transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] From is on Sundays on MGM+. In a small, inescapable town, understanding the monsters may be the only way out. Desperate hope may lead residents toward even darker truths. I think they're doing it to make us afraid.

Speaker 2:
[00:17] Well, then it worked.

Speaker 1:
[00:18] Something ancient is feeding off of their suffering, and it won't stop. Survival will demand impossible choices. Catch new episodes of From, Sundays on MGM+.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] With Plan B emergency contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation, and it won't impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 US states at all major retailers near you, with no ID, prescription, or age requirement needed. Together, we got this. Follow Plan B on Insta at PlanBoneStep to learn more. Use as directed.

Speaker 3:
[00:58] There's nothing like your first Mac. Here's what people online are sharing. At Dr. Rain says, Everything is just so smooth and fast I still can't get over it. Sinking stuff between my phone and this is just chef's kiss. At Mr. Incredible 488 says, Apple silicon basically cures low battery trauma. That's how they felt with their first Mac. How will you? Introducing the all-new MacBook Neo, an amazing Mac at a surprising price. Find out more on apple.com/mac.

Speaker 4:
[02:08] Welcome to Scared To Death, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts and Annabelles. I'm Dan.

Speaker 5:
[02:12] Hello, Dan. I'm Lulu Marie.

Speaker 4:
[02:14] Hello, Lulu Marie.

Speaker 5:
[02:15] Hello.

Speaker 4:
[02:16] Thank you for everyone with leaving recent ratings and reviews. Always appreciate it.

Speaker 5:
[02:22] I heard you were like, wait, what was I gonna say?

Speaker 4:
[02:24] I know, I know. For some reason, it's like whenever I say something that I don't say like at the start of the show every week, it's the same thing on Time Suck. The first part, I feel like I have to get like locked in to storytelling mode and that's where I will make the most mistakes. And then I relax, but like this many episodes in.

Speaker 5:
[02:40] You would think.

Speaker 4:
[02:40] Yeah, you would think it would all be relaxed. It's still the first part. But anyway, saw a lot of recent ratings and reviews and very much appreciated. So thank you so much. And also got to meet some Creeps and Peepers in person at the Tree Fort Music Festival in Boise, where we were watching Father John Misty and that was so cool.

Speaker 5:
[02:56] It was, first of all, it was an epic show.

Speaker 4:
[02:58] It was so good.

Speaker 5:
[02:59] It was so good. If you're not listening to him, if you're not following him, get on it. It's beautiful, beautiful music. If you remember Fleet Foxes, he was part of that band. But yeah, I had grown some veggies, if you know what I mean. And Dan was enjoying them at the festival. So he can't remember the names of people that we met other than one person we met who has the same name as me. So shout out to the other, Lynze. Now, he's the only second male Lynze I've ever met in my life.

Speaker 4:
[03:27] Oh.

Speaker 5:
[03:28] I'm making assumptions about pronouns there. But I know there's a famous basketball player named Lynze.

Speaker 4:
[03:34] Yeah, I don't know about that. I know like, I think of Fleetwood Mac.

Speaker 5:
[03:38] Like in the 70s.

Speaker 4:
[03:39] Fleetwood Mac, wasn't like one of the main Fleetwood Mac people, I believe, is Lynze Buckingham or something like that.

Speaker 5:
[03:44] Yep, that's correct.

Speaker 4:
[03:45] And then there was a guy in my little town growing up.

Speaker 5:
[03:48] There was a guy, Lynze?

Speaker 4:
[03:49] Uh-huh, generation above me. But yeah, there was a Lynze. Some of his kids went to school with me.

Speaker 5:
[03:53] Funny. Yeah, so, but it was just funny, because we were like in line. I was like, oh, I love your shirt. And then he ended up being with some friends, with his wife and a friend of theirs. And I had already met her earlier. It was just funny. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it was just, it always feels really good to be out in the wild and just like, oh yeah, you're a person, I'm a person. We're having this shared experience. It's really nice.

Speaker 4:
[04:16] Festivals are so fun to see people at.

Speaker 5:
[04:17] Festivals are the freaking best.

Speaker 4:
[04:20] What paranormal listener claims have you chosen to share this week from those sent in to my story at scaredtodeathpodcast.com?

Speaker 5:
[04:26] I don't feel like it, so I'm not gonna.

Speaker 4:
[04:28] Okay, I'll just jump into mine then.

Speaker 5:
[04:29] Okay, bye. Just kidding. I have three stories this week. My first story has me really tripping out, A Call From The Great Beyond. And it is, it's a story. It's like, really, can that really happen? So had me scratching my head and a little bit anxious. My second story takes us to a legend called The 666 Bridge in Pennsylvania. And then my third story takes us to something a paramedic saw in a nursing home.

Speaker 4:
[05:02] Okay, cool.

Speaker 5:
[05:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[05:04] My first of two stories, I think the creeps are going to like both my stories this week, comes from Reddit, revolves around a boy moving into the biggest basement bedroom in his family's new house, where he almost immediately begins having the same horrible nightmare every night, being chained to a wall while a man comes down the stairs to hurt him. Then soon things happen to lead him to thinking that this dream is maybe more than a dream.

Speaker 5:
[05:27] What's the Ethan Hawke movie?

Speaker 4:
[05:29] Oh, yes. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 5:
[05:33] I know you guys are all shouting it right now.

Speaker 4:
[05:34] Shit.

Speaker 5:
[05:35] It's not the caller.

Speaker 4:
[05:36] It won't come into my head. I can see the mask he wears.

Speaker 5:
[05:40] Yeah, because...

Speaker 4:
[05:40] Dang it, now I'm going to have to look.

Speaker 5:
[05:42] Because the second...

Speaker 4:
[05:43] Oh my god. Sinister. No.

Speaker 5:
[05:45] No.

Speaker 4:
[05:45] No, god damn it. Black phone, the black phone.

Speaker 5:
[05:47] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 4:
[05:49] I had a smile stuck in my head and I hate that when like one reference gets in. I'm like, I know it's not that, but it won't leave.

Speaker 5:
[05:53] Well, that happened because his daughter's in Smile, right? I don't know. But yeah, but the change of the wall thing.

Speaker 4:
[05:59] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[05:59] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[05:59] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[05:59] Yeah. Exactly. Yep. And then my next story comes from yourghoststories.com. It's about a woman who when she was a child, saw something that terrified her. Was it just her imagination? Like she eventually came around believing decades later, something else happens that makes her question what she saw as a kid and question what is possible.

Speaker 5:
[06:18] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[06:19] You got some new spoopy socks on for this episode.

