The Ghost of Mary Ann Cotton
01:15:32 Share

When you choose to earn your degree online from Southern New Hampshire University, you're saying yes to new opportunities and to new adventures. You're saying yes to something big, something you've always wanted to do. If earning your degree is one of your goals this new year, SNHU can help you get there. With low online tuition, no set class times, and multiple term starts per year, you can set the pace that works for you and save money along the way. Visit snhu.edu today to get started.

Ever wonder what lurks on the other side of the veil, looking for a guide to the unexplainable? The Spooked podcast features supernatural stories told by the people that can barely believe it happened themselves. Spooked walks with demons, angels, ghosts, and ghouls, but most of all, wonder. It's a show built of mystery that will leave you questioning everything. Listen to Spooked wherever you get your podcasts.

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, creepspeepers. Roberts and Annabelle's. I'm Dan. Hello, Dan. I'm Dan.

Yeah, I'm Lindsay. I was just checking. I was just thinking, making sure. Crazy that this is already the December 3rd episode. I know. I was working on something with our custody. Yeah. And then it's like the way the new iCal update is. With our custody? Yeah.

With Monroe, our custody. Uh-huh. Yeah, I was working on something with our custody for Monroe, like our back and forth schedule with her. Oh, gotcha. So your schedule, it's like all of a sudden we're in a custody battle. I'm like, what are you talking about? Okay, you just never said that word that way. Okay, gotcha. I have, but okay. Okay. But anyways, it said week 50, and I was like, holy shit. Like from like that point on, it was just two more weeks of the year. That's insane. Yeah, 2025, almost here, full quarter through the 21st century. Weird. Yeah.

Okay, so no announcements today. We're just going to get right into it, right, Dan? Yeah, yeah. How many stories do you have? Well, Dan, believe it or not, I have just two stories. Okay. And my first story involves two family members seeing a strange someone in their house. Okay. I'm just going to leave it at that. All right. It just has this moment of like, oh, what just happened there? Yeah.

And then my second tale, you know, I haven't done this in a long time and I'm actually really excited for this one. It's like a very hard but beautiful story to listen to. And I just feel really inclined to share this kind of tale at this time of year. Yeah. As we're rolling into the holidays and, you know, we're rushing about. And I think at this time of year, we're often thinking about those that are no longer with us, our most loved people. And I think that this is such a beautiful tale about that. Awesome.

I look forward to hearing it. I hope you do. I have my standard, too. But the first not so standard, a paranormal tale based in true crime. And honestly, I think the true crime portion is the most interesting part of the story. I'll be talking about Mary Ann Cotton, an English woman convicted of the murder of her stepson in 1872, who almost certainly killed another 20 people.

Most of them her children. Oh, dear. Oh, yeah. It's a wild story. And ever since her execution, her spirit has allegedly not been resting. And then we will head to Mexico for a very weird tale about the host of a paranormal call-in show, La Mano Peluda, getting wrapped up in a caller's case of demonic torment. Oh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was fascinated by it. Once you are socked up, I will begin. Well, excuse me. Yeah.

Of course, I went to talk and I joked. This month, trying to honor as many of the holidays as I possibly can that occur this month, I have Hanukkah songs. Oh, nice. They're very fluffy. They're very fluffy and very cozy.

Okay, here we go. Marianne Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten, lying in bed with her eyes wide open. Sing, sing, what shall we sing? Marianne Cotton tied up with string. Where, where? Up in the air, selling black puddings, a penny a pair. This is a once popular dark nursery rhyme. You might even still hear today walking around or past a playground in England, especially in County Durham.

Marianne Cotton is thought to be one of the most prolific Black Widow serial killers in English history.

While only ever convicted of one murder, she is strongly assumed to have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 victims. Dang. Yeah, including three of her husbands and nearly a dozen of her own children. What? Her primary motive seems to have been financial. To either collect insurance money, rid herself of mouths to feed that would have required spending some of that precious insurance money, or ridding herself of someone who might take some kind of legal action against her or otherwise stand in the way of her getting some money.

Born into a poor mining family in the village of Low Moresley in County Durham on Halloween, October 31st, 1832, Marianne's early life was not an easy one and probably is what helped motivate her to do what she did to try and put her early life of poverty far behind her. Like many girls from mining towns in the 19th century, she was quickly taught how to take care of a house and children on next to nothing and taught very little else.

Coal mining has long been a particularly dangerous profession, and Marianne's father died after falling roughly 150 feet down into a mine shaft on February of 1842, when young Marianne was only nine years old. Her mother then remarried the next year in 1843. At the age of 16, Marianne left home, escaping from one thankless, bleak life, barely grinding out a living, and into another.

She took a job in a middle-class home in the nearby village of South Hetton, just a few miles down the road, as a domestic servant. Marianne now worked long days nearly every day as a maid, cook, and nanny to the couple's dozen children. Four years later, at the age of 20 in 1852, she made her escape out of a life of labor. Or so she thought.

She met and married William Malbray, a man who had just been offered what sounded like a promising job on the railway lines of Cornwall, and the young couple moved to a rural area of southwest England. As it turned out, life in an unincorporated railway shantytown was no better than life in a coal mining town, and Marianne would quickly give birth to either four or five children, one right after another,

The exact number not known due to notoriously inadequate record keeping of the time. So let's just pick the number five. So I don't have to refer to her subsequent children as her fifth or sixth child and her sixth or seventh child, et cetera. All but one of these children would die early in their childhood, all before the age of four. And in 1857, just five years after getting married and moving, the young couple decided to take their last remaining child, Margaret Jane, and move back to County Durham near where Marianne grew up and where she will spend the rest of her wicked life.

While we don't know for sure if Marianne killed her first four children, it seems extremely likely she did, judging by the amount of death that would follow her throughout her life, especially when it came to her children. Almost no one close to Marianne seemed to survive for very long. William got a new job working on a steam vessel that sailed out of Sunderland, just a dozen miles from South Hetton, where she'd lived when the two had met. In 1858, she gave birth to another baby girl, Isabella Jane, her sixth child.

And then two years later, on June 22nd, 1860, Marianne's eldest living daughter, Margaret Jane, passed away unexpectedly after a sudden bout of some illness that affected her stomach at the age of either three or four. Again, very likely murdered by her mother. Marianne gave birth to another girl in 1861, her seventh child, who she now also named Margaret, Margaret Jane. Two years after her birth, a son named John Robert William was born, her eighth baby.

Marianne was now raising her three living children while married to a man making no more money than a coal miner. Life on a ship was almost as dangerous as life in the mines, and Mary strongly encouraged her husband to take out a life insurance policy with obviously her as the beneficiary. And shortly after she did, their baby John Robert died at just the age of one, followed by his father William dying in early 1865. Both thought to have likely died of some unknown, quote, intestinal disorder. Most sources say they died of a gastric fever.

And many who have studied Mary in recent years think their symptoms were brought on by arsenic poisoning. Mary Ann collected a 35-pound life insurance policy, which was equal to about a half year's pay for William at the time. And now she moved again with her two remaining daughters. And within just a few weeks, in March of 1865, her four-year-old Margaret Jane now also died. Following intestinal pain, almost certainly brought about by arsenic poisoning.

And then her remaining daughter, Isabella, now her only living child, was sent away to live with Marianne's mother. Marianne, currently 32 years old now, is free of her husband, free of her children, and she has a decent amount of money in her pocket. She soon gets a job as a fever nurse in a hospital in Sunderland, where she quickly meets a patient named George Ward, who lived in nearby Seaham Harbor, about five miles away.

The two were married a few months later, in August of 1865. Doesn't seem like it was a union of love, at least not on Mary Ann's part. By the time the two had married, she had already had her eye or set her eye on somebody else and started having an affair with a neighbor named Joseph Natras. Then the following year, Mary's new husband, George, wouldn't you know it, he'll die. Just 14 months after Mary and Mary, on October 20th, 1866.

George had been in poor health since before he had met Mary. His death certificate would state that he died from cholera and typhoid fever. But his attending doctor later reported that while Ward had been very ill, he had been greatly surprised that his death came on so suddenly. Yet again, now thought that he was poisoned. And once again, Mary collects a hefty life insurance payout. The second husband she almost certainly killed.

