Episode 129 - Water These Ghosts up to?

In the fall of 1987, two boaters discovered the body of Sabrina Kidd floating in the Colorado River. Who would do this to this poor girl? To some, Sabrina was just another young female victim from the Las Vegas strip. But to Lindo Marks, Sabrina's death would become a mission. This woman tells me that a niece is missing. You are our last resort. Lindo would find herself in over her head. I just thought it was too dangerous. I could feel that it was going to have an impact on her for the rest of her life. Through her persistence, the hunt for Sabrina's killer was blown wide open. He said she never came home. I go that motherfucker's lying. I was scared of death. He realized that I was on to him. Tony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Killer Story, coming February 1st to the binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Sabrina. Oh hey, Corinne. It's lovely to see you in the daylight and less scared than we last left each other. The last recording was quite possibly one of the most terrifying recordings we've had in years. At the beginning of the podcast, we used to get scared after every single episode. But somehow along the way, we became desensitized. But this last one, when we hung up, well, we didn't hang up. When we clicked stop recording, I followed you to the bathroom. And I followed you on all of your nightly routine. And then you had to follow me on my nightly routine. We were on for like another 30 minutes. Just babysitting each other in the darkness as we prepared for the night. So today before recording, I did a bunch of jumping jacks. I held a plank for a minute. I got ready. I warmed up. I ate chocolate covered raisins. I literally used to bring it text in me. And you said, I just did a bunch of jumping jacks. I'm ready. And I was like, great. I just chopped chocolate covered raisins in my mouth. And then I was thinking, this is why you are flight. And I'm fight because I'm not going to get anywhere very quick. So I think I have my only option. It's really to just stay in place and try to stay in my mind. But you know, it works. It works. This is two girls one goes. Two girls one goes. In the fall of 1987, two boaters discovered the body of Sabrina Kid floating in the Colorado River. This woman tells me that her niece is missing. From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Killer Story coming February 1st to the binge. And we are your ghostesses. That's Corinne. Hey, and I'm Sabrina. And these recordings, albeit scary, are what is getting me through life at the moment. I know. Am I allowed to air our dirty little secret that happened in backstage of the Nashville show? Oh, I don't know. Should we? I don't know. Well, I was just thinking about how this podcast is really wonderful at a time like this, because it is giving us more purpose and it's something to look forward to. Yeah. And there was a time when you and I weren't sure if we would be able to continue like we had been. Yes. Which is why, and I think we did explain it when we talked about why we were cutting back on episodes. Yeah, there was a period of time in our lives where we were both so stressed. And Corinne and I were reflecting on it recently about how we're so grateful that we have this podcast. Because it's kind of our saving grace in hard times. Yeah. And just even seeing people's comments on Instagram and going on Facebook and just having a bunch of other people that share similar interests and being able to communicate with them. I was just like, man, this is so nice to just have this. This is like the type of community that so many people look for. And I just feel so grateful that we have them. Yeah. Me too. And I'm grateful for you. Me too. I'm also grateful for me. I'm grateful for you. I love me. Well, that's important too. Self love is very important. I hope you do love yourself. But I love you a lot too, Sabrina. Thank you. This just turned into I was gushing over each other, but I love it. And I was just thinking, also, you moved three years ago now and think about how many people who have moved in your life and you just naturally grow distant from them because of that. And if it weren't for this podcast, I mean, I hope that we would have stayed close, but I think this has really made us stay close. It's been that extra line of communication for sure. And I was actually thinking about that too because I Facebook has a new feature where you can essentially like sort by year and just go through your newsfeed. And so I was like, oh, maybe I should look at some of the stuff and do some cleaning, which I didn't really get around to. But what I did do was I went back to some of my old profile pictures because I was like, why do I need 50 Facebook profile pictures? I don't need that many. And I was noticing that you liked every single one of my profile pictures, even the ones that I had posted like five years before we had met. And I was just thinking, this is friendship. At one point, Sabrina stalked me so hard that she liked everything. No shame. Wait, did you delete them or no? Are they still there? I think most of them are still there because I got overwhelmed with how many photos I used to take up myself. Oh my gosh, that is the best thing ever. When you look through old photos and it's just all selfies, I went through, there was in the beginning of shelter in place. There was like this thing going around an Instagram, like sharing your first picture with your significant other. I went searching in a old hard drive that I had from like a computer I used in college, searching for a photo of Nick and I from the night that we drunkenly made out. And then we took a selfie on a bus. And I remember the picture so vividly, but anyway, that's beside the point. I'm really glad that random drunk make out works out for you. Me too. I'm very grateful for it. But anyway, I was like looking through and I found a bunch of photos from like senior year of high school where I was wearing push-up bras that probably shouldn't be allowed to be worn by a 14 year old girl. And I was just taking selfies on photo booths on my computer. And I was just like, this isn't embarrassing. I thought I was so hot. Yes. And it wouldn't just be one. It would be like 60 photos in a row. So many. So many. So many. Also, I say this all now. I'm like, uh, Wendy's going to listen to this. Nick's mom and she's going to send me a text or she's going to be like, oh, no, what is the pretty talking about? It was a romantic first kiss on a bus into the evening. Yeah. Well, actually, Nick's dad visited a few years ago and we walked from our old place and playa to Hermosa where American junkie is. And that's the place that Nick and I first made out. D.F.M.O. Yeah. Nick's dad insisted to take a picture of Nick and I in front of American junkie. That's amazing. Oh my gosh. I love that. Oh, I miss the Hermosa beach bars. I know. You know what I miss? What? The poop deck. I freaking loved that bar. I don't know that you do because I forced everybody to go there for my birthday like two years in a row. It was the bar that was right on the beach and Hermosa. It backed up to the beach and there was like popcorn and hot dogs and taco ladies. Oh, they would literally give you cups to play beer pong in the back. Oh my gosh. But what was most amazing about it is that we were not the correct demographic to be there. It was old local men and I don't know why I loved it so much but it was just such a dive and I was like, yes, I don't want to feel like I belong. I like this. Oh my god. Wait, did we go when you're during the day? Yes, we did. Okay. Now I do remember it. That was for my birthday. It was very fun. It's so fun because it was just one of those places where you got to be as trashy or as classy as you felt. But usually trashy. Usually it didn't end very well. Such a great time. Good memories. Speaking of good times or good things, I just wanted to give a little shout out to the company that I work for. Ministry of Supply because they're doing a lot of amazing things. Or I guess I should include myself and say we because of that. A very small team and everybody's worked so, so hard over the past few months to just drive all these new initiatives. There's one specific initiative that I wanted to share with everybody. I know that this is a really hard time and a lot of people have lost their jobs and a lot of people are struggling financially. And if you visit the Ministry of Supply website, you'll find an application that we have put up where people can apply who aren't in the position to purchase new clothing right now. Apply for a fresh interview outfit to borrow. Our clothing is very nicely made. Wait, that's amazing. It's really, really awesome. And I know that we've already served quite a few people with the interview wardrobe. So if you are also looking to interview and want to look sharp and are not in the position to be able to support the company financially by purchasing clothing, please fill out the form. And hopefully we'll be able to help you. That's amazing. I wonder can you share that on our Facebook page? Yeah. And there's also a link in the Ministry of Supply Instagram. Oh, great. But I'll share it. That's amazing. I think it is incredible to see how companies are responding to things like this and in times as hard as it is right now. And you know, some of them are not responding well and others are just stepping up like Ministry of Supply. And I think it shows and proves that they're good people working there. Yeah, it really does. I mean, it's such a tough time. And I know businesses decisions are every decision that people make is one that's not lighthearted. Like I know so many of people are probably making decisions that they're later going to regret. But it's all out of fear and pressure and whatnot. But I feel really good about being a part of a group that's being so incredibly empathetic during this time. Yeah, that's amazing. I don't know if I'll be, none of that must and let's be real. They're going to be happy to hear that I talked about them. No one will know. I feel they're very supportive of you believing in ghosts though. Oh, they are. Well, they, I'm not sure many of them believe in ghosts, but they open up the conversation for me to always talk about my. And that's important. I open up a lot of video calls with here's my ghostly update. Everyone's like Jesus. Did anything happen at your haunted home after our recording last week? No, I was just, I stayed up, essentially playing the Kimmy Schmidt game that's now on Netflix because it's a choose your own adventure movie. That's so fun. It was the best thing I could have possibly done to get my mind off of the horror story three red with lights all on. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Now, nothing happened. Did anything happen with you? I mean, you're still in a kind of fresh new apartment for you and nothing happened. Nothing happened. Maya, nothing happened. Good. I'm glad. Maya's been a little wack of duty, but I think that's just normal. She's local. She's local. I love her so much though. I had to give her canned food because she now knows when we start recording to start meowing like crazy, which is she smart. She knows she's winning the game. She, yeah, she has conditioned you, Sabrina. She does. You set up your recording. She rings her little bell and then you give her the food. Okay. All right. This week's theme. This week's theme. I'm excited. I am very excited. It's one that we've done before, but I feel like this episode in specific. We're both really excited about the two options that we chose. Yes. Because, okay, so the theme is bodies of water. Mm-hmm. But I think in the past we did haunted, I don't know, the way we worded it was different. So I think the way that we are taking this might be a little different. Right. I feel like last time I cheated. What do you mean? I don't know. I just remembered myself. How do you cheat on the recordings of our podcast? It was giving you the answers. The goals. It was proving in my brain. They're speaking through you. No, I think we did. I swear, last time we did something about bodies of water. I ended up just talking about all of the haunted spots around the body of water. Oh. But not the physical. It didn't really include anything that happened on or in your water. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I totally cheated if that's what you're saying is cheating. It's fine. Who's creating these rules? Me? Us. Should I go? I think, yes. I would like that. Okay. If you're familiar with New York City, there's a little neighborhood called SoHo or South of Houston. And it's famously the artsy neighborhood from the 70s and 80s. But today it has like a bunch of cute trendy shots. It has like the old brick roads, quaint architecture, cute boutiques. And one of those boutiques is called COS. And though, okay. Well, after I did all my research, after I wrote that I was a cute boutique, and I wanted to keep those words, I realized it's actually H&M's sister store. So it's not really a boutique, but it appears as one. So it's got the vibe. It's got the vibe. So COS takes up shop at 129 Spring Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. And if you're a fan of minimalist fashion, it's totally the place for you. Or maybe you wanted to go visit a haunted well where over 200 years ago a murder took place. That's right. The haunted well, just hanging out in the back of COS. That below is my mind already. I feel like you don't even need to tell me anything else because this already is just so weird. And fascinating. Yes. COS is a prime piece of real estate. And you go inside, you go downstairs into the men's department and into the back. And right by the register is a well, a brick well, accompanied by two structurally perfect mannequins that are in dapper suits. It's pretty haunted and a lot of people who work at that store have experienced miscellaneous hauntings and ghostly apparitions and scary experiences. And it's all because of a murder, which was dubbed the Manhattan well murder and it occurred on the night of December 22, 1799. So as story goes, Julie Elma Elmore-Sant, who went by Elma, was a young 22 year old who lived in a boarding house run by her cousin Catherine ring, which was located on Grenet Street. And sadly, there's not a ton of information about who Elma was and I tried looking up because there's a lot of information about the murder in this case or supposed murder. But when I tried to search Elma Sands, it was purely only information about the murder, which is kind of a bummer. It's like, why? Why? There's no information about the victims. Yeah, I know. That is always a bummer. So she, based on the very little information I know, went and moved in with her cousin. And no one knows really what her hopes or dreams were or what she was really like. The only things that were really written about her was that she suffered from depression and had very melancholy moods or often was sick. And that she once spoke of suicidal thoughts, but I'm sure she was much, much more than that. Unfortunately, that's all that's on the internet. So as it goes, Elma was her usual sad self until July 1799 when a young carpenter named Levi Weeks moved into the boarding house and very quickly took interest in Elma. And Weeks reportedly moved to the city to help his older brother Ezra Weeks, who had a massive, probably the biggest construction business in New York at the time. Ezra was thrilled to have his brother join him in the big apple and he was like, you also sit here and you're away from home. This is a great place to meet a wife and start a family. So he was encouraging him to start a family and settle down. Because apparently Levi was a little bit of a player. Luckily, for Ezra, as it seemed, Levi did start taking interest in someone. It was Elma. They started spending a lot of time together. Elma's mood shifted. She became more cheerful. And her cousin Catherine was like, wow, this is amazing. I love seeing Elma this happy. And Levi would spend hours in Elma's room with the door locked and keep in mind, this is 1799. So premarital sex is not necessarily something that's condoned. It's very looked down upon. Very taboo. Very taboo. Elma was like, don't worry, Catherine. Because Catherine was like, girl, I guarantee she sounded just like this. She was like, girl, you are locking your door. Everyone in the boarding house knows what you're doing. Maybe like be a little bit more subtle about it or don't do this. And Elma was like, don't worry, I'm so happy. Levi and I are going to get married. And so she confides in Catherine and says that Levi promised me he wants to marry me and that they were going to get married in secrecy. There were some differences in stories. Some said that on December 22nd was the night that they were supposed to get married in secrecy. But others just said that she told Catherine they were planning to get married. This is actually sounding a lot like whatever the topic was that included water. And I did the campsite and remember that guy basically killed his wife or the girlfriend kept this girlfriend in secret. Yeah. And then she was probably not going to turn into the lake. Right. Yes. Yes. But the tennis racket. Something like that. Yeah. He was wearing his tennis whites or something like that. Yeah. Don't do things. If someone's trying to keep you secret. Yeah. They won't trust. They deserve more than being a secret. Yeah. Catherine was very happy to hear this because she was like, okay, maybe their rendezvous's or horizontal dances. No pants weren't so taboo anymore because they were going to get married. Catherine starts helping Elma plan for this wedding. Sadly, marriage was not an Elma's future because on the evening of December 22nd, 1799, Elma sands left the boarding house and was never again seen alive. In recalling the events, many people assumed that Elma had left the boarding house with leave by that night because they reported seeing Elma getting ready in her room upstairs and then hearing footsteps as if someone were descending the stairs, whispers by the front door as if two people were talking and then the opening and closing of the door. Unfortunately, no one saw the two leave together. They only heard and made assumptions like they saw Elma getting ready and then they assumed it was her going on the stairs, her leaving with someone whispering. But she could have been whispering and talking to anyone. So that evening, leave by weeks returned home to the boarding house alone. And it wasn't until the morning that people realized Elma was missing and Catherine awoke to her absent cousin and grew very, very concerned. Days started passing and still Elma was nowhere to be found. And Catherine inquired with weeks about it because she was like, you were probably with her. You spent so much time with her. How do you not know where she is? I thought you were planning to get married to her. I apparently kind of reacted very strangely when she said and made it clear that she knew of his intentions to marry Elma because leave I didn't want people to know that they were getting married. But he seemed very, he stayed, stayed very clear in the fact that he had no idea where Elma was, but he was kind of dismissive about it, claiming he knew nothing and but also didn't really have very much emotion about him. So days past, Christmas past, still no sign of Elma, New Year's past, still no sign of Elma. And it was hard for Catherine to ignore the fact she feared the worst that Elma was dead. Then on January 2nd of 1800, a man was drawing water from a well which was owned by the Manhattan company and was startled when he found a lady's fur muff floating in his bucket. Concerned, this man stood up on his toes and looked into the well and peering down his eyes with struck with horror because they're floating face down in the well was a woman's body. Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Wait, I'm going to put a horrible image in your mind. Not that finding a dead body is any less horrible than what I'm about to say, but do you think that other people had visited the well to get drinking water prior to, oh. It reminds me this part of the story reminds me a lot of the Cecil Hotel. Cecil Hotel. Yeah. I'm using that water and didn't know. I know. Oh. It's so sad. So news travels fast and Catherine cures about the body and the well and she's like, I think it's Elma. So she sent her husband and some other men from the boarding house to the well to retrieve the body. They pulled the remains out from the well. It was in fact, Elma. So Elma's body was covered in bruising indicative of a horrific beating prior to being thrown into the well where her body was discovered. Dr. studied Elma's body and found strangulation marks, water in her lungs, cracks to her skull, and they concluded that Elma had been strangled to the point of losing consciousness, then thrown into the well where she cracked her skull and then drowned to death. And then according to encyclopedia.com, which based on the website name, domain, I'm tempted to trust, but also I didn't find this information anywhere else in my research. But according to encyclopedia.com, Elma's body was put on display in multiple locations in the days after her body was discovered, which spurred the community to join in outrage and they all quickly turned on Levi Weeks. My gosh. Yeah. So I don't know that her body was actually put on display, but either way the community did turn against Levi. Okay. He was a prime suspect and they were determined to get justice for Elma, basically as it does in many communities when something like this happens or when big things shake a community. There are a lot of rumors that begin to spread. And the very first one that spread was that Levi Weeks was a womanizer, which probably wasn't a rumor and probably was based in fact. But the rumor said that he was seeing a lot of women beyond Elma, some even claimed that he was trying to move Catherine, who was Elma's cousin, but Catherine was married and denied the claims. A woman came out to say that she claimed to have seen Elma on the night of December 22nd the night that she went missing and this woman told of seeing Elma in a crowd on Greenwich Street and went to go speak with Elma, but some man, who she didn't recognize, pulled Elma and said we had to go and then Elma and this person disappeared into the crowd. Multiple others came out to say that they heard someone scream murder adjacent to the man hat and well on the evening of December 22nd. Does that not make you kind of think of murder mystery dinners when they're like, there's no murder totally, totally, because ever in murder mystery dinners, you investigate and try to solve. But in this case, multiple people come out to say, Oh, yeah, I heard someone yelling murder and screams and yet no one went to go investigate, which is very kiddie genavisi by Sandra effect. Others claimed that they saw a one horse play with a dark horse and