Speaker 5:
[06:21] I do. Thanks to Kurt. I think that maybe he gave me these on the cruise or summer camp last year. I can't remember. But they're so funny. They're just like what you would think of like a white crew sock and they have little bubbly eyes that are like felt that stick off the sock and then they have the magnetic hands. So my socks are holding hands. My ghost socks. That's so cute. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[06:45] Enough cute. Let's get into the creepy. The first story I'm sharing here. Yeah. A longer claim slightly adapted from a post on the r slash paranormal subreddit. Time now for the tale of he was really there. I'd gone back and forth for years about whether I should post this or not. Part of me thought it was just something my brain made worse over time. Memory is weird, especially when you're a kid. But the problem is this isn't just my memory. It's my mom's and my brother's as well. We stopped talking about it for many, many years after it happened, for so long that I started to doubt it. But just recently over the holidays, after a great day full of catching up with family and good food, my mom, brother, and I stayed up drinking more than we usually do. At least more than we do when we're all together. It finally came up again. The details my mom and brother shared, the way they lined up to my memories, well, it makes me feel sick to think about it. It made me finally want to share this story because now no one will ever be able to convince me that it wasn't real. This happened over two decades ago, back when I was seven years old. We had just started renting this new house, new to us anyway. It was nothing fancy or overtly creepy, especially from the outside. It was a pretty standard split-entry rancher in the suburbs on a quiet cul-de-sac. I remember being really excited about it. It felt like a big step up. My mom thinks it was probably built in the 60s. You walked in and either walked up the stairs to the main living room, dining room, kitchen, guest bathroom, and master bedroom, or you walked downstairs to the basement that had another guest bathroom, a big family room, and three bedrooms. I guess the layout was a little strange in that most of the bedrooms were in the basement. It wasn't a finished cozy basement either. It felt older than the rest of the house. I doubt it was, but that's how it felt, especially to a little kid. It had lower ceilings, lots of exposed concrete, and only a few of those really tiny windows. It was a kind of place where even during the day, it never felt fully like the daytime. Two of the bedrooms down there felt pretty normal though, but the third one, not so much. You had to go down two small steps to get into it, like it had been dug out slightly deeper than the rest of the basement. It made the ceiling feel even lower in a weird way, even though it probably wasn't. It was also the only room with no windows. It didn't feel like a bedroom, but that's how it was advertised. It was the biggest room down there by far, though, so naturally my older brother claimed it immediately. He was 10 at the time. At first, I remember how excited he was. I was jealous. He talked about exactly how he was going to set up all his stuff, how it was basically like having his own apartment, like it made him pretty much an adult. It's hilarious to me looking back now about how he felt about it when he was just 10. He wanted to get a fridge for it, a little couch. That didn't happen, but that was the plan. He also wanted to get a big TV for his Super Nintendo. But he only lasted around four days in that room before he started acting funny. Nothing dramatic, not, I'm terrified, something's wrong, please help me. He just got quieter and withdrawn. He was always tired and irritated. I barely remember that, but that's what he told us a few weeks ago. When my mom asked him what was going on, he told her he just wasn't sleeping well. When she asked why, all he said was, it's always too cold in that room. My mom thought at the time that that didn't make much sense because to her, the whole basement felt like it was the same temperature. But he insisted that the room got really cold, especially at night, and that it made it hard for him to fall asleep. After about a week, he asked if we could switch rooms. I remember thinking he was crazy. I couldn't believe he was being such a big baby about the temperature, but I was also really glad he was being such a big baby because to me, that room was beyond awesome. It was huge, especially to a seven-year-old. It felt like it would be a massive level up. I begged my parents to let us make the switch and they didn't fight us on it. Looking back, why would they? Whatever kept me and my brother from bothering them was a win. And so just like that, I got the big room and my first night in it was totally fine. I loved it. I started making my own big plans for it. I think I wanted to try and talk to my parents and letting me build some kind of multi-level fort in the corner across from my bed, something I must have seen on some kids show. I think I did find my second night too. It's hard to remember exactly when the dreams started, but I know they started very soon, within the first couple of nights. The first dream I had, I don't think I remembered much of it the next morning. Just some vague notion of a bad man who was looking for me. I remember the next one very well to this day, though. It felt different than any other dream I've ever had. I've never had dreams quite like the ones I had in that room since we moved out of that house. In the dream, I was in the same place, the same house, and I was in my big new room. Except in the dream, it looked a little different. There was no wallpaper on the walls, no carpet, the whole thing was just concrete, concrete floor, concrete ceiling, concrete walls. Looked less like a bedroom and more like a prison cell. The door was different too, thicker and heavier with a couple of locks. And I was locked in it. And not only that, I was literally chained to the wall. One of my ankles was shackled to the wall right beside my bed, and my bed was different, smaller, a little metal frame, an old stained mattress. I remember that I could feel the metal of the shackle around my ankle, cold and tight, and digging into my skin. And I remember knowing in that weird dream way where you don't question things, that I had been there for a long time. And I was really scared and anxious. And then I heard it, footsteps from above me, slow and deliberate, like someone pacing, someone walking across the floor upstairs. And then I heard the sound of a door opening from somewhere above me, and I started whimpering. I soon heard more footsteps. Whoever had been pacing above me was now coming down the stairs. I remember feeling terrified. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Then I heard the sound of this person's boots walking down the hallway towards my room, towards where I was being kept. I heard the sound of a key going into a lock, turning a deadbolt. Then another key went into another lock and turned that bolt as well. The door slowly opened soon after that, and I saw him for the first time. Not clearly, never clearly. Just the shape of a man with stringy shoulder length hair, tall and thin, but strong looking. For some reason, I can't ever picture his face. But he was standing in the doorway to my room above those two steps watching me. And then when he started to move down those steps, I woke up. I had the same dream the next night, and the next night, and the night after that. Every single detail exactly the same except for one. It was the same chain tying me to the wall, same footsteps, same man in the doorway watching me, but he started to get closer to me before I'd wake up. He'd make it down both steps, and then he'd keep walking closer, and I would be so scared of what he was about to do to me. In the dream, I finally inspected my body, which didn't look quite right, even though I was still a little boy in the dream. I had all sorts of bruises, cuts, and scrapes. After a few nights of this horror, I started really dreading going to sleep, like true dread, the kind where your stomach hurts. And just a couple of days, after just a couple of days of that, I told my brother, I was probably hoping he would tell me I was just being stupid. I explained the dream, everything, the chain, the footsteps, the man. And I will never forget the way he reacted. He didn't laugh or tell me it was just a nightmare. He just stared at me and he said, stop. And then he went to his room, his new room, and shut the door. At the time, I thought I just freaked him out. But then we brought it all up again a few weeks ago over the holidays. He told me he freaked out because he had had the same dream, that he was too afraid to tell me because he worried that if he did, it would freak me out even more. And since he was the older brother, our parents would make us switch rooms again. Despite being terrified, I tried to keep from telling my parents about the dream because I still wanted the big room. I hoped the dreams would just go away. I didn't want everyone to think I was still a baby who had to run to his parents' room in the middle of the night. But about a week after the dream started, something else happened that suddenly made it a lot harder for me to stay quiet. I woke up one night, maybe from that dream, but maybe not. I can't remember. I just remember being awake and immediately knowing that something was wrong. The room felt different. It felt colder, but something else was off with it too. It felt empty, like the air had been pulled out. And I had this overwhelming, horrifying feeling that I was not alone. So I didn't move. I didn't sit up. But I did look toward the doorway. And I saw him, the same man from my dreams, standing there watching me from the doorway, just like in my nightmares. I shut my eyes so hard, it hurt, and told myself I must be dreaming. And I stayed like that for what felt like hours. Eventually, I guess I must have fallen back asleep. The next day, I tried to convince myself it had all been another dream. Looking back, I can't believe I didn't freak out that night and wake up everyone else in the house screaming. Clearly, I still really wanted to keep my big room and to prove that I was tough. But then that kept happening, not every night, but close. I'd wake up and he would be there. And sometimes he would be standing closer than before, not just in the doorway, but inside the room with me, closer to me in my bed. Never speaking, always watching. And he always felt so incredibly menacing. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. My mom noticed I was looking pretty tired. And when she asked me why, I broke down and started sobbing. And I told her all about it. She tried to tell me like pretty much any parent would do in the situation that I was just having bad dreams, that the move, the new house, the room switch, it had all shaken me up a bit. But I kept having the dreams. And worse, I kept seeing that guy in my actual room, not the room from my dream when I kept waking up. Mom got me a nightlight to try and help me. She sat with me until I fell asleep, but none of that worked. So finally one morning, after I'd had another meltdown about the man in my room, and after my brother freaked out when mom talked to him about switching rooms with me again, and he told her he had had nightmares when he slept in there too, she decided to prove to me, to both of us, I guess, that no one was coming into that room at night. She told me she was going to make it impossible for anyone to walk in there without her knowing. She took a big bottle of baby powder and covered the floor with it. She dumped a thick layer out all around the doorway, all across the thin gray worn out carpet in my room between the door and my bed, after I was in bed, all over those two steps and out into the hallway as she left. She told me, when you wake up, you'll see there will not be a single footprint. I remember feeling embarrassed about it all, but also so relieved. I so badly wanted to wake up the next morning and have it all just be over, have proof that nothing had been coming into my room. That night, I had another nightmare, the same terrible dream. And when I woke up, I could see him standing there again. I started screaming. And then when my mom rushed down the stairs and turned on the light in the hallway, she started screaming. And that brought my dad down and woke up my brother. When she turned on the light to my bedroom and when I looked at the floor, we both screamed even harder. The powder in the hallway and in my bedroom had definitely, no doubt about it, been disturbed. And not just scattered in some way where you couldn't tell exactly what had messed it up. No, there were clear defined boot prints in it. They started out in the hallway like someone had just materialized there. And then whoever or whatever had made those prints walked from the hallway into my room, down those steps and over to within a few feet of my bed to right where I had woken up and seen that guy standing. And that was it. No more prints. It was like the person who had made them just disappeared. No turning around, no exit. They just ended. My mom immediately took both me and my brother upstairs. We all slept in her and dad's room that night. Before we went to bed, she sat my brother and I down, asked us more about the dream. We both told her about being chained up to the wall, about the footsteps, about the man coming down the stairs who wanted to hurt us. We moved out within a week. And just a few weeks ago, after so many years, my mom told my brother and I something new, something she hadn't wanted to share with us when we were kids because she didn't want to scare us more than we already were. The next day after the whole baby powder incident, when we were both at school, she went in and inspected that room. And she said she found a strange shape on the wall beside my bed down towards the floor. She peeled back the wallpaper and it was an old metal loop embedded into the concrete that had been pushed flat and wallpapered over. The kind of thing you would or could connect a chain to. She didn't investigate any further. She said she didn't want to know anymore. She just wanted out. And when she brought it all up to the landlord, he didn't fight her on breaking the lease. After my mom went over to the, went to the bed over the holidays, oh, excuse me, after my mom went to bed to go to sleep over the holidays, we talked about all this again. My brother and I stayed up a bit longer and talked some more. We talked about how the dream had felt so real and about how while we were still a little boy in that dream, we weren't ourselves in the dream. We both now firmly believe that something terrible happened in that room, that some little boy like us had once been kept there, and that the man from our dreams, the man who was still in that house in some form, he was the one who kept him. We hope the boy eventually escaped, but neither one of us thinks he probably did. We also hope that it was only that terrible man's spirit that was still haunting the place instead of the spirit of the man and the spirit of the boy, doomed to keep living the nightmare over and over again. That sucks.

Speaker 5:
[20:11] That sucks so bad.

Speaker 4:
[20:12] Oh my God, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[20:13] I love that mom.

Speaker 4:
[20:15] Yeah, the baby powder.

Speaker 5:
[20:16] Yeah, because, okay, not only, not only is it smart, it's also like that's good moming, because you know what a fucking mess that is to clean up afterwards? You're never going to vacuum it all up. You're going to be finding the scent, and I just can imagine stepping on a floor and then just picking up your foot. You're like, what's that graininess on the bottom of my foot for months to come?

Speaker 4:
[20:38] Actually, I think you would, because I totally forgot about this and tell this story. I was like, oh my God, I had this memory. My stepmom, I had a bunch of chores in high school with my stepmom, and I was pretty much in charge of cleaning the house. But one of the things that I've never heard of anybody else doing this, but I guess they made this so other people must've, but she was really into, I don't remember-

Speaker 5:
[20:57] The baking powder stuff that you put on the carpet and vacuum up?