Not long after George's death, Marianne then came across an ad for domestic help from a recently widowed, fairly wealthy man, James Robinson, her next husband and the next target for her money for murder scheme. James lived back in Sunderland and had been left with five children, the youngest of whom was quite ill. Marianne was hired to take care of James's family in November of 1866, and within a month of taking the job, James's youngest child is dead. She had suffered from terrible stomach distress in her final days.

Mary Ann had now very likely killed seven of her own children, two husbands, and one of James Robinson's children. And now James, overcome with grief over the death of his baby girl, turns to his new housekeeper and her likely murderer for comfort. And soon, Mary will become pregnant with his child, her ninth. And she's put her affair with Joseph Natras on hold.

She also has to leave her new man to return home and deal with her mother for a moment. In April of 1867, Mary is summoned to her mother's bedside about six miles away in Seaham Harbor because her mom is sick with hepatitis. By the time Mary arrives, her mother is beginning to recover from her illness. But then shortly after Mary arrives, what do you know it? She begins to suffer from terrible stomach pains.

She also confronts her daughter about Marianne allegedly stealing and selling some of her possessions. And it seems her mother may have wanted to have her daughter charged with theft. But nothing would come of this because nine days after Mary shows up, her mom is dead. Seven of her own children, two husbands, another child in her care, and now her mother. Marianne returned to the Robinson household in Sunderland following her mother's death with her daughter, Isabella Jane, whom her mother had been watching after.

Within just a few weeks, two of James's surviving children will now also die, closely followed by poor Isabella, who is now either eight or nine years old. Three children in Mary's care die in a single month's time, and all of them died from, quote, abdominal discomfort. Eight of her own children are dead now, two husbands, her mother, and three other kids who died in her care.

Despite these deaths, four months later, after Marianne revealed to James that she was pregnant with his child, James does the honorable thing and the two are wed in August of 1867. Their child, Margaret Isabella, her third daughter, she named Margaret in case you were keeping track, born in November, and wouldn't you know it, up and dies three months later in February of 1868 after suffering from some mysterious stomach ailment.

Still, if James was at this point suspicious of Mary, he doesn't confront her. All this death doesn't put an end to the sexual side of their marriage because a year later, in June of 1869, Mary will give birth to a son named George, her 10th child. Finally, within seven or so months of George's birth, James seems to get an inkling of who his wife really is. At the beginning of 1870, James Robinson finds out that Mary Ann had been stealing from him.

and that she had stolen a lot. She had been doctoring his checkbook, and he had gone from being relatively wealthy when he met her into falling into debt. She had also been pressuring him for months to take out a life insurance policy. Enraged and rightfully so after putting her theft together with all the recent deaths and her insistence on him taking out a life insurance policy and making her the beneficiary, James ends their marriage and has Marianne thrown out of his house. Knowing he could have her arrested, she doesn't fight to stay.

And Marianne, despite having birthed 10 children, is now child-free once again because James has kept young George with him, and that'll be the only reason young George will outlive his mother. Mary is also broke again, and that same year in early 1870, a friend named Margaret Cotton, so many Margarets in this tale, now gives Marianne a place to stay in nearby Wallbottle, just under 20 miles away from where she was living. At the time, Margaret's recently widowed brother, Fred Cotton, was living with her, along with his two boys, Fred Jr. and Charles.

and Margaret had let it slip to Marianne that she had a savings of approximately 60 pounds. Marianne knew that if Margaret died, that money would go straight to her brother Fred, who Mary had quickly started a romantic relationship with. Poor Margaret does die, three weeks after meeting Mary, in March of 1870 from, I bet you can guess, a stomach ailment. If your name was Margaret and you had a close relationship with Marianne, you were as good as dead.

Nine of her own children, two husbands, her mother, three children in her care, and now a friend who made the terrible decision to take pity on her and help her, all got sick and died from a nasty stomach ailment while Mary was either raising them, had married them, or had just met them. 15 people in total now. Around this time, Marianne's former neighbor and lover, Joseph Natras, one of the few men to become close to Mary and live for any real length of time, moved into a home near Mary in West Auckland, and Mary resumed her affair with him.

Then about three weeks after the death of his sister, Marianne told Fred she is pregnant with her 11th child now. And in September of 1870, Marianne and Frederick Cotton, husband number four, get married, despite the fact that she was still legally married to James Robinson, as official divorce proceedings had not been carried out. And despite the fact that Joseph Natras, not Frederick, could quite possibly be the father of Marianne's latest baby. So Mary now became Marianne Cotton, the name we know her by today.

and she convinces Fred to move to West Auckland. Not sure what reason she sold him on to do this, but the real reason was to live closer to her lover, Joseph. Her next child, Robert Robson, her 11th, born at the start of 1871, and within the year in December, one year and two days after getting married, Frederick Cotton, again husband number four, dies of some sort of gastric fever. More stomach problems.

Mary is the beneficiary of a recent insurance policy she had taken out on Fred. The third husband she has very likely murdered, possibly the 16th person she's killed. Then just three months later, Mary moves in with her lover, or moves her lover, Joseph, into Frederick's former house in West Auckland, her lover who might actually be Robert's father. By the time she moves in with Joseph, she is already pregnant again with her lover's child or her recently murdered husband's, a boy she will name Frederick, her 12th.

But soon, Mary will have spent all of the insurance money, and she'll have to return to her cold-blooded cutting cost measures. On March 10th, 1872, young Fred Cotton Jr., still an infant, dies of gastric fever. The 10th child of hers she is likely killed. Just 18 days later, on March 28th, her other son, Robert Robson, dies of convulsions. Then just three days after Robert dies, on April 1st, her lover Joseph Natris dies of gastric fever.

Joseph had just made Mary the beneficiary of his will and a recipient of the new, you know, life insurance policy, a move that surely cost him his life. Mary had also collected life insurance payouts following the deaths of her recent children. She's now very likely killed 11 of her kids, three of her husbands, her mother, three other kids, a friend, and a lover, 20 people.

And she may have killed Joseph to pursue a new lover some sources say she had just met, Richard Quick Mann, a custom and excise agent specialized in breweries, who she may have begun to have an affair with while she was still with Joseph. Regardless, following Joseph's death, Marianne, now 39 years old, backed down to just one child in her care, her young stepson, Charles Cotton. And she has just taken out a life insurance policy on poor Charles.

She soon meets Thomas Riley, a parish official, who asks Marianne to help him nurse a woman sick with smallpox. She agrees. She also complains that her stepson Charles, who is not quite seven, is making it hard for her to work. And she asks Thomas if her stepson can be committed to a workhouse, basically an orphanage. When the official doesn't agree to place Charles in this workhouse, Marianne claims he has become weak and sickly and makes the following remark to Riley.

I won't be troubled long. He'll go like all the rest of the Cottons. Five days later, July 12th, 1872, young Charles dies. And Marianne Cotton is no longer troubled by him. She has now very likely killed 21 people. 11 of her own children, three of her husband's, her mother, four other children in her care, a friend and a lover.

Hearing this, Mr. Riley becomes naturally rightfully very alarmed about the troubled comment and then Charles dying. He goes to the village police, persuades a doctor to delay writing a death certificate until the circumstances can be investigated. An inquest is held and a jury will return a verdict of natural causes. Marianne claimed to have used arrowroot to relieve the boy's illness and said Riley had only made accusations against her because she had rejected his romantic advances. She seemingly had gotten away with murder yet again.

During the 19th century, arsenic was a popular choice for murderers. It's colorless, odorless, tasteless, difficult to detect in an autopsy. It's quickly absorbed into the body's tissues, making it a historically challenging poison to detect in a deceased individual until sometime after their death. It was also readily available in 19th century England, as it was used for a variety of everyday household tasks.

The symptoms of arsenic poisoning include extreme cramping, shortness of breath, and diarrhea, which made it very easy to mistake arsenic poisoning for many common natural illnesses of the time. However, after the verdict of natural causes, some suspicious local reporters looked into Mary further, and papers in the area began to report that she had moved often and death followed her wherever she went.