no bells travel away from the area shortly after the loud scream Ezra, who is Levi's brother, owns a slave very similar to that at that time. So people are assuming that maybe Levi borrowed his brother's sleigh to kill Elma. Other people noted that they saw two men and a woman, but they were all laughing over by the well and with the sleigh. But anyway, because of all these rumors, basically people were theorizing that maybe Ezra and Levi together killed Elma either way, if all fingers were pointing to Levi, a week after Elma's body was discovered, the grand jury indicted Levi Weeks for the murder of Elma sands and the newspapers infimously coined it the Manhattan well murder. And what makes this story so famous is that the Manhattan well murder trial of 1800 was the very first murder trial in the United States for which there is a recorded transcript. Whoa, yeah, that's so cool. And even cooler is that Levi Weeks hired three attorneys to defend him. Those three men were Thomas Jefferson, who one year later became the third American president and is also credited with bringing macaroni and cheese to the United States. Factored did not know that Alexander Hamilton, the Alexander Hamilton of Hamilton, the Broadway musical by Manuel Miranda and one of the United States founding fathers. And thirdly, Alexander Burr, also another future president. Those three men were hired to defend Levi. That's absolutely wild. Who did you call? How did you get all of them? It's like the legal dream team, it's the legal ghost busters. He's serious. This feels made up. I know. I know. Doesn't it? You know, what us fans made up is, but I know all of these facts, but I like mac and cheese. So I think that's why in Thomas Jefferson's handwriting, there is a recipe that exists of his macaroni recipe, and he measures the liquid, which I believe was milk in wine glasses. It was like one wine glass of milk. No way. Yeah, no, it's a thing. You can look it up. I'm looking it up right now. Also unbelievable. Wait, this is amazing. Six egg yolks and whites, two wine glasses of milk. That's amazing. Respect. I'm going to start measuring things that way, but just do with wine instead of milk. Yeah. So he had the best legal team he possibly could have ever had. Some people think that maybe Levi's brother paid for them. There's also this belief that Ezra had built homes for all three of these prominent lawyers and that they were in debt to him for his services. So Ezra promised to cancel their debts in exchange for them representing Levi. Regardless, they took the case and the trial lasted two days. It began on March 31st, 1800, and ended on April 1st, 1800. Throughout the proceedings, angry mobs stood outside the courthouse chanting crucify him over and over. The prosecutors and the community were all very certain that Levi was guilty. The prosecutors used Levi's relationship with Elma, their sexual endeavors as promised to marry her and accounts of the two leaving together to prove their case. But in response, Levi's team claimed that he had a valid alibi for all but a few minutes of the night of December 22nd, 1799, and that although witnesses claimed to hear Levi and Elma leave together, there were no eyewitnesses who actually saw the pair together. So they then in turn presented an alternative. They said that the murder was in fact Richard Croucher, who was another border at the boarding house, and Richard could not account for his whereabouts the night of the murder. So the first day of the trial goes to 1am, and usually a trial during this time lasted one day, Max. They asked for recess because it was so like I remember was so tired so they started again the next day. They ended up two in the morning on April 1st, 1800. There's no way there can be good law being practiced with that long of hours spent in court. You need to rest your brain. Yeah. It's pretty wild just the way that the system was and the fact that this was the longest trial ever. The judge at the time who was standing court, his name was Chief Judge John Lansing, instructed the jury that the case against Levi Weeks was purely circumstantial. So he kind of nudged them in the direction that they ended up going. And after five minutes of jury deliberation the verdict was in and they found Levi Weeks not guilty for the murder of Elma Sands and Levi was acquitted. I mean, it does, I get it though, because you can't, it has to be proven without reasonable doubt. And if he had, I mean, granted to hit someone and murder them and essentially throw them into a well, that would probably only take a couple minutes, you think, especially if she was a more petite woman and someone who trusted him and I'm sure wasn't expecting it. So I understand that the few minutes that he couldn't account for absolutely could have resulted in her murder. It's always a little bit, I mean, you can't just, oh, I'm so back and forth because part of me is like, yeah, crucify him. The part of me is like, well, there are other extraneous variables that could have also resulted in her murder, ie, the other suspect that was there at the boarding house that didn't have an alibi. It doesn't mean he did it, but he is now a suspect. And let's not forget that this guy was a womanizer and I'm sure there were other women out there that also thought that they were going to secretly get married and what if one of them found out about her and wasn't making sound choices and decided to murder her. Maybe in a past life, you were on the story and now you're defending her, your decision. I was Thomas Jefferson. It explains everything. I agree with everything you're saying, but I also think it's the 1800s. I think it was probably very easy to lie about your alibi. His brother clearly is a prominent figure in the society who could very easily lie and say, we bear with me all the time that whole day, there's no technology. There's no way of proving they don't have forensics the way that they do now. And that badass woman had an invented CCTV footage yet, so you couldn't capture people. I know. I know. But I agree with you. I think there was not a lot of evidence. Either way, the community was horrified and they were like, you just let a murderer walk free. And Catherine Ring, Elma's cousin, of course, was furious and apparently as the men descended the courthouse steps, she screamed and pointed at them and shouted at all of them and said, if the dies a natural death, I shall think there is no justice in heaven. And whether it was Catherine's rage or the vengeance of Elma's spirit, it appears that a curse seemed to strike the entire defense team and the judge as well. Because, and Levi, I guess as well, Levi was harassed and basically ran out of New York city. He fled to Mississippi and never returned to New York. Four years after the trial in 1804, Aaron Burr famously shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel on the Wehawk and Dooling grounds. In 1807, Aaron Burr was ostracized for killing an American hero, tried for treason. His daughter died in a hurricane in 1812 and Aaron Burr eventually died a broke man in Staten Island in a boarding house in 1836 and it was the exact same day that his divorce papers finally came through. Oh, yeah, 30 years after the trial, Judge John Lansing left his home and never was seen again. So he too disappeared. Oh my goodness. And then Thomas Jefferson appears to be the only one not impacted by the supposed curse. He died of dysentery, which I'm sure was not great, but was common in that time and died on July 4th of 1826. So he was the most patriotic, presidential death. July 4th. Are you kidding? Who is he? You know, when people are like, who is she? Who is he? You know? Is he your new crush? Is your past life your new crush? The new Bigfoot? I'm blushing. I was thinking about shirts and merch and how we haven't designed new ones in a while and I was like, we should make a shirt that says Bigfoot is my boyfriend. Sabrina, you are speaking to myself. No. Wow. Should we do it? We have to now. Okay. I've announced it. There's no way. I would wear the crap out of that shirt. I know you would. I know you would. We'll do that. Okay. Yes. So it appears Catherine, whatever she spoke at the end of that trial, may have put a curse on all these men because aside from Thomas Jefferson, everyone kind of had a pretty tough strange life and her words were, if you die a natural death, then there's no justice in heaven. So Thomas Jefferson is really the only one. I guess dysentery is not a natural death, but a lot of people died of dysentery back then. So she may have cursed them and no one really knows who killed Alma. Was it Levi Weeks or the man that the defense team pointed towards Richard Croucher? It's hard to say, although Croucher left New York City a year after the trial. And so you might be right in thinking that it was him because a year later, he was found guilty of raping a child in Virginia and then he fled to England before he could stand trial and was later executed in England for strangling a woman to death. Oh, okay. So very possible. I mean, Croucher, it's clear he's not a good man, but is he the bad man that also did the bad thing to Alma? Or is he just a bad guy who didn't do it to Alma but did to others? I don't know. This is a murder mystery that I don't think will ever be solved. Another question for us to ask on the other side. Questions for the other side. That's the name of our first question. Just a long list. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, my gosh, that was such a good one. I still have more. Because she haunts. Oh, yeah, I forgot. We're not a murder podcast. So Alma may be dead, but those don't stop her from haunting the place that she was murdered. I also like that you said she haunts like she haunts like she flaunts it, but she haunts it. In 1861, it was reported that eerie sights and sounds were emanating from the Manhattan well. There were shrieks and flashes in the sky, along with the appearance of a figure dripped in white. Since it was 60 years after Alma's murder, it wasn't really a credit to Alma and it was more of like this is a strange thing, but it stopped happening very quickly. So no one really paid much more attention to it. And then New York City obviously became what it is and has grown exponentially since the 1800s. The fury surrounding Alma's murder really dissipated and the well became a distant memory. There was no longer an operation. And it wasn't until the 1990s that the Manhattan well and the story of Alma resurfaced. So in the 1990s, one to nine spring street was occupied by a restaurant called the Manhattan bistro. And they were like, we have this nice fine cellar downstairs, but we wanted to expand it. So in order to do so, they had to rip up the floors and demolish the back walls. And while they were doing that, they unearthed a well, which had been buried beneath the foundations of the building. Man, oh man. A nerthing that well seemed to unearth some strange occurrences and some horrors that many people have experienced there specifically male employees or males in general, which I think is the curious because the store that takes place there or takes residents there now. The well is downstairs on the men's floor, which I can imagine Alma likes that now. And also that's a clue right there that whoever her murderer was, we can presume was male if there's so much aggression in the afterlife towards one particular. towards men. Yeah. So during the Manhattan bistro years, male employees began to feel uneasy in the