Speaker 4:
[20:59] Like potpourri baking powder.

Speaker 5:
[21:01] Yeah, exactly. You can still get it now. Oh, okay. Because they sell it for pets to help with pet smell.

Speaker 4:
[21:06] Well, I think we had it because we had cats, and she was a smoker, like a chain smoker, but you'd put that stuff all over the carpet, and then it would vacuum right up.

Speaker 5:
[21:16] So you think, but also I just think like micro particle.

Speaker 4:
[21:19] Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 5:
[21:20] But I'm just thinking about what every parent out there who's listening to this is like, God damn it, that's a mess to clean up. I got to go to work the next day. Yes, we'll do anything for our kids, but fuck.

Speaker 4:
[21:31] I also thought like, what an ingenious idea because I have known about that powder since high school. I never thought about applying that to a paranormal situation.

Speaker 5:
[21:39] Oh, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[21:40] I don't think I've ever heard of anybody doing that. It doesn't sound familiar to me.

Speaker 5:
[21:44] Yeah, I don't. I can't. My brains aren't functioning well enough.

Speaker 4:
[21:48] But if you're hearing like footsteps in the attic or whatever, I guess it is a smart idea. Yeah, not that the sound has to be connected to a physical touch, I guess. But I'm like, that would be a cool thing to do. I'm surprised like Ghost Hunters haven't tried that or maybe they have.

Speaker 5:
[21:59] Maybe they have and we're just out of touch.

Speaker 4:
[22:00] Yeah, but I don't think I've seen that where I'm like, oh yeah, like sprinkle it all around.

Speaker 5:
[22:04] I would use baking soda before I use baby powder.

Speaker 4:
[22:07] Yeah, okay. Yeah, just a different kind of powder.

Speaker 5:
[22:09] Yeah. I just feel like it has longer lasting effects of like absorbing moisture.

Speaker 4:
[22:15] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[22:15] So like I like wash our clothes with baking soda all the time to get like scents out or, you know, for a deeper clean. I just feel like, listen guys, go baking soda. Yeah, that was just so, so intense. And I love the details about both kids just having plans for their rooms.

Speaker 4:
[22:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[22:33] You know, one, we have a child getting ready to go to college and she is fucking into planning her room. It's the cutest thing.

Speaker 4:
[22:39] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[22:39] But I remember after my parents divorced, so we lived in like a three bedroom, one and a half bath rancher on a basement. So my parents bedroom was essentially the basement. So my mom just stayed down there and I got to get the master room. And I'm not even sure how exactly this all came together, but my most prized possessions of that room, one, I think it's called like a pet canopy. And it went in the corner of my room from like one ceiling, kind of drooped down and then into like the other side of the ceiling. And you put all your stuffed animals in it.

Speaker 4:
[23:10] Ah, yes.

Speaker 5:
[23:12] And it was like the most basic white netting thing.

Speaker 4:
[23:16] But you loved it.

Speaker 5:
[23:17] Oh my God, I got to have all my stuffies in there. It was so great. And then at some point, my mom's boss, Dr. Carl Christian, he has since passed, so I feel okay saying that, he was getting a new couch in his office at the orthodontist office.

Speaker 4:
[23:32] So you got the old couch.

Speaker 5:
[23:33] Yes. And it was like, honestly, I wish I still had it. It was this beautiful, like caramel leather loveseat. I don't even know how it fit in this bedroom. Okay, we lived in a very small house. Those two things, to me, I was like, pff.

Speaker 4:
[23:50] Luxury.

Speaker 5:
[23:50] I'm fucking queen shit over here.

Speaker 4:
[23:52] I know. It is cool when you're a kid that way, where it's like, yeah, I remember I had some old janky TV in my room and I'm like, ooh. Friends, you know.

Speaker 5:
[24:01] I have my own TV.

Speaker 4:
[24:02] Yep, I got my own TV. I can play video games in my room, not bother people. I just felt like, man, I'm really, I'm grown up.

Speaker 5:
[24:09] I would have been amazed because we had one TV and no cable. So I would have been blown away.

Speaker 4:
[24:13] Oh yeah, some of the kids in my class absolutely were like, holy shit, Lucky.

Speaker 5:
[24:17] Dan Cummins is rich.

Speaker 4:
[24:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[24:19] Okay, what do you got for photos?

Speaker 4:
[24:20] Okay, so I just put in photos of like creepy basement bedrooms.

Speaker 5:
[24:24] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[24:25] The photos that showed up a little more hardcore than what I was looking for. So this is going to be a little intense. But once I saw them, I was like, okay, I just felt compelled to share them. This first one, a photo of a basement torture chamber in Ukraine. After the successful 2022 Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive, they liberated a bunch of settlements from Russian occupation. Authorities discovered all these torture chambers underground used by Russian troops during their time in the area.

Speaker 5:
[24:51] No, the Russians are good. They would never.

Speaker 4:
[24:53] I know. It's crazy to remember that like what I've just only seen in horror movies or read about in books, I'm like, oh yeah, this is still real life. I cannot imagine the fear I would feel if I was on that little chair. Yeah. And then there's another one. My God, this one's even scarier. Just like cement walls, dirt floor, one little foldout chair in the corner. And then the scariest one of all, just a door that leads straight down into the ground, like an opening to actual hell. My God. That's from publicinternationalandpolicygroup.org. Oh, international law and policy group over, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[25:35] It never ceases to shock me how awful humans can be to other humans.

Speaker 4:
[25:40] 100%, especially when they're given like permission.

Speaker 5:
[25:42] Yeah, or encouragement, like, okay, well, that's the enemy.

Speaker 4:
[25:46] Yep, exactly. And it could be somebody culturally the same as you or whatever. You could not even believe in the war effort, but some people, it's like, oh, the only thing that's been stopping you from doing that already was the law. Like fear of consequences. Yeah. But now that you've been given some sort of permission off to the races.

Speaker 5:
[26:02] Like, okay, you and I were talking on a walk back from the concert on Sunday, and we were just talking about somebody we both despise. And we were like, just this person in life, and he's an incredibly horrible human. And you were like, I could kill him. And I was like, honestly, even given permission, like in that moment, and this is like a bad, bad man, like every bad thing you can think of. He is done, right? And I was like, nope, couldn't do it. And I even think like, you know, I know Idaho recently, I think it was this year, passed a new law for firing squads and death penalties for pedophiles. I just couldn't do it.

Speaker 4:
[26:44] I think I have more psychopath in me than you. Where it's like, given permission against certain people, I definitely think I could.

Speaker 5:
[26:51] There are people I want dead, you know?

Speaker 4:
[26:52] Initially, it might be, I view it kind of like hunting, where it's like-

Speaker 5:
[26:55] Nope, I couldn't do that either.

Speaker 4:
[26:56] Right, exactly. But I just look at it like, I eat meat, and it's not like I'm like, oh, I hate deer, I can't wait to kill those, but I just look at it like, yep, I am going to eat you. And so if I'm going to eat you and somebody else killed you, then I should be able to kill you myself. And once I go to that mentality, right or wrong, it doesn't bother me to kill them.

Speaker 5:
[27:15] Well, and I think, like just, you know, it's just different for different people.

Speaker 4:
[27:19] Totally.

Speaker 5:
[27:20] But, yep. So when I see stuff like that, like torture, I'm like, the only thing I willingly, excitedly kill is flies in our house.

Speaker 4:
[27:30] Oh yeah, you are.

Speaker 5:
[27:30] I do fucking love to swat a fly. Cause I'm really good with the fly swatter.

Speaker 4:
[27:34] Yeah, no, I think if I was 100% confident, the person had done certain things, it might not be the best thing about me or to admit about myself, but I think I could torture them.

Speaker 5:
[27:44] I think it's good to be honest about who we are and what we're capable of. Pushing it down and hiding it is not doing anybody any favors.

Speaker 4:
[27:50] Yeah, true.

Speaker 5:
[27:50] Because you're not going out and killing someone. You're not threatening anybody's life. You're just saying like if push came to shove and you had to.

Speaker 4:
[27:56] If the revolution happened and they're like, Dan, we need you to be a torturer to get like these people who have done these terrible things, I'd be like, all right.

Speaker 5:
[28:05] Could you really?

Speaker 4:
[28:06] I mean, I guess you never know until you're in the moment. But I mean, I think I could.

Speaker 5:
[28:11] Somebody from the CIA is listening to this and they're going to be knocking at our door later like we have a mission for you.

Speaker 4:
[28:15] That's kind of a fantasy I have sometimes. I love you. Okay. You're ready to leave one person's memory of a terrifying childhood encounter and move on to someone else's?

Speaker 5:
[28:25] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[28:26] I'll share my second story after a quick in between story sponsor break. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a Robert or an Annabelle on Patreon. Get all these episodes ad free and a whole week early, additional bonus episodes and so much more. And 20% of your contribution goes directly to charity.

Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
[29:50] This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress doesn't just live in your bank account. It follows you into bed at night like the Hat Man. It can quietly raise your anxiety day after day, freaking you out.

Speaker 4:
[30:04] At the start of this year, 88% of Americans said they were experiencing some form of financial stress. That is a lot of people carrying a lot of weight. It's understandable that we are all stressed about money. Life is so expensive. If that sounds familiar to you, talking with a therapist might help you work through this.