Three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother, 12 or 13 children, going back to not knowing for certain if she killed three or four kids when she lived in southwest England, had all died of so-called stomach fevers. And now Dr. William Byers Kilburn, who had performed the autopsy on Charles, got a gut feeling that he had missed something. So he takes some tissue samples, passes them along to a forensic lab in Leeds to have them checked for arsenic.

And sure enough, the results come back. The presence of arsenic is confirmed. Marianne is subsequently arrested for the murder of Charles Cotton and three bodies of others she was suspected of killing are exhumed from the West Auckland Church Cemetery located in the village of West Auckland. Fred Jr., Robert Robson, and Joseph Natris. And all bodies are confirmed to have arsenic inside of them. So all died from arsenic poisoning. Now it seems as if Marianne was about to die, but her story's still not quite finished.

While waiting trial, she reveals that she has gotten pregnant again. She was a regular fertile myrtle. Her trial is postponed until the baby, Margaret Edith Cotton, another Margaret, and her 13th child is born on January 10th, 1873. Only the second of her children who will outlive her.

Two months later, on March 7th, 1873, her trial begins for the murder of Charles alone. Public outrage is strong. Just two weeks later, her trial is concluded and it takes the jury less than two hours to deliver a verdict of guilty. And her sentence? Death by hanging. Her baby is taken from her. Her sentence of death by hanging swiftly carried out just over two weeks later, March 24th, 1873.

London's The Daily News will report, after a few convulsive struggles, she ceased to exist. Marianne's execution was reportedly intentionally botched in order to make sure she suffered. The executioner used a much shorter rope than normal and only allowed her to have a two-foot drop. So instead of having her neck broken and dying nearly instantaneously, she died slowly of strangulation.

By the time she finally stopped kicking, the hood over her face was reportedly stained with blood. Witnesses were, quote, visibly disturbed as they watched her botched execution. Marianne was then buried on the grounds of the Durham Jail. Her body was later exhumed and cremated. While she was only convicted for the murder of Charles Cotton, clearly, it's believed her victim count is much higher, likely 21. Ever since her death, Marianne's name has been used as a deterrent to prevent children from misbehaving in England.

Some version of telling them, be a good boy or girl, or Marianne Cotton will come for you. And perhaps according to the paranormal claims of some, this might be more than a hollow threat. Marianne's ghost might actually come for you, or at least reveal itself to you. Time now for the tale of the ghosts of Marianne Cotton and her victims.

There are many areas around West Auckland where Mary Ann's ghost is said to still visit, including the West Auckland Town Hall, where a portrait of her hangs to this day, the West Auckland Cemetery, where some of her victims are still buried, a bench that now sits in place of one of her former residences, 20 Johnson Terrace in West Auckland, and the last house she lived in, where she murdered multiple victims and where Dr. Kilburn performed the autopsy on poor Charles Cotton.

This house is located on Front Street, West Auckland, and overlooks the village green. The table where Dr. Kilburn conducted his post-mortem exam remains in the house. And according to the BBC, a teapot that Marianne reportedly used to brew her poisoned arsenic-laced tea was donated to the Beamish Museum in 1972. The bench is now known to many locals as a place to avoid. It is said a dark, foreboding presence surrounds the bench, and anyone who sits there will be overcome with a sudden and unnatural chill.

Locals have also reported seeing the apparitions of children, thought by some to be Mary Ann's child victims, playing on the surrounding grass. The last residence of Mary Ann and her ever-changing family is currently being rented out by the owner, and some tenants who lived there in 2017 reported numerous incidents of paranormal activity. Sick of the torment, they allowed author and paranormal investigator Elaine Kelly to conduct an investigation. The tenants wished to remain anonymous, but Elaine described them as a middle-aged couple whose daughter had already left the family home.

By the time Elaine began her investigation, she said that the tenants refused to even enter a room on the top floor anymore unless absolutely necessary because of what they described as the presence of a very angry and evil spirit. The entity's heavy, pacing footsteps could be heard all night long, and the spirit either was sometimes visiting the rest of the home or other entities were also giving the couple problems.

objects were said to have been witnessed moving around the house on their own. The man in the house claimed he had been scratched by an unseen entity on numerous occasions and that others in his home had been pushed while walking down the stairs by invisible hands. The couple said that their dog began to refuse to go up the stairs. He would only stand at the bottom, hair raised, looking up the staircase. The couple also claimed that they often felt like something at the top of the stairs was watching them.

The man claimed that when he first moved in, he would often fall asleep next to the fireplace. He said he typically covered himself up with a blanket, but then he began to notice that when he woke up, the blanket was no longer covering him. Instead, it had been removed and was found neatly folded on the floor next to him. Both the man and his wife supposedly said that coins would often go missing, but then be found later stacked in neat piles around the house.

On the first floor in the main bedroom, there's a cupboard shut firmly with a large draught excluder on the floor in front of it, yet it still allegedly slams open and shut of its own accord. And that particular cupboard is a doorway to a tunnel that runs alongside the house. Originally, it led to the pub next door. It's believed that Marianne would lock her children in this tunnel to punish them.

The man of the house has also claimed that he would often wake up in his bed in a state of paralysis, feeling as if someone was pushing him down into the mattress, hard enough to make it difficult for him to breathe. Was he being attacked by the ghost of Marianne? Did she wish to eliminate this family from her home? On the top floor, there was another smaller cupboard that Elaine said she found locked with crystals hanging on the door.

The tenants explained that the crystals were there when they moved in. They said they had previously removed them, but then the paranormal activity in the room greatly increased. So they put them back and the activity lessened. Elaine asked the couple about some small wooden crosses hanging above the large fireplace downstairs. Apparently, when the activity became violent, the tenants would make one of these small crosses and pray with it. And afterwards, they would hang it above the fireplace and it would seem to calm the activity down for a while.

During the investigation, Elaine and her team claimed to hear their fair share of knocks and bangs. They also claimed to record EVPs, many of which were the sounds of children crying out for help, particularly in and around the cupboard on the second floor. On the top floor, where the tenants refused to go, the investigation took a sinister turn when team members, one by one, claimed to feel the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Their stomachs convulsed, their fingers and toes tingled, their muscles cramped, their chest tightened, and they began to fear for their safety.

They ended up leaving the house and calling an end to their paranormal investigation. So do the ghosts of Mary Ann Cotton and her many victims, most of whom were her own children, still linger in West Auckland? And does the ghost of Mary specifically want to take still more lives? ♪

Mary Ann was a psychopath. I had to go over this story. So I had to create a second document that was just a body tracker to keep track of like how many kids she had versus how many kids died versus how many other people died around her. And they had so many of them had the same name. That was killing me. I was like, wait, is it the third or the fourth Margaret?

Poor Margaret, Marjorie's, Maggie's, whatever nicknames. It is crazy that every single child of hers that she actually spent any time raising, without exception, died. The only two kids of her, like, 13 kids she had that didn't die were the one that her...

third husband, I believe. I think it was their second or third. I hope you kept track. I know. George took to raise, you know, like he raised the little boy George on his own. So that prevented her from killing him. And then the only other kid that survived was the kid she had right before she was executed. Unbelievable. So given a chance, she would have undoubtedly killed them all. She loves to murder.

She's crazy. What is it, Belle Gunness? Yeah, Belle Gunness, but like, at least Belle Gunness, well, Belle Gunness killed a few of her kids. See? But she wasn't killing like all of her kids, all the time. Well, she still killed her kids. My God.

I have a few pictures. This first one, an old portrait of Marianne Cotton from an article in the Day's Doings, a late 19th century New York City publication printed November 16th, 1872. Yeah, I mean, her story did make like international news. It was just such a wild story of, I mean, obviously so rare for any era for a woman to kill a lot of people. Women serial killers are much more rare, excuse me, than men.

And B, they kill so many of her own family members. She's a fucking nut. And she looks crazy. Yeah. Yeah, she looks... I mean, even in this old portrait, when you can't get a real good look at her eyes, what you can see, her eyes look real dark. She looks evil. Yeah, she does. And I always wonder, when you see these pictures...

