MrBallen: “They thought it was their dead mother… but it was worse”

What's up everybody? Today we are joined by maybe the best storyteller on the internet. And he's come with some of the most insane, dark, strange, twisted stories that I've ever heard. Some of which he's never told before. And trust me, these absolutely blew my mind. He even tells us about his first-hand experience with the supernatural. But first, a family starts noticing strange tapping happening inside their home. At first, they think that the house might be haunted. Then they discover what's actually happening. And somehow the truth is even more terrifying. This story is 100% real and you're not going to believe how it ends. Everybody enjoy and welcome to the couch, Mr. Baldwin. I got a demon-esque story. Okay. You may have heard this one. This is a classic one. So in the, I think it was 1984, there was this family, Frank, Karen, and Tina, who lived in some part of Massachusetts. I forget the name, but it's like Western Massachusetts. And in 1984 or whatever it was, 86, the mom died sort of abruptly. And it was not only this like huge tragedy for the family, but from sort of an economic perspective, it immediately put the family in duress because they needed her money. She was making money and with her deceased, suddenly the dad, Frank, who's a blue-collar guy, you know, he wanted to be home with his 14-year-old and nine-year-old. Tina and Karen, respectively, to help them grieve. But it was like, I also now need to work more just to pay the bills. Peperal, peperal mess. And so, you know, this is like in the, in the, in December of 1984, probably getting the year wrong. But on one of the first nights that he had his, his late night shift, his first late night shift, the girls were left alone. You know, they really haven't been able to process the grief yet. This is a very new wound. And the girls were, had been really, really close with, with their mom, like more so than the average girls to their mom. This was like a devastating, devastating blow. And the girls, they, they're not even really at the stage where they're ready to accept that their mom's dead. They still think like she's going to come back. And so their dad's out for the night. They know he's not coming home till like midnight or something. And they're like, hey, like, why don't we get out the Ouija board and try to contact mom, you know, if she's still here. And so they get out the Ouija board. The girls go down into the basement and they like, set up the seance, you know, they put candles out. It's like cliche, you know, their Ouija board in the middle of the room. And the basement is like nondescript. It's a classic New England basement where there's like nothing down there, but like a washer dryer. But they start the seance and they have their Ouija board out. They'd never used it before. And the girls they're asking these questions, you know, mom, if you're here, like give us a sign and they got their hands on the planchette and they're like waiting for it to move, but nothing happens. And like over the course of an hour, it's like they, they just keep asking more and more questions and they're trying so hard to like will their mom to, to come into existence, but she doesn't, there's, it's a failed seance. You know, eventually the girls sort of pack it in and they're like, you know, I bet she's still here, but you know, it is what it is. She didn't, she didn't come through the Ouija board. So they pack up the Ouija board, they go back upstairs, they go to the second floor where the bedrooms are, their dad's still out at work and the girls go into their respective bedrooms, sort of a disappointing end to the night and they're like, all right, you know, go to bed and they're laying in bed and the two girls independently start hearing tapping noises coming from somewhere in the house. And at first. Neither of the girls, you know, thought to contact the other girl. It sounded like the noise was maybe coming from downstairs. They didn't think it was the other, but they were sporadic noises. It was not, uh, like a, something consistent, like a fan or something that could be written off. It was something random happening downstairs. And the girls at first just laid there and listened and, you know, kept them awake because it was loud enough. But then at some point, the little girl, the nine year old, she got scared of this tapping noise. And so she left her room, walked down the hallway. Came into Tina's room and climbed in bed with, with, uh, with Tina. And she's like, what's that noise? Like, it's scaring me. Like, what is that? And Karen and Tina, they lay in bed and Karen's like, I don't know. Or Tina, the oldest is like, I don't know. And then at some point, one of them says, well, wait a minute. What if it's mom? What if our seance worked? What if, what if we've contacted mom and she's trying to contact us? What if, well, that's what it is. And they like desperately want this to be true. So they get out of bed and they walk to the doorway leading into the bedroom. They walk into the hallway and there's some steps going down and the steps kind of turn and go, go down another flight to the first floor. So they can't see the first floor. They can only see the first floor landing and they kind of like look down the stairs and they, they call out like, Hey mom, is that you? And there's like silence in the house. And then they hear tap, tap, tap coming from somewhere downstairs, like a, a distinctive reaction, or it sounded to them. Like there's a reaction to what we've just asked. And the girls that are like freaked out by it, and they walk out of their door. They go to the top. There's now they're like looking down. They say it again, like, mom, if that's really you, like, give us a sign. Like, please, like, we want, we want to talk to you again. And they're like, oh, there's something down there. And they're like, it's mom. And they're pumped. They're like, this is the best. This is like the greatest thing that's ever happened. Mom is here. And so not scared. They start going down the stairs and they start firing off questions like to mom thinking that she's down here tapping somewhere. This is definitely her. And they're asking questions. Some of the questions aren't even really like a. Yes, now answer there much longer. But even still, it's like every question just about they would hear like a rapid tap, like a three, three taps was often what they would hear. And the house is dark. Frank's not back yet. They follow the tapping noise to the first floor over to the door that leads down to the basement. And they realize that the tapping is coming from the basement, which in their mind only further establishes this has to be from the seance that we did down in the basements. It's gotta be mom. She's answering our questions. And so they opened the door and they're looking. Down this dark stairwell into this dingy basement. And even though they know it's mom, they're a little bit too scared to like fully commit and go down in the basement right now, but they stood there at the top of the stairs for several more minutes asking more questions of their mom and getting their taps. You know, it felt very much like we're talking to mom. Eventually it stopped and the girls are so jazzed up from this interaction that they can't sleep. So they're like, let's just wait up and like tell dad the great news that, you know, mom's still in the house. And so a little bit later, Frank comes in. He comes home and he's very surprised to see that the girls are still awake. He comes in and he's like, what's going on? And they're like, oh my gosh, you wouldn't believe it. Like we did the seance and mom was here. She was talking to us like, oh my God, it's so unbelievable. And Frank, you know, he knows they've just lost their mom. Like we're talking probably, probably within the last couple of weeks. And he knows he's not here for them. He's out doing what he's gotta do, but he knows these kids are, are left alone and they're in this terrible position. And so he instinctively is like, I'm. Not about to sit here and try to dispel the idea that their mom is talking to them, even though this feels borderline unhealthy, what they're doing here. Cause he doesn't believe this is real at all. He's like, that's great. Of course, your mom is here. Of course, your mom is, is, is gonna be with you forever. And yeah, I'm sure she's looking out for you right now. And the girls they're like, giddy. They're so happy. Like dad's just said, it's true too. Like, this is great. And so the girls, they go to sleep and Frank, you know, he sort of didn't really think that much of it ultimately. He's like, if, if this is their coping mechanism. That's okay with me over the next couple of days, the girls, despite not doing any more seances, continued to hear tapping noises in the house, not just at night, but sort of throughout the day. And for the most part, they were coming from down in the basement, but they would only be heard when Frank wasn't around or he wasn't near enough that he could hear it like he, they would hear it. They'd run to get their dad. He was like out cutting the grass or something and he'd be like, oh, okay. And then you wouldn't hear it. He doesn't think it's real. So he's not expecting to hear anything, but this was, this was a very prevalent thing. Like throughout the course of the next few days, there were taps almost practically all day. Frank never heard them. And Frank, again, he's just rolling with it. It is what it is. The girls are, they're grieving. But at some point, you know, maybe after about three days of this, the girls, they started to have a different opinion about the tapping sounds they, when the tapping was pretty much only coming from the basement, it felt like mom. But they noticed about the day three, four mark, the tapping began to migrate through the house and it began originating from places that were a little bit frightening. Like they'd be laying in bed and they'd hear tapping under their bed or they'd