Speaker 5:
[30:23] I tend to be an emotional spender. Even when I know the worst thing to do is to spend more money, I do it. And I do it for the dopamine hit. Through the work I've done with my therapist, I have learned other coping skills that keep me from spending more when I'm depressed. Instead of shopping, I now try to go for a walk or call a friend.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 4:
[33:41] If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com/scared. That's mintmobile.com/scared. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thanks for listening to our sponsor deals, creeps and peepers. The following story was slightly adapted from a post found on yourgostories.com. Time now for the tale of what is it? I need to tell my husband about this soon. I'm hoping getting my thoughts down here helps me prepare for that. I'm also hoping someone reading this can help me. I still don't know how to say any of this out loud without sounding insane. But I also don't know how I'm supposed to sleep tonight or ever let my daughter sleep in her own room again. When I was a kid, I was terrified of anything even remotely scary. Ghost stories, horror movies, even those dumb chain emails that said if you didn't forward them, something would come for you. I couldn't handle any of it. I would cry, have nightmares, sleep with the lights on, to the great irritation of my little sister who I shared a room with. My family used to tease me about it constantly. And then something happened when I was in fifth grade that about broke me. One Sunday night, my oldest sister's boyfriend came over and for whatever reason, decided it would be a good idea to tell a bunch of ghost stories to a group of kids. I tried so hard to be a good sport. Looking back, I think I had a bit of a crush on him. I didn't want him to think I was just some stupid little kid. We all sat in the living room with lights turned down low and the TV off. And he just kept going. He knew so many creepy pasta campfire like ghost stories. And each one of his stories was worse than the last one. I remember acting really tough at first, acting like I was totally fine with it. When he'd ask everyone if they could handle an even scarier story, I was the first one to tell him to go for it. But then eventually, it all became too much and I broke down. I started crying and my sisters laughed at me and told me to go to bed. I was scared and humiliated. No one offered to stay with me until I fell asleep or even leave my light on. They didn't want mom to find out my sister's boyfriend scared me, I guess. Or maybe they were just being some assholes. I barely slept that night and went to bed hating all of my sisters. But the next morning when I woke up, everything felt pretty normal again. It was sunny outside and the light shining in through the windows made everything look bright and safe. We were all rushing around getting ready for school. My oldest sister was about to leave when she realized she forgot her jacket in her bedroom upstairs. She asked me to go grab it and without even thinking twice, I did. Her room was at the end of the hallway. She was the only one of us who had her own room and she kept it perfect. Bed made, everything always dusted and clean and in its place. Her room was bright and cheery with two windows and lots of pastel colors. But I remember walking in that morning and immediately feeling a little uneasy, not maybe scared, but very aware that the room felt different somehow. Kind of like when you walk into a really quiet room and feel like you shouldn't make too much noise, like you might disturb, I don't even know, the room itself or something. I went to the chair where her jacket was hanging, and that's when I saw it. From under her bed, an arm was starting to stick out. I could eventually see it all the way up to the elbow. I remember it was very pale, and then it slid out slowly, like it was feeling the ground. The hand opened and dragged lightly across the floor in this half-circle motion, like it was searching for something or someone. Then after a few moments, it slipped back under the bed. I didn't scream right away. I think the first thing I felt was anger. I assumed it had to have been one of my sister's arms, that they were all in on pranking me because I'd gotten so scared. My older sister just had sent me right into a trap, I reasoned, to grab her jacket knowing that another one of my sisters would be waiting for me there, hiding under her bed to send me running off, screaming and crying. I quickly walked around to the other side of the bed, got down on my knees and lifted up the blanket and peeked underneath. There was absolutely no one there. I popped back up instantly, ran around to the other side of the bed thinking that maybe one of my sisters had quickly snuck out from under the bed, even though I hadn't heard them move. But there was no one, and now I started screaming. I ran down the hall and down the stairs, crying and shrieking, just completely hysterical, and no one believed me. Everyone assumed I was still worked up over the stories the night before. My mom eventually walked back into that room with me and inspected the bed thoroughly, and then my sisters were mad at me for ratting out my oldest sister's boyfriend. And that was the end of it. I never saw anything in that house ever again. And after a few years, my sisters had me convinced that I did just imagine it all. I even eventually convinced myself that my sister's boyfriend really had just got me all worked up and that I hadn't actually seen anything because what would be the alternative? That some kind of, I don't know, monster was actually under that bed? Well, I'm in my 30s now and I have two daughters of my own. And until last night, I hadn't thought about that moment from my childhood in years. My youngest daughter is six. She's always been a good sleeper, brave too. Way braver than I ever was. But yesterday out of nowhere, she told me she didn't want to sleep in her room. And when I asked her why, she said, very casually, because there's something under my bed. And I felt that exact feeling I had felt as a kid, that drop, like something inside of you has sunk. But I didn't let her know that. I smiled and kept it light. I told her it was probably just shadows or one of her toys or her imagination. But she firmly shook her head and she told me, no, mommy, it moves. I laughed it off, I mean, what else are you supposed to do? I also checked under her bed with her watching me. And I'll admit, I was nervous, or I guess I should say, I was scared when I knelt down beside the bed to lift up that cover. But I did it and there was nothing there. Then I relaxed, I felt this huge wave of relief. I had her get down and look again with me. See, I said, making a big show of it, there is nothing. But she did not look convinced. She was still scared. So that night I let her sleep in our bed. I told my husband she had just had a nightmare and he didn't question it. She fell asleep quickly and so did he. But I didn't. I just laid there staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about it, trying not to connect it to what I thought I saw as a kid, because that memory was back in my mind now, like it had just happened yesterday. I kept telling myself that my childhood memory was not real, that I was just remembering what I had imagined and that my daughter hadn't seen anything either. She couldn't have, because monsters aren't real. There's never actually anything under your bed. But I could not shut my brain off. The thought kept creeping in. What if it was real? What if I didn't imagine it? And what if my daughter didn't either? What if she saw it too and now it's in my house? What if it could hurt her? After maybe an hour of lying there, at least it felt like an hour, I couldn't take it anymore. I had this overwhelming urge to go check her room again, to prove to myself once and for all that there are no monsters under the bed, that this was just another kid being scared of the dark. I got up carefully so I wouldn't wake anyone. I practically tiptoed through the house. Her door was slightly open when I made it to her room and I pushed it gently and stepped inside. Her room looked exactly how it was supposed to. Nightlight glowing softly, stuffed animals on top of her bed. Everything normal, everything safe. I told myself this was stupid, that I was just letting an old memory get to me, that I was worse than my six-year-old. What was I doing? A grown and very scared adult standing in a quiet room about to check under a bed like a child. But then I saw it. A flicker of movement coming from the darkness beneath the foot of the bed. I completely froze my eyes wide staring at where the comforter met the floor, and sure enough, slowly and deliberately an arm slid out. It looked exactly like the one I saw as a kid, pale and thin, and when it came out I could see it all the way up to the elbow again. And just like before, the hand opened, dragged across the floor in that same exact half-circle motion. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I just stood there frozen watching it. And then it stopped, right at the edge of the bed, like it knew I was there watching it. And it went back under. I did not check under the bed this time. I couldn't. I was convinced that if I did, it wouldn't be gone like it was when I was a kid. It would still be there along with whatever creature it was attached to. I didn't move closer to the bed. I didn't turn on the light. I didn't make a sound. I just quietly backed out of the room. Slowly and carefully I closed the door, quickly snuck back into my own bed where I squeezed my daughter so hard she told me to stop. And now the next morning, I'm sitting here on my laptop, writing this while my daughter sleeps in my bed. I don't know what that thing is. I don't know for sure if it's the same thing I saw when I was a kid, but I think it is. What I know for sure is that this was not my imagination. Whatever I saw, it was real. So what do I do now? I don't go to church, so I don't have a pastor I can talk to about any of this. I'm not religious. I don't know if a pastor would even be willing to help me. I have no idea where the closest exorcist is or if they would even come and try and deal with this. Do I burn some sage? Do I tell it in a loud, confident voice to get out of my house? Would that make it leave or just amuse it or piss it off? What I can't do is let my daughter go back and be around that thing, but I also don't want to tell her what I saw and scare her even further. I'm afraid my husband won't believe me when I tell him, and even if he does, it's not like he'll know what it is or how to get rid of it. Eventually, my daughter is going to want to go back into her room. I can't let her, can I? What is that thing? And what could it do to her?

Speaker 5:
[43:31] That is an interesting conundrum. What do you do?

Speaker 4:
[43:34] Right. Exactly. I mean, if you see that thing, I mean...

Speaker 5:
[43:37] But she survived her childhood. It didn't...

Speaker 4:
[43:40] But she didn't sleep in the room with that thing.

Speaker 5:
[43:42] But her sister survived her childhood.

Speaker 4:
[43:43] That's true. And she just saw it the one time.

Speaker 5:
[43:46] Yeah. And she never like... I guess in this situation, I'm like, maybe don't acknowledge it, because sometimes acknowledging it gives it more power.

Speaker 4:
[43:55] What would you do? You'd probably like burn something, perform some little ceremony, and there's some cleansing ritual.

Speaker 5:
[44:00] 1000%. I would immediately tell you, I don't care if you think I'm crazy. You already know I'm nuts. So I'm not worried about that part. Yeah. That's never a concern. I never think like, Dan's gonna think I'm crazy. I think Dan already thinks I'm crazy, so I might as well just add to it.

Speaker 4:
[44:16] I think they're like... I get what she's saying though about her husband. Let's say her husband believes her. What's he gonna do?

Speaker 5:
[44:20] They're gonna move?

Speaker 4:
[44:22] Probably not.

Speaker 5:
[44:23] Okay, well, they could.