If we hadn't have heard that story and just saw this photo... No, I would still think like, oh, not that lady. Yeah, I think I'd be like, ugh. Kind of like, you know, not that we need to go into her story, but we met that lady in the plane yesterday. Ugh. And we were like, oof, bad energy. I mean, she was acting shitty. Yeah, she's a big...

nasty see you next Tuesday. But her vibe was just like, ooh, there's something dark going on with you. Yeah. I know. And when I see those people and I pick up on that energy and my initial reaction is like, ugh. And then this person's particular instance that we're referencing from our airplane ride, I just thought like, man, who hurt you? How'd you become this? Yeah. Like what trauma have you not dealt with that you are now reflecting back onto every

Everyone around you, you piece of shit. Or you're the rare person, and I've gone over some of these people on Time Suck where it's like loving family, doted on, nothing bad seems to happen from what anyone can tell. And this, like starting when they were young, just something was wrong. Just like how some people are, you know, you're born with lesser eyesight than others. Some people are born with like a lesser amount of just like empathy, just like a conscience. Yeah.

Uh, this next one, Mary's house on front street in West Auckland, her final residence and where she killed her last victim, her poor stepson. Oh. Uh, and then this, uh, next one, this is the teapot. She very likely used to brew arsenic laced tea to poison numerous victims donated to the Beamish museum in 1972. Okay. And, uh, I think that's all the pictures I have of, uh, leading to this story. Well then. Yeah. I mean, wasn't a lot of photos being taken back then. You should be careful.

Yeah? You're going to poison me with arsenic? I mean, it just sounds like I think you're able to do it really slowly over time. Uh-huh. Just a little bit here. Yep. A little bit there. I think I've talked about this before. A little in your protein shake. I've talked about this before, but...

not for a long time, uh, at least on this show, but there was a lady that we found out that lady in Riggins, uh, where I grew up that we found out killed her kids many years earlier. And then the last, before they rearrest her, like the last two old guys, she, she dated one of which was my, I think it would have been my great, great uncle, my great grandpa's brother. But anyway, you know, older guys in their seventies, I think when they started to date this lady, but totally healthy, everything's going great. They started dating her and they're dead. And, uh,

Sigs, who's my like great, great uncle, Sigs' son Bobby has been convinced ever since that that lady poisoned her dad. Probably. Uh-huh. Just based on what we know. And she had, and I didn't know her story when I was a kid, and she was creepy. Just like her eyes, her eyes were dead. Like there was something terrible in her eyes. See?

So crazy. I wonder why that is that like we can read crazy through eyeballs. I think it's evolution. I think it's like perceiving threats. Sometimes your instincts aren't, you know, accurate. Yeah. But a lot of times when a lot of people consistently get the same kind of vibe of somebody, I think it's because like, you know, we're reading something about like a process

predatory kind of way they're looking at us that would keep us alive previously. Like when somebody stared at us in a certain way, I mean, we are like, which is why kind of the masks mess people up psychologically during like the COVID stuff is because we are so programmed without even consciously thinking of it to read people's faces and try and detect, are they friend or foe?

Which is why like con artists often have like this smarmy kind of affect that sadly dupes a lot of people because it's a put on. Like they are making sure that their face reads as like, I'm happy. I'm trustworthy. Everything down to my haircut and the shirt I wear and the way I'm looking, the way I shake your hand is trying to signal I'm not a bad guy. And yeah, because they're able to kind of put that mask on so effectively. Even you just doing that right now and I know, love and trust you. I'm like, ugh.

Yeah, it's creepy. Yeah. You ready to move on from a murderous mother and talk about a case of an alleged demonic summoning gone wrong down in Mexico City? Yeah, I'm stoked for this. Okay. Before we move on to more scares, we need to take a quick in-between story sponsor break.

If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a Robert or Annabelle on our Patreon to get all these episodes ad-free, additional bonus episodes, and more. The holiday shopping frenzy is upon us. What are you planning to get your favorite people? I hope you're keeping in mind that what most people really want is to be together and share in special memories. And even if you can't be together, you can still give them your smiling face on an Aura digital picture frame. Name.

Named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter, Aura frames are easy to use and are a beautiful addition to any home. The frames are such an easy gift to give this holiday season. You can preload a frame with all of your favorite pictures so that when your loved one opens their Aura frame, they can immediately start to enjoy it. It's an easy home run of a gift.

Do what we did and load up a frame for your favorite family members. And don't forget to sneak a few silly pics in there. For a limited time, visit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames by using promo code SCARED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code SCARED. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year, so don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply.

Ah.

Ah, yes, the forever challenge of soaking up as much vitamin D is upon us. And for me, this time of year is always a bit of a roller coaster. On the one hand, I love to hunker down and stay in. On the other hand, I also need to get out and socialize. If I don't,

My depression and anxiety can get real, real ugly. Thankfully, we both have amazing BetterHelp therapists to lean on during this time of the year. If you have been considering starting therapy, maybe now is the time. Why not give BetterHelp a shot? It's entirely online and designed to fit into your busy schedule.

Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash scaredtodeathtoday to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash scaredtodeath. Do you love a good deal? I know I do. When Mint Mobile said it was easy to get our cell phone bill down to just $15 a month with the purchase of a three-month plan, we had to check it out.

Turns out it really is that easy. The only hard part is breaking up with your current provider who will, for sure, put you on hold and then beg you to stay.

They're just so needy. True. Mint Mobile does all that they can to make switching providers easy-peasy. All of their plans come with high-speed data on unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. And bonus, you can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan. You get to keep your number and all of your contacts, avoiding all the new phone who dis drama. Breaking up with your current provider won't be easy. Stay strong. You can do this.

Saving money with Mint Mobile will make you so happy each and every month. You'll be glad you made the switch. To get this new offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com. That's mintmobile.com. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com. $45 upfront payment required, acquiescence.

Thanks for listening to our sponsored deals, creeps and peepers. Okay, born on October 19th, 1962 in Mexico City.

Juan Ramon Sainz was the host of a popular radio show called La Mano Peludo, La Mano Peluda, Spanish for the hairy hand. That primarily revolved around Collins, where listeners share alleged supernatural encounters before the show ended in 2018, according to the BBC. Sounds similar to Coast to Coast AM here in the U.S.

And explain the name because it's an odd little name. Yeah, the show was named after the legend of La Mano Paluda, an old legend that can be heard in almost every Latin American country, but it seems bigger in Mexico and Colombia and dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. Most versions of the legends say that La Mano Paluda belongs to a man that lived and died during the Spanish Inquisition. He was wrongfully accused of robbery and as punishment, his hand was cut off.

When this happened, he swore he would get revenge on everyone who had anything to do with him being accused and maimed, but then he was murdered before he could do so.

At least he couldn't get his revenge now in life. But then his hand seemed to come back after he died, crawling out from his grave, even though I don't know if they buried him with his hand and seeking his vengeance. The graveyard keeper would see a black, according to this legend, black hairy hand from time to time crawling out of the man's tomb, looking for victims to grab hold of, to tear out their eyeballs, choke them to death.

When it was done killing, it would return to the tomb. And after killing everyone who had anything to do with the man being falsely accused, maimed, and murdered, the hand kept killing. And it became a, you know, like a grim fairy tale type story to get kids to, you know, behave. To this day, there are those who claim that the hand has pulled them out of their bed while sleeping or people who have seen the hand moving through the field, searching for more victims. For generations, parents would tell their children to stay in their beds once it was time for them to go to sleep.

Because if they didn't, if they got up before the morning light, the hand, right, the hairy hand, the la mano peluda would come out from their bed, grab them, pull them under their bed and take them down into hell. I love this. So that's how the show got its name. First airing in August of 1995 and broadcast out of Mexico City from 10 o'clock to midnight every weeknight.

The show became a cult classic amongst taxi drivers, like long-haul truck drivers, just late-night workers in general, and night owls. Over the years, listeners shared various encounters with ghosts, demonic possession, cursed objects, cryptids, extraterrestrials, and more. Juan took over hosting the show in 1999, and he endeared himself to fan to the show by always showing callers respect instead of skepticism. He seemed very open to even just the most bizarre tales.

