

One procedure that was beginning to spread across the country at the time was a form of psychosurgery known as the lobotomy. For reasons unknown, Jenny was subject for a lobotomy procedure in early 1955. According to records, she had, quote, extensive neurosurgery with bilateral extirpation of most of the frontal and temporal lobes.

Post-operation, the chart also noted Jenny was, quote, now mute, totally dependent on commands for functioning of everything from toilet urges on up, to be given an experimental course of electroconvulsive therapy to see if any effective change can be brought about. By all accounts, the lobotomy was a complete and total failure. Jenny was largely unresponsive and then subjected to yet another seven sessions of shock therapy,

Jenny's evaluation the following year highlights her deterioration. Confused, unresponsive, needs supervision because of wandering, has to be led and helped, unsuitable for further research. For the next 45 years, Jenny was a mumbling woman staring at walls. Mantino State had turned Jenny into an incoherent and soulless shell plagued by demons only she could understand.

For the last 20 years of her life, doctors reported she was, quote, incapable of any kind of human interaction. And she was reported to have spent her final days, quote, buried under her bedclothes or roaming the halls of her nursing home, drooling and babbling. By 1954, returning to Manteno State's history now, the patient population had swelled to 8,195. It was the fourth largest mental institution in the entire nation.

mantino cemetery was used to dispose of patients bodies until the early 70s and it now contained over 4 000 sets of human remains by the 1960s and 70s as society's treatment of the mentally ill was changing most of its patients were now elderly people struggling with alcoholism who had voluntarily committed themselves mantino was also accepting so-called minimus patients people who had committed violent crimes but have been found not guilty by reason of insanity

Some of these patients will escape, creating a lot of fear and worry in the surrounding community. Superintendent Ella Curry would tell the Kankakee Daily, Kankakee, not an easy word, Daily Journal, that in one 12-month period, 56 minimus patients escaped from the hospital. All but five were later apprehended, but still that is five too many. In 1981, plans were announced to convert the hospital into a state prison, but the project was abandoned due to widespread opposition.

Locals did approve of transitioning the facility into a veterans home, however. Manteno State Hospital officially shut down on December 31st, 1985, and the following year, in October of 1986, a portion of the facility was reopened as the Illinois Veterans Home. However, most of the massive complex remained unused. In the late 80s and early 90s, the site's many abandoned buildings attracted a slew of curious teens, urban explorers, and graffiti artists. Then some of the buildings were demolished.

Others were turned into a residential treatment center or rented out by a local business. Part of the complex was converted into a golf course. Very little of the grounds remain abandoned today. Most of the stories of paranormal activity at Manteno State come from the late 1980s through the early 2000s, when a lot more of the area than now was still abandoned. And it is from this era that all of the following paranormal claims originate. Time now for the tale of the ghosts of Manteno State Hospital.

Many of those who trespassed into the old hospital's abandoned buildings in decades past have reported seeing apparitions of what appeared to be long-dead patients, orderlies, and nurses. Some have even claimed to have heard disembodied voices over the old supposedly non-functioning intercom system. Others have said they have felt cold hands touching them, or actually grabbing and pulling at them, as they've explored the facility's abandoned halls. One local posted the following on a forum site called Illinois Haunted Houses.

Another commenter wrote in 2022...

A group of friends and I mustered up the courage to visit here probably in 2005 or so. It was definitely creepy. We heard the PA system, kind of like it glitched, or someone put a speaker in there to scare trespassers. We found the tunnel system underground, walked for a bit and found a room full of old shoes and metal chairs in a circle. Another chair was facing the corner, and there was what looked like blood on the wall in front of it.

The basic details of the following story were also posted online. Whoever posted it claims he was unwillingly brought to Manteno State, where he had an encounter he will never forget. We adapted and cleaned up his claim in order to make it more cohesive and a more compelling paranormal encounter story. I spent most of the summer of 1990 bored beyond belief. I was 13, still too young for either a steady part-time job or to drive. I spent most of my time home alone while my older brother Bryce went out and had fun with his friends. It sucked.

None of my friends lived in our neighborhood and I was only willing to ride my bike so far in the blistering heat One friday night towards the end of the summer. My mom granted my brother the ultimate privilege Borrowing her car. He told her he was going to use it to go get some pizza and watch the exorcist 3 at the theater in the next town over Uh bourbon a with his friends. I wanted to go with him so badly I must have spent the rest of the afternoon begging bryce to please let me tag along. He wasn't having it

He kept telling me in an increasingly less polite way to get the hell out of his room and stop bothering him. I tried everything, being really nice, begging him, offering to pay for his ticket. I even tried to bribe him with an offer to do his chores for an entire week. When that didn't work, as a last resort, I begged Mom to make him take me. I pled my case for why I should get to go with Bryce and his friends to the theater, even though the movie was rated R. I didn't think it would work, but to my surprise, she let me go. Bryce was furious.

Are you serious? He shouted. Why do I have to take my little brother? That's so lame. My friends are going to make fun of me. Josh has been cooped up in the house all summer. She said, your friends are nice boys. I'm sure they'll understand. He continued to protest. Mom, this isn't fair. It is fair because I'm letting you use my car. She shot back. I can change my mind. If you want the car for the night, you'll take him. You can drop him off afterwards and then you can do something else with your friends until curfew. Bryce was still angry when she left his room.

but not in his normal, constantly annoyed, brooding older brother way. I could tell there was something more to it. He seemed unusually stressed. I wanted to ask him what was really going on, but he kicked me out of his room and slammed the door in my face. Around 7.30, Bryce jerked over my bedroom door. Let's go, he said, like it was literally painful to talk to me, jerking his head to indicate I should follow. I didn't care that he was annoyed. I was still happy to get out of the house and to watch a horror movie in the theater. So I raced after him.

We said goodbye to mom and he got in the car. As soon as he shut the door and she couldn't hear him, Bryce glared at me from the driver's seat and said, don't talk to anyone. Don't even look at anyone. I ignored him and started playing my Game Boy, a recent birthday gift I took everywhere I went. About five minutes later, we made it to Bryce's friend's Adam's house. Adam ran out to the car and jumped into the passenger seat. He was shocked to see me. Hey, Josh, what you doing here, little man? I hated him. He called me little man.

but I'd always liked Adam. He was never mean to me like Bryce was. You sure about this? Adam asked Bryce, browsed forward in concern. Yeah, Bryce said with a frown and a shrug. I'll make sure he stays in the car. Hey, I protested, unable to keep quiet after hearing that. I'm not staying in the car during the movie. Bryce turned and shot me another glare. We're not going to watch a movie, dipshit.