Speaker 4:
[44:25] They could, they could, possibly.

Speaker 5:
[44:27] I don't know what their finances are, but yeah. I mean, she could also put a salt ring around the bed, you know? She could do a smoke cleansing. She could, you know...

Speaker 4:
[44:38] Would you get rid of the bed? Would you think it was maybe connected to the bed itself? You could try. What if you just got a bed that wasn't... There was no space underneath it. It just goes straight down to the floor.

Speaker 5:
[44:48] Oh, yeah, like a platform bed or whatever, where it's just, you know... Or just whatever.

Speaker 4:
[44:54] There is no underneath the bed.

Speaker 5:
[44:55] Throw that mattress on the ground.

Speaker 4:
[44:56] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[44:57] Maybe. In order to do all of those things, she's going to need to talk to her husband, because otherwise she's going to be like, what's with all the salt on the floor? Why are there... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would also be thinking of every religious token, even though I'm not religious, but like, you know... Yeah, I might get like a mazuzah, you know, maybe like a hamsahan, like, you know, I'm really trying to think of a dream catcher. You know, I would dive into everything I could think of, and, you know, find some witchy friends, go to the local crystal shop. I mean, there are options, but like, there just might not be answers. I think that's the most frustrating thing with all of it, is that you could try and try and try, and you still might be stuck with a creepy-ass arm. But what if it's just an arm? What if it never goes beyond that? It's just like, okay, this is really strange, but we just see the arm once and then it goes? I just don't know.

Speaker 4:
[45:51] Yeah, I guess it'd be different if like, in her childhood, like, the arm was under her bed, and then it came up under her bed and like tried to strangle her.

Speaker 5:
[45:58] Yeah, or like, you know, then the next time she saw it, there was a torso.

Speaker 4:
[46:01] Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair.

Speaker 5:
[46:04] Also, unrelated, but kind of just going back to the first story, because it came to me, it was called a pet net, okay? This thing that was called a pet net.

Speaker 4:
[46:11] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[46:11] It just hit me in the middle of that and I need to say it out loud.

Speaker 4:
[46:14] Got it out.

Speaker 5:
[46:14] Okay, thank you.

Speaker 4:
[46:15] I just have one photo.

Speaker 5:
[46:17] Is it of a pet net?

Speaker 4:
[46:18] It's not of a pet net. It's related to the story. This is from a March 2017 online article published by the Irish Mirror. I think it showed up in like some UK publications as well, and maybe The Guardian. It's a still from a video of a Brazilian American YouTuber, Marissa Rachel, who captured footage she claims was not staged, of this little doll hand popping out from underneath her bed and sliding back under her bed.

Speaker 5:
[46:42] A doll hand? It looks...

Speaker 4:
[46:43] Or a little person's hand. I watched the footage. It's hard to see the hand in real time. You can see it for a second. It slides out, slides back under. But of course, it's impossible to say whether or not someone was controlling it. Like, do they have a little stick back there or something?

Speaker 5:
[46:55] Well, also, it's strange looking, like...

Speaker 4:
[46:59] I think it's a doll hand.

Speaker 5:
[47:01] Yeah, it's like four chubby little things. It looks like a doll foot more than it looks like a hand to me. It looks like a foot with four toes instead of five.

Speaker 2:
[47:08] Like it's just, I don't know, it's a really funny little shape.

Speaker 4:
[47:12] Yeah, yeah, I think it's a hand.

Speaker 5:
[47:14] What if right now it just moved?

Speaker 4:
[47:15] Oh my God, that'd be crazy. And the thumb is just like underneath.

Speaker 5:
[47:19] No, I understand, but it just looks... This is zero percent scary to me. It's just funny to me.

Speaker 4:
[47:24] I always... Yeah, I do think about that a lot with photos, especially when you're zoomed in. Actually, even if you're not, of just somebody moving. I think I first read about that in a book. It's shown up in a number of horror movies and books, that concept of something moving inside a photo. But I think the first time I heard about it was when I read It as a kid, and I was seventh grade or something, and that freaked me the fuck out. Because then after that, for the longest time, whenever I was looking at pictures...

Speaker 5:
[47:49] Just waiting for something to move?

Speaker 4:
[47:50] Oh, my God. Just waiting for someone in the background to move, waiting for a clown to show up or something. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[47:54] Aye, aye, aye.

Speaker 4:
[47:54] Aye, aye, aye.

Speaker 5:
[47:57] Aye, aye, aye.

Speaker 4:
[47:58] That's all I got.

Speaker 5:
[47:59] Clowns just came up in something I was reading and I can't remember. I don't know. When we were at the Boise Tree Fort Festival, there are these three people going around on roller skates that had these giant domes on their head that looked like eyeballs.

Speaker 6:
[48:15] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[48:15] Eyeball shaped.

Speaker 5:
[48:16] Yeah. Think of an astronaut's helmet, but elongated into an eyeball.

Speaker 4:
[48:20] And LED lights inside of them, so especially when the sun went down, they were illuminated and then they would illuminate people near them.

Speaker 5:
[48:26] And they were on roller skates. It was so funny.

Speaker 4:
[48:30] There was some crazy costumes at Treefort Festival. It was a really funky little festival. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[48:34] Cool animatronic things.

Speaker 4:
[48:36] Oh yeah. Yeah. There was like a big caterpillar-like thing, a dragon-y thing, a big mammoth.

Speaker 5:
[48:40] The woolly mammoth. Dan was like, is that supposed to be there?

Speaker 4:
[48:43] Yeah. The caterpillar was close to us. And I, yeah, I was struggling with like, I would forget about it and I'd be like, why is that here?

Speaker 5:
[48:49] Your sister was really funny. She's like, it's supposed to be. But at first she didn't understand your questions. And she was really trying to like logically answer. She's like, well, I know like, you know, like it's an art installation. It's like, you're like, uh-huh.

Speaker 2:
[49:01] But why is it here?

Speaker 4:
[49:02] Why is it near us? What's it going to do to us?

Speaker 2:
[49:06] God, you were so funny.

Speaker 5:
[49:08] So funny. I'm sure we'll be talking about that in the April bonus. It was especially special.

Speaker 4:
[49:14] It was fun.

Speaker 5:
[49:14] OK, well, I have three stories that I would love to tell. Do you have a Layla with you this week?

Speaker 4:
[49:18] I have a blue one, very soft.

Speaker 5:
[49:20] Oh, that one does seem especially squishy. OK, well, let's begin. To begin, hail Nimrod.

Speaker 4:
[49:31] Hail Nimrod.

Speaker 5:
[49:31] And now on to my story. About five years ago, I had an unsettling experience that I have yet to find an explanation for. It was an average night. I had spent the evening with a very good buddy of mine talking about pastimes, having a couple of dude talks and watching some movies. Nothing outrageous about it at all. Eventually, we both passed out. He fell asleep on the reclining sofa chair, and I took the bed. I promise I'm a good host. He has back issues and prefers to sit sleeping up. For no particular reason, something woke me up in the middle of the night. I reached for my phone, but it didn't seem to be next to me on the bed where I had last left it. I rolled over onto my right side. My friend was still sleeping on the sofa chair in a very peculiar position. He was sitting sideways, so the arm provided some form of pronounced lumbar support with one leg off the chair and the other leg stretched out, hanging over the other arm of the sofa. I got out of bed noticing that every move I made felt airy. I walked a few feet towards the staircase thinking I'd head upstairs. Maybe I just needed some water. A loud noise suddenly came directly from the bed I had exited only moments before. Startled, my attention shifted from the stairs to my bed. I turned around, and what I saw shocked me to my core. It was me. I was still in bed. I stood there, looking at myself sleeping in the bed in the exact same position I remembered falling asleep in. I stood there, frozen in place, staring at myself for a few minutes, trying to assess what was wrong. I made a move towards where the other me was sleeping, and as I did, I heard the distinct noise of a vibrating cell phone coming from the desk that sat directly between the staircase and the bed. My cell phone was on top of the desk flanked by a couple of high school yearbooks and World War II encyclopedias from the previous night's conversations. What were these books doing here? We had most definitely put them away because we had needed to make room for the maps we had laid out next. We were scoping out hunting and camping areas for us to check out in the future. What I saw on my ringing phone terrified me so completely, I let go of all questions about the books. My Aunt Lisa was calling me. My Aunt Lisa, who had passed away a few years prior when I was conducting training for the Marine Corps. She had been a monumental supporter of mine throughout the whole process. I had always felt I had let her down by not being home for her funeral or burial. But, I knew she was proud of me and would have wanted me to remain strong and not interrupt my journey. She was very practical in that sense. I answered the phone and clear as day, I heard her voice. Hey buddy, it's me, Lisa, she said. I tried to start telling her how much I missed her and loved her, but she interrupted me. Buddy, buddy, I need you to pay attention. Don't listen to it. Listen to who? I said. I don't have time buddy, she said. I need to go. You need to go. I love you so much. I'm so proud, she said right before the phone signal disappeared. As soon as I set the phone down, hands a bit shaky, a voice emerged from the darkness near the stairs. Cody, Cody, come here. It sounded just like my aunt, except I knew it wasn't. A ruse to lure me upstairs perhaps, but I could tell it wasn't her. When I didn't do as it said, the voice grew agitated. Come here, now, it said, before the stairs exploded with noise. I could make out every single creak and moan of the staircase, seemingly amplified 100 times louder than it should be. I started walking back to where I could see myself writhing in bed. I stood there watching myself having a nightmare. I ran to myself and in absolute confusion, I tried to wake myself up. As I was focused on waking myself up, a dark mass descended the stairs, its legs the only part of this thing I could make out. And these legs belonged to a goat or maybe a horse? I was panicked. I was running out of time. And just as I thought my fate was sealed, I felt myself being sucked back into my own sleeping body. I jolted awake in actual reality. It was still dark in the basement. I attempted to grab my phone when I noticed it wasn't next to me. I scrambled out of bed knowing my phone must be on the desk. And it was. I grabbed it, turned on the flashlight. On the desk are the yearbooks and the encyclopedias that I swore we took back upstairs. I scanned the room further. My friend is sleeping in the exact position he was in my dream state. I feel relieved. Maybe it was just a nightmare. I unlocked my phone and checked my call log. A missed call from Aunt Lisa. One unheard voicemail. Terrified, I sat at that desk and listened to the voicemail. It was 10 seconds or less and consisted of almost nothing but feedback noise. But wait, what was that? A small portion of sound had made itself clear. It was faint and yet so clear. Love you, I heard the message say. I questioned my friend the next morning without telling him about my experience. I wanted to hear his recollection of the previous evening. He supported my memory of us putting the books back upstairs. From that day on, I never stayed another night in that basement and have since moved from that house. Even though it's old and it doesn't have service, I still have that cell phone. And I hold onto it, hoping that if this were to ever happen again, my aunt would be able to reach me and protect me from the unknown. A totally sane but completely spooked meat sack, Cody.