He frequently offered advice to those who were going through difficult situations with a seemingly paranormal origin, and sometimes also would do follow-up investigations with the people he spoke to. And a lot of people now wonder, did one of these follow-up investigations end up getting Juan killed? Time now for the tale of Careful Who You Help. In 2002, Juan answered a call from an extremely disturbed caller named Josue Velasquez.

Josue explained that his family had been in debt for years. He was always looking for ways to make extra money, and that that is what led him into the occult. He said he had tried summoning several different spirits, some would say demons, who he'd heard could make him fabulously wealthy. He told Juan and his listeners that nothing came from his initial attempts, but he didn't give up. He kept trying new rituals, that eventually, he came into possession of an old book on witchcraft, complete with yet another summoning ritual for a powerful demon who could give him his fortune, in exchange for sacrifices.

Josue told Juan that he tried to summon this demon off and on for over a year. He said he was about to give up, but he was desperate. And one night around two in the morning, he finally fully committed to the ritual, making deeper slashes into his wrists instead of cursory scratches. And his blood really flowed. It flowed so much he was worried that he might bleed to death. But instead of dying, his show of faith gave the demon what it wanted. Then the ritual worked.

Josue claimed that a tall, dark, shadowy entity appeared before him and spoke in a deep and powerful, terrifying voice, saying, Josue made his first wish. It would be the first of many, with the demon needing to be summoned, but without the requirement of as much of his blood, each time he made a new wish. And every time, the demon demanded a new sacrifice.

Josue said the sacrifices started off small, small just like the initial amount of help he was asking for. But soon Josue became greedy, asking for more and more and more. And the more money he asked for, the greater the sacrifice the demon demanded. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Josue said the demon wanted a human sacrifice. And not only that, it demanded that the sacrifice be someone from his family. God.

At this point, Josue shockingly admitted on air that he had killed his own grandmother. Oh my God! He described how he drugged her so she would fall into a deep sleep. He said he then prayed to the demon for the strength to murder her before he killed her and that he then, quote, did what he had to do. Afterwards, when she was found dead, he said he was shocked that she didn't have any marks on her and that her body was found intact. It was surprising, he said, because he claimed that he had, quote, did a lot of things to her.

Josue told Juan that for this sacrifice he was rewarded with a large sum of money. But there was a catch. He said that once he had the money he had asked for, he now had to spend it all in the same day. And he couldn't give any away or donate it. And if he didn't spend all of his money in one day, the demon would send numerous lesser demonic entities to torment him.

Josue now claimed that he still had some money left over by the time the night was almost over that he got the money and that he saw a construction worker. He said he suddenly felt compelled to give the man his leftover cash, perhaps to alleviate some of his guilt that he cared for doing what he had done to get the money. And he gave the man the money despite the warning of what would happen to him if he broke the rules. He doubted in that moment, for whatever reason, that the demon would actually know what he had done.

But then, by the time he arrived home, he said a demonic entity was already waiting for him. He described the being as looking like a very thin woman with white hair and said, quote, I don't want to turn back because it has a very, very large mouth and a rather large tongue. Oswey told Juan Ramon that this disturbing creature had been following him ever since that night and that she was standing behind him right now as he spoke.

At one point during the call-in, Josue said that this womanish-looking entity had recently appeared in front of him, holding something in her hand that terrified him, an inverted cross with an eye in the center. Josue now became emotional on the call, had trouble speaking, saying that this symbol was a symbol of death and it meant he would soon die. Josue also said that his appearance had been changing since he had first successfully summoned the demon.

Uh, that he was worried that he was becoming some sort of monster himself. He said his nose had grown and his face was transforming. He claimed to have photographed himself before and after the summoning and said he now looked like a totally different person. He claimed that people he encountered recently in the street looked at him with disgust or refused to look him directly in the eye.

Josue said he was horrified by what he had done to his grandmother and that he wanted out of his deal with the devil. He said he wished he had never made the deal, that he could take it all back. And despite how tall this tale may seem, the host of La Mano, Paluda, Juan Ramon, acted as if he completely believed it all. Juan had Josue stay on the line with him, while he called a pastor friend of his named Roberto Guazo, put him on the air as well, and asked him to help Josue. And now here's where this story gets weirder.

Juan would later claim that at this point during the call, his studio began to feel exceptionally cold, and that when he and the pastor read some passages from their Bibles on air, the page he was reading from curled up on its own as if something wanted him to stop reading from it. He also claimed that a laptop in the studio burst into flames. Despite these alleged terrifying occurrences, Juan would continue to speak with Josue after that first call-in, and things would get even stranger and more terrifying.

In a follow-up call with Juan Ramon and Pastor Guazo, Josue said that he was now being physically and psychologically tormented by four separate demonic entities. And then while the pastor prayed for Josue's torment to end, the show's listeners heard disembodied voices and a sinister laugh in the background. Josue sounded utterly petrified.

Josue would later claim that after this particular call ended, the demonic entity disguised as a woman stabbed him with a crucifix. Whether or not that claim is true, he apparently did end up in the hospital with a stab wound and Juan Ramon would visit him there. Juan would keep visiting him and keep getting further and further intertwined with whatever was happening to him for years. At some point, Josue told Juan Ramon again he was heading to a monastery in California at the suggestion of Pastor Guazo, who was still trying to rid himself of the demons he claimed still plagued him.

And this trip to the monastery seemed to have worked out. Josue ended up going back to school, became a bacteriologist, or bacterial, bacteriologist. He was finally demon free. Then in 2010, Juan Ramon stopped hosting La Mano Polluda. The following year, Josue called him, told him the demons had returned. At this time, Juan Ramon was now helping produce a segment for a paranormal TV show in Mexico called Extra Normal.

He asked the producers if they would interview Josue for the show, and they agreed. And now this story takes its darkest turn. A cameraman, unnamed, reporter Mario Estrada, and Juan Ramon all met Josue for the interview in 2011. Strangely, he told them that he would have to do the interview over a body of water, that he would only be safe to talk about what was happening to him if he was surrounded by water, that for some reason the demon's hold over him would be weakened. So they met on Lake Texcoco.

Once there, at the edge of the lake to get on a boat, they float out towards the center. The cameraman sat behind Josue and Juan Ramon. Mario, the reporter, sat in front of him. Mario and the cameraman thought something was off with Josue, really, really off. He seemed insane, possibly dangerous. He was wearing a black suit with an animal skin wrapped around his shoulders. He had a black leather glove on his right hand. He was using a bone as some sort of staff.

Josue explained that the bone was a human femur and that he carried it because it had a protection spell attached to it. Mario then also found it odd how when shaking everyone's hands, Josue used his left hand to greet him and the cameraman, but then he shook Juan Ramon's hand with his right gloved hand.

At the end of the interview, Josue promised never to use dark magic again, and he planned to visit a new priest very soon who had recently promised to help him. And that was the last time Josue would speak with Juan Ramon, but it wasn't perhaps the end of Juan Ramon's involvement with Josue's story. Just a few days later, Juan Ramon died May 29, 2011, at the age of 48. His official cause of death was listed as periatontis, caused by bacteria, both the onset and his demise, very sudden, unexpected death.

He seemed like he was perfectly fine just days before he died, right before he had went on the water with Josue Velasquez. The reporter, Mario Estrada, got into a car accident just after the interview that left him hospitalized for over a week. The cameraman had to have surgery right after this interview due to some unspecified life-threatening medical issue. And the other man who had tried for years to help Josue, Pastor Roberto Guazo, died of a heart attack a week after Juan Ramon died. All coincidence? Or something both paranormal and nefarious?

A number of people online have speculated that Josue tricked the man who tried to help him, that in order to save his own life, Josue had made another deal with the demon he had summoned, one where he exchanged his life for Juan Ramon and Pastor Roberto Guazos, and that he had taken Juan Ramon out on the water as part of a ritual. As crazy as Josue Velasquez's story seems to be, could some or all of it actually be true? Could trying to help someone remove a demonic presence from their life get you killed?

I mean, sure. I think, like, absolutely. Yeah, messed around with dark forces? Yeah, I mean, I am certain...