hear tapping coming from their closet or they, it was just, it was in other parts of the house that felt a little bit ominous and it scared them. And they started to worry that maybe our seance worked, but it didn't bring mom out. Maybe it brought a demon out. Maybe it's like we've invited something we don't want into our house. And so the girls went from dad, check it out. Mom's here. Taps her. Her to dad. I'm scared. I keep hearing the tapping noises. I think it's a demon. I think that I think there's a ghost or something in the house. And at that point, Frank, he sort of went from allowing this to happen to being a little bit more authoritative and saying to the girls, look like I know you lost your mom. I know you're dealing with it. You got to let this stuff go. Like there's, there's no tapping in the house. There's no ghost. There's no nothing. You guys are fine. You know, sort of doing the sort of it's you got to get with reality here, but the girls are like, no, dad, you don't understand it. Like, we're not lying. We're not lying to you. We don't believe this is mom anymore. We're telling you there's something in our house and we don't know what it is. And for some reason you can't hear it, but it's very real. And Frank's like, just let it go. Like there's nothing here over the next few days. This is the first week of the post seance. Now we're at like day four post seance. The girls now are constantly trying to get Frank to hear these taps because they are still happening all over the place. And Frank's still not hearing him. He's getting progressively more upset with them. No longer. soft, more like you gotta cut it out. This has gotta stop, I think you guys might to go into counseling or something. This is getting out of control. Girls are adamant, they're not lying. Fast forward to, it was almost exactly a week from the seance. The girls, this is the first time they're going to be home since they started getting scared. When they noticed they were getting scared all the time, Frank said that they could stay at friends' houses when he was staying out late, or he would stay home. This represents the first time they're going to be home alone at night while he does a late shift now that they're scared of their house. They're already on edge. In the beginning of the night, there's no taps. The house is quiet. The girls, they know they're not going to sleep. They're too scared. They're just waiting in the kitchen for their dad to come home. At some point, they start hearing tapping noises, the sort of sporadic random tapping sounds. They can tell it's coming from the basement, and the basement door is shut. The two girls, they look at each other. This has been going on practically every day. It's sort of expected. Tina, the older one, looks at Karen and is like, we have to go down. We have to go down and see what this is. To this point, they had never really actually investigated it. Every time they heard tapping, even under their beds, they'd be so scared they wouldn't look. They would just accept that that was mom or it wasn't mom. They never looked for it. They never went all the way. Tina, she grabs a knife from the kitchen block, and little Karen gets behind her. They open up the basement door, and they can literally hear tapping coming from somewhere in the dark basement. They flip on the lights, and they go down the stairs, and they get to the basement, and there's nothing down there. It's like utterly devoid of anything down there. In some ways, it was almost worse than had they discovered a fucking dude down there or something. Now, maybe some part of them had thought, we are making this up, but now they're hearing tapping. There is no point. There's nowhere it could be coming from. They're freaked out. They turn, and they start running back up the stairs. As they do, they notice on the wall, in the stairwell, in red, is written, I'm in your closet. Come find me. Oh, shit. The girls, they see that. They sprint out of the basement. They don't go to check their closet. They run out of the house. They run next door to their neighbor's house. They're banging on the door. Oh, my God. The neighbor comes to the door. He's aware they've lost their mom. He knows that they're dealing with some really serious issues. He just lets them inside, and they're hysterical. They're trying to explain that, oh, there's writing on the wall. There's ghosts. Oh, my God. The neighbor's like, you're fine. You're staying here. You're safe. Just stay here. We'll wait for your dad to get home. He'll know what to do. It's okay. The girls are hysterical. They're in the neighbor's house. Frank comes home a little bit later. He pulls in the driveway, and the neighbor promptly goes out and says, hey, here's what happened. I don't know. They said something about writing in your basement. I don't understand it, but I just want you to know they're safe in the house. Whatever you want to do. Frank's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I get it. This has been going on the whole week. It's okay. Just tell them. I'll go look. I'll go look in the house, and I'll make sure it's safe, and then we'll get him back home. Frank goes in the house, and there's nothing amiss. The house is normal. They'd left the door open, but he goes inside, and there's nothing that seems out of the ordinary. He eventually finds his way into the basement, and he sees for himself the writing on the wall that says, I'm in your closet. Come find me, but he sees it's written in ketchup, and he immediately thinks, my daughters must have done this. They've now taken this delusion to the next level. They're actually adding props to it. Maybe they want me to believe this is real, so they've done this. He's not scared at all. He's just like, what the fuck is this? He checks the whole house. There's nobody there. He sees the writing. It's ketchup. He leaves. He goes to his girls, and he just says to them, look, you're starting therapy. There's no two ways about it. This has gotten completely out of control, and you're starting tomorrow. You're going to therapy. The girls are so scared and resigned, frankly, that they don't even know what to do. They didn't even fight with their dad. They just are like, fine. Literally, I think it was actually the next day or very shortly thereafter, the girls start therapy. Around the same time they start grief counseling, all the tapping in the house stops, just completely stops. It's like everything goes back to normal. No weirdness. The girls even said it just felt better in the house, and they began to attribute it to must be the therapy. The dad's like, yeah, obviously. They didn't say it to them, but that's his thinking. He's like, of course. This is just grief, manifesting. A couple of weeks later, things are great in the house. Tapping's done. Everything's good. Frank took Tina, Karen, and I think their friend, whose name was Maureen, out for ice cream. They go out for ice cream. It's the evening, and they come back to Frank's house. When they get there, Frank actually notices that something's off about the house. It's late at night, and he sees that there are lights on in the house that he didn't remember leaving on. He couldn't be 100% sure, but he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. It immediately made him think, that's weird. I definitely didn't leave that light on. He gets in front of the girls. He doesn't tell them this. He just puts himself in front of them. He walks up onto the porch, and as he's about to open the door to examine what's going on here, he wanted to be the first one in the house, he hears the TV is on inside the house. He stops, and he looks at the girls, and the girls at this point pick up that something odd is going on, that Frank has noticed something. Even though things have been good, Tina and Karen know how this got really bad in this house. They're back into that mode of, oh no, what do you see? What's going on here? Frank, he looks at his daughters, and he's like, did you guys leave the TV on? Was that you? They're like, no. Frank's like, what in the world is going on here? I definitely didn't do that. Frank, he's looking at his daughters, trying to size up, like, are you doing this stuff again? He didn't say it to them, but he's thinking it. Then he's also like, I was just out with them the whole time. I was with them the whole time. I was the last one to leave the TV on. He has these competing realities that don't mesh. I know my daughters were the ghost, so to speak, but I can't explain what's going on right now. He enters the house, and the girls are terrified. They've tucked themselves up behind Frank. He's almost half invested, walking through the house, like, what in the world is going on here? Girls are so scared right behind him. He goes room to room, just looking around. There's weirdness. The TV's on, lights on, but that was basically it. He searched the whole house, and he doesn't find anything beyond those oddities. Then the last room that he hadn't checked was the front room of the first floor that overlooked the road. It was basically right off the main door. He just hadn't gone to it yet. Frank, again, he's just in disbelief that this is going on. He walks straight in to this room. He's basically facing the window that leads out to the road out front where they arrived. As he walks in, he looks up, and he sees on the door, drapes above the window. Someone had written in shaving cream the words, marry me, on the shaving cream. He's staring at it. He looks back at his girls. Again, he's like, did you guys do this? He's looking at the words. He's just staring at them. The girls are staring at them. They're all scared. Then they hear movement inside of this room. There's this little closet in the back corner of this small front room. Frank looks over, and it opens up. This person walks out of the closet wearing, his wife's wedding dress, clown makeup on their face with a hatchet over their shoulder. They walk out into the middle of the room, and they look over at Frank and the girls. They just point to the stairs, and they just go upstairs. Frank is immediately in like, what the fuck is going on? He grabs the girls, and he starts ushering them behind him out the door back into the house. This dude with the clown makeup and the dress and the hatchet is just slowly pacing towards them. Frank sort of brings the girls upstairs. He's just positioning himself between the hatchet person and his kids. They go in the first bedroom, and the girls all go in. Then when Frank goes in the room, again, this person's just slowly walking up. He slams the door, and he holds it tight. Suddenly, there's a struggle at the door between the hatchet person and Frank. They're fighting at the door. Tina, the 15-year-old, just turns and runs and jumps out the second floor window, just jumps clean out the window, smashes to the ground. She runs to that same neighbor, and she tells them, oh my God, there's somebody in the house. You got to call 911. 