But you told mom. I know what I told mom. We're going somewhere else. And if you tell her, I swear to God, I'll never take you anywhere again. And your game boy might accidentally get broken. He said, accentuated his threat with air quotes. I always hated it when he did that. I swallowed nervously and kept quiet, wondering where the hell Bryce could possibly be taking me. I was pretty sure he wouldn't take his little brother to a party, but I couldn't think of anywhere else we might be heading. After we picked up his friend Lincoln, who was also shocked to see me,

I found out what was happening about 20 minutes later, when we arrived at the abandoned grounds of Manteno State Hospital. Although part of it had recently been converted into a veteran's home, I'd heard plenty of stories about all the abandoned buildings. The rumor was that it was haunted by the spirits of some people who had died there, including some crazy doctor who experimented on and murdered some of his patients. I didn't want to tell my brother how scared I was after how hard I'd pushed to make mom tell him he had to take me. I was terrified of the dark buildings that loomed over Bryce's car.

By the time he cut the engine and killed the lights, his eyes scanning for police officers who were known to occasionally patrol the area, looking for teens doing exactly what Bryce and his friends were doing, I think I was shaking a little bit. But I did my best to act cool. I think we're good, Lincoln announced from beside me in the back seat. Okay, Bryce said as he turned around and stared into my eyes. Stay here. I mean it. Wait, how long are you going to take? I asked. I was trying so hard not to sound like I was about to freak out, but you could hear how anxious I was in my voice.

He sighed, rolling his eyes. I don't know. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. And then he didn't even give me the chance to say anything before he and his friends hopped out and slammed the doors. I could hear them laughing as they walked away. I was pretty sure they were making fun of me for being a baby. I didn't care what they were saying. I just wanted them to hurry up. I hoped the cops or some security guards would find them and scare them back to the car. I leaned forward and pressed the manual lock button before I flopped back into my seat, feeling pretty dejected.

I'd been so excited to go to the movie theater with Bryce and his friends, but now I was stuck sitting in the car in the dark, creepy woods. Worst Friday night ever. Thank God I brought my Game Boy with me. And I just put in fresh batteries too, so I didn't even have to worry about it dying while I waited. And it would keep me from looking around too much and letting my mind wander. Soon I was totally immersed in the world of Super Mario Land, entirely focused on my game and not my surroundings. But then I started to get pretty frustrated when I just kept dying over and over and over on the same level.

Now I wasn't quite into the game anymore. And I started to wonder, how long had it been since Bryce left? I didn't have a watch on me to tell the time, but it felt like it had been at least a half an hour, maybe more. Then just as I was about to try the game again, a flickering light in the distance caught my eye. It was small and bright, like the beam of a flashlight. I got excited. It was coming from the grassy area between the two buildings where Bryce and his friends had disappeared earlier. Was it one of them, finally coming back? I thought it was.

As the light appeared to come closer, I could start to see a male figure illuminated behind it. It was too dark to make out many details, but it was roughly the same height and build as my brother and his friends. It could have been any one of them. Then the figure lifted up a hand and waved at me. I smiled and waved back, crawling into the front passenger seat to try and get a better look. Was it Bryce? I doubted he would wave at me. I thought maybe it was Lincoln or Adam. The figure continued waving, and then the waving transformed into more of a come-here gesture.

Me? I asked silently in the car, putting a hand over my chest. The figure gave me an exaggerated nod. I was pretty nervous about getting out of the car. I really didn't want to explore the creepy asylum, but I also wasn't going to say no if one of Bryce's friends invited me. I guess I was more scared of them not thinking I was cool than I was of the hospital. Trying my best to set my fears aside, I unlocked the door and stepped out. Whoever was waiting for me was still waving their hand, encouraging me to come closer.

I was surprised by how cold it felt when I got out of the car. There was a weird chill to the air that cut through the summer heat and humidity. It was especially dark, too. Big trees and buildings were blocking out most of the moonlight. I noticed that Bryce's friend's light seemed pretty dim, nowhere near as bright as a typical flashlight. I assumed the batteries must be low. I remember worrying that the light would go completely out, and then we'd be surrounded by total darkness. I upped my pace. I was starting to get pretty nervous that the light would go out before I made it to, well, whoever I was heading towards.

But then it started to feel like the closer I got, the further away Bryce's friend was. Kind of like how a mirage works. Now I was starting to panic a bit inside, but I didn't want to show it. I was worried I was never going to reach him. Then they stopped waving and stood completely still. I figured he was probably getting tired of standing around waiting, so I picked up my pace and started to run. Just when I thought I was going to reach him, when I was on the edge of figuring out who was waiting for me, they vanished. No more figure, no more light. Now I was really panicking.

I came to an abrupt stop, nearly falling and face-planting in the grass. "'Guys?' I called out. "'Guys, guys, this isn't funny!' Everything was eerily silent for a few moments. My heart was pounding. My palms were getting sweaty. Without that light, I could hardly see anything. "'Over here!' A faint voice whispered, coming from the back of one of the old cottages. I hesitated. It didn't sound like Bryce or any of his friends. It didn't sound right. More of a hiss than a human voice. So faint, I could barely make out the words.'

And now rather than getting more scared I got pissed off I decided they were all messing with me Bryce must have talked them into this Into luring me out of the car Getting me good and scared So they could have a fun laugh About how I started to cry or whatever Bryce had been such a dick all night I was determined not to let him scare me I decided that no matter what I wasn't going to show any fear Not even if they jumped out of the shadows Screaming and wearing scary masks And wielding knives like Michael Myers Over here The same voice called out again A bit louder this time Urging me towards the building

To prove I wasn't scared, I walked towards them, towards a dark space between two of the buildings, and pretty soon I was standing outside of one of the building's run-down exit doors. No one was there. "'I know what you're doing, Bryce!' I shouted into the dark. "'You can't trick me! I'm not just some dumb little kid anymore!' I was met with complete silence. Tension filled the air as I braced myself, waiting for my brother and his friends to finish pulling off their stupid prank."