cellar by themselves. They reported feeling as if someone was watching them. They'd go and search for a bottle of wine when all of a sudden from across the room glasses or wine bottles would be thrown at them by some invisible force. Other waiters would descend into the cellar retrieved what they were looking for and try to go back up into the restaurant only to find that they were locked in the cellar locked. And the only way to get out was by banging on the door waiting for someone on the other side to hear them. One bus boy claimed have seen a woman dripping wet in 18th century garb standing in the cellar. And a resident living adjacent to the restaurant reported seeing a very similar specter emerge from his water bed. His water bed? Yep. What the hell does that mean? That she just like floated up out of her water bed and was soaking wet, I don't know. Like a modern day water bed. I think it was a water bed, like a modern day water bed. No, I'm afraid of water bed. I always was afraid of them. Me too. I just, I always like feared that. What is it? Edward's his hand when he pops the water bed. Yeah. I think so, I think. Yeah. So today people state they can sometimes hear Elma screaming in the green and spring area. People think that she's pleading for her life, kind of like a residual haunting. But there are many other occurrences within the building that can't be written off as residual after the man had a bistro clothes, many other businesses took up shop, including COS, which is the current tenant and almost all of these businesses experienced unusual activity. People continued to feel watch downstairs by the well and there have been random electrical shortages or outages that seem to only affect one to nine spring street and not any of the other neighboring buildings or apartments or anything just that one items will go missing. COS employees report merchandise that's disappeared and then reappeared in the same spot where they had left it days before. The hauntings don't seem spiteful, more off putting or more toward men. But the truth of it is that unfortunately, Elma's hands has not been able to find peace or justice, which is very sad and I don't blame her for haunting the place that she was murdered, but I do wish she could find peace. I wonder if it's difficult for COS to hire employees. I wonder if the retail staff all kind of shares their creepy or if there's a lot of women who work there and it's they're all fine. And then it's just a girl gang and they have a great time together. They all think they have another employee. They have happy hour at five grand downstairs by the well with Elma. If that's the case, I'd be very happy for Elma. She deserves that. Me too. If you're in New York City, you should stop by the Manhattan well and your next trip. It's located on the lower level of COS in the back. There is a company that does stop by to for a ghost tour, but I don't think that they go in because I'm not sure that COS would take kindly to a big group of people going into their store or not to shop. But if you're alone or in a small group, just like, you know, go in, pretend to peruse the racks. Right. And then make your way to the well. There is no way in hell if I were shopping in a store about to go into a dressing room to try on in a group, a paranormal group came in on tour. No way would I go alone into the dressing room to try something on it. So I think they're smart to be like, yeah, keep it, keep it to the street outside. Exactly. But that is the haunted Manhattan well. Wow. Oh my gosh. What a little hidden treasure. Right. So much history, a murder mystery, a ton of famous people involved historical figures. Geez. I know. I was, this story's loaded. I was very excited when I started doing a research. And then I was thinking similar to how now we've discovered that you were Thomas Jefferson in a past life. I feel like it's been confirmed by the two of us. I feel like every time I do research for these episodes, I'm like, oh my god, I'm so drawn to this story. Like, I wonder if this was my past life. Is that why I was so drawn to it? But then I, as I was doing this one, I was like, I can't say that every time Sabrina. Right. Right. Although, now it makes me think that you and I should go get a past life reading somewhere. We'd have to go together. It'd be so down. Yeah. Absolutely. That's why I said we. We should just hijack my bachelor at hijack my bachelor at. How does that happen? Um, we're, but you and I go get a past life reading in New Orleans. We should. Absolutely. Just that take. It would only be an hour. We'll just, everyone go get another drink at the bar. We'll just slip out for a minute. Quick second. We're going to the bathroom. Don't worry about us. Don't come after us. Someone finds us like, I'm just picturing, you know, how so many of the fortune telling booths have the curtains around them and everybody's addressed to kind of fit the part. I just picture everyone finding us while intoxicated and hiding in one of us being very scared of what we're doing. Yeah. Probably not best to do it when we're drunk. No. No, I want to remember every, not that I drink to not remember, but I'm just, we've moved on from that part of our lives. We have. I just want to be really, really, really in tune with what I'm being told while the reading is up. All right. Hi. I'm so excited for this. I'm very excited for this too. So the preface what I'm about to talk about, I'm talking about Lake linear and talking about the curse of Lake linear. And I thought for a minute that this episode might be cursed because I had a full moment of panic. So I was like, wait, this is starting to sound way too familiar after I've done all of the research already. And it's because we've mentioned it twice already during the history of a podcast. And you had done a bunch of research already on Lake linear and anticipation of doing an episode on it. Yep. You so graciously passed on your research to me, the complete, because I wanted to do it. And you wanted to do the well. Yeah, exactly. But for a moment, I was like, wait a second, did we both forget that we were in this? But we just mentioned it two years ago and then again a year ago. Yeah, because it was the last body of water episode. And I had done basically all the research for it or not all the research, but I started doing the research of it. And then I don't know what maybe my other one of my other past lives was calling me it elsewhere. I don't know, but I ended up doing a different like here we are, we're going to complete the circle. I can't wait to hear about it. I don't remember anything. Great. I don't either. I wrote it yesterday. This is the curse of Lake linear. Lake Sydney, linear, more commonly known as Lake linear, is a very popular vacation spot. Every summer, this lake in northern Georgia attracts many, many tourists. It's said that an estimated 2.5 to 8 million tourists will come to Lake linear every single year or so. Not necessarily just in the summer. But all of these tourists, especially in the summer, are coming looking to have a good time, looking to go out on the water, boat around, maybe do some jet skiing. Sounds nice. Sounds nice. The refreshing water sounds so great. And this lake is actually man-made. So the lake was built in 1956 and it encompasses 38,000 acres or 59 square miles of water, with 692 miles of shoreline, many public parks and beautiful beaches. So what a great idea. Oh my gosh. Thanks everybody. You just made a wonderful lake and everybody's having a good time, barbecuing, hanging out on the beach, such a nice reprieve from the Georgian summer heat. Sounds wonderful. It truly does. But while these tourists are enjoying cooling off in Lake linear, what many fail to notice is what lies beneath. Not a sea monster, not a shark from jaws, but something a bit more eerie, a town now abandoned, flooded, and forgotten by most. So how did this town end up at the bottom of a man-made lake? It just sounds crazy because it's like clearly you knew that there was a town. Yeah. Back in the 1950s, the lake was proposed as a $1 billion project to provide hydroelectricity, navigation and to control flooding, and the project was approved, but there was one major road block. The proposed area for the lake was already in use. There was a town. It was inhabited by many families. There were businesses, there were burial grounds, farmlands, etc. It was a normal, existing life, like picture where you live right now and the picture someone coming and knocking at your door and being like, "Hey, we're going to put a ton of water here. You got to go." And you're like, "What? Excuse me?" But that's what happened, and now everything that these people had built over their lives, all of the memories that they thought that they were creating for the next generations of their children or whatever, everything that they'd created was about to be destroyed. So the government began to buy the land that they needed for the project, and they were paying land owners $30 per acre, so it was speculated or rumored or reported or whatever. And while upsetting to many people, the residents did accept payment, and many of them actually took their homes and physically moved their homes off the land if they were able to do that. However, some did not. Some just left their structures of their homes, took their belongings and some houses, some businesses, and some of their old lives were just abandoned in that spot while they moved on. So rather than demolish all of these structures that remained, Lake Linear was simply filled in on top of the town. Yep. If a building was over 35 feet, it was removed because it would extend above the depth of the water in many parts of the lake. The lake is relatively, in comparison to many lakes, pretty shallow, but there are plenty of spots on lakes that are 100, 200 feet deep. Plenty of buildings, plenty of structures were just kept there if they didn't peak above the water and gave enough clearance for the water. It was left and it created this underwater ghost town. So wild. So wild. It can't even imagine. It's very AI reminds me of like all of New York City underwater in that movie. Yeah. Freaky. So the people left behind homes, roads, businesses, farms, even fairies, the Chattahoochee River had a ferry that the Easter Shuttle people across, and now that the ferry was unneeded, they just. I'm sorry. I thought you said ferry, like they left a specific ferry, F-A-I-R-Y. All the ferry gardens, they didn't even bother to tell them that they were flooding there. Land. And I was like, wow, Crane, you're mentioning this so casually, love fairies. The mermaids were displaced, the ferries displaced, ridiculous, all the residents had to move. And then everything was covered with water. And if you dove to the bottom of the lake, you would essentially be walking through an entire town because there were the roads and all of these structures left over, especially like right in the beginning before the water and time took its toll on the lake. Since the lake was filled, many of the buildings crumbled away. Most of them are no longer really structures anymore, but crumbled remains at the bottom of the lake. It's not New York and AI and it's, it's no Atlantis. But there are around 160 little islands across the lake, and these islands are a wonderful reminder of what life used to be like back in the 1950s before the lake was created, because these little islands are actually farms. So the farms that used to operate on the land had hilltops. It