911. The same neighbor who had the whole ketchup thing happen, he's like, oh my God, what's going on? Calls 911. The police show up minutes later, and when they get there, they look up, and they see Frank and Karen and the friend Maureen. They're all leaning out the window of that same room, screaming, get us down from here. There's somebody in the house. He's gone. I don't know where he is, but there's somebody here. The police, they put the ladder up to the window. They go up. They get all the kids out. They get Frank out. Everybody's safe. Then they bring all the kids and Frank over to the neighbor's house. They're like, you stay in there. We're going to clear the house. We're going to make sure no one's in there. We're going to find whoever you're talking about. Guns drawn, the police go into the house, and they search the house, and they can't find anybody. They do find a hatchet leaning up against the back sliding glass door that was opened partially, suggesting somebody was here that matched the description you gave that has now fled the scene. Afterwards, the police are like, okay, Frank, we're going to look for this the dress-wearing, clown makeup-wearing, hatchet-wielding maniac. Admittedly, we don't even really know what to look for. You've described them as a man, but frankly, just based on the description, they could be either. Don't really know how old they are. It's going to be really hard to narrow this down, even though they're really distinct, what you've described. Here's what we're going to do. Stay with family. Stay away from here. We'll keep an eye on your house for the next couple of days. We'll search the town. We'll look for somebody. We're going to look for this person, and then, you know, when the coast is clear, you can come back, find this person. So Frank and his kids and then the friend, they all leave. And Frank and his girls, they go stay with a friend. And over the next couple of days, the police are in contact with Frank and they're staking out his house, you know, basically just watching it. And they're looking around town. They can't find anybody, you know, that matches the description. But, you know, no one's coming in or out of the house. And there's no sign of anybody in town or anything that gives away, you know, who this guy is or whatever. So it's sort of a dead end. It's like terrifying dead end. So after three days of this, Frank is, you know, sort of restless from not living in his house. You know, he's left all his shit at the house, all his toiletries and stuff like that. It's all at the house. And so in the middle of the day, three days into this, he decides, you know what, I'm going to go back to my house real quick and just like going real quick, get my toothbrush, whatever, and I'll be out of there. And so he drives over to his house. But before he goes, he's like, actually, you know what, I should probably tell the police because they're monitoring the house. I don't want them to see me. I don't want them to accidentally think I'm like breaking into my own house. And so he goes to like his neighbor's house and he calls the police and he's looking at his property and he didn't see any police cars marked or otherwise near his property. And he thinks that's weird. You know, maybe they're on the other side or something. But he calls the police and he's like, hey, it's me. I'm going in. I'm doing this thing. And they're like, OK. And and as Frank is like having this discussion, he's looking out the window at his property and he notices that there's somebody or he thinks for a second, he sees someone moving around in the second floor of his house. And he couldn't be sure, but he immediately tells the officer, he's like, hey, I I think I think one of your guys is in my house. Are you like are you monitoring my house from the inside? Just like let them know I'm going to be going in there and I don't want to scare anyone. And the officer's like, no one's gone inside your house. No one's come in or out of your house. No police officers gone inside of your house. You must be seeing things. There's no one in your house. And so Frank's like, I know I just saw someone like I'm nearly positive I saw someone in my bedroom. And the police officer's like, do not go in your house. We are going to go in and search your house. Make sure it's OK. So remember, over these three days, they there has been a couple of times where the police had left and there was a gap in security on the outside monitoring the property. But damn near 24 hours a day, there's someone physically watching this house and they had not seen anybody interact with the house at any point. And so this is the first time anyone's going inside the house. And so the officers, they go up to the front door and they unlock the door. They go inside and it's just fucking madness inside of this house. There are pennies that are glued to the ceiling all across the first floor. There are knives driven into the pictures in the wall of the girls, Tina and Karen, with the words like, I'm going to kill you. You're dead all over the all over the house. And there are like half filled champagne glasses, like champagne flutes around the house. And furniture is not broken, but it's like toppled over and like organized in weird ways around the house. And you're thinking like you would have seen this should happen inside the house. So now the police are like, huge gap in security. Clearly someone's coming in and out of this house. They're probably here now. Frank just claimed to have seen someone. And so they full bore like guns out. They tear this house apart looking for whoever is in this house. It's like a full effort, loads of people there, top to bottom. And for hours they're searching the stupid house and they can't find anyone. There's weird shit here, no doubt, but there is no one in this house. And like there's not even any footprints outside of the house suggesting because there was snow on that would have shown them coming in or out of the house. And so finally, a couple of the officers are down in the basement of this house and they're like frustrated. They've been just looking endlessly and they can't find it. And they're like, man, like we must have missed something. Like, I don't know what we missed, but we missed something. And one of them is leaning up against the washer, the washer or dryer that's down in the basement, like the only things down in the basement. And at some point it like moves like his weight caused the washer to literally just move. And it revealed a hole in the wall of the basement that had been overlooked by the entire group of police that had searched this house over and over again. No one thought to look behind the washer dryer and they get their flashlight out and they look into this hole in the wall and they see there's a tunnel that's burrowed into the wall and they shine down into the back corner. And there's this person crouched in the corner in the wall, wearing a dress with clown makeup on, looking back at the police. They pulled, they pulled this person out of the wall. They pulled this person out of the wall and they get arrested. And this person would like say who they are and why they were there. So their name was Danny, Danny LaPlante. He was 16 years old. And Danny, a year later, he was arrested. And he was arrested. And he was arrested. And he was on a date with Tina or he believed that they were on a date or maybe they were out together, but he saw it as like a romantic connection. And he felt like she had spurned his advances and he felt really put off by it. And so naturally he broke into their house as retaliation and built this tunnel in the basement of the house. And over the course of six months, he was living in their walls, not full time. He would leave, get this during the day while they're out and about in their house, just like living their lives. He also would just leave the wall. He'd walk around their house. He'd just like come up like he should have been caught dozens of times. And he wasn't, he was just living. He began burrowing into other parts of the wall. There were, there were holes or there was a way to get up to one of the other walls up in the second floor, I believe. But he was in the basement at when they were doing the seance for their mom. And he knew they were trying to contact their mother. He admitted that he pretended to be their mother by doing those rapid taps. And so he pretended to be their mother and he continued to make those tapping sounds. He would walk into their bedrooms and he would flick the springs under their bed. He's not even hiding. He's just under their bed in the middle of the night and no one ever caught him, but it gets worse. So he has this just horrifying thing that for basically six months to a year, he's living in their walls, just spying on them, eating their food, flicking the walls, torturing them. So he is arrested and he is let out on bail or whatever it is for minors. He's basically allowed to roam the streets until his trial. 