Whatever! You guys are stupid! I'm going back to the car! I... And then I screamed. When I felt something cold grab my wrist, holding me in place with its firm grip. I knew immediately it wasn't Bryce. It wasn't one of his friends either. Whatever this thing was, it gripped me so tight I'd have a bruise show up the next day. They were strong. I pulled myself back so hard I worried I was going to dislocate my shoulder, but they still didn't let go. Their grip was so tight I couldn't even try to slip out of my jacket to escape.

it! Let go of me! Help! I yelled, frantic to escape whatever had me in its grasp. Panic overwhelmed me as I thrashed and fought against its immovable hand.

Stay here. The faintest voice whispered in my ear, making me shudder and scream hysterically. Now I was genuinely worried I was going to die. I had no idea what was happening. I felt pure terror coursing through me. At this point, I was fighting and kicking, and then my foot made contact with something solid, something that felt like a body. The hand started pulling me forward, now trying to drag me back to that building. I knew I couldn't let that happen, that I couldn't let whatever this thing was take me into that dark building, but I was powerless to stop it, too small, too weak to defend myself. Help! I kept screaming, Bryce, help!

Seconds later, my brother came sprinting around the side of the building, his friends close behind. Whatever was holding onto me let go, sending me falling down under the grass. When Bryce made it to me, he looked terrified. I wondered if he'd seen that thing pulling on me when he rounded the corner. He must have, because he wasn't completely furious with me when he kneeled in front of me. Are you okay? Why the hell did you leave the car? I scrambled to sit up, rubbing my sore wrist and trying to hold back tears. I saw something! I shouted. I thought it was one of you calling me over. I thought you were playing a trick on me.

Rice shot a look at his friends, who all shrugged innocently, just as confused as he was. "'Why were you screaming?' "'It grabbed me! It was trying to pull me in that building! I heard—' Rice started to laugh. But I also saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes.

Stop making shit up, he said. I'm not, I swear, look, I yelled as I pushed up my sleeve. My skin was bright red, slightly raised near my wrist where the thing had a hold of me. Bryce's eyes widened, then his friends came over to get a closer look. Holy shit, no way, they said. Are you lying, Bryce asked, sounding a bit scared himself now. No, I swear, look,

They could tell I was serious. Bryce stared down at my wrist for a long moment. I looked up at his friends, and my heart dropped when I saw behind them that shadowy figure lurking just a few feet back. I gasped and pointed, unable to form words. Bryce whipped his head around and sucked in a bunch of air in surprise. I watched him jerk his head back in shock. He saw it too. His friends were too slow, though. By the time they turned around, the shadow man was gone. "'Let's get the fuck out of here,' Bryce said."

Come on, man, his friends protested. I'm leaving, Bryce said, already walking towards the car. If you don't want to walk, then come on. They grumbled, but they followed. So did I. Bryce didn't say a word as he sped away from the old asylum. To my surprise, he took us to the theater. No Exorcist 3. We saw Total Recall instead. We were about 10 minutes late, but it was better than nothing. Missing the beginning didn't mess up the movie at all for me. Even if we had gotten there early, I still wouldn't have been able to pay attention. I couldn't focus on it.

All I could think about was that shadowy figure in my sore wrist. The reminder of my encounter took over a week to fade from my skin. Rice never brought up what happened at the abandoned hospital. I tried to ask him about it. I've tried several times over the years, but he won't be honest with me. He insists he didn't see anything that night, but I'm his brother. I can always tell when he's lying, and he is. Even though that thing grabbed me, I think it scared him even worse.

I don't think he ever went ghost hunting again after that. And as far as I know, he hasn't been into watching horror movies ever since. I don't blame him. What the hell was that thing? And what was he going to try and do to me in that building? God, that's so awful. He's so lucky his little brother didn't get really hurt or abducted.

Yeah, it could have been a person. It could have been some creep hanging out there. I mean, kids are just so stupid. And I mean that having obviously been a kid and having kids and all of that. It's like, oh, man, any of you teenagers listening right now, we love you, but you're real dumb. Yeah, just that invincibility of youth. Yeah, it's like, first of all, your brain's not fully developed. And second of all, don't leave your friend alone in the car. Right.

Just under any circumstances. That is so stupid. It's like, oh, hey, I'm going to run into Target. You know what? I'm not going to wait in the car by myself. Seriously. It's like people get abducted all the time by real living people. Nonetheless, in this situation. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Bryce is so fucking lucky. His brother's okay. Uh-huh.

I know there is that thing where like the part of the brain that really does like a well with risk assessment and understanding of consequences hasn't fully developed. So you just don't, I mean, I remember being the same way. You literally either just don't think of consequences at all or are just absurdly dismissive of them and be like, yeah, that's not gonna happen to me. Okay. Monroe. Yeah. A hundred percent. Monroe is so much like I was at that age. Yep. And if she gets caught, like she's going to crumble.

Mm hmm. I will say, I mean, maybe like in private. Yeah, in private. Exactly. Because because I was I had a weird, I don't know, unique skill or superpower that way. Like when I would get confronted by authorities, I would not break. I would not crack. Yeah. No matter what they said to me, no matter what they threatened, I'd be like, do it. Like I was so bold that way. Like I would basically like like bluffing like a poker player. I would bluff so hard because I'm like because my mentality would be like, well, I'm already gonna get in trouble.

So bluffing really hard. It's like, whatever. I might get in more trouble, but I also might get out of it. And almost every time I got out of it, because I just would refuse to back down. I'm recalling a story that someone recently told us about our daughter behaving exactly like that to a authority figure. Yeah. Yeah. We might need to have a little chat with her because my, my, my times have changed. And we're also not in like a small town. I know. Like, oh God, you guys just, just, you know, the parent in me was like, oh,

But then the teenager in me was like, oh man, I've been there a hundred times. And the thrill of getting away with something and not getting caught and, you know, going home and telling your mom how great The Exorcist was and knowing full well that she's not going to see it. So you could tell her anything happened in that movie. Yeah. Right. Because that was always the deal. Like if you were going to go to him, say that you were going to a movie, but not, you had to be prepared to talk about it when you came home. And mom was like, so how was the movie? It was great. What was it about? Who was in it? It's like a

You have to stay sober long enough to be able to carry on a conversation. That poor woman, Jenny Polarski. I was like, just my blood was boiling. I was handmaid's tailing in my head. I was so angry. I just. People who don't understand history, they don't understand. They see people who like get worked up about, let's say like women's rights. Yeah. And they're like, what are you talking about? That would never happen.