was a pretty hilly area, and so these hilltops are the little islands that peak out above the water now. Oh, that's cool. It is cool. So during long periods of drought, the water will also recede and sometimes expose a bit more of the 1950s life. There's an old racetrack that sits at the bottom of the lake, and when little rain visits like linear, which happened probably a decade ago, there was a huge drought. The water line lowered enough to reveal the old stadium seating from this racetrack. Whoa. Yeah, it sounds really awesome. It's like, okay, during summertime you can boat around, you can float and peer into the water, maybe catch a glimpse of the past. You can walk the perimeter, maybe catch clumps as it holds structures, maybe find some treasure if you're lucky. Oh. However, this man made underwater ghost town isn't as magical as you would think. It's not this wonderful little time capsule, necessarily, because they didn't just flood the abandoned town. They flooded the dead as well. Oh. Oh, no. There were multiple grave sites and many were dug up and many moved and anticipation of the lake. So many of the grave sites, they were little tiny, tiny cemeteries, oftentimes in the yards of people's homes, it was their family cemetery. And so many of them were accounted for and many of them were moved, but not all were saved because they were plenty of grave sites that were unmarked. Oh, my God. And so these bodies were just left and forgotten about as water levels rose and the people moved on with their lives. But the spirits of the unclaimed bodies didn't move on. These restless spirits now hunt lake the near, moving across the bottom of the lake along the abandoned roads and into the now crumpled structures, continuing to live life like they had before the lake, before they died. But these spirits, they don't always mind their own business. Swimmers have felt hands grabbing their leg, pulling them down. Oh, that's so scary! Deeper. Into the water. No. The spirits town was taken from them, so now they have set out to reclaim their town and to build this population once more, taking new residents to join them. When you put it that way, current it is terrifying. Menacing. Not to just make assumptions about what the ghost intentions are, but that's how I do it. That's how I view it now too. If you're plucking someone from the surface and bringing them down to drown, like sorry, I'm not going to write your story nicely. It is believed that these restless spirits are what caused the curse of lake linear as well. And this curse has resulted in many, many deaths. So not only is there an inordinate number of drownings, but also boating accidents and even drivers that are driving along the side of the lake trying to navigate, seemingly lose control and drive straight into the lake. I wonder if there's like something that happens that catches our eyes in the lake and it makes them veer off. I know we're just like a blinding light that suddenly takes over and they can't see where they're going anymore. I don't know. There are so many possibilities. And a lot of people are like, okay, well, there are so many people that come to this lake and people are drinking and this could just be an accident, right? This stuff happens in other places. Lake linear can't be so special. There's no curse. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. People who have survived these accidents all seem to report similar and odd details. So not only is the number of these accidents and deaths staggeringly high in comparison to other lakes that have the same sort of activity and similar types of populations attracted to them. But the actual events that occur all have these weird sort of details to the story. So people who have survived, they'll report some of these things and that's why we now know them. So swimmers who are suddenly pulled from something under the surface have all been swimming very close to shore. They're all strong swimmers and also swimming in a very calm and swim-friendly lake conditions. So no weird weather incidents, no weird currents or anything happening at that time. Now only do they feel as though they're being pulled under the water by unseen hands, but survivors have also reported that the air and their lungs suddenly dissipate, leaving them feeling light-headed and disoriented. So what's even more odd is the positions of the bodies of those who have drowned. So the lake is very large, yes, and there are currents, yes, but many of the bodies of the drown victims appear much further away than expected from their initial entry point. So some people speculate that the bodies of these victims weren't just carried by a current, but rather dragged underwater by the rest of the spirits who live in the underwater town. Wow. Voters who have survived voting accidents have also reported really strange things. Voters will report that their boat will seemingly hit something in the water and they'll be like, "Oh my gosh, what did we just hit?" That was really dangerous. Thank God we didn't flip over. And when they circle back to see what they hit, there's nothing there. There's no wildlife. There are no logs, there are no rocks hiding below the surface, now they want them to stop. They want them to stop. They want them to fall into the water. Nope. So not only that, but there have also been reporting of boats capsizing for absolutely no reason at all. They just flip on over. And plenty of people have also reported these rogue waves appearing out of nowhere, rushing towards people in their boats and personal water crafts, kayaks, paddle boards, what have you, attempting to knock them into the water, just rogue waves out of nowhere. That seems angry. It does. It's like an angry version of Moana, you know how like the wave comes and will pick her up or throw her? I was thinking little mermaid, but yeah, I do remember that too. Yeah. Okay, so while the lake is sizable, it's by no means a giant lake. It's pretty big, but it's not giant. And yet it is the deadliest lake in Georgia and one of the deadliest in the US. This lake and possibly the curse of Lake Lanier has taken the lives of over 675 people since it opened in 1956. That's wow. It's not a lot of time. 675 people. I believe it was 675 people as of 2018 if I'm remembering the report that I looked at correctly. So presumably more now. So a lot of deaths and for such a populated area and such a busy lake, you think that all of the bodies would have been recovered as well, but that is not true. Some bodies have yet to be found though there have been plenty of search and rescue attempts and divers sent into the lake in search of these missing people. Okay. So I have a question. Because of all these bodies that have been buried or that were left buried there when the lake was formed, I imagine over years and like erosion and stuff, do these bones like surface? Like part of me wonder, like, are they pulling these bodies down and burying them with them? Or are these bones surfacing? I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. Yeah, because I would wonder too if okay. So in Boston, there is a cemetery, I'm forgetting the name of the cemetery, but it's like right next to the Boston common, right by the Omni Parker House and the cemetery used to flood and then the graves were rather shallow and so the bodies would actually move underneath the earth when it got really rainy and were essentially displaced and they would just like, I mean, for lack of a better term, they'd just like slip out of the graves and onto the streets. If that happened to ground with rain, I would assume that underwater, yes, it's very murky and probably very, I don't know if it's like clay based or what the earth is like there. Right. But you would think that these bodies would move to the surface or the bones would be found. So it reminds me of, I mean, it's different history of the areas, but of Pavilion Island in Italy, where all the TB patients were taken and how even today, because so many people were buried on that little island, people will be like lounging at the beach near the island and bone to a wash up. How wild is that? So creepy. I mean, I'm sure this, I'm sure it probably happens. I know construction workers will find stuff when they dig around the area, but yeah. So one of the very first deaths of Lake Lanier occurred in April of 1958, just two years after the lake was built. Celia, Parker, Young and Susie Roberts. They were two young girlfriends and they were driving towards three gables for a night out at party in Susie's 1954 board, the two young friends. They were quite excited for the night ahead, but they never returned. Celia and Susie were never seen again. And in search for these two women, police discovered that the two had first visited a gas station, seemingly left without paying. And then further along the road, there were a set of skid marks that went across the lane and off the bridge, heading in the direction of Dawsonville Highway, which is the direction they would have been going to get to their desired end location for the night. And so they're like, is it possible that these women drove off of the bridge and into Lake Lanier? So they sent divers down into the water and searched for the car. And while the lake isn't very deep, like I said before, it's murky, visibility is pretty poor. And the divers pretty much just turned up, I'm tainted, they couldn't find a single thing. So this investigation lasted another 18 months until the first clue came. And it wasn't even a clue, it was a huge discovery. A fisherman named C.A. Simpson witnessed a body float up from under the water. Oh. And the body was decomposed, missing two toes from the left foot and both hands. And this body could not be identified, though they suspected at the time that it might be one of the two girls. So it was missing everything that they would need to identify it. Yeah. Essentially, yep. Well, two toes, the left foot and both hands, yeah, all of the fingertips. Plus, it was so decomposed that I'm sure some of those, like if, even if there were hands of the hands that ever been discovered, which they were not, I'm not sure, I don't know enough about human composition, but I would assume that it would be hard to identify based on, on flesh, especially because there's critters and stuff that probably fish and all kinds of chews. Yeah. Yeah. So the body couldn't be identified, though it was suspected that it must have been Celia or Susie, they ended up burying this body in the unmarked grave in altivista cemetery, leading everyone to wonder if it was one of the girls. And if it was, where was the other girl, and where was the missing car? Yeah. That's the real thing that I feel like is hard to go missing, right? Yeah. Because it's so huge. So then another 32 years later, linear bridge went under construction, they were trying to widen it. Construction crews, they went and they started digging at the bottom of the lake to set a new pillar. They hit metal. And then they found the missing 1954 Ford, which Susie had been driving that night. And inside the car were the remains of a human body, presumably Susie, because the body still had a purse rings watch and all the belongings of Susie Roberts with it. And then the other body that had been found discovered by the fisherman, 32 years prior, was now confirmed to be Delia. And so the unmarked headstone was changed to reflect Delia's name, and her friend Susie now discovered was buried right beside her and the two friends could finally get some rest. Oh, wow. So the car was underneath the bridge the entire time. It was, I read in one report that it wasn't just below where you would think the divers would have gone. Plus it was so incredibly murky. It's possible that a diver could have gone down. And if you can't see even six inches in front of you, it's easy to miss something, but I read in one report that it was so deep into the sediment at the bottom of the lake. And that it was kind of on this, remember the town that had been there prior was very hilly. Right. And so the bottom of the lake is not a flat lake. And so apparently it was like at the bottom, like 90 feet down or something on this steep, hillside, so it wasn't exactly in a spot that was easy to navigate or explore. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So everyone's like, yay, mystery solved. Our girls can rest in peace. However, residents of Lake Linear will tell you that Delia is not at rest. While Susie remained intact in the car, Delia's body was somehow ripped from the car and damaged and her soul left alone. And the spectral image of this young woman, presumably or a young woman, is sometimes seen walking up and down the length of Linear Bridge, where the car went off that night. And this ghostly woman is dressed in a blue dress, which is the same color dress that Delia had been wearing the night of her death. This ghostly image is missing both hands, which Delia's body had been found, missing both hands by the fisherman, and it is believed that the spirit of Delia is searching for her missing hands, possibly her friend as well. Wow. So Delia's spirit has been nicknamed the Lady of the Lake. And although the mystery of Delia and Susie's disappearance and death have now been solved, there are other cases that remain a mystery, which I will tell you about. Tell me. This is a very murdery episode we're doing. In 2012, a 16-year-old Gainesville high school student named Hannah True Love went missing from her apartment complex. She lived with her mother at this complex right by Lake Linear. Prior to her disappearance on the morning of August 24, 2012, Hannah had tweeted a few alarming messages. In her tweets, she suggested that she had a stalker and was fearful of this stalker, and then she tweeted, quote, "So scared right now." So when she disappeared, these tweets were immediately viewed as evidence, a clue, as to what happened to Hannah. However, her father was like, "Uh, she didn't seem that upset. She didn't seem under duress in the days leading up to this incident every time she lived with her mother, but every time she saw her father, nothing seemed to miss." And so he was thinking maybe she was just exaggerating on social media, who knows how she was using it. She was a teen. So her family was essentially seemingly encouraging police to not take her tweets as evidence, even though it was a rather big clue. Unknown what happened to her, but the next day her body was found by another resident of the apartment complex in a wooded area bordering Lake Linear. Hannah had multiple stab wounds on her, and a major investigation was launched. Neighbors were interviewed, residents of the complex were interviewed, people who'd been in the area at the time, but no suspects came from the interviews and no one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary that morning, and her murder has never been solved. Oh my gosh. There's another unsolved incident in Lake Linear. This is the unsolved disappearance and death of Kelly Nash. Kelly was a 25-year-old Georgian man who went missing on January 5th, 2015, so not that long ago. Kelly had lived in Buford, Georgia, a town that borders Lake Linear. And on the day that he went missing around 4am, Kelly woke up and complained that he wasn't feeling well. He had his girlfriend Jessica Sexton, she was with him and he was coughing and he was sneezing and he was telling her like, oh man, I just feel so awful. I feel like I have the flu or something. I feel really, really bad. You might need to take me to the hospital, but they were like, okay, let's just, let's just see how you do through the night, see if you can get back to sleep. Kelly was going to drive him if he wasn't feeling better. The plan was, let's rest a little bit longer and if you don't get better, we'll go see a doctor. Jessica eventually falls back to sleep with Kelly next to her in bed, but when she wakes up at 7.30am, Kelly was no longer in their bed. What? So she got up to look for him and she couldn't find him. He wasn't anywhere in their apartment and so she's searching around their home and she finds his wallet, she finds his car keys and she finds his ID, but she doesn't find him. And so she's like, that's really weird. I wonder where he went. And so she's looking around, she's notifying, you know, the friends and family and he doesn't return home at all that morning. He doesn't return home at all that afternoon. And so when the evening rolls around and he still hasn't come back and they can't locate him, he's not at any of the spots that they would think he's not with friends or family, he's not in the hospital. They notify police and they report Kelly as a missing person. Where'd he go? I know. The police found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the signs of struggle or where things were. However, they did notice that a nine millimeter pistol was missing, Kelly's nine millimeter pistol. Oh no. And so friends and family immediately rushed to the area. They're joining police in the search for Kelly. They bring in cadaver dogs. They comb the area nearby. It's a town, sorry, by the lake too. There's plenty of land, but like it's not giant. And if you look on Google Earth, there are plenty of roads and houses and neighborhoods. So I'm sure they did a wonderful job combing the area. I can only assume, but they couldn't find Kelly. So after many searches and no evidence and cadaver dogs and all of these resources for the investigation pulled in, a $50,000 reward was offered for any information regarding his disappearance because they just felt like there was, there was nothing else that they could do. And then on February 8th, just one month after Kelly had gone missing, a fisherman had come across his body and Lake Clinear. Kelly's body had been badly decomposed, suggesting that he had been in the water for a few weeks, so probably from the same day as his death or his disappearance. And he was wearing the pajama pants and the shirt that he had been wearing that morning that he'd gone missing. There were no scratches on his body, no sign of a struggle beyond what was done in the lake. But there was a single gunshot wound to his head. Oh. Kelly's friends and family do not believe it was a suicide. Police have not ruled out the possibility of foul play either, but there isn't any additional evidence to lead to any suspects. I'm so curious, like he was not feeling well the night before. I'm like, I mean, I'm sure they did an autopsy to try to see if there was any other illness happening in his body, but like, I don't know, did he have a brain tumor or something? You know when people have hypothermia and they just start taking off all of their clothes and basically do the opposite, what they should be doing to survive, you're no longer aware of what's actually going on. You're entirely delusional. And when you get that cold, you feel hot, right, right, right. And I was thinking maybe there was something like that happening in his body because he was feeling so feverish in the night. So I was wondering like, if there was the opposite of hypothermia, where essentially you're so incredibly feverish that you also make these or choices or, you know, that episode of was at house where Demi Lovato was in it. And everyone thought she was going crazy because she kept saying that she could hear things in her head. No, I don't remember any of this. What actually happened in this episode, of course, it didn't actually happen to Demi Lovato. In the episode, there was small perforations within her ear canal. So essentially every time she breathed every bodily function that happened like within her head space and upper body could be heard by her. So she was essentially going insane because there was so much noise constantly happening in her head. And it was driving her mad, but it was a medical condition. And so I was wondering. Interesting. I was inspired by that episode if there was some sort of reaction to the fever that forced him to not think appropriately and to just be like, I just need to get this thing out of my head. Yeah. Interesting. It's sad. Oh, it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. Like if we think about the curse of like linear two, there are some people that are like, okay, well, something happened, maybe something summoned him to the edge of the water and did something to him, maybe something caused him to fall ill and perhaps took advantage of him or took advantage of his condition when he was ill because he lived right near the lake. Yeah. Something just coaxed him to the edge and took his life, but we'll never really know. So those are a few examples of many, many examples of strange disappearances and deaths in Lake linear, but there's also quite a bit of paranormal activity that curves here at Lake linear as well. So we've already talked about the lady of the lake, which is thought to be Delia. We've talked about the unseen hands pulling swimmers deeper, the rogue waves, the odd disappearances, but some people have reported strange sightings on the lake at night. And the few reports have been made of this mysterious raft that appears and is driven by a shadowy figure that uses a pole to push the raft along. It's like death rowing its boat. It is. It doesn't feel, it's like a hibi-gibi image, you know, it doesn't feel good. It's not like, ah, beautiful, like let the lanterns fly up. This is whatever that, that, what's that movie? The Rapunzel one, hang on. So the pole that this shadowy figure uses also has a lantern attached to it, which obviously catches the attention of the living who are around the edge of the lake and looking onto the lake. They can't quite make sense of what they're saying, especially as the craft just disappears into thin air. Sometimes appears into thin air. Just a mystery. And one interesting incident involving this raft happened to two fishermen. So these two fishermen, they were out one night and they were in a rowboat. And it was autumn, so it was cooler, the water was cold. And they were out about 1 a.m. trying to get some of those neckturnal fish. When they were out, they spotted this raft. It appeared about a half mile away from them. And where the raft had appeared was an adept of about 45 feet. So the fisherman found it odd that this figure in the raft would be pushing it along with a pole because the pole couldn't reach the bottom of the lake, it was 45 feet. And so it was weird that the movement of the raft would suggest that it was essentially being pushed along by a pole that was sticking to the bottom and being pulled in the mud. So already these fishermen were like, we got to eye this thing. This is weirdness. Super weird. Super weird. And as they're watching this craft, the figure on the raft, notice the fisherman and shout something to the fisherman. So the shadowy figure is now being vocal. It says something and then it leaps off of the raft into the freezing cold water and begins to swim towards them. No. Yep. So understandably, these fishermen are like, let's get out of here. And