Speaker 4:
[55:38] Thank you, Cody. Um, that's funny, like I was just researching something that I came across astral projection recently.

Speaker 5:
[55:46] Oh, oh God. I didn't even think of that.

Speaker 4:
[55:48] I thought of that like, you know, early on when he's like, when he's like the, I felt lighter and everything and just my movement felt different. And then I looked back and I was like, okay, he's going to look back and see his body.

Speaker 5:
[55:57] Uh huh.

Speaker 4:
[55:58] And then talking to a deceased aunt, you know, his aunt. It's funny, like, I'm very open to the possibility of astral projection, but it does get, when people take it too far, it will spook me, which Cody did not. But there's like, you know, some theosophical new age stuff where they, you know, people have claimed to be able to at will enter the astral plane, access the Akashic records, which is like the supposed records of literally everything that has ever happened, every look, every glance, every living creature, past, present, future. And then, you know, so they have like, you know, infinite knowledge and all that. It's like, sure. Why do you have to take it that far?

Speaker 7:
[56:35] But like they always do.

Speaker 4:
[56:37] But the mystery, some mysterious thing of like, could your soul, you know, A, do we have a soul? I'm open to believing that we do. I do think we do, even though I can't prove it. I know I think we have some kind of essence that's, you know, not physical. And can that then access some other plane that doesn't need a physical reality to exist where your spirit is on this ethereal plane? Could you then, you know, speak with, you know, dead people? I'm actually open to all of that. Okay. But that, yeah, it is just fascinating. The phone thing. And then also I'm like, why is the black phone just in my head now? Ever since my first story, or second story, about first story. Yeah, where I'm like, oh my God, it is similar to the black phone. When you said that I hadn't connected that. And then why is the phone showing up, talking to a dead person in this story, which is also like the black phone.

Speaker 5:
[57:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[57:25] Did not expect to have all these parallels.

Speaker 5:
[57:26] You have a phone theme.

Speaker 4:
[57:27] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[57:28] Well, don't worry, we're gonna get away from phones.

Speaker 4:
[57:30] Don't listen to it. So what do you think, what was Aunt Lisa warning?

Speaker 5:
[57:36] I don't know, and the thing that, it was so weird that the creature coming down the stairs.

Speaker 4:
[57:42] With the weird legs?

Speaker 5:
[57:43] Yeah, goat legs.

Speaker 4:
[57:44] Horse legs, something like that.

Speaker 5:
[57:45] Yeah, or horse legs. I'm like, was it a demon? Was it the devil?

Speaker 4:
[57:49] Yeah, that's traditionally demonic imagery.

Speaker 7:
[57:51] Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Speaker 5:
[57:53] Yeah, and if not for the, if not for getting up the next day, or later, whatever, and having the staticky voicemail, Yeah. it's all just a dream.

Speaker 4:
[58:02] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 5:
[58:03] You know, it's, but like when you come out of it and there is some leftover physical evidence.

Speaker 4:
[58:08] Was Aunt Lisa warning him to not listen to the voicemail?

Speaker 5:
[58:11] No, I think, no, because the demon was calling him, Cody, come here. So it's like, don't listen to it.

Speaker 4:
[58:16] Don't listen to it. Okay, that's what she was referring to.

Speaker 5:
[58:18] What I would think.

Speaker 4:
[58:19] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. Don't listen to that thing. Yeah, that was a, I like when they're really weird like that.

Speaker 5:
[58:25] Yeah, weird and unexplained.

Speaker 4:
[58:27] Uh-huh, crazy stuff going on where it's like, what? What was happening there?

Speaker 5:
[58:30] Uh-huh, and it was strange that like his phone wasn't in bed with him because I think about that. I sleep with my phone in the exact same spot every night.

Speaker 4:
[58:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[58:37] Where it's like the only people that can get me and do not disturb are our kids. Every text, every phone call from them will always come through. And they do. And it's like, god damn it, Kyler. He's in Germany and he's not thinking about the time. So three o'clock in the morning, I'm getting text messages, which I'm both grateful and annoyed by.

Speaker 4:
[58:53] Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 5:
[58:55] But I just know that feeling of wake up, if I woke up and my phone was not next to me, I would immediately be super freaked out. Because you're not getting up and moving my phone. That doesn't even make sense.

Speaker 4:
[59:04] No. Uh-huh. Unless I was pulling some prank on you.

Speaker 5:
[59:06] No, you know better. You don't want to ruin your own sleep.

Speaker 4:
[59:09] I know, it wouldn't be worth it, yeah. The kickback wouldn't be worth it.

Speaker 5:
[59:12] Nah, absolutely not. Okay, well, let's go to a bridge. Hey, Dan and Lynze.

Speaker 4:
[59:22] Hello.

Speaker 5:
[59:22] I've been listening to Scared To Death for a few years now, and every time you read a story about haunted roads or bridges, I think about my own bridge experience. This happened ages ago in Lancaster County at a place the locals call Her's Mill Covered Bridge. Most of the kids around town call it the 666 Bridge. When you're a teenager in rural Pennsylvania, there are only so many ways to entertain yourself. Driving back roads while listening to music or daring each other to visit the creepy places are at the top of the list. 666 Bridge was one of those places everyone knew about. The legend goes that a young woman turned up pregnant with nowhere to turn. Her family disowned her, her boyfriend disappeared, and she was completely alone to deal with her own fate. One night she went down to the bridge and climbed underneath it. She tied a noose to one of the old wooden beams and hung herself. The part of the story that always stuck with me was what she was holding. In one hand, she was supposedly holding a briefcase full of photographs of death, accidents, crime scenes, the worst things people can do to one another. In the other hand, she held a Bible. Of course, the rumors flew around. Some said she had been obsessed with death, while others said she was trying to choose between despair and faith. Whatever she had in her hands when she perished will never truly know. The story goes that she never left the bridge even after they removed her body. Not really, anyways. If you want to see her for yourself, there's a very specific way to try. You have to drive to the middle of the bridge late at night, turn the car off, take your keys out of the ignition and place them on the roof of the car. Then, you just sit there in the dark and wait. Nothing will happen, not yet. Then, when you have had enough and try to leave, your car won't start. And that's when she shows herself. Naturally, this sounded like the perfect stupid thing for a group of teenagers to try. Me, my best friend Tyler, my girlfriend Maya, and another couple, Drew and Alicia, decided tonight was the night. It was late October, and we thought it would be the perfect pre-Halloween spook. By the time we turned down the narrow road that leads to the bridge, the mood in the car shifted from joking to quiet anticipation. All five of us were instantly questioning our choice to actually do this. The bridge appeared suddenly between the trees, like a dark wooden tunnel crossing the creek. Tyler slowed the car and rolled it into the middle of the bridge, headlights illuminating the exit, but everything outside of the beam of the lights was just pure darkness. Well, Drew said from the backseat, here we are. Tyler turned off the engine. Without the engine running, the entire bridge seemed to breathe. The wooden structure creaked softly around us, and we could hear the water of the creek moving somewhere beneath the floorboards. Keys, Alicia said, calling out the next step. No going back now. Tyler sighed dramatically and pulled the keys from the ignition, opened the door, and reached up to place them on the roof. The car door shut with a heavy thud that echoed through the bridge. And then we waited. Drew whispered dumb fake ghost noises and Alicia pretended to be scared. I remember thinking the whole thing was really kind of ridiculous. We waited about five minutes, and as we did, the tension in the car began to grow. While the steps of the legend are pretty clear, no one ever told us how long we had to sit there in the darkness. Every little moment seemed to echo around us. When someone shifted in their seat, it traveled along the beams. When wind passed through the cracks of the bridge, it whistled. Every so often, we heard something that sounded like footsteps on the bridge. Probably an animal, Tyler said, but nobody responded. And after about maybe ten minutes, Maya finally said, Okay, this is dumb. Let's go. Tyler opened the door, reached up, and grabbed the keys from the roof, slid them into the ignition, and started the car. Only nothing happened. The engine didn't even try. He turned the key again, and still nothing. Seriously, Drew said, stop messing around. I'm not, Tyler said. He tried again, but the car remained completely silent. And that's when the temperature in the car seemed to drop. The windows even fogged up slightly. Do you guys smell that? Alicia asked. A damp metallic smell, like rust, seemed to linger in the air now. Tyler tried the ignition again. Nothing. Maya pointed towards the passenger window. Look. Outside of the car, just beyond the weak glow of the headlights, there was movement near the side of the bridge. At first, I thought it was just fog drifting up from the creek. But the shape became clearer as it moved closer. It looked like a woman standing near the wooden railing. Her head was tilted slightly to one side in a way that made my stomach twist immediately. The angle wasn't natural, like her neck couldn't quite hold her upright. Her hair hung down in long dark strands, and even in the dim light, I could see something dangling from her hands. Tyler whispered, what the hell is that? As the figure took one slow step forward, the car engine suddenly roared to life. Tyler didn't hesitate, he floored the gas pedal, and we shot out of the bridge. Finally, after the longest silence ever, Drew said, everyone saw that, right? And we nodded together silently. Our little band of friends went on our way soon after all that. We all headed to colleges in different parts of the country. We keep up with each other on social media, but that's about it. And I've heard a lot of people say that in their stories, too, that after one of these events, the friendships fade. And it's got me wondering, why? Do you think it's the spirit or entity causing this rift? Or is it just life? Anonymous.