10 months after he was pulled from the wall, he broke into another family's house, except he murdered the entire family. Oh shit. And he had no connection to them whatsoever. He was, he's alive. Danny LaPlante is alive right now. He's in max security prison and he has zero remorse. And he was recently, he's not, he was not released. He's not going to be released. He was put up for parole. And during the parole hearing, there's like an element of trying to discuss whether or not this person is capable of rehabilitation. And they determined the parole board that arguably Danny LaPlante is the single most psychotic person in the entire prison system. And he was denied parole. Hmm. What the fuck? So that's a real life demon right there, dude. That's a story, dude. Holy shit. Oh, let me get this guy. Have you, have you told this one before? Yeah. I've told it live quite a bit. Oh my God. That's an insane one, dude. That's a good one. The term is frogging. And how do you not believe in demons, bro? So that dude, how do you not believe in demons? Just a full blown sociopath. Socio or psycho? I think, well, I think, I think, I don't know. I think psychotic was the word that they used to describe him, which is sort of like the understatement of the year here. What is the difference between socio and psychopath? Isn't socio like not feeling? Anything psychotic would be like not of sound mind. So you can be, I'm probably still wrong, but I believe sociopathic is you lack empathy. You lack the feelings, but you might be a good person, but you don't have the ability to like understand that my actions could hurt you. And by, and that type of thing, I think psychotic probably lends itself to people who are also sociopathic. But I think that's more like you do things that are like mentally unwell, like a break from reality. Yeah. Like you're acting on things. That's, that's also being psychotic. But then there's also psychopath. But that's someone who is psychotic, psychopathic and psychopath. Yeah. Right. Where were his parents? I don't know. I think, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Well, he, by the way, he would leave the house, but I think he had a very dysfunctional home life. And so he was able to be in and out of the house, I believe. Is that him as an adult right now? No, I don't know. No, no. I think that him in real life now looks like a guy that should be in prison. You're like, he looks like he don't give a fuck. Oh. And you know what's weird is like he looks relatively young still, you know, he's just like this nondescript sort of like weird looking guy. Yeah, there he is. Oh my God. Danny LaPlante. Looks like a judge. His cardigan is at a prison issued. Look at that. Whoa. Yeah. He was born in Townsend, Massachusetts. Parents divorced. He claimed to have been psychologically and sexually abused by adults in his life. And his classmates described him as creepy and weird and was considered a loner. Residents in the neighborhood described him as disturbed or strange. Whoa. Fuck me, dude. All right, guys, this fall, I'm back in the lab getting the new hour ready. And I just want to say thank you so much for New Brunswick, New Jersey, Houston, and West Nile for selling out all the shows. Also coming to Indianapolis, Indiana, October 23rd and 24th, Birmingham, Alabama, November 6th and 7th, Cleveland, Ohio, November 13th, 14th, Raleigh, North Carolina, December 4th and 5th, Columbus, Ohio, December 11th and 12th. Those are the remaining shows for this fall. DeAndreSchultz.com for tickets. I will see you there. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the Save. The Diyalo Pass, it's fascinating. In 1959, there were these nine hikers who are really like mountaineers in Russia. And they were going up for what's called their Level 3 hiking exam, which sounds sort of lame, but it effectively amounts to like the highest degree of mountaineering in Russia at the time. So if you pass this test, you're sort of like the top mountaineer, if you will. Not many people have this credential. So the Navy SEALs of hikers. Sort of. Sort of, kind of. These guys are very serious mountaineers. So the way it works is you need to plan a route. You, the test taker, you got to plan a route that sort of is technically challenging enough on a piece of paper that someone can look at it. I think it's like a university. And they approve that, yes, this is difficult enough that if you successfully navigate this path and there's checkpoints along the way, you pass your test, right? So they set it up. They talk to this university that's going to effectively be their graders. And they were given, or they gave, like here's how long it's going to take us. We're going to start here. We're going to enter the Ural Mountains, these like snow-swept, like huge icy mountains. And we're going to navigate. It's a multi-week long course. It's a pretty long course. Oh, wow. Okay. And they're going to get to X number of checkpoints and we'll be out in February of 1950. In 59 or whatever it is. So there was a protocol in place for if they didn't get to a checkpoint. I believe there's a little bit of grace period if they didn't hit a checkpoint. They had to, I forget how they were even in contact, but either way, there was a little bit of grace. And then at the end, when they finished, there was a little bit of grace if they were late. But for the most part, if you were late, you sort of failed the test right away. You had, I think, 24 hours or something. And so they pretty much enacted a rescue policy if you were late. Because it's like, yeah, if you already failed, we might as well get you out of there safe and sound. So I don't know exactly if they actually made their checkpoints, but I do know, because really the story picks up when it's clear they have not returned from the journey. They've entered the wilderness and they have not come out again. And this is not a place where there are other tourists. This might as well be Antarctica. This is like the middle of nowhere. And the university, they send out a cursory search sometime in February to go look for these hikers. And they have, they have the route that they were supposed to be on. And they're going in reverse. They're sort of backtracking. And they get to this point where they look out and they see this huge mountain. And on the side of the mountain is this one canvas tent that's sort of, you know, conspicuously sitting on the side of the windswept side of the mountain, which is tactically like the worst place to put a tent. These are skilled mountaineers. They put it in, there's a crops of trees down here would have saved you from the wind. Like, it's just an odd place. It's like an amateur would put a tent there. So already it's like red flag. But there's no hikers anywhere. They walk up to the tent and that's actually the tent right there on the left. And it's collapsed. They see that. And even though I don't think you can tell from this picture, but they pulled the snow off of it and they looked at this tent and there was a cut made in the tent that looked like someone had cut it with a knife. But it apparently, based on the way the threads looked, it had been cut from the inside out. So somebody in this tent, and it was the hikers tent, one, because there's nobody else out here. But two, some of their equipment was still inside the tent that identified, that identified it as theirs. Hikers are not there. It's been cut open from the inside out. A lot of their clothing that would have been required to survive in the cold, it was negative 40 degrees, was still in the tent. Like, lots of cold weather gear was still sitting in the tent. So it's like, okay, this is really bad. Where are they? Also, fun fact I learned, minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit is the same as minus 40 degrees Celsius. Fun fact. Oh, shit, I know that. So the university, they realized that we now have a pretty serious problem here because this is obviously quite bad. So they round up, I believe the police, or not the police, I think the army was rounded up for a much more robust search. And they ended up finding a set of prints in the snow not far from the tent that initially, I guess, they discounted, but it was prints left by the hikers. And they were traveling in a group and the footprints were, there were at least eight sets of prints. There were nine total hikers. They could see eight for sure. Many of them only had one shoe on. So it's like barefoot boot or barefoot sock or just two barefeets or two boots. But again, you're entering the negative 40 degrees, the cold, it made no sense. And they cut their tent open and they saw that the cadence of the footsteps were, they were not running. These are not people running down the mountain. They're walking. The space between all the steps was a very casual pace. And so they follow these footsteps down the hill and it brings them to this forest. They weren't, not a forest. It was a crops of trees. It was pretty small. And the footsteps, they sort of stop at the edge and they're looking into this, this dark foreboding forest and they can't see anybody in there. And they start weaving their way into the trees. They pick up a few prints here and there and it brings them to this clearing where there's this huge cedar tree that's right in the middle of the clearing. And at the base of the tree is one of the hikers and there's a burned out fire, like a puny little fire that couldn't have provided much warmth. It's burned out. And one of the hikers is sort of curled around it like they were trying to get warm. And they're deceased. They're not really wearing enough clothes. They're clearly died from some sort of exposure, hypothermia, whatever. And then they see the tree has various scratch marks in it. Not super aggressive, but there's some scratch marks in it. And they also found higher up the tree, there were broken branches and some human, it sounds aggressive, but there's human flesh. But it suggests someone had climbed pretty high up the tree at one point and left behind their skin. And then one report said there was one of the hikers draped in a tree. I