so they quickly pull up their fishing lines. They are preparing to leave and they're freaking out. It's the middle of the night and there's a dark shadowy figure moving in the water towards them. Also, it's freezing cold and this thing was a half mile away. So strong swimmer that goes to his ball. So how fast was it going? I don't know. But they're freaking out. And so they get everything and they're ready to go. And as soon as the boat is about to pull away and they're looking out at the raft to try to see what's coming for them, the lantern in the distance just goes out. I can't see anything. No. They can't see the figure. They can't see the raft. And so the fishermen grabbed their spotlight and they immediately shined it in the direction that the raft had just been with a figure had jumped into the frigid water, but they saw nothing. The water was undisturbed. There was no sign that anyone or anything had ever been there. So this lake is haunted. No doubt. Wow. Cursed. It seems so. But if the risk of being pulled underwater by a rest of the spirit isn't enough to keep you alert while on this lake or in this lake, perhaps this little fact, well, it is reported by local fishermen and divers that catfish have grown in the lake up to five to seven feet long. Oh. And our rumored to have swallowed dogs and to attack swimmers. So if the ghosts don't get you, the catfish might five to eight feet, five to seven feet. That's huge. It's giant. Seven feet. Think about the tallest friend you have. I haven't seen people in so long. I don't know how tall people are anymore. Seven feet is quite tall. And a catfish is not like if you're thinking about, oh, I have a friend who's six foot seven. Quadruple the width of that friend and then hollow them out. And that's like, oh, catfish, just suck on you up. There's swoop you up. Shlupin. But to end on a more pleasant note, there's a very special event that may bring you to the lake because every year from mid-November through January over six miles of Christmas lights are hung up on Lake Linear islands, creating the largest animated light show in the southeast and one of the world's largest light shows. And the name of this event is called magical nights of light. How magical. It's so magical. I watched many YouTube videos to try to virtually experience it. It's an animated drive-through display. It includes a Christmas village, carnival ride, spawnfire, live nativity scenes, Santa's workshop, and the tradition has gone on for 26 years and counting. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, thank you, Sabrina, because you added that little note at the bottom of your notes, and I was like, there's no way I'm erasing this because it's nice. Got to end with a positive note. Got to. Wow. Yeah. It's one of those things where like, after so many deaths, so many disappearances and mysteries and strange things that make it seem like there's a curse there, it makes me wonder why people continue to go back. Yeah. I was looking at the, so there's another lake that's similar-ish in terms of size, and it gets about 7 million visitors each year. But the death toll and like the reported accidents is not even close to the number that happens at like linear. So I do them like, what is going on? Why is everybody going here when they're seemingly something off, whether it be regulations and in terms of like voting accidents, or whether it truly be a curse or a mix of the two, you know? Yeah. I mean, it does sound like a nice vacation and a vacation sounds nice right now, but it- Just dip your toes in the hair and edge, and then yeah, and then a catfish will eat you. Yeah. Don't go in past your- past your knees. And you imagine, oh gosh, my dad was diving one time and he turned around and he saw a giant grouper- the grouper, and I'm gonna look up a grouper, I don't know fish. It's like a giant catfish of salt water, and they can be dangerous. Oh my gosh, it's so scary. Yeah, but that's what I picture with the catfish. Whoa. I picture just turning around and being like, holy shit. I'm face-to-face with something bigger than me. Yeah. Terrifying. Yeah. Wow. And more mobile than you, because we are not born in the water. We are not meant to navigate the water. We need another life when you're a mermaid, but not now, not today. I feel like if I go to Lake Lanier, I'm gonna just set up camp on the shores and brand snack. Listener stories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel so much better recording this episode than I did the last one. Me too. I mean, good spirits. Although, both of our stories had a lot of sadness in them, but yes, I do feel less scared. Yeah. Personal space hasn't felt invaded by negativity either and dark spirits. Same. Okay. So this is from Alexa and it's called Haunted Yacht. Hey, my name is Alexa and I have been binging your podcast during work and love it. I would like to share my two stories, one on the yacht I currently work for and the other of a friend who also experienced hauntings on another luxury yacht. I have been working as a stewardess aboard a brand new private motor yacht for about a year now. The boat has five guest rooms, but only one has been giving me the creeps and is now referred to by the entire crew as the haunted room. It started when I was vacuuming and I discovered a bullet in the corner of the room. I brought it to the captain who ensured me that the only gun on board was locked in the captain's safe on the other side of the boat. He was curious as well as the bullet didn't even fit the only gun on board. The next week, the owner of the boat came on board and the captain asked if he or his friends were bringing firearms on board and showed him the bullet. The owner was very sure that neither he nor his friend would ever bring a firearm on board as all guns must be declared to the Coast Guard. Weeks went by and we all forgot about the bullet. During the summer, the owner's nanny stayed in the room where I found the bullet, the haunted room, and she complained constantly that she hated her room even though it was a beautiful large-state room on the yacht. She would say that she felt like she was in prison. In a few months in, she approached me with a bullet in her hands. She said she entered her room and found it on the floor. I asked her to show me where and she pointed to the exact same spot I found the first bullet. She swears it wasn't hers and I went to the captain again who was shook. Again, the boat was brand new, so there couldn't have been a gun-happy past owner. More weeks went by and the nanny moved out of the room, which is now unoccupied, and I always try to clean that room as quickly as possible because I get uneasy feelings whenever I'm in there. And in all the rooms, there are iPods to control the TVs and the iPod for that room disappeared and was missing for weeks. The captain was getting on my case to find it, so I tore the room apart, ripped up the carpet, took off all the sheets, went through every cabinet, and even separated the bed, which was two twins that stood together to form a queen-wind desired. And I basically just gave up until one day, and went into the room and sitting right in the middle of the floor where the two bullets had been found previously was the iPod. I freaked out and ran to other crew members in shock. Again, a couple months went by and the boat was in Miami, Florida. When we were there, there was a large amount of mosquito-looking flies all around, and I constantly bitched at the deck crew to keep the doors closed. I went down into the haunted room and noticed about a dozen dead flies had made their way into the room and only that room. I quickly cleaned them up and left, and later that day I went back, and again, found even more dead flies. The next day I went back only to discover that the flies were pouring out of the shower extractor fan that only sucks air out and should not allow any outside air to come in. I panicked and taped up the fan grate before more could enter. A few days later, I untapped the grate and they were no more flies. To this day, I hate going into that room, but fears that I will discover more items in that spot on the floor, and I feel very unwelcome, and I don't have that feeling in any other room. And now, since listening to your podcast, I don't even like going downstairs by myself. And now I'd like to share my friend's story, which is way more creepy than mine. My friend is a captain who had worked aboard a very haunted motor yacht. He got on board in the Philippines and immediately experienced activity. He says him and his crew constantly saw shadowy figures, and he would hear footsteps around the boat when he was the only one on board. The worst room, however, was the captain's quarters. My friend, let's call him Jim, felt extremely uncomfortable in this room. He says while sleeping in that room, he experienced the worst nightmares of his life. He was so frightened of the room that he would sleep every night on the floor of the main salon where he wouldn't have any nightmares. However, one night when he was sleeping in his room, he awoke to see a dark figure at the foot of his bed watching him, and he immediately left. In the captain's quarters, there was a painting of a man fastened to the wall, and Jim always hated that picture, but it came with the boat and was attached to the wall. Later, after talking to some of the crew, the painting came up in conversation, and Jim mentioned that he hated it, and one of the crew members asked him, "Do you know who's in the painting?" To Jim's horror, the painting was of an old slave boat captain. He researched but was unable to find out any more information. Another story from the same boat was that there were two crew members on watch during a long crossing at sea, while Jim was sleeping, getting some rest, and the two men were in the wheelhouse when one left to answer a call on the satellite phone. The other guy was alone and felt someone looking at him, and turned to see an elderly man looking and waving at him. "Oh!" He blinked, and looked away, and the figure had disappeared. Minute later, the other man returned, and informed his colleague that the call was his mother telling him that his grandfather had just passed away. The guy who saw the elderly man immediately asked him what the grandfather looked like, and the description exactly matched the elderly man who was waving. He told the guy what he saw, and they both agreed it was his grandfather saying goodbye. Thank you for reading my email. I hope you like the story's Alexa. "Oh my goodness." "Wow." "Wow." "I know." "Oh, so much happening on this yacht." "Everyone's like, "Oh, I wish I hadn't yacht." "Do you?" "Do you now?" "Do you really?" "If you needed a reason to feel better about not being on a yacht, this is the story for you." "Wow. I wonder why that one particular room had so much going down." "I know." "In a brand new yacht." "Right." "And the bullet is so threatening." "I know." "Don't some -- I might be making this up or may have heard it from -- or seen it in like Barry, which was not accurate at all, but like don't -- some mobs send a bullet with like your name on it as a threat saying like, "You're next." "I don't know what they've never targeted me." But it just reminds me of that where it's super ominous and just not welcoming whatsoever. "Right. Into -- it's a new yacht, but was it new or new? Because sometimes -- I mean, now I'm gonna call upon my television knowledge of rug trades. And don't they often use yachts and different