That in all of these years and all of these stories, we've had demonic possession stories where then like the priest dies, you know, like during an, you know, after an exorcism or that there's a strange series of events where people who are around or involved in a exorcism then fall ill and then die of said illness. And so it doesn't feel like it's technically directly related to that, but, you know, probably is. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if we're going to, you know, entertain the possibility of demonic possession being real and obviously then demons being real, then it makes sense that these demons could, you know, not just hurt the person they're currently possessing, but anybody who tries to help that person. Yeah, that's a crazy story. Yeah, right? A few pictures. This first one, just La Mano Polluda host Juan Ramon Saiz.

Yeah, you know, he was kind of a legendary figure down there. Still has, you know, a lot of fans who just love that show. Yeah, again, it reminds me very much of like Coast to Coast AM. Yeah, I mean, sounds like a really cool show. And then this is an illustration of La Mano Polluda created by Mackenzie Knees found on artbooksfilmmusicmagazine.com. Cool, cool. There's a bunch of similar. Yeah, I was not familiar with that folklore story before.

And then finally, a photo of Josue Velasquez. He just looks so normal. Yeah, he's still around. He pops up on Paranormal Podcast down in Mexico. I'm pretty sure he only speaks Spanish. So if you can speak Spanish, you can find him on a number of Spanish-speaking podcasts as a guest and just like YouTube videos and stuff. I'm surprised that anyone would want to have contact with him. I know, I know. I'd be pretty nervous, I must say.

And also, I just don't know that I would trust him. Like if I know, if I believe that he may have done something to cause other people to lose their lives, then there's no way I'm interacting with that guy. Yeah. If you're somebody who's like, you know, nervous about that kind of stuff, he definitely seems like a risky guest. Yeah. Like he's not coming on this show fucking ever. He is officially uninvited. Yeah.

If we ever have guests, or I guess, you know, you've kind of had like one, I think once, but if we ever, yeah, not that we're going to. No, not that we're going to. We know. We know. We heard all about how you don't like it. And we don't, yeah, we like doing it the way we're doing it. But if we did ever want to have guests, he would not be on the list of top gets. He would be like on the Z list. Yeah. Like all the way at the very end.

no thank you desperate for you know other uh other guests before i would want him yep no thank you all right daniel yeah are you ready i am ready are you ready to tell us some stories yeah what kind of leila do you have this week for us i have my traditional one so i guess uh brown yeah neutral neutral leila uh does she smell

She does. She still is. They retain some of these. Only the brown, I feel like, really smells. Yeah, they retain their smell a surprisingly long amount of time. All right. Well, let's get into it, Dan. Okay. Hello, queen of the spoops and king of the suck. Hello. Hello. When I was 15, my parents, after years of renting one apartment after another, were finally able to purchase a home of their own.

It came with a very silly golden retriever, three beds and one and a half baths. It was basically an old cabin built in the 1920s that was retrofitted to be a single family home. The main portion of the house consisted of an entryway leading to the living room and dining area, which was next to the kitchen, then a door to the primary bedroom.

After the kitchen, there was a very narrow hallway where the addition began, adding on the second and third bedrooms plus the half bath. When you sat on the couch in the living room, you were facing the dining area, kitchen, and that oh-so-narrow hallway. My parents obviously had the primary bedroom. My room was the furthest away at the end of the narrow hallway. Just outside of my bedroom door was the back door of the house, which was my preferred way of coming and going.

Next to my room was what we called the middle room. It was a makeshift office slash guest room, though we never really had any overnight guests. It was a smaller room with a pull-out couch and a little entertainment stand for the television. It was also where I browsed the internet in the early days. During the day, I never had an issue with the middle room, even though, for whatever reason, it was the darkest room in the house. Always.

The house was a bit drafty. If the door to the middle room wasn't closed all the way, it would hit the frame any time the AC came on or when someone was coming or going out of any other door in the house. I was forever closing the door every day to avoid hearing it slam into the frame, a sound which felt like it reverberated through my room more than anywhere else in the house.

Before I would go to bed, I would pull the door to the middle room closed shut, making sure I heard the clicking sound that indicated that yes, the door is fully closed now. Only then to wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and find the door wide open. Not ajar, but wide open. More than it ever was during the day. Wide open and the room was pitch black.

I would quickly reach in, grab the doorknob, close the door in one swift movement and listen for the clicking confirmation that the door was in fact once again closed. And then I would rush away from the middle room as fast as possible.

One night in my early 20s, I'd just come back from the bar around 2.30. I opened the back door as quietly as I could, slipped into my room, dropped off my stuff, and made my way to talk to my dad, who was very obviously awake when I quote-unquote snuck into my house as a full-grown adult.

As I walked to the living room, I noticed the door to the middle room was slightly ajar. Paying no mind to the door being cracked open, I greeted my father. With a weird look in his eyes, he asked me, Hey boy, do you have a guest over? Being a 22-year-old living at home, it wasn't unheard of that I'd sneak girls in through the back door. Nah, pops, I said. He looked at me, confused.

He said, Me, very confused now, said, And without hesitation, he said, That's the only reason I even asked. Noticing the absolute fear that just washed over me, he said,

It might have just been my imagination. Just, you know, make sure if you have a friend over, she's gone before your mom wakes up. Not really knowing what to do or say, I just said, uh, okay, well, goodnight, pops. And I walked back to my room. As I made my way, I noticed that now, instead of being slightly cracked open like it was before, the door to the middle room was wide the fuck open.

A wave of both fear and cold air hit me all at once. Not just a kind of like, ooh, this is a spooky feeling, more like a I'm about to piss myself kind of fear. I reached into the middle room, grabbed the doorknob like I always did, trying not to look inside the room. I thought I felt or heard someone breathing in the room. A soft, cold kind of breath. A

Of course, I looked into the damn room. In front of me was the silhouette of a petite girl with long brown hair staring directly into my soul. This normally pitch-black room was now very dimly lit. I could just barely make out the shape of her in front of me. I locked eyes with this thing, and although I could not fully see her, I felt its strange smile slowly plaster across her face.

Frozen in terror, I tried to close the door. I don't know if it was my fear or the being in the room preventing me from slamming the door in its face, but the door would not close. After a short time, I finally looked away and was simultaneously able to close the door. The door, however, would not make its very noticeable click sound to assure me that the door was securely shut.

Taking my hand off the handle, the door flew all the way open, practically slamming against the wall. Again, I grabbed that damn handle, without looking this time, and slammed the door shut as hard as I could, finally hearing the signature click.

Shaking and sweating, I turned to the living room, hoping that my dad had gotten at least a brief glance of what had just happened. But of course, he was fast asleep on the couch. I ran back to my room, closed the door, and barricaded myself inside, refusing to leave until the following morning.

That next morning, my dad had no recollection of me coming home, asking me about the small brownhead girl I had over. He hadn't heard the door slamming or me cursing. Absolutely nothing. After that, I made sure the door to the middle room was locked. Not just shut, but locked. Thanks for all the spoops. Your friendly neighborhood bad wolf, Kyle. Aw, thanks, Kyle.

So creepy. That is so creepy. Ah, I was just trying to like imagine this from our perspective. You know, Kyler is about to come home for the holidays and he's not quite 22, but you know, he's about to be 19 and he's been, you know, living on his own and we're pretty relaxed. I mean, he hasn't asked about like

He has not yet broached the subject of like, hey, would it be okay if I had a girl spend the night? Right, right. To which, at this age, I think we would still say no. But, you know, I'm just thinking like, well, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe we would say yes. I mean, it is different. Yeah, he's an adult. Yeah, kind of. He's still a little guy in my mind. But like, okay, he comes home. We see him come in the front door. Yeah. Chat with him. Like, hey, buddy, got a friend with you tonight? He's like looking at us like we're crazy. Uh-huh.

And then all that goes down. And then the next morning, we don't remember talking to him about it. I think that was the part that did me in the most. Yeah, that's a crazy detail in that story of his dad being the first one to see this entity and bring it up to Kyle. But then his dad was apparently lucid, I don't know, just not fully awake or something. It's just so weird. Yeah.