actually recently have seen, I don't think that was true, but there were two other hikers that were on the ground near the guy near the fire. So there's like three hikers that are all dead, all in various stages of sort of bedraggledness. Their clothes were all fucked up and they're all dead. And one of them, later they would find he had some of his own skin, I think from his hand and his mouth, like he had swallowed it. So he was eating himself, presumably. Or theoretically, someone could have put it into his mouth, but it looked like he was eating himself. But they're missing the other hikers. And so they look within the forest and they find another two hikers that were a little bit further away from the cedar tree. They're also all dead. So they're all dead. It looks like, okay, something caused them to flee their tent. They weren't prepared. Their clothes are not right. Hypothermia, mass hysteria. I mean, it looks like this is just a horrible tragedy. They also haven't found the other four hikers yet, but already the picture they're painting is this is like a mass hysteria. But these are also very experienced mountaineers who go into this type of environment a lot. You know, it'd be like if you went on your podcast and then suddenly forgot how to do your podcast. It'd be like, I guess that's possible. But realistically, it's just not going to happen. And so it was like, okay, maybe that's what it is. But they couldn't find the other hikers. And it was the weather was quite bad. And so they decide at this point, it's not going to be a we're not going to find them. Or I should say, it's a body recovery at this point. So they decide they're not going to find them. They're not going to be able to find them. It's a body recovery at this point. They're very likely dead if these five have been found dead already. So they wait until the snow thaws and they come back in the spring in like May. And there's still quite a bit of snow out there. But there's the remains of this old snow cave, this big snow drift. And they find the other four hikers inside. They've clearly taken shelter inside of this cave. And they have just catastrophic injuries. They're all dead. One of them has this chest injury that was consistent with being struck by a train, I think they said. However, Lexo's chest is caved in, like utterly caved in. But he has no or very limited lacerations or bruising on his skin. It's almost like his chest caved in without any external force being applied. The woman, she had her lips, her eyelids, and I think a piece of her nose or maybe her ears, I forget which. They were gone. Animal predation is a thing. After you die, animals might pick at your body. But usually there's a tearing to it. Like it doesn't look neat. Almost like cuts were made in her face to pull the skin off of her face. One guy was missing his eyeballs. But again, animal predation. That could have explained that one as well. They were wearing the other's clothing. At least some variation of the other's clothing. So they weren't wearing enough. But like the woman was wearing men's clothing and the men were wearing women's clothing. And there were trace levels of radiation on several of their clothings. And so they're all dead. Radiation. They're all dead. And so this discovery is made. And in some ways, this story was already pretty big in Russia at the time. Because the hikers' families were really up in arms about how little information had been discovered. It just sort of felt like, how in the world can this have happened? And there isn't some huge investigation. Why aren't we doing more? We can't just say, oh yeah, they went crazy and just died out there. We'll find the others in the spring. They were already pretty mad. launch, a fairly public investigation into what happened. just to respond to the outcry. But they very quickly shut the investigation down and classified it all. And the families were not given much in the way of information. They were just sort of told, oh yeah, we're just going to shut it down. But some information got out, one and more today, because they unredacted most of it. One is the conclusion that Russia came to is that the nine hikers who died, they didn't die from exposure. They died from a compelling force, was what they described it as. A compelling force, that was it. And then in addition, there were all these people in Russia in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains on the outskirts, including a fairly senior military official who was running a military operation or a training in the Ural Mountains, but not close, just somewhere in the Urals, that reported these orbs of fire. Independent people who did not talk to each other described orbs of fire shooting up and down in the Ural Mountains around the same time that these hikers all died. And the military guy, he even went so far as to say that he thought they were being invaded. And he stopped the exercise, this huge military exercise, because he was fearful that we might actually need to go literally defend our country right now. No one ever explained what the orbs of fire were. Compelling force was all that was given for what happened. What does that mean? So they went classified. And so this mystery remained a mystery for decades. And everyone's like, holy shit. And also there's pictures. There's more pictures from this. There's pictures of the hikers when they step out. They're all in good spirits. Everyone's so happy. They're doing selfies in 1959. It's like, wow, it's sort of a movie. It's so nice. And then it's just like death and destruction. See, I was thinking like a bear attacked them in the tent and they had to leave in a hurry. That's why they didn't have all the shoes. There's like no animals out there. Oh, wow. So finally in 2020, and this is probably part of the reason why the story really went as big as it did for me on my TikTok page, is I told it by saying, at the end of this story, you're going to Google two words. And then I tell this little bit about what happened. And then at the end, I say, this is known as the Dyatlov Pass. If you Google Dyatlov Pass, it's this fucking thing. And right around that time, Russia unredacted what happened and they gave more information. It was definitely nothing to do with me. It was just timing. And they did their own new investigation into the Dyatlov Pass and what happened. And they concluded that it was an avalanche. There you go. But the thing is, I'm saying it sort of facetiously. No one really buys that. Oh, no one buys the avalanche thing. There's so many discrepancies. They were like, oh, an ice slab broke off and it caused them to run out of their tent. And that's why. And then they sort of got scattered and they died. And like, okay, fine. Totally buy that there could be a sudden, oh, my God, ice is crashing down. We got to go. You hear the ice. You cut out of the tent. I think, Mark, you were explaining this to us. I don't know if it was another pod, but did we record a pod? So you hear the avalanche. You cut out of the tent because the tent is organized in a way where unhooking all the things is more time. Can't do it. It's more time consuming than just cutting out. You don't have all your stuff because you got to go right now or you die. So like that part makes sense. Totally. Trying to climb up the tree to, you know. Oh, climb up the tree. Some of your skin is on the tree. Totally. Because you're climbing a fucking tree. Start eating your hand because you're scared. You know. Now we're getting a little weird. Lose eyeballs because there's, you know, animals and birds and stuff. You start eating your eyes. You take your knife out. You cut your lips off. What about lips for, uh, what about lips is, you get, um, what is that called? Chapped lips. Yeah, chapped lips. You got to open chapped lips. Yeah, chapped lips is a nightmare. What is this shit where it's a frostbite and then when it thaws, it just decomposes? Oh, I think it's just frostbite. And it turned black. Yeah. They were getting ahead of it. So they just cut it off so it wouldn't get frostbite. Okay, so you don't buy it. You think something fishy's going on. Well, the radiation thing is weird. The what? The radiation. Yeah, but they're Russian. Like, I don't know. I feel like the only thing is it's very low levels. And so people have said that it's possible that their clothes could have been contaminated going in. But, like, I think that the thing that stands out is that the reports of the multiple fireballs, those reports hadn't been made before. And so many people did it and they're like, "Oh, that's weird. It's in the same spot where all those vikers just died really mysteriously. Bah! Gotta be an avalanche." But couldn't that be, like, Russia's just trying to sweat us? Like, we get all the aliens, they get none, and they're trying to use a tragedy to, like, make us think, "Oh, the aliens like us, too." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that could be it. 