like boating vessels to transfer like cocaine and whatnot?" "Yes, but I can't imagine that they're using this family's yacht unless the owner is like in the drug trade, and we just don't know about it." "Probably not." "But I feel like Alexa who works on that but would probably be in the know of that because she would -- she's there all the time." "Right. That's true. If there's any particular artwork or decoration that was brought into that haunted room, that maybe is contributing to the paranormal activity just like the bad feelings that her friend had when he was in a room with the picture of the captain of an old slave ship. Like, do you think that this is an incident where all of the hauntings were entirely brought on by artifacts? Or the other thing is, hauntings don't have to have any particular reason, like my house, what the hell is going on here." "That's true." "There's no real explanation, so I wonder if some -- maybe the marina that they were at or just something happened where some spirits decided to set up shop in that." "Interesting. Yeah. Like, some ghosts just getting a free ride. Like, I want to go on a yacht. And then when people are in his room or in their room, like, please get out and they put ominous things there." Right. I just picture the bad spirits chilling on someone else's yacht in the same marina and spotting the brand new boat coming up and being like, "I can use an upgrade." "Let's pitch this bad boy and get on there." Maybe the bullet is, "Well, no. I was going to think, like, inception, you know, how they -- they have the little like -- "Oh, dreidel. To spin it." "Dreidel's." I was thinking, "What if the bullet, like, you can only go where your bullet appears?" And so they just are drawn to -- now I'm just making sure that. You're doing -- yeah, you went very different, but I love it. It's fun. I like that. But theory. It's very unparalleled universe. Just got to bend my mind a little bit. Yeah. Definitely don't want a yacht. Don't think I could afford to yacht anyway. All right. What do you have? Okay. This one excites me. This is from Talula Linear. A sign-der-full name, and so I will read it because -- Wait. This is called Storytime Lake Linear, and my weird first impressions. It is sent from a relative, a descendant of the person who the lake was named after. Oh, my God. That is so cool. Right. Wow. Hello. Lovely ghostesses. My name is Talula Linear, and I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I have been waiting for the best time to write into the show, and that time is clearly now, because I just listened to your latest episode into which you mentioned Lake Linear. She emailed again another time, and I was like, "You just mentioned it again." I don't know. We mentioned it twice. That's funny. And then she says, "Lonear," because it's actually spelled L-A-N-I-E-R, and she spells at L-U-H-N-E-E-R in the U.S., since we have to add that southern draw. This lake is named after my ancestor. All of your Georgia listeners will immediately hear my name and say, "Like the lake," which is how I get most people to spell my name right. My preferred name, my middle name, is also a gorge and waterfall in North Georgia. So I make gorgeous lake, obviously. Wow. Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. Get a girl. Anyway, I've written in to share some history and spooky tales of my namesake, as well as a story about my weird first impression when I meet new people. Attached are some images of my sweet Poppy as a thank you for making such a great podcast. And Poppy is just the cutest little sweetest little popper and little golden fur and I just want to kiss a little cheek. Okay. So Lake Linear, interestingly enough, there are no natural lakes in Georgia. Lake Sydney Linear was created by the Army Corps of Engineers by damning the Chattahoochee River in 1952. It was named for Sydney Clopped in Linear, my paternal ancestor. It was a poet, musician, and Confederate soldier. As you've suggested, the lake did swallow towns. The whole town of Oscarville was submerged, as well as many surrounding towns and even some smaller lakes. According to the Gwyneth citizen, the local newspaper for one of the counties bordering the lake, the Army Corps had to move 250 families. Six churches. I'm surprised it was only six given the sheer concentration of them down here. Fifteen businesses and 20 fucking geometaries. When covered all of the spooky primary state, the lake is as deep as 258 feet in some parts. That's deeper than the Statue of Liberty is tall. As you can guess, building a dark and deep ass lake over 20 cementaries and several towns has led to some spooky stories. The lake claimed its first victim in 1958, a woman named Susie Roberts, who was driving to the next lake when she lost control of her car and crashed in the lake. As the water is teased with dirt and natural debris, they couldn't locate her body until 1990 when crews dredged the bottom in preparation for a bridge expansion. There, they found the body still inside the car that led to her untimely death. A alleged passenger, it was unclear whether she was in the car or somehow died in the lake in another incident, was uncovered in 1959. Many teens have also died in the lake for a variety of reasons, a guy who went to my high school died over a decade ago when he dove into the lake, not realizing there were rocks not far below the murky surface. His body has not been recovered yet. Wow. In total, 20 people have been killed in or by the lake with three dying in 2012 alone. I love to kayak, but you could not get me to kayak on this lake if you paid me. If you ask me, we should all be a little more cautious about it. So now, my first impression story. Why do people always think they've met me? I'm a grad student here in Atlanta, which means I attend quite a number of social and networking events regularly. However, and by the way, this email was a while ago long before social distancing and safer at home. However, even before professional school, I've had this weird effect on people I meet. Almost every time I go to an event or a bar, someone asks if we've met before. I always make a joke out of it, but recently it's been happening with greater frequency. Now, I'm beginning to worry that either I have a doppelganger attending a lot of social events, or if somehow my face triggers something in people. I have a very distinctive nose and hair, so I don't think it's an honest mistake. What do you all think? Thanks for all of your hard work. You make me feel less lonely in my belief of the paranormal, popping and I look forward to listening every week. Once I have money, ha ha, grad school sex, I'll definitely be a Patreon donor. Bester guards to Luba linear. Wow. Well, of course, you believe in the paranormal when you're a descendant of the Lake linear family. Right. So cool. Yeah. And if T'Lula is staying off this lake, perhaps you should consider going to one of the other lakes in the area. Yes. Definitely. Also, as for people feeling like they've always met her before, there are people who have that face where you're like, I just feel like I know them. Or maybe you've just touched so many people's lives and past lives, T'Lula, that they remember you. But it's not from this life. And now you're connecting to them again in this life. That's such an interesting, oh, I love that. I don't know what I would want more people like coming up to me all the time and saying, oh my gosh, I feel like I've met you before or what I have now where it's like no one recognizes me or just even all the just my existence. Yeah. People look at you and then they look away and pretend that no one is standing in front of that. As an introvert, I somewhat appreciate that because it's like, okay, yeah, I do want to be left alone. But then as a person with a feeling, as a person sometimes, it feels good to be recognized. Yeah. Yeah. So when I first read this email, I was thinking, I like your take. I like to think that she touched so many people's lives in the past and that her soul maybe is so strong that it can't help but trigger other people's souls to recognize her existence. When I very first read this email, I was thinking about how I think it was our last episode that we were talking about the people who appear in your dreams and how you'll have like the same people that appear in. I wonder if somehow she's a character in everybody else's dreams. And maybe she's in such vivid dreams that people are like, no, I definitely know you. Right. But that'd be weird. If there are certain shows in people that might be the people that are the characters in everybody's dreams, that is interesting, but it's interesting that she is seen more than others. You know, that's such dreams that people could play roles in dreams, although I have this whole like project that one day will make into a movie about parallel universes basically about like multiple, you living multiple lives, but you living them in your dreams. I mean, I believe it. I'll watch the movie. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Doesn't exist yet. Whatever happened, remember you were writing a serial killer character and you were inspired by me. Yes, that's what helped me get into the Warner Brothers writers workshop. That's the scripture. That's for that project. Win. Just me as a serial killer. It was based on you told us, we were in an Uber somewhere and we were talking about like intruders and you were like, well, they wouldn't know what's coming for them because I'm going to be sitting in a chair and I'm going to turn a lamp on as they walk in and I'm going to be holding a knife and say, I've been waiting for you. And that story, that image spurred my pilot and also set immense fear and entertainment for our Uber driver. Yes. Oh, yeah. He thought it was funny only because it was 11 a.m. but if he had picked us up at like 8 p.m., I'm sure we would have been kicked out of the car and yes, zero start reading because especially when you tell things like that, you say in such a menacing manner that they for sure would have been terrified. Well, I'm honored that I inspired a bit of your writing. You inspire me all the time. Thank you. Sabrina. Pullin' on my heart strings today. I know we started very emotional, we're ending very emotional. We're all over the place. All right. Well, we're just grateful for you guys and all of the community that you've felt. Yeah. So years you've given to us to speak into and all of the stories that you share with us. Yeah. So if you have any experiences that you want to share with us, any cool fun facts, any relation to Thomas Jefferson, we're looking for that out there, please email us at 2Girls1Ghost [email protected]. And you can support us in many, many ways. We have Facebook, we have Instagram, Twitter, we have tons of social media, join our community. We are reading "Turn Of The Key" by Ruth Ware and we will discuss it in two weeks now, I think. Somebody's got how to get the book. I've finished it already. Oh, geez. Overachiever. I know. It's so good. Can't wait to talk to you about it. I'll get on it. I promise. And then we have Patreon and we have merch and thank you, Eric Foster, up by our digital and your whole team for editing our episodes. We really appreciate it. And we will see you on the. Other side. There's Ruby. Thanks for listening. We love to hear your stories and your feedback, so we have a little survey for you. Please visit 2GoG.Fans to take our listener survey. 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