It has happened. Motherfucker. And recently. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Crazy things have happened. Like people got, women especially, got sent to asylums for literally whatever reason. Didn't matter. They're hysterical. Yep. Hysterical was the catch all for just anything. Yep. Get caught masturbating. Guess where you're going. Yep. And then if you protested being locked in, you know, uh, you know, like you would never, it would never happen. Well, actually also happened in prisons, but 30,

And theoretically, people are like, well, you know, you wouldn't be locked up involuntarily or whatever, but you were. And then if you were, it's like, well, of course you're going to get hysterical and protest because you have been kidnapped, essentially. But then the more you would protest, they'd be like, see, I told you she's hysterical. And it's like, well, yeah, you've made her that way because of the situation. You just fucking let her go and she'll be fine. And that right there is why you never tell a woman she's acting crazy. Right. It has such a history. It's so loaded. Exactly. It's like it's such a fuck.

up thing to say because it's like, oh, you're making me crazy. I can't make you feel anything. Fuck you. I'll kill you. I wanted to find Jenny's parents. I mean, obviously she's deceased. I know her parents probably deceased at this point as well. But, uh,

I was making a little list over here. I was like, let's find them and let's just do to them what was done to her. I know. Too late, though. But yeah, absolutely. Those motherfuckers. Yep. Because she wouldn't do what they wanted. And you know that was the dad. You know there was like a domineering father who was just a piece of shit. Uh-huh. Daughter won't do what I want. I'll show you. Uh-huh. Yeah, he sure did. Sure did, you motherfucker. You broke her. I hope he went to his grave feeling like the biggest...

piece of shit ever. I was raging over here. Meanwhile, love the name Archibald. That came up really early on and I was like, you know, let's bring back Archibald. I have a few pictures if you want to see them. I do. This first one is an old postcard showing what the original Manteno State Hospital looked like shortly after construction was completed. Yeah, and it's like, you know, it reminds me, well, not this, but it does make me, how do I want to say this? This is not an example of a Kirkbride asylum, but

I do appreciate and value that there were attempts to make mental health facilities less scary, make it, you know, a place that people could live a good life. I understand what happened in time, but, you know. Yeah, a lot of people did have the very best intentions with these buildings, and they were good a lot of these places for a while. And then, you know, then shit went off the rails. Yeah, as it often does. That is usually how things go.

Yeah. No oversight. This next photo, an abandoned room in the facility that someone really took some time adding some intricate graffiti to. Oh, damn. Oh, damn. That's crazy. Yeah. And I think these, I don't know for sure, for sure, for sure. But I think this graffiti, I think somebody in memory of Jenny Polarski. Oh.

Went into the facility and wrote out things that she had said over the years all over the walls. So anybody listening who can't pop over to socials right now or to the Patreon to see the photos,

A quick example of what it is, is it's like Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard the same sentence over and over. It kind of has that vibe. It's a room in the facility where it must have been a bathhouse type room. And there's various, or where they were doing hydrotherapy. There are various tubs, but all along the walls and on the tubs in thick black paint are written various things like,

uh she said she said this or you know enemies threatened torn at the seams like you know it's yeah we can only see a piece of it honestly this this is weird to say but i'm like it would be cool if they made an art exhibit of this well you know what i think they did and i and i um you know i didn't do a lot of digging into the art side because it wasn't necessarily relevant to the story sure but i um found some articles that had more pictures like this and some of the pictures had women um

uh, like young women, uh, hunched over in the tubs, you know, like replicating maybe how patients were treated. It did feel like this art installation they did, or at least a photo shoot to, to show, you know, the horrors that went on to help people remember. Well, it's not, it's easy to remember. Yeah. Uh, the only picture of this next one is the only picture I could find of poor Jenny Polarski before she went to the facility.

It's also like a strange photo where her, it's just like the time or just like a bad photo, but her eyes. Well, I think she might have maybe a wandering eye. Oh, okay. Okay. Just based on this photo. Cause I looked at it and I was like, oh yeah, I bet one of her eyes was lazy.

Uh, yeah. Which, which would like, you know, be something that I'm sure they would point to. Like, well, look at her eyeballs. She's unwell. Yeah. We gotta, we gotta fix that. Fucking that lobotomy. Oh my God. Uh, yeah. Next, this next one. Uh, this is a photo again of an abandoned room in the facility. Uh, perhaps the room looks like a surgical room where Jenny had that lobotomy. God.

I don't know if with your ex-wife, if you ever went to the gynecologist, but it's just like really unnerving to me that even all these years later, basically, like anytime I see a room like that with a vet, I'm just like, how does it still feel like gynecology rooms still kind of feel like that? Torture vibe, yeah. Yeah. I mean, because given the nature of what you're going to do in that room, you know, there's a variety of tools and you have to put your feet in the stirrups and everything, but it just...

Gynecological tables always just feel a little like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, thankfully now you have to have somebody else in the room too. Like, well, I don't know if that's true if you have a female gynecologist, but I have a male gyno. And so there always has to be another person in the room, another nurse or, um,

you know, somebody. Yeah, there's a precedent of a lot of bad stuff happening when those other people haven't been there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Dan. Yes. Well done. Okay, thank you. That was fun. Do you have a Layla that you would like to tell us about? I do. I got a blue one. Switching it up. Blue Layla. Blue Layla. Devil in the blue dress. All right. Well, let's hear the craziest Ouija, homemade Ouija board story I think I have ever told.

I somehow found myself willing myself to share this with you guys. For years, I have shunned the whole encounter from my memories, but recently I have had it lingering in my mind.

When I was roughly 11-ish, I was invited to spend spring break with my good friend at their family's lake house. Overwhelmed with excitement for these plans, I spent days spending my allowance and putting together the ultimate sleepover collection. Spooky movies, board games, snacks, a juice bottle filled with wine that I sold from my parents' liquor cabinet. You know, the essentials.

Finally, the day had arrived. Our parents exchanged phone numbers and chatted with each other at the front door for a bit while my friend helped me load my suitcases into the trunk. We were so thrilled for this trip. Swimming, barbecues, boat rides. We were over the moon.