'Cause aliens don't go anywhere. They don't go anywhere but America. That's right. That is how aliens work. I've never heard of anybody say there's aliens. And Brazil, but that's part of the Americas, and they've probably seen the porn that came out of it. Yeah, that's how it is. That's how it is. But also, if you're an alien, where are you gonna go? I mean, America. It's not going to Russia. Yeah, exactly. It just seems whack. Yeah, exactly. If you're Ukrainian, where do you want to go? You want to go to America. Everyone wants to go to America. Yeah, Ukraine is kind of lit, dude. I'm not gonna lie. All right, all right, all right. So that's the Dyalov Pass. But that we can find, like, certain—there's certain— Yeah, sure. Yeah. We can find the avalanche. Ooh. Oh, that's another theory, is that perhaps Russia was testing military equipment, and they're like, "Oh, boy, that went wrong." Oopsie-daisy. Better cover that up. I feel like that's the most plausible one. Yeah, I think that would explain the fireballs. Yeah, they're doing some military testing. It causes an avalanche. They have to cover it up because they're like, "Yo, we accidentally killed nine people." Yeah. And so then they're like, "Oh, it's just a regular old avalanche." And then the families are like, "Well, they wouldn't have gone in an avalanche area." And they're like, "Eh, don't look into it." Exactly. Dude, I have a great story that's in the same vein as— As this one, but very different genre. You want to hear it? Yes. So there's this dude, David Lewis. This is in 1989. Successful lawyer. He lives in Amarillo, Texas with his wife and his young daughter. And in many ways, his life is sort of unremarkable. He's sort of—he's living the American dream, if you will. But, you know, he's sort of living a basic life. He likes to watch sports. He's got a couple of friends. He goes to work 9 to 5. And in January of that year—this is, again, 1989—his wife and his daughter— Yes. They decide they're going to go on this weekend trip to Dallas. I think it was to see family, but it was a trip that normally David would have gone with them to just go be a part of the trip. But it was the Super Bowl weekend. And he's like, "Actually, you know what? I'm going to stay here. I'm going to just watch the Super Bowl. You guys go. You know, see when you get back." And they're like, "Okay." And there's nothing going on in his life or their life. Everything's fine. And he's like a total nerd. He's like a dude with glasses, like just—David Lewis. You're probably going to give it away if you Google it. So you might want to hold on. Yeah. Anyhow, so the mom and the daughter, they leave, and they come back a couple of days later on the day of the Super Bowl. They actually return to their house in Amarillo literally within 30 minutes of the actual game coming to an end. And when they get to the house, they expected to see her husband, her father, either cleaning up after having watched the game or still watching the postgame or something. But they go in the house, and there's nothing odd about the inside of the house. But they see the TV's on, and it's on the channel for the Super Bowl, and the game's over. It's postgame. And David had a habit of recording major sports games, like the Super Bowl, World Series. And so the VHS was still recording. He had clearly hit record at the start of the game. But David's not in the room with the TV, and so the wife is walking around the first floor. She's calling out for David. It doesn't appear to be here. It was a little bit weird. She couldn't recall a time that he did that, but it was odd. So she's in the kitchen like, what in the world? He's not here. She ends up opening the fridge, and she sees there are two freshly made turkey sandwiches, which was sort of his go-to sandwich, just sitting in the fridge. And so she's like, that's so weird. All signs point to David should still be here. And then she went outside, and she realized she hadn't noticed, but his car was actually not in the driveway. She just hadn't seen it when she showed up. And so she's like, okay, he probably went to go catch the end of the game with a friend or something. And apparently their return trip that night was a little bit early. So she's thinking he didn't know he'd even be here right now. So it's totally normal. He's probably out at a buddy's house. He'll be home soon. It's 1989. She can't really call him. So she's like, okay, whatever. So she stays up. Her daughter goes to bed, and she's just waiting for David to come back. But David doesn't come back. And so she ultimately, the wife, just goes to bed thinking, okay, he's a responsible guy. There's no sign of anything wrong here. It's a little weird, but everything's fine. So she goes to bed, and then she gets up in the morning. David's still not home. So at this point, she's concerned. She goes to the police. The police that day, they start searching Amarillo for David, and they quickly find his car. And it's been abandoned near the courthouse. Remember, he's a lawyer, just for reference. So it's near the courthouse. And no damage to his car, but it's parked in the lot. He's not there. There's no sign of him. He's not in the courthouse. And they look in the car, and they find his checkbook, his license, his wallet are in sort of the cup holders where he would normally keep them. And then on the mat on the driver's side were the keys to the car and the keys to his house. And so David's not there. His stuff's all been left here. They look all over that area. They can't find him. No one seemed David. He did not go to a friend's house, at least not anyone they know. And so no one has any idea what happens to David, what's happened to David. So the wife is immediately brought in. Like, you got to tell us, like, was there any sign of something going on with David at all, like, that you can think of? Because this seems like foul play could be involved. And she's like, the only thing I can think of is that he was supposed to give a deposition in the next couple of weeks for the old law firm that he worked for there they were wrapped up in a really vicious lawsuit with a high-profile client and the law firm was being accused of something like medical medical like malpractice and the firm was trying to get david to lie in this deposition to protect the firm they didn't know this but he was not prepared to lie under oath he had told his wife i'm going to to tell the truth even if it hurts somebody and so she had said david had said to me i feel like i'm in danger but she had always interpreted that as i think that in the future if i do this something could happen like if i destroy somebody's image i could be in danger and so she thought that it was like you're doing the right thing it is what it is but she's like beyond that there's nothing else in his life so the police don't have much to go on they they expand their search but there's there's no sign of david and 11 months later david still hasn't shown up and they officially say this is no longer uh being viewed as a crime we're going to view this as david chose to disappear we believe he's elected to basically abandon his life people do do that he's an adult there's no sign of a crime uh they interviewed the law firm and the client like they're like oh my god i have no idea so it's just it's just decided that well i guess david just went his own way it is what it is and so the family's left with nothing uh i believe it was 11 years later so 2004 that was 1993 this is actually yeah 1993 for sure that was the start so now it's 2004 and out in washington state there's this cop who is a big true crime enthusiast he loves just personally he loves true crime and he's a cop part of the reason he was a cop and he was always digging into like rabbit holes of unsolved mysteries he thought they're really interesting and he had just learned about this one particular mystery of this this hit and run it was a john doe that had happened in washington state he actually was one of the first cases that he had worked on when he became a cop 11 years earlier um he began investigating it investigating it because people were like talking about it online basically this guy had been struck on the side of the road in washington and he had no id he was wearing military fatigues and he was just walking along this highway and and this cop had been the first on the scene and he had seen him and like it just stuck with him it was this weird thing where nobody ever identified him simultaneously he saw this like news report this cop did this and he was like oh my god this cop did this and he was like oh my god this cop did about how david lewis was still missing after 11 years and the family was giving an interview about david lewis and he saw a picture of david lewis and he was like oh my god i think that's the same guy from the john doe case i think he's the guy who got hit 11 years ago and so he pulled out the evidence i suppose that included the glasses of the guy who was hit and killed uh it was the same prescription same type of glasses they ultimately did dna it took a minute but they discovered that sure enough the john doe who had been a totally unidentified cop had been identified body on the side of the road was david lewis which means also when he was hit and killed was 24 hours after the the wife and daughter came home from the trip so if we follow the what's happened here david lewis starts watching the game the super bowl game assuming that he's the guy who turned the tv on and hit record on the vhs within 24 hours without the use of his car without his id without any of his belongings he winds up 1600 miles an hour and he's like away in Yokima, Washington, walking along a deserted highway, is struck and killed, and he's wearing top-to-bottom military fatigues. He has no identification on him, and he has no connections in Yokima. The client, the high-profile client in the law firm had nothing to do with Washington, but that was definitely him on the side of the road. And to this day, no one has any idea what happened to David Lewis or why. They took him out. Fire. They took him out. But how? We don't know. How do you take him out and then move him to Washington? What a convoluted way to take somebody out. But, I mean, there he is. I hope I have the name right. David Lewis. Yeah. There he is. So what do you think happened? I don't know. I mean, like, there's definitely cases. Have you ever heard of a thing called a fugue state? No. Oh, man. You want to see some crazy stories? I got another crazy fugue state story. Yeah. Basically, there are these people who, there are not necessarily precursors that are known that can cause. A fugue state. I'm not saying he was in a fugue state, but imagine you suddenly break from reality. Like, you wouldn't be aware of it because if you break from reality, you don't know you've broken from reality. But you don't totally go crazy. It's almost like you just sort of become a different person. Yeah. But your old self has no idea that this person ever, it's like the show Severance. You know the show Severance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you snap and you become this other person and you're unaware of the old person. Yeah. Yeah. And you're in this state for sometimes. Sometimes. Long periods of time. People have committed murders in their fugue state and then be deemed, and they've been deemed not guilty because they were in a fugue state. Yeah, we almost saw that happen last week. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. That happens. So, I believe women call it halving their period. Jesus Christ. Come on, dude. Is that? No. It's like a little fugue state. It's just a little fugue state, guys. A little fugue state. So, I think that could happen with him, but then it just doesn't really explain how he gets there. The 1,600 miles is the issue. So, it's not possible. It's not possible that they killed him, they took him there, and then they just dropped him off on the side of the highway. That's another way to look at it. Actually, you know what? That probably seems to be most likely it. He's killed somewhere else, dropped in Yakima. Yeah. You know what's funny? I've never thought about it that way. That actually does sound like that's, unless there's some evidence that shows somebody saw the accident. They know he's going to tell the truth. They can't have him tell the truth, right? Because then the law firm is going to be, I don't know what's going to happen to them. I don't know what the punishment will be. Unless there's proof that somebody saw him get hit in Washington, he probably got killed and dumped. Yeah, they kill him at his house. I thought he was a secret spy, and being the lawyer is just his cover. Oh, yeah? Oh, he could be like a little. There were calls, there was someone wandering the street where he was hit minutes before. Yeah, but he, oh, yeah, if he's wandering, he could have been planted and then struck. You know, put him out there, we're going to hit him in Yakima. Yeah. I mean, can they prove that he was struck? Like, does he. The autopsy of injuries on the body? The autopsy? Yeah. I bet you can find that, though. Yeah. But there's another guy. Autopsy is consistent with being struck by a vehicle. No evidence of drugs in the bloodstream. Oh, yeah, no drugs. Just the other thing, too. No drugs. All right, guys, take a break for a second. I got to tell you about the best thing that happened to a boner since saliva and its blue chewed gold. You're already within 15 minutes. It's that simple, okay? I can tell you about the apomorphine and the oxytocin. You don't care about any of those things. 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Enjoy yourself. And most importantly, no hangovers the next morning. Willie's is the number one THC-infused beverage in the U.S. With over 350,000 happy customers, 1 million-plus bottles sold. So order now at drinkwillies.com. Use the code FLAGRANT for 20% off your first order, plus free shipping on orders over $95. Or use the store locator to find Willie's on shelves near you. Like your local Total Wine, Specs, ABC, or local liquor store. Let's get back to the show. And before we get back into the show, football season is back. Back. Yes. We can all stop pretending to care about politics. Yes. Thank the Lord. We have 18 straight weeks of actually caring about something that is important in the world. Knicks in five. I think it's going to be Knicks in five. Don't you wish the Knicks just played every sport? Because I feel like that's the only thing you guys really get excited about. We would do better this season if we had the Knicks on the field. I think so. Who do New Yorkers even like? You guys like the Jets or something? Depends. On what? Depends. Whichever one plays better. I go worse. Jets or Giants, whoever's worse. I mean, what team's colors go best for you? I go blue. You go blue. Giants. Giants all day. I'm going for 49ers. I'm going for the 49ers this year. They've won me over. It's the team I've read about the most so far. It's like this year, it's the team that I've been the most invested in. Do you know the owner the same week got a handjob and got arrested at a massage parlor? Apparently, we were a part of the PSYOP. Yeah, you kill a story with a story. Because now every time somebody Googles 49ers, they're going to hear about this other dude instead of the owner. They got us, but then we got you back. What are these owners getting handjobs? Didn't the Patriots owner also get a handjob? Man, why can't they get that? Why can't they get that? Just buy some pussy. They are. That's the point. That's what they're doing. No, but the handjobs. They're not from their wives. How do you think they're getting the handjobs? They can't even risk it. Yeah. Also, it's just like a, whatever. It's a completion thing. Do you know what I mean? Speaking of football. How can you really be relaxed? Yeah. All right, so who do we think is going to win the Super Bowl, honestly? I mean, Kelsey's got the Rams. They got them at 15%. But I think we need to go all in right now. Yeah, where are the Giants? Oh, they're way, oh, keep going. 2%. And then Jets? Even lower. Less than 1%. Wow. But you could come up. You could come up. How could you be negative 1%? Less than 1%. But if you put a dollar on that, you make a trillion dollars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the math on that? Yeah, I think you just win. You win everything. You become Elon Musk tomorrow. So all that that means is there's not even somebody willing to take on your trade. There's no trade volume. Yeah. Whoa. Damn. Yeah, that's impressive. Nah, that's the one. Yeah. I think we got to do that. Right? I'm going Jets. Yeah, now I'm all in on Jets. I'm going Jets. Become the richest guy in the world? Ever. Yeah. Yeah, that's fire. I mean, what's the likelihood that an asteroid hits the world? Is it higher than that? It's more likely that the world doesn't exist than the Jets win the Super Bowl. Yo, that's crazy. That's crazy, right? That is crazy. Kind of impressive. But also, yeah. Like, I do believe that there's a higher likelihood of an asteroid hitting than the Jets win it. Yeah. Because I can't see a course of action. The Jets could possibly win. But I can see an asteroid hitting the Earth. You can see God resetting this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems more likely. That God's like, hey, this is run amok. We've got to fix this. Yeah, that's sad, bro. Yeah. That's sad. But I would love for the Jets to win just so they can clip this moment of you being like, I don't see it. And then to see that go viral. It's happened before. That's happened before. Jets, if it happens for you, you're welcome. Okay? I want tickets to that Super Bowl. If you guys get there. Anyway, let's get back to this show, boys. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights and Cool Summer. You get free nights every night all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first-of-its-kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights and Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Energy. Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. Okay, what's the other one? The other one. This one is better because the conclusion's a little bit harder, but it lands in the same domain. This one's more recent, too. So in 2018, there's this guy, Danny Philippitis. Have you heard this name? Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Okay, great. It's a great story. Yeah, I wouldn't Google it because it'll give it away. So Danny Philippitis, he's a 40-something-year-old firefighter in Canada, and he and his firefighter buddies every year have this. They have this trip where they go to Whiteface Mountain in upstate New York to go skiing. It's like their retreat. They go there. They drink. They party. They have a great time with their family. And so in 2018, they have this trip. They go to Whiteface Mountain, and it's going great. You know, good day skiing up on the mountain. And at some point during the day, there's a ski lodge that's like halfway up the mountain, or maybe it's a little restaurant or something. But the group of them, like 12 of them, they decide to stop and take a minute and get a cup of coffee or whatever. They go in the lodge. And Danny is like, oh, shoot. I left my, I think it was a cell phone or his wallet, down at the main lodge down below. I have to go get it. So I'll be right back. And so they're like, all right, cool, dude. So he takes off. They see him ski down the mountain, and he's a good skier. You know, this is an easy stretch from here down, right? But he doesn't come back up. And at first, the guys that he was with weren't like, oh, my God, where's Danny? It was just sort of like, oh, what an asshole. Like, he sort of blew us off. Like, he's doing something else, right? But over the course of the day, they can't find Danny. They're calling Danny. He's not picking up. They're talking to his wife, who was there. She doesn't know where he is. No one's seen him, but no one's really worried yet. It's broad daylight. There's been no reports of accidents or anything. Like, he's got to be here. But by the end of the day, as it's like time to wrap up, and they were staying there overnight. They had stayed, and they were all staying in the hotel that was right at the base of the mountain. They're like, man, like, where is he? And they're like, you know what we should do? Let's just go to his room. He probably just, like, got tired, went to his room. And so they walk over. This is the whole group, wife, everybody. They walk over, and they see his car is still in the parking lot. And they go up to his room. His wife had a key. It was their room. Actually, I think it was separate. Either way, they go in. Danny's not in there. But all of the things that he would carry on his person were his phone, his wallet. Like, he had a knife that he always carried. Like, all the things that you would take with you, like, he left them all in the room. But Danny's not in there. And so now it's like, now really what happened to Danny? There's no good reason for this. And so they tell the