Speaker 4:
[65:31] Thank you, Anonymous. That's an interesting question there at the end about, like, you know, why do the friendships often fade after these experiences? Like, is it just coincidence? Is it the spirit doing something? I would say it's like maybe people are afraid to reckon with what they've seen. They want to dismiss it. They want to put it behind them because it could, like, kind of mess up their worldview. You know, it's like if it's one thing, if you just see something by yourself, you can just over time be like, I don't know, you can second-guess it, false memories. Maybe, you know, you can, like, use all these, you know, like terms to convince yourself that, like, what you saw didn't actually happen. But if you're with other people who also saw it, we can't really do that if you all happen to see the same thing.

Speaker 5:
[66:14] Yeah, unless they also choose to pretend like it didn't happen.

Speaker 4:
[66:17] Which is tougher for, like, everybody to do together and all kind of, like, share that lie then. And so maybe it makes certain people uncomfortable. Like, they don't want to think about it. They don't want to think what that could mean, what it could open up.

Speaker 5:
[66:29] I love that.

Speaker 4:
[66:30] Yeah. Also, this is so different than the thrust of the story, but, like, early on in the story, after you're talking about where it was located, after the anonymous poster was, and then they said, you know, you get bored in Lancaster County, like, this rural area, and they said, like, you know, driving back roads, listening to music. I initially, my brain heard driving backwards, and I'm like, and I just got so hung up for a little bit, I'm like, huh, you're so bored, why do you have to listen to music while you drive backwards? Like, I was so confused. I was just picturing these teenagers hauling ass in reverse, which is so hard to do.

Speaker 5:
[67:05] So hard.

Speaker 4:
[67:06] When I wrote like cranking music, I'm like, that's a new one. Yeah, back roads makes way more sense.

Speaker 5:
[67:11] That's really funny.

Speaker 4:
[67:13] Yeah, that was a cool story. Well told.

Speaker 5:
[67:15] Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 4:
[67:16] Yeah, that was interesting symbolism, the pregnant woman, the myth of the bridge, holding a book of death essentially in one hand and a Bible in the other.

Speaker 5:
[67:24] I know.

Speaker 4:
[67:24] I'm like, ooh, that feels like mystical. That feels like a parable or something.

Speaker 5:
[67:28] Yeah, and I did absolutely no digging, no research to see like, is this a real legend? Is it just, cause I think sometimes these things are like a little bit generational. Like, you know, if any of these, well, this person is telling their story now, but it sounds like it happened when they were in high school. So it's like at that time, if they had any older siblings or like, you know, just kind of a hand me down of a lore that never really existed, but it exists to this generation of kids. Then after that, it just goes away. I mean, it could be very real. I don't know. But yeah, it just really struck me. Uh-huh.

Speaker 4:
[67:59] That was a cool one.

Speaker 5:
[67:59] Yeah. Okay. One more little baby story. Dear Dan and Lynze, first, thank you guys so much for the podcast.

Speaker 4:
[68:10] Thanks for listening.

Speaker 5:
[68:12] I'm a paramedic in Fresno, California and I'm often asked, what's the worst thing you've ever seen? Rather than tell someone a gruesome or even sad story, I like to share something that happened to me while I was on call about six years ago when I was a brand new medic. My partner and I got a call for a, quote, sick person. The general term they give to low priority calls at a skilled nursing facility just outside of town. It was around 9 a.m. when we arrived on the scene. As we approached our patient's door, I popped my head in the doorway to make sure the patient wasn't in need of immediate attention. Once I confirmed that the patient was in their bed and I noticed a middle-aged woman sitting next to her, presumably a family member, I told my partner to get the patient's vital signs while I got a report from the nurse. And just as I said that, I turned around to find the nurse right behind me. After receiving a fairly basic report on the patient, the nurse added, we've attempted to call her family, but we haven't been able to reach them. I then asked the nurse, is that the family in the room? The nurse looked a little confused. She said, she doesn't have any visitors right now. I then turned around pointing and said, is she another employee here then? But now, all I saw was my partner and the patient, no modernly dressed middle-aged woman. Confused, I asked my partner, where'd that lady go? What lady, he asked. I went on to explain that I saw a lady sitting next to the patient when we had arrived. My partner again confirmed that nobody but he and the patient had been in the room. When I told the nurse this, a concerned look washed over her face. She then asked me to describe the woman, and I described her as I had seen her, white, between 40 and 50, wearing a sweater and jeans. The nurse said, oh, well, maybe your eyes are just playing tricks on you. She walked away and did not return. Thinking that, in fact, my eyes were just playing tricks on me, I brushed it off. After exiting the building and getting to the ambulance to load the patient, the patient asked, can my daughter come too? I explained to the patient that the nurse attempted to call her family, but they hadn't answered. I assured her that either the staff at the nursing facility or the staff at the hospital would get a hold of someone so she wouldn't be alone. And she said, well, she was just sitting with me. My partner gave me the what the fuck look. I went back inside to ask the nurse if she was positive that the patient did not have a visitor that morning. The nurse began speaking in a soft tone. Well, it may have been her daughter, but her daughter lost her battle with breast cancer just a few weeks ago. Apparently, I had described the daughter to a T. At that moment, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. I've since returned many times to that facility and have never had another experience like that one. Thanks for reading. Keep on creeping on. Surge.

Speaker 4:
[71:20] Surge, cool name for starters. Reminds me of the lead vocalist for System of a Down.

Speaker 5:
[71:26] Excellent.

Speaker 4:
[71:28] But I love stories like that. I love stories that are like some kind of confirmation of life beyond. Where that one is so strongly that.

Speaker 5:
[71:36] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[71:37] Where it's like Surge sees this middle-aged woman next to this elderly patient who maybe sounds like kind of had dementia.

Speaker 5:
[71:44] I don't know. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 4:
[71:44] Just based on being a little confused. Maybe not. As far as like not knowing that the daughter had died a few weeks earlier. But like sees this, you know, figure.

Speaker 5:
[71:53] Oh, yeah. Maybe I didn't. I didn't pick that up.

Speaker 4:
[71:55] But I guess maybe not.

Speaker 5:
[71:56] Yeah, but yeah. No, you're probably right. She probably is like, because she was in a skilled nursing facility. Yes. Good job making that connection.

Speaker 4:
[72:02] And then all these. And then so sees this middle-aged woman like, you know, very specific so much so it doesn't look like a ghost. Just thinks like, oh, there's just somebody there.

Speaker 5:
[72:09] Right.

Speaker 4:
[72:10] And then gone. But then to hear that from the nurse, like, well, the daughter died of breast cancer a few weeks back and then describes the daughter who the patient asked for. And the daughter looked exactly like this person he saw. It's like, if I'm Surge, I'm like, yep, 100% confident there is life after death. Not a doubt in my mind now.

Speaker 5:
[72:27] And how interesting.

Speaker 4:
[72:28] Nothing else explains that.

Speaker 5:
[72:29] Yeah. And how interesting in that moment that Surge and this woman can see the woman's daughter, but nobody else can. So then if I'm Surge and I'm like, oh god, do I have like a gift?

Speaker 4:
[72:38] Yeah, you're more open to it or something?

Speaker 5:
[72:40] Something. Or maybe it was just happenstance. Because he says he's been back to this place and it's never happened to him again in that place. So it doesn't seem like, I mean, for lack of better terms, it's not like a portal for him. Like when he's there, he suddenly has this ability. But I wonder in, he said this was six years ago. I'm like, I wonder if he's had any other paranormal experiences.

Speaker 4:
[72:59] I just had a moment there.

Speaker 5:
[73:01] Yeah. Maybe as I was like prepping that story, I'm like, oh my God, have I told this story before? But I think we have like another paramedic story very early on that I just is like lingering in my brain. Huh. Okay. Sometimes when I'm prepping episodes, I read a story so many times to get like the word straight in my head that by the time I get here, I'm like, I definitely just told this. But it's like, it's just fresh, you know? Yep.

Speaker 4:
[73:23] Exactly. Well, good stories.

Speaker 5:
[73:25] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[73:27] You want to thank some of our Annabelles?

Speaker 5:
[73:29] I do. Okay. I would like to thank the following Annabelles for making our monthly donations possible. We'll be announcing April's charitable donation next week. Mia Carlosi, Panja, like Panda, but with a G.