Like sleepwalking or talking in his sleep. Oh, I didn't think that. Okay. But in a weird way, we're clearly like brought on by this entity or something that Kyle then did see while he's awake. And he saw this entity before he fell asleep. So it's not like sleep paralysis on his side. Yeah, that's a creepy one. Yeah, I know. I was trying to think like if this like entity had the ability to...

I don't know, pause time or have a little bit of like mind control or trick Kyle's dad. Yeah. You know, because for him to just, for his dad the next day to just say like he didn't remember any of that was particularly odd. Yeah.

Yeah, very, very. That was a good story. Yeah. And I know we've been talking to Kyle for a little while. I will be on Kyle's podcast. Sometime next year. Yeah, yeah. We haven't sorted out the details because he's going on tour and we were going back and forth with him. So when that happens, we'll see.

We can report back. Yeah. His little reference to being like a wolf. A bad wolf. A bad wolf is because Kyle's the bass player for Bad Wolves and you should check him out. See him when they come to your city. Yeah. I think they're doing like a maybe Midwest tour. I can't remember now where he told us where he was headed, but you can follow them on Instagram and yeah, he's just a sweet guy. Yeah. Yeah. And a hell of a bass player. Hell of a bass player.

Okay. Are we ready for one more tale? We are. Okay. This one is, you know, just as a reminder, it is a little rough in some ways, just giving a little bit of a warning. Maybe check this one out first before letting other younger listeners listen. The ending, however, is incredibly sweet. Aw.

Hey, Dan and Lindsay. Hello. I would like to remain anonymous since telling this story is going to require a lot of very personal details.

Some backstory about my parents is necessary. My mother would scare the shit out of Lucifina. To not sugarcoat anything, she's a horrible, abusive, manipulative person with no redeeming qualities. My father was so completely opposite from her in every way that I still find my conception hard to believe. He was a very kind, gentle soul who died far too young.

He took his own life when I was seven years old. From what I was told by relatives later, he'd written a suicide note in his truck, he was a long-haul semi-driver, and overdosed on drugs. He appeared to have had a change of heart based on how he was found. He had apparently opened the truck door and made it a short distance before he either passed away or lost consciousness. Everyone who knew him believes that this was him realizing what he had done and was trying to get help.

Is this detail relevant? I'm not really sure, but maybe. I consider myself a skeptic in the sense that I don't believe 99% of the paranormal stories I hear. With that being said, I have a very hard time rationalizing the experiences I'm about to describe.

Not even a week after his funeral, my mother was beating the shit out of me again in our kitchen for coming out of my room without permission. All of a sudden, there was an extremely loud crash. A few pans came crashing out of the cupboard. A few things to note here. One, all of the cupboards had definitely been shut all of the way. Two, all of the fallen pans were still stacked inside of each other.

And three, they had somehow landed halfway across the room. My mother was so taken aback, she let me go and I was able to run into my room. I never could make any sense of this incident, but I was grateful and didn't think about it too much after that time.

Similar incidents kept occurring, always when I was in a bad situation. For the sake of keeping this story a reasonable length, I'm going to fast forward about five years. I was in middle school and struggling with anorexia. I had been over at a friend's house and had eaten a cupcake my friend's mom had made to avoid being rude. They were such a nice family, and I've always had a hardcore people-pleaser problem.

I become terrified of how many calories I must have just eaten from the cupcake, feeling like I instantly gained 10 pounds. Panicking, I told my friend my mom wanted me back home. As soon as I made it through the front door, I ran to the bathroom, hoping I'd be able to force myself to throw up. My mother was almost never home anymore, and there was no one to stop me. I was unable to force any food to come back up and began sobbing, leaning over the toilet bowl.

I'm not sure how long I stayed like this, but after some time, I felt a hand gently rubbing my back. I screamed at the top of my lungs, knowing I was home alone. I frantically searched the whole house, confirming no one else was there. I didn't know what to do. I was absolutely sure that someone had been rubbing my back, but kept telling myself I must have imagined it. By the end of the night, I had almost convinced myself.

Fast forward another five or so years. I was a recent high school graduate and had moved in with my boyfriend of three years. Let's call him Ben. Ben had been diagnosed with bipolar in our junior year and his mom had put him on medications to manage the condition. Sadly, now that he was no longer under her roof, he had stopped taking his medications and slid into a very dark mental place.

He changed into a totally different person, becoming more aggressive every day. He had never been physically violent, but I could feel us getting closer to that line. I should have left, but my finances were going to make that very challenging.

Eventually, my fears were realized and he punched me in the face, grabbing me by my hair when I tried to leave through the back door. The back door was in a tiny enclosed porch area. To the left of the back door, there was a stairway leading to the unfinished basement. I still don't know exactly what happened next though. All I know is that Ben had suddenly let go of me and fallen halfway down the basement stairs. All I know is that Ben had suddenly let go of me and fallen halfway down the basement stairs.

I was worried that he could be seriously injured and started to race towards him. I stopped dead in my tracks when I felt a hand firmly grab my shoulder. This freaked me the fuck out, taking me right back to that day with the damn cupcake. I turned around and I ran out the door. Not knowing where to go or what to do, I walked to the long-term care facility where I worked as a CNA.

I had been asked to pick up a shift that day, and I knew they were short-staffed by several aides. I wasn't in scrubs, but no one cared. Honestly, the place should have been shut down by the state. Anyways, the scheduler gleefully told me to report to Unit 5, the memory care unit. This was the evening shift, which ended at 10 p.m., but to buy myself some more time to think, I said I'd work a double shift, keeping me overnight until 6 in the morning.

Night shift was mostly rounding on the residents every two hours, occasionally redirecting those with sundowners, and getting a few people dressed in the morning. Thankfully, this gave me enough time to get in touch with a friend who would pick me up in the morning and let me stay with her. I was still incredibly upset and stressed and enjoyed checking in on this adorable little grandma. She really took my mind off everything, prattling on about her son and his dogs.

During my 2 a.m. check, she was still wide awake and smiled a welcoming smile, asking me if I could stay a while. There was enough downtime that I was in no rush. We were talking about a golden retriever when all of a sudden she said, oh, you brought your dad again. This caught me by surprise. She did have dementia, but she was by far the most lucid resident on the unit. It was definitely not like her to say such things.

"'My dad?' I questioned. "'Yeah, the good old Indian cowboy,' she laughed. "'I felt like I was going to faint. "'My dad was Native American "'and had had a fondness for cowboy hats. "'She kept chatting, saying, "'Oh, he's such a nice man. "'The other night, he was saying "'he'd sneak me a brownie from the kitchen.'"

A couple side notes here. This resident was diabetic and forever trying to get extra desserts from people. More importantly, my father loved to cook. I have vivid memories of him in an apron making elaborate meals. My mother would berate him with homophobic slurs, saying that only women wear aprons, but she would always gladly eat his food. Particularly his favorite frequently made dessert, brownies.

This was just too much for me after the insane day I had had. And I told her I had to go check on her neighbor. I ended up living with my friend for a year, finished nursing school, and I met my husband. My life has never been better.

We have two wonderful kids, a beautiful home, and I love my work. I haven't felt any hands pat my back since, nor have I experienced anything else unexplainable. As a skeptical person, I look back on my experiences and I'm conflicted. It's possible that as a young girl, I just missed my overprotective father and somehow imagined him being with me in some way.

However, this doesn't explain the very first event with the pans, nor many other strange happenings. A part of me wonders if it is possible that my father remained with me knowing the kind of childhood I would be subjected to. Maybe now that I'm in a much better place in life, he knows that I don't need his protection anymore. Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering if dead always means gone.

That's a great story. It's a great story. I'm crying. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so hard and yet so beautiful. And, you know, this person has to remain anonymous, but anonymous sender. I hope you're still listening to the show. And I just want to tell you how proud of you I am. Yeah. Yeah. What a cool, like that's such a crazy, like out of a movie, like a great scene. Yeah. You know, the starts off as a horrible scene where Ben is, you know, off his meds.

And spiraling with his bipolar and maybe some other stuff going on in addition to that, just some character flaws or something perhaps as well, where he's becoming abusive. And then the moment he becomes physically abusive and he hits her right after that.