Her parents had brought road snacks for us to enjoy while we kept ourselves busy playing games and jamming out to the radio. It was already starting to be such a great time. We just knew in our hearts that this would be an unforgettable experience.

When we finally arrived, I couldn't even pick my jaw up off the floor. The house was incredible. It was a beautiful single-story home that looked like it was right out of a magazine. The plants growing around the yard were thriving and so beautiful. The color of the trim on the house was vibrant and freshly painted. The driveway was a tidy little gravel runway that led to a super clean and spacious garage.

The most beautiful, sparkling lake I had ever seen was just waiting for us at the end of a wooden dock. My body was vibrating with excitement. My friend was so eager to give me the full tour, so off we went. She grabbed my hand and led me straight to the bedroom we would be sharing. It was really quaint and inviting. We spent a decent chunk of time showing each other every last item we had thoughtfully packed. There was no doubt in either of our minds that we would be making lifelong memories.

We were all pretty drained from the long car drive, so we enjoyed sandwiches and chips for dinner and started to settle in for the first night of vacation. After we cleaned up from dinner, we were deciding what activities to do before bed. We vacillated between board games and movies and ultimately decided to veg out and watch a movie.

We pulled out our DVDs and played eeny, meeny, miny, moe to determine which one we would watch. We landed on a horror movie that neither of us had ever watched before. We exchanged wide eyes and big grins of anticipation. What a perfect way to end the night.

We cozied up with blankets while sharing a large beanbag chair. We poured tall glasses of our wine mixed with juice and grabbed our munchies. As soon as the DVD menu came on, we knew we were in for one hell of a ride.

The movie featured a group of young adults that had discovered an old, worn-out, splintered Ouija board. From what I can remember, the storyline was fairly basic. The group had made contact with a malicious demon. People were experiencing supernatural encounters. Many died in suspicious ways. You get the idea. My friend blurted out, "'We should do that tonight!' A huge smile on her face, desperately wanting my approval."

Confused, I asked, "Do what?" "We'll make a Ouija board! Let's do it and see what happens!" A wave of uncertainty ran through me, but I hesitantly agreed. I mean, why not, right?

This was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made, and to this day, the events course through my mind, leaving me full of dread. We didn't have a proper paper or marker to create a board, so we pulled a large but lightweight mirror off the wall. We set the mirror down on the carpet and used an old tinted chapstick to draw the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9, yes, no, hello, and goodbye.

I watched as my friend's writing filled the surface of the mirror. Something was itching in the back of my head saying, we really didn't need to be getting wrapped up in any weird shit like this. But I didn't want to back out of our last bit of entertainment for the night. She tiptoed into the kitchen and brought a black, brought back a tall flared shot glass. She said, we can use this as the thingamajiggy that they're moving around in the movie to spell out the words.

I shrugged. It's not like anything was actually going to talk to us, right? So we started out with silly questions. Is anyone here with us? Yes. Do you have a name? Yes. Do you live at the lake? Yes. Can you swim? No. Are you single? Yes. Do you think my friend is cute? Yes. Would you take her on a date? Yes. Can you come over tonight and meet us? No.

Suddenly, the shot glass stopped moving. It was stuck? The rim of the shot glass was somehow now fused to the mirror. We leaned back and exchanged looks of what the fuck. I tried to jiggle the shot glass loose, but it wouldn't move. We wondered if it was all in our imagination. Maybe the wine had gotten to our heads. We halted the questions and became distracted with how we would explain the missing shot glass to her parents. Surely they would notice.

While the concern ate away at me, I noticed a smell in the air.

Damp? Mossy? Pond scummy? Where was it coming from? I did not bring this up to my friend as she was fixated on getting the shot glass off the mirror without shattering it. She was growing frustrated. I watched as her emotions quickly escalated. With a heavy amount of sarcasm, she placed her fingertips back on the shot glass, closed her eyes, and asked, "'Can you fuck off? You're going to get us in trouble.'"

My eyes were bulging out of my head, and my friend's body language changed dramatically. We both watched as the shot glass quite literally sunk into the surface of the mirror. "'What the hell?' she stuttered as she spoke. "'Did that actually just happen?' We leaned into the surface of the mirror to look. "'How is this possible?' I said. The surface of the mirror had somehow become liquid?'

and that stench was becoming unbearable. My friend sat still and then locked eyes with me. What is happening right now? I asked as I stood up, backing away towards the door. I wanted to get the hell out of there. My friend stayed seated, gazing into the mirror in a trance-like kind of way. I tried to focus on my breathing as I could feel myself starting to shake when I heard her ask, Is this real?

Silence consumed the room. I felt like I was underwater. Everything sounded muffled. The air was full of resistance when I moved. Standing across the room, I watched as my friend slowly reached downwards towards the shot glass and her hand sunk into the mirror. Still as a statue, my brain was literally not comprehending.

How are you doing that? I asked her. She looked up at me in disbelief. Her hand had sunk past the surface of the mirror, through the glass. Is this water? She asked. I couldn't even answer her. I was just frozen in place. I was struggling to hear what she said. I was struggling to breathe. The air felt so dense and wet. Sound couldn't penetrate. My lungs began to sting as if I were drowning. I choked and ran out of the bedroom.

Within seconds, I went back to tell my friend to come with me. She was quick to comply. We sat upright on the couch all night long. We barely even spoke to one another. When our parents woke up, they could see the terror written all over our faces. They asked us over and over, did something happen? Are you two okay?

They tried to get us to talk, but neither of us was willing. We moved on with our day, and her parents encouraged us to get our bathing suits on and enjoy swimming in the lake. The whole time we were changing, we didn't say one word to one another. It suddenly felt like we were strangers. Then we noticed the mirror we had left on the floor was leaking. A large puddle of green, tinted water had formed around the borders of the mirror frame and soaked into the carpet. And it stunk.

What was even more bewildering was that the surface of the mirror was now solid again, perfectly shiny and clean. Even the letters and numbers we had drawn on it the night before had vanished.

We silently studied what we were looking at. Neither of us could fathom how any of this was possible. We leaned the mirror up against the wall and finished getting our swimsuits on. We made our way to the dock where her parents were waiting for us. We tried to let go of the memory of last night. It had to have been the wine, right? We tried to distract ourselves with a little game.