Speaker 4:
[73:43] Oh, nice, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[73:44] Yeah, Panja. All right, I think this is supposed to be Gavin Niner, but it's G-A-1-V-I-N-9-N-R. I don't know. So if you would like a redo, I'm happy to do it because I'm not sure what that's supposed to be.

Speaker 4:
[73:59] I'm still thinking about Panja. I want Panja to be Ponga.

Speaker 5:
[74:03] Ponga?

Speaker 4:
[74:03] Ponga.

Speaker 5:
[74:04] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[74:05] Who knows?

Speaker 5:
[74:05] Panja. It's like tomato, tomato.

Speaker 4:
[74:08] Yeah, Panja Ponga.

Speaker 5:
[74:09] You get it. Coffee Zombie. What you mean, Jelly Bean.

Speaker 4:
[74:14] What you mean, Jelly Bean?

Speaker 5:
[74:15] Jelly Bean. Carrie, Geyser and Wren. Not that Wren. Because I would lose my mind.

Speaker 4:
[74:23] I miss that Wren.

Speaker 5:
[74:23] But also another Wren.

Speaker 4:
[74:25] Also on names, I just saw the funniest sketch. I missed Key and Peele when it was airing on Comedy Central. Yeah. Just, I don't know, whatever's going on in my life. Oh yeah, I know what you're gonna... Yes, I've been watching like here and there for a little like brain breaks when I'm doing episode prep or whatever on YouTube. Geniuses. They are so incredibly funny. Yeah. But they have this one sketch called Substitute Teacher that Donna was familiar with. Yes. And it just reminded me of like doing names here on Annabelle's where it's like, yeah, when you just, there are so many different ways to pronounce like the same. Actually, even one of the names here, I will thank you a little bit. It can be Camille or Camila. Same spelling. You just don't know unless you meet the person.

Speaker 5:
[75:02] Sure.

Speaker 4:
[75:02] But they had this really funny, they were parodying like those old movies where it'd be like the white teacher goes to the inner city and it's like from the early 90s trying to break through to these kids and they flipped it. What was that?

Speaker 5:
[75:14] Michelle Pfeiffer movie?

Speaker 4:
[75:15] Yes. There was another one and they did another one where Key is, he's the substitute teacher and he's flipped, like he's pretending to be this inner city like hard guy and he's doing roll call. That's the whole sketch is just roll call and he pronounces every name comically wrong and it's all these like white suburban kids and there's one kid, Aaron, A-A-R-O-N. And he's like, the kids are nervous at this point to like not go along with it. He's like, it's pronounced Aaron.

Speaker 5:
[75:47] Don't you fuck with me.

Speaker 4:
[75:48] Like he just gets so mad. A-A-R-O-N. And I just like, I will forever hear A-A-R-O-N now when I hear Aaron.

Speaker 5:
[75:54] And that specifically came up this past weekend because we were out to breakfast at this place in Boise called Stardust, which is really good.

Speaker 4:
[76:02] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[76:02] And we were sitting at the bar and this lovely young man comes and sits down. It was the funniest like six degrees of separation story. It was so fucking crazy. We're just chatting with him, chatting with him. And then, you know, like he was by himself. We were together, whatever. And he, it turns out he works for the company that one of our best friends used to work for. That was a startup that she helped start up. Like it's such an Uber specific teeny tiny company out of Spokane and he listens to it.

Speaker 4:
[76:31] It was just, he's a genetic counselor. It's the most niche job.

Speaker 5:
[76:35] Yeah. So specific. And so then we were just like chatting with him. And then, you know, you get to a point, you're like, oh, well, what's your name? And he's like, wait a second. He's like, I love your podcast. It was just so comical. And then Dan, when his name was Aaron, he immediately went into the substitute.

Speaker 4:
[76:49] So if you're listening to this one, so Aaron knew it, but Aaron knew it.

Speaker 5:
[76:53] Yes. All weekend, we were like, A-A-Ron.

Speaker 4:
[76:55] And I would like to thank the following Annabelle's as well, Azheely or Ashley, Ashley Falcon, Falcon. I won't do that to all of them. Go ahead, go ahead. I'd like to thank Sarah Troxell, not Sarah Troxell. It's going to be hard to do all of them. I'd like to thank James Hattos or Hatos Hattos. I feel like that might be Greek.

Speaker 5:
[77:16] Jay Ames.

Speaker 4:
[77:18] Jay Ames. Oh, I like Jay Ames. Camille, probably Camille, could be Camila Aquino. And actually Camille added the phonetic spelling for Aquino. Cause I think a lot of people pronounce it Aquino, but Aquino. And then Lola Collins, Lola. I don't think there's a lot of alternate pronunciations, but who knows Lola. No, I don't know how you could change that one.

Speaker 5:
[77:39] You know, it is kind of amazing how people can screw names up though.

Speaker 4:
[77:42] They can put a little, a little accent on part of it. Mej the mage, Jim Madol and Jackie Otero Walker.

Speaker 5:
[77:50] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[77:51] Wacar.

Speaker 5:
[77:51] Wacar.

Speaker 4:
[77:52] Wacar.

Speaker 5:
[77:52] Waker.

Speaker 4:
[77:53] Waker. W-Walker.

Speaker 5:
[77:55] Walk-her.

Speaker 4:
[77:56] Walk- could be Wock-er.

Speaker 5:
[78:00] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[78:00] Okay, spoopy shout-outs.

Speaker 5:
[78:01] Okay, yes. I'm not going to fuck with any of them. To Brett from- I'm sorry. To Brett and Michaela from Kurt. Happy birthday to you both. Brett, I'm annoyed to know- to now only be two years older than you again. Welcome to the family, Michaela. May you too have many years of happiness to come. To Jade from your favorite resident alien. Happy anniversary. Five years of pushing past your limits with your patience and all the trials and tribulations life has to offer. All the smiles sideways places. So many more nerd moments to come. Just remember, there are no bees on Typhoon Station. PS. I'm feeling attacked. I'm snowflaking by the cat that is. This is like, you know that this means so much to them. And I love how every couple has their own internal language. Like I could do an entire shout out to you. The people will be like, what the fuck is that?

Speaker 4:
[78:54] You're reminding me of a cameo now. I think that's still around, but people really need cameo during the pandemic. And I sent Doug Mellard, Gary Busey was doing like songs. You could buy a song and get like a word count. And you'd work with the song. And Doug and I have the most absurdist nonsensical little like rapport with each other. And I just had, it was so funny. I'm going to find the video now of Gary Busey talking about how the squirrel, Doug, I'm glad you're out of the hospital. That squirrel attack, no one should have survived it. You did cause you're strong as 10,000 men. But having Gary Busey put that into a song was priceless.

Speaker 5:
[79:29] That's, I have some great Gary Busey production stories.

Speaker 4:
[79:32] Oh yes you do. And that is our-

Speaker 5:
[79:35] Dude, I'm not done.

Speaker 4:
[79:35] Oh yeah, you have more spoopy.

Speaker 5:
[79:36] Yeah, you just interrupted with your story.

Speaker 4:
[79:38] I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5:
[79:39] I only did two.

Speaker 4:
[79:40] Keep spooping.

Speaker 5:
[79:42] To future Lynze from past Lynze, I'm so proud of you for pushing your anxiety aside and taking the big scary steps you needed to get your life back on track. There's so much to be proud of with your personal growth. Happy birthday and I hope you're feeling great at 38. To Melissa from Your Dragon, Sean, happy birthday babe and good luck with your surgery. To Christina from Christina, three decades lived, five years of hell overcome. You've faced darkness and danced in the light. 30, flirty and thriving ahead. The best is yet to come, Queen. And lastly, to Tressa from Whitney, happy anniversary to my beautiful wife. Thanks for sticking with me. I'm excited to finally go on our honeymoon to Greece.

Speaker 4:
[80:26] That's awesome.

Speaker 5:
[80:27] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[80:27] Congrats. And that is our show.

Speaker 5:
[80:29] Now you can be done.

Speaker 4:
[80:31] Thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror to My Story at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. You can email us for everything else at info at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. Thanks to Logan Keith for scoring today's show. Thanks to Heather Rylener for organizing the My Story emails. And to book editor Drew Atana, Polishing and Preparing Listener Stories from book number seven. I was able to find the stories I shared today. We're on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics of the company episodes and more at Scared To Death Podcast. Also, I have a private Facebook group called The Creeps and Peepers, full of fellow horror lovers and moderated by the wonderful all-seeing eyes. Enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death.

Speaker 6:
[81:08] Bye.

Speaker 3:
[81:36] And Magic Productions.

Speaker 4:
[81:41] Yeah, no, I think if I was 100% confident, the person had done certain things, it might not be the best thing about me to admit about myself, but I think I could torch them.

Speaker 6:
[81:51] Why have we asked our contractor we found on angie.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids.

Speaker 1:
[82:00] We only met a month ago. Angie, the one you trust, define the ones you trust.

Speaker 6:
[82:04] Find pros for all your home projects at angie.com.

Speaker 7:
[82:07] Breathe in, feel the sense of calm that comes from having up to $300 in overdraft protection with GoToBank. Now.

Speaker 3:
[82:14] Did you say $300?

Speaker 7:
[82:16] Yes. Now, back to our breathing.

Speaker 1:
[82:18] So if I overspend my balance, GoToBank has my back up to $300.

Speaker 7:
[82:22] Yes. Can we breathe out now? Less worries, more zen. With over $300 in overdraft protection, tap to open an account today. Eligible direct deposits and opt-in required for overdraft protection. Fees, terms and conditions apply.