Like he gets basically thrown down the stairs. I know. As a protective parent, I really love that. Me too. And then that extra detail of her then going to try to help the person that she cares about, even though it's the person who just attacked her. Of course. I mean, that is how it goes. Mm-hmm.

But then a hand, like feeling a hand stop her. That was like the coolest detail of the whole story to me. Yeah. Like she's going down there and like this entity would just say her dad. It's like, no. Yeah. That's not, he's not for you to help. Yeah. And I love that because as parents, as people who, you know, have children and love and would protect them from anything in any way, shape or form. I mean, it's really hard to watch your kids go through heartbreak. And if her dad was alive-

And she was telling her dad what was going on. I imagine that he would also be saying like, what are you doing? You need to get out of this relationship, you know? So just like his ability to reach from the great beyond. Yeah. And also just like taking it back even further. Like, you know, she's going through an eating disorder and in his own way, her dad is coming to her telling her like, you don't, you don't need to do this. Right. Right. Rubbing her back. Right. And then going back even further to when her mom is abusing her and the pots and the pans. And it's like,

I'm sure, I'm going to make an assumption here, but, you know, he was, her dad was, you know, in a relationship with her mother. Yeah.

who probably to some degree knew who she was. I mean, it's not just women who think that they can marry and change men. It goes the other way sometimes too. Oh, absolutely. The whole knight in shining armor kind of syndrome. You're going to help the damsel in distress. You're going to save her. Yeah, you're going to save her. You're going to fix her. You're going to make it better. And then I would go out on a limb here and say that he probably felt very guilty for bringing a child into that situation because he just sounds like he was such a sweet man. And then...

not only did that, but then left his daughter to deal with her mother on her own. So it's like, I, I do, I don't know. I agree with this sender that every, every which way he could step in, he did. I wonder how much her mom had to do with her dad's death. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. Beautiful, yeah. And as I said before, as we're going into this holiday season, well, I guess we're already in it. By the time you guys hear this, Thanksgiving will have happened. We're going into the December holidays and the new year. Yeah, I just really took it as like a...

A reminder to be grateful for what you do have. Yeah. You know, and to love your people in your life big and love them out loud. And, you know, I think we all think about the people who are not here at the holidays. You know, it's like we think about them all the time, but the holidays always bring it up. So just a good little reminder that your people might still be around. And like her dad might still be around, but he doesn't need to intervene anymore. Yeah. He's probably just...

Sitting up in heaven or wherever he is watching down and so proud of her. Yeah, I love that story. Yeah, me too. Speaking of thanks. Do you want to do some? Do you want to thank some Annabelles? Yeah, some spoopy shout outs. Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first? You can go first. Okay. I would like to thank the following Annabelles, especially this time of year. I mean, all the year. All the year long, but yeah. But we feel extra grateful this time of year. Of course we do. Thanks for supporting this show. Michael Knight.

Kylie Reese, Jack Morlock, Chris Coronado. That's crazy. I knew a Chris Coronado in college. Maybe the same guy. Hey, Chris, what's up? Jeremy Stahl, Demi Gregory, Big Daddy D. Oh, boy.

Valente Gonzalez and Kylie Skidgel. Skidgel? Skidgel. Oh, gosh. It's S-K-I-D-G-E-L. Skidgel? Probably Skidgel. It's probably Skidgel, but I'm sure... Is it Kylie? It's Kylie. Oh, Kylie, you've heard every Skidmark joke known to man. Oh, you poor thing. Okay. Oh, sorry, one more. I missed. And Drunken Leprechaun. Oh, very nice. First name, I'm sure. Definitely. Definitely.

I would like to thank the following Annabelles for their continued love and support. Mary Winder, Madison Andrews, Imogen Schumacher. I love the name. Imogen? Me too. Or this is with an E, so Imogen. Oh, yeah. I was picturing I, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imogen. Still love it. Love it. Imogen's one of my favorite names. Anna Klein, Stephanie Wells, April Zick, Brady Sawyer Hedgecock,

Jordan S. Brady Sawyer Hedgecock. Uh-huh. I used to be best friends with a guy named Brady Sawyer Hedgecock. You did? Yeah. Really? At what phase in your life? Back in college as well. Interesting. Yeah, me and Hedgecock. Cummins and Hedgecock, we used to talk about opening a law firm together. I thought that was Cox and Butts. Also A. Cox and Butts. Yeah, it was A. Cox and Butts, also a law firm. No, I've never met them.

That person, talk about skids getting teased. Hedgecock got teased. Hedgecock and skids should get together. That'd be quite the hyphenated last name. Skidgel hyphen Hedgecock. Yeah. Jordan S., I think I said that one. Telmain and Kyle Knight.

Kyle Knight. And then we really, it was an opportunity for our spoopy shout-outs this week to just a big shout-out to St. Joan for all her work on the Giving Tree this year. It's amazing the amount of problems we have with Amazon every single year.

I mean, bless them. They shut us down for fraud every year. At a certain point, they're like, this is a scam. And then we have to get on the phone with them and explain the whole thing again. But she is tenacious. She is on it. And it brings her the most amount of joy to interact with all of you. Thank you for being so kind to her, so patient. She works really hard on it all year long with a lot of behind the scenes stuff that has to be done ahead of time and everything.

Yeah, it's just really cool for my mom who, you know, if you guys don't know that already, St. Joan is my mom. You know, she is not a podcast listener. She'll listen to Time Suck occasionally. She hates scary stories. This is not her show. But, yeah.

It's a really cool way for her to understand our community. Yeah. You know? And she just, every year, she's like, oh my God, this person, oh my God, that person. Did you see this email? Did you see that? Can you believe? Like, she just is flabbergasted by you guys. And it's really sweet. Aw, we love St. Joan. Yeah, she's pretty great. And speaking of horror shows, Lindsay and I just saw in the theater, Heretic. Dang. Not what we expected, but so good. Not a horror movie. Well, yeah.

It's hard to describe what it is without spoiling it. So I would say it is a horror movie, but not a conventional horror movie. And Hugh Grant's performance, he, I'll be shocked if he's not on some award list. I don't know if like, you know, the Academy doesn't tend to like look at horror movies, but

but there's many other award shows. He's bound to get some awards for his performance. It was incredible. It was incredible. And the two lead females, one of them from Yellow Jackets, and then the other gal I didn't recognize. She looks like a young Brooke Shields minus the eyebrows. It was killing me. But also- They did great too. No, they were excellent. Excellent. A lot of- I would say, I don't think of it as a horror movie. I think of it as more of like thriller. Yeah. Like, but if you, if Silence of the Lambs was-

Designated horror. Yeah, then I would say that this is in like that genre Yeah, I thought the writing was brilliant. The writing is incredible It's incredible. I actually I want to look up who wrote it because I have not done that yet. Um It was so so so good. Yeah, so we uh, we recommend that this holiday season and uh, and unless you have something else That's our show. I think that's our show dan Well, thanks for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror everyone to my story at scared of that podcast.com That last one's gonna stick with me for a while

You can email us for everything else at info at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. Not that Kyle's story wasn't also great because it was just not as emotive as that last one. Kyle, he hated it. No, I love it. He doesn't want to talk to you anymore. Thanks to Logan Keith scoring today's shows. Thanks to Heather Rylander for organizing the My Story emails to book editor Drew Atana polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thank you to Olivia Lee finding both of the stories I shared this week.

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, creeps and peepers full of fellow horror lovers. Big thanks to the all seen eyes, the creeps and peepers moderators. Thanks for making our online community such a fun and welcoming place for so many, so many enjoy your nightmares, creeps and peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye.

Add magic productions.

I'm happy. I'm trustworthy. Everything down to my haircut and the shirt I wear and the way I shake your hand, I'm not a bad guy.

When you choose to earn your degree online from Southern New Hampshire University, you're saying yes to new opportunities and to new adventures. You're saying yes to something big, something you've always wanted to do. If earning your degree is one of your goals this new year, SNHU can help you get there. With low online tuition, no set class times, and multiple term starts per year, you can set the pace that works for you and save money along the way. Visit snhu.edu today to get started.