We decided to race each other from the surface of the water to the lake bed and back up. Whomever won would get to choose the next board game for all of us to play together. We asked her mom to watch us from the dock so she could tell us who officially won the race. We dove up and down and decided, well, maybe the winner would be whoever got the best two out of three. My friend surprised me with how fast she could move under the water. She was definitely winning. This seemed to be exactly the kind of distraction we needed.

On our final round, we dove down to the bottom of the lake together. And as my fingers met the murky surface of the lake bed, I rose to the surface with an object in my hand. As the water cleared from my eyes, I was able to confirm what I was so afraid of. The fucking shot glass. The exact same tall flared shot glass we used the night before somehow had ended up at the bottom of the lake. Was I losing my mind?

There just didn't seem to be any rational explanation for this. My body went cold as I lifted the glass up out of the water and showed it to my friend. We stared at each other in disbelief, and then I dropped the shot glass out of my hand and let it sink back down to the bottom of the lake. I was so ready for this vacation to be over, I wanted to get the fuck out and go home.

So badly. But of course, I was not going to inconvenience my friend's family by having them drive me all the way back home. I stayed the full four days with my friend and her parents. We worked desperately to get the giant green puddle stain of what I can only imagine was lake water out of the carpet.

Shortly after our vacation had ended, my friend texted me a link to an obituary. It was for a young man who had lost his life by drowning while trying to retrieve something from the bottom of the lake that he had dropped. I was stunned. Could that have been who we were talking to? Was the lake haunted? Was the mirror some sort of portal?

I wonder if any of you creeps and peepers have a similar story or can offer an explanation that our minds could not collectively come up with. Thanks for reading. Stay weird. That was like a good horror movie. Yeek.

yeah it was such an interesting take uh i'm sorry it's such an interesting twist yeah on a homemade ouija board yeah the mirror i i mean because that would work i of course it would work i never thought of that me either if you had like a big mirror like a big you know whatever just big enough to put all the letters there yeah and you got lipstick or like they said tinted chapstick yep and you just wrote all that stuff down there you could absolutely use a little shot glass for the planchette i love

that they were so innocent that they didn't she was like you know the thingy that you move across it's like they didn't even know the word planchette yeah

Yeah. If, if, if she talked about like the next day, like, you know, like, ah, maybe it was the wine. If I saw my friend's hand dissolve into a mirror. Holy shit. I'm probably going to be in the previous story that I told. I'm going to be in the, what the Manteno state hospital. Fair enough. Like, ah, my God, that would disintegrate my brain. But also being so young and sneaking alcohol. There's also like, I think the possibility that you believe at that age that you're like, wow, alcohol is powerful. It really makes you hallucinate. Yeah.

It really makes things so strange, which is definitely like what me and my friends would have thought at that age. Like, wow, no wonder my parents love this. No wonder they drink so much. True, true. Yeah.

Oh, but that was, yeah, that was an especially creepy story. Yeah, and obviously like finding the shot glass, the bottom of the lake is super creepy. But I just got hung up on just the mirror Ouija board. Just that alone. I'm like, wow. I can't believe I haven't heard of that before or seen that before because that is just, you know, mirrors show up a lot in horror movies and horror lore. Yes, portals. Paranormal lore. There's so many like weird rituals involving mirrors. Oh my God, don't be so cool. You can use this in a nightmare fuel if you want. Okay, if you...

If you have a mirror hanging on a wall and you make it into a Ouija board and then it does somehow soften and, like, you can go into it. Yeah. Like, use it as an actual portal or... And then, you know, a person is stuck in there and then what if, like...

from the other side, the person has gone through the mirror, but they have what is supposed to be the planchette and they use it to like try and spell things out. But of course, to the person who's on the other side, everything is reverse. Yeah. Like it would just be so confusing and maddening. And, but as a viewer, you'd be so tense. You'd be like, ah,

They're writing this. I can figure it out. God damn it. It's just backwards. Uh-huh. No, that would be good. Like, yeah, have somebody like, you know, fall into their Ouija board. Uh-huh. Yep. Gone. Crazy. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, I thought so too. Okay, well, now we're going to tell what is possibly my favorite UFO story. Oh, yeah. I can't even believe I'm saying that I like this. All right. Ridiculous. Hey, Dan and Lindsay.

While my own story is perhaps not as harrowing, I think it is, as many of the other experiences discussed here, I still felt it was worth sharing.

I was maybe 12 or 13 when I came across a book at a small local bookstore about the paranormal. I was a fan of youth horror like Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And what I first thought was another compilation of fictional essays was in fact supposedly factual accounts by the author John Keel. If you're a fan of cryptozoology, you have probably come across his work.

His seminal 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies, eventually became well-known in paranormal research circles and even became the basis of a Hollywood movie in 2002. The tiny Appalachian town of Point Pleasant became somewhat famous and now a yearly festival is held in honor of the legacy of the Mothman cryptid paranormal activity and the collapse of the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River in 1967.

I was not familiar with the story of the Mothman, the year of unexplained UFO activity, animal disappearances, men in black sightings, and other unusual phenomena that culminated in the Silver Bridge disaster of 1967. I remember thumbing through the book with exhilaration, handing over my allowance to the storekeeper and stepping out, new book in hand.

I then stopped and looked, with a new appreciation, at the bridge just a mile from my location that now spanned the Ohio River in place of the one that had plunged nearly four dozen vehicles into the icy December waters 30 years prior.

I live outside of the tiny town of Gallipolis on the Ohio side of the river from Point Pleasant. I couldn't believe that I had never heard anyone talk about the man-sized winged creature that chased cars and supposedly killed dogs, the lights in the skies, the strange men, and supposed government cover-ups that took place.

Perhaps this small Bible and Rust Belt hamlet wanted to forget that such crazy things ever took place here. My mom was worried about the book that I had purchased, that a boy my age shouldn't be reading about creatures and demons, and that those sorts of things should be left alone. I didn't know how right she was at the time.

After that book, I was hooked. I think I purchased every work that Kiel had written. The bookstore and library special ordered books for me about aliens and monsters and ghosts. I had maps and folders of material. I became thoroughly obsessed with the paranormal, especially cryptids and UFOs. And that's when things got weird. It started innocuously, innocuously at first.

I remember one day seeing a silver object in the sky moving strangely while riding the bus home from school one afternoon. At first, I thought it had to be a UFO, but my still rational mind waved it off as just a distant aircraft reflecting the evening sun.

But later sightings were harder to explain. On the way home one rainy night, I and my entire family watched something hover over a field only a few hundred yards from us. It appeared triangular, a light at each corner and a brighter light in the center and cast a faint glow on the ground below. My grandma nervously declared it a helicopter and we moved on.

On another overcast night, while putting chickens to roost, my mom and I watched a red orb descend behind a hill about a mile or two away. We then heard the distant, frantic bellowing of cattle, obviously in distress, then silence. After a minute, the red orb rose skyward, paused, turned white, then sped across the sky at meteoric speed, vanishing through the clouds.

Another sighting, probably the most incredible one I had, again occurred while riding the school bus, in which every student, along with the driver, watched a dome-shaped object with three lights in a triangle hover over a rural crossroads at about 1,000 feet distance.

in broad daylight. We all watched, hanging out the windows at one point, until the buzz passed beneath the craft, at which point it suddenly vanished as if it had never existed. I think I may have even shouted, I told you all! at one point.

When these sightings first started, I chalked it up to my imagination playing tricks on me. Reading about aliens made me want to see lights in the sky. So now every aircraft, balloon, and bird was a flying saucer to my not fully developed preteen brain. But how does that explain the other people with me also seeing what I saw?

How does it explain when unmarked military planes began flying over my house at near tree level? Nothing wakes you up like five C-130s passing over at 500 feet. How did that explain my grandma telling me about the, quote, government looking people, quote, that kept driving slowly past the house in a black sedan every few days?

The weirdest part of this was how every phenomenon, every detail of my experiences was almost identical to something that I had read in my growing library of books on UFO encounters. Like, just imagine reading Harry Potter and then seeing a hippogriff wandering into your local park or seeing a man with a wand quietly turn his book into a cup of coffee while sitting at Starbucks. You would think you were crazy. Unless...

Someone else witnessed it too. It was as if whatever these things were knew what I expected to see and were conforming to it. And it was all too much for my 13-year-old brain to handle. Everything came to a head one night just after dinner. I was still sitting at the dining room table when the phone rang.

My mom answered, said, hello, then made the strangest face. I asked her what was wrong, and she held the phone away from her as if it were a particularly disgusting piece of trash. Come listen to this, she said. I reluctantly took the phone from her, and when I placed it to my own ear, all I could hear was what sounded like rapid, garbled speech of some kind. But what they were saying, I had no idea.

That was ten seconds of rap- then it was ten seconds of rapid beeps, then another ten seconds of weird electronic buzzes and tones, a bit like an old phone modem, but more layered and unusual. After that, the garbled speech started up again. I suddenly had an idea, and I thrust the phone into my mom's confused hands and dashed outside and looked up at the starlit sky.

And there, directly above my house, was that all-too-familiar triangle of lights with a bright red light at its center hovering silently and directly above my house.

As I gazed, dumbstruck, the outer three lights went out, the center light became blindingly white, and the object disappeared in a noiseless streak. I came slowly back into the house, shaking and pale. My mom watched worriedly as I got a trash bag from the kitchen pantry, went quietly to my room, gathered all of my books on the paranormal, threw them in the bag, and handed them to my mom. I'm done.

I said to her, I don't want to know anymore. And then I cried as she held me, both of us scared and confused by what happened. And I never saw another light in the sky ever again.

A few years later, when the Mothman Prophecies movie premiered, several of my friends and I went to see it on opening night. There was a scene in the movie where the lead actor asks a paranormal researcher, why me? And the researcher says, you noticed them and they noticed you noticed them.

Then, speaking of his own experiences, he said, in the end, it all came down to just one simple question. Which was more important, having proof or being alive? Trust me, I turned away years ago and I've never looked back. I don't think anyone else in that crowded theater felt the weight of those statements as much as I did. Even now, listening to your podcast, I feel like I'm tempting fate just a little. Will I notice them again?

I'll just enjoy the stories as entertainment, at least until something weird starts happening again. Then I'm out. If so, no hard feelings, okay? Dustin.

I like the ending of that story. Me too. I feel the same way. You've talked about that a lot, about we have to be open to it to see these things. Yeah, that is an interesting thing about it. Why does noticing them make them notice you? Okay, listen, let me tell you why I loved this story. Because once he was like, I'm done, he was like, I'm done.

He was free. Right, right. So I'm like, Dustin, I am with you. Like, yes, I hope you're still listening. He sent this story in almost five years ago. So I hope you're still listening. Right. Because like I do go back to the archives, you know, it's like really try to we have so many amazing stories. It's hard to get them all. But I do just genuinely think like, OK, yeah.

How great would it be if you did notice it and you were like, I do not want this to be able to get rid of it? I don't know. It gave me some sort of peace, I guess. Yeah, that if you like just like you can open yourself up to this stuff and then start seeing more things, you can also shut it down. Yeah. And I don't know if that's really true. Yeah. In terms of...

you know, like ghosts and whatnot. I mean, that's a very different thing. But as far as aliens and UFOs go, just because they scare me so much, I am going to sink into Dustin, what he said, and I'm going to believe that God forbid I see a fucking alien. I can just be like, no, I didn't. And just move on with my life. And they will leave me alone. You saw the Mothman prophecies, right? Didn't we talk about that?

My heart, just stop for a second. I thought you were literally about to be like, you saw that alien, right? I mean, yesterday you saw that. No, but I think we've talked about it's been a while, but didn't you see that with Richard Gere? Yes, I did. Yes. I was actually Dustin. We're probably about the same age because, well, he said a few years later when Mothman came out, I was in about the seventh grade when it came out. Okay. I think. Yeah.

I feel like I was in, I guess I was in college when it came out or something. Well, that seems right. I remember it. I remember it coming out. I'll look it up. Yeah. Yeah. I remember being like a really good movie. Also, uh, during that, um, 2002. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I actually 2000. Wow. Okay. So I was out of college. Yeah. When that came out, um, you would, you would have been in high school, probably early high school. Oh, okay. Maybe I thought, uh, I do remember seeing it. I could probably watch it again.

Yeah, I remember being a good movie. And then also, I covered Mothman a long time ago. Maybe about the time Dustin sent in the story or even a little earlier on Time Suck. And I hadn't thought about the... It's a fascinating story, the whole Point Pleasant and all the sightings around this bridge collapsing and everything. Mm-hmm. And then...

I could not get the song Rocket Man out of my head the whole time you're telling that story because it just triggered a memory of like for that episode. I did some parody of Rocket Man, but replaced it with Mothman. Hilarious. And so just like I was fighting the entire time you were telling that story, just hearing like Mothman thing is going. How's Rocket Man go? Rocket Man. I think it's going to be a long, long time or something like that. I had that basic melody.

Oh, that's how it is. And I think it's going to be a long, long time. The touchdown brings me round. I get to find. Not the man they think. Man at home. Yeah. Oh, no, no. And he goes high. And then he's like, I'm a mothman. Mothman burning out of fuel up there alone. That's how it is. Wow. You know more of those words than I do. I think I've been faking the words to that song for a long time.

That's a great, probably my favorite Elton John song, actually. Really? Yeah, either Rocketman or there's like this one album, I think it's called Tumbleweed Connection. It's like one of his early ones. Yeah, that's a great album. Like Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatter's. There's a bunch of like songs from that. I pretty much, I like when he did this like very brief, like almost like country phase or folk kind of country. But as far as out of his hits, yeah, Rocketman's pretty hard to beat. Pretty great. Monroe loves...

Oh my God. Crocodile Rock. Yeah. Yep. Are you laughing because I'm tone deaf? Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I am so unbelievably tone deaf. Yeah. Crocodile. Like I can hear things in my head like a sound and then when I try to make that sound come out of it, it just does not. Okay. Yeah. I can't remember. You don't have that problem so you don't understand what I'm saying right now. I can't remember the melody of Crocodile Rock. I know that song.

It's like right on the tip of my tongue. I think I remember because at Kyler's graduation party, Kyler and Monroe both karaoke'd that. I think so. I think so. And don't worry, it wasn't a fancy party. It just sounds like it was. Karaoke consisted of a six-foot folding table in our backyard and our kids just screaming songs. Yeah, a friend of ours bringing over a karaoke machine. Dang it, it's going to drive me crazy not being able to do the melody of Crocodile Rock.

See, that's not it. Every time I try and think of that melody, another Elton John song enters my head for some reason. I think from that era, Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting. Saturday, Saturday. Oh, my gosh. Hold on. I'm going to give it to you. I just have to get through this ad first. Okay. Rock was fun. Me and Susie had so much fun. Oh, yeah. Rock was young. That's right.

Let's see if we can get it. Let's see if we can get it. Here it comes. Here it comes. Oh, you keep going around. Okay. I think we got it. Are you good? I think so. Do you feel satisfied? Oh, yeah. Okay.

Okay, this is also a great video. Elton John, Crocodile Rock, live at Madison Square Garden. The people in this audience are special. Okay. It's very dated. Oh, yeah. It's just very dated in the best way. Oh, yeah. Lots of mullets going on.

You want to thank some Annabelles, Crocodile Rock? I do. All right. I'd like to thank the following Annabelles for helping us to donate to Pasadena Humane. Bree Bishop, Amanda McCauley, Jamie Richter, eel oil. Okay. What even would be eel oil? Can you squeeze the oil out of an eel? Eel oil is what you get on some sushi.

They put that eel oil on certain sushi pieces. No, it's not oil. It's like a... No, it is. You keep thinking Annabelle's. You keep focused on that. And I will write or look into eel oil. Okay. Juan Cortez, Tim Grom, Chrissy, Jennifer Pentington, Kurt Hallett, and Elizabeth Moeller. Awesome. Awesome.

Uh, eel oil is a natural health supplement and traditional medicine that comes from the bones of eels, rich in vitamins, fatty acids, and proteins. Uh-huh. Uh, I would like to thank the following Annabelles. Jacqueline Tinsley, the gay potato. Ha!

I don't even know what that means. I love it. Lawrence, Portia Lathrop, Luke Mort, Mike Hazel, Jennifer Smith, Glenn Meyer, Lily Cummings with a G. With a G. Not related. And Jessica Jesse.

Oh, Jessica, Jesse. And now do you have some spoopy shout outs? I do. To Dee Dee and Ariel. I know, but not that Dee Dee. To Dee Dee and Ariel from Kate, I am unbelievably grateful for you both. Thanks for introducing me to dance, stand up, and scared to death. Thank you for helping me manifest the love of my life, Dee. And thanks for being the best big brother, Ariel. Congrats on your engagement and many years together ahead of you. I love you.

To Cassie from Frederico, you keep me going. Thank you. To mom, mom, I don't have your name, but to Stephanie and Booba's mom, happy birthday. We love you and appreciate all you do for us. Have a great 52nd birthday. And to Daisy from Aunt Angelica, I'm so proud of the woman you've become. I can't wait to see what 2025 has in store for you and Jorge. I love you so much.

Oh, those are great. Yeah, very sweet. And when I was talking about sushi, eel sauce. Eel sauce, yeah. That's probably what threw you. Oh, great. Well, listen, Stephanie got back to me because I was like, what is your mom's birthday? Or your mom's name? Oh, no.

She did not tell me her mom's name. Just kidding. Sorry, tried to save it. Womp, womp. Oh, Tanya. Sorry, she sent like four emails. This is a roller coaster. There's a lot of emails. Okay. Good job, Tanya. That is our show. Thank you for continuing to send... Went off the rails a bit at the end. We were really story focused. Yeah. We saved all of our... It was too much. Yeah. It was too much. I didn't break out enough. Thank you for continuing to send your personal tales of terror to mystory at scaredtodeathpodcast.com.

You can email us for everything else at info at scared to death podcast.com. Thank you. Logan Keith scoring today's show. Thanks to Heather Rylander organized in the, my story emails and to book editor drew a Tana for polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thank you to Olivia Lee for finding the second story I shared this week. Uh, I was able to find the first, uh,

We are on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany episodes and more at Scared to Death Podcast. We also have a private Facebook group called Creeps and Peepers. Get in there if you haven't already. Big thanks to the All Seen Eyes, the Creeps and Peepers moderators. Enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye. Bye.

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. Mad Magic Productions. I believe that water is actually oil.