mountain, like, this is a big deal. The police get involved. And that night, a storm rolls in, and the police go out looking for this guy. And, you know, the search was sort of futile because of how bad the weather was. And so they end up packing it up for the night. And they're like, we'll just come back in the morning. We'll try to get the mountain to stop operations so we can really look for him. Chances are good if he, you know, makes it through the night, we'll find him tomorrow. Next day comes around. Mountain is like, no, we're going to run operations. It's peak season. We're not doing that. Like, there's been no reports of any injury. Like, you guys got to look on your own. So with a very crowded mountain, which made the search really difficult, they're looking for Danny. They're asking anybody, do you have footage of this guy? Here's what he looks like. They're asking for anybody that might have taken photos of the parking lot to see if maybe he left at some point, anything. And, like, they've got no usable leads. And so that day, and I think two more days, these were all the days that the whole group was still going to be in New York. There's this search that's happening on this very crowded mountain. Danny doesn't show up. And then comes the last day. They're checking out of their hotel. There's no sign of Danny. No one can find him. And they are like, well, we have to go back to Canada. You know, our lives go on. So they go back to Canada. And they're in touch with police in New York. And they're carrying on the search. But they just, they can't, they can't find Danny. But they're like, don't worry. We're going to keep looking. Like, we're not losing faith. But over the coming days, it's like the family sort of realizes very likely at this point Danny's dead. I mean, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where he's not dead if he was somewhere out on the mountain. Don't know why, but that's, that's. That's the reality. But seven days after he goes missing. So from the day, you know, things started getting weird. His wife is back home in Canada. And she gets a phone call. And it's fucking Danny. And she answers the phone. And Danny's like, I don't know why I'm calling you. But I know this number. Like, how do I know you? And she knows it's his voice. And she's like, oh, my God, Danny, is that you? And he's like, yeah, I think my name's Danny. He's like really confused. But he knew this number. And she, through this very broken conversation, comes to find out, according to Danny, that he's in Sacramento, California. So, like, thousands of miles away from Whiteface. Very far away from Canada, too. And so their conversation ends up getting broken up. And he hangs up or something. But he had imparted to her Sacramento and airport. Those things came out of his mouth. And so she immediately calls police. And the police are actually in New York. And she tells them they get in touch with the police in Sacramento. And they're like, go to the airport. And see if you can find this guy. He's, maybe he's got a head injury or something. We don't know. And so they go to the airport. And they find Danny really quickly. Because Danny is wearing ski gear. Top to bottom. Walking around the airport. Ski boots. Ski pants. Ski top. He's still at his helmet on. Goggles. But, like, you know how people are when they see really crazy people. We just ignore them. Completely ignore them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to engage with you at all. And so Danny's just wandering around the airport in full ski gear. And then, inexplicably, he also had a haircut. Although, he didn't have a haircut. He didn't have his phone. He had a new phone. He had a phone that he had recently bought, an iPhone. He had $1,000 cash. He had no bank transactions whatsoever over those seven days. But he had new credit cards. And he had no idea how he got there. And they scoop him up. And they bring him back to Canada. And they, like, do all this testing on him. And he kind of, like, comes back to reality, if you will. He had no brain damage. He didn't show any drug use. Like, he's OK now. But he has no fucking clue. How he got off the mountain. How he inexplicably traveled to California. Got a haircut. They asked all the barbers in Sacramento, did you give the guy in ski gear a haircut? No one knew how he got the haircut. They checked the stores that sold iPhones. No one knew. The only thing he said is he thought maybe he hit his head. But he was like, I don't even know. I might just be saying that because it seems to answer the question of what happened to me. And he remembers being--he was sleeping somewhere that he thought might have been a truck. But they interviewed all these truck drivers that drove in that airport. area and not one person recalled, a man in ski gear sleeping in their cabin but danny has fully recovered he's fully he the other thing that's funny is danny was super uh collaborative with the new york state police because they were sort of embarrassed that they that danny shows up after this huge effort to find him it was like wait a minute so danny in ski gear is just wandering around sacramento you missed that one and so new york was like trying to save face the state police and danny was like doing interviews being like i want to know what happened i don't know what happened and like the state police were like yeah he he talks to us constantly he's giving us everything he can but we have no idea what happened how long was he away for it was a week sometimes that's all you need as a dad man sometimes that's all you need the reset dude yeah exactly like women will just kill their kids but men we just need a fugue state we need a week away in sacramento california just to get our head together and then we're back and locked up yeah he's he's a changed man yeah exactly that's really all you need is just a little bit of a break yeah oh yeah we got to investigate the family and see what was going on yeah how many kids no bank transactions no no how to get the money no one knows how did you get without your car to sacramento you don't think that he planned like when we're going on the ski trip and then he just left you don't think he knew exactly where he was going hitting a fugue state real exactly i'm hitting a few i'm handling a fugue state i got a thousand bucks that i took out my wife don't even know about okay right and now i'm in sacramento where can you go where for sure she won't come this is fantastic and then he had to like make it obvious he had to like buy a fucking ski outfit in sacramento he called his wife he's like they're really not gonna find me he was getting tired yeah yeah yeah did they go through like planes like they can see if he flew right police they you can tell they wanted to show they tried really hard because it seems like you just sort of missed the guy yeah but no they did all these press conferences where they're like he has been nothing but collaborative and we don't have a good explanation holy shit that's what we do man there's a lot of dads that went on a fugue say yeah i'm gonna plan one of these all right mark believes in demons oh nice nice he believes in them though like yeah so any stories you have with demons he he he watches them and he goes this is proof that what i already believe is real well i've never seen one i've never seen one but i do i don't want to see one because i think i think that's a fair position no that is a fair position i don't know the crazy thing is with covering so many stories is i i don't know sometimes whether someone's perspective is true and we're talking about like demon stories a lot of times you're dealing with somebody's perspective which whether true or not like it's their perspective they're saying this is what happened to me um but oftentimes the stories that are the most compelling are people that are almost in denial that it happened to them but they didn't want it to be true they're looking for an out yeah people that want you to see the demon in their story are people that are harder to believe yeah or if there's an outside observer like there was this one uh yeah or an outside observer there was this one and this is this is a story that to be honest i don't know uh i think it's a creepy story nonetheless but it i don't know if he even falls into demon or not but there was this this wildland firefighter out in i think it was iowa um he was a smoke jumper you know what those guys are they jump into the fire high speed dudes yeah those guys are like special operations firefighters they're very cool so they jump in uh i think it was this huge fire in iowa and where they landed apparently was like not the ideal drop zone and so one thing led to another and one of the firefighters who who ends up telling the story i think his name is mike he uh he sees there's a property that's like sort of nearby and there's an atv that's outside that he was able to turn on and there's an access road and for whatever reason this is off the cuff here he knows that if he takes this atv and and like like blazes down this off for this this road over here he can apparently get a vantage point on the fire that is really valuable to make sense of where they need to go next so like strategically if i just go down this road i can grab this atv take a look come back and we can make a decision so his team they're relatively safe they stay in this like field waiting to see what's going to happen mike's like this will be super quick and so he hops on the atv and he takes off into this forest and it's like a logging road or not a logging road it's an access road but it's very densely forested on either side and so he's burning down this trail he's it's broad daylight he's he's not thinking about anything other than this fire but he he said that he started hearing these screeching sounds coming from out in the woods like really distinct screeching sounds and i think he has a lot of experience with these things and i think it's really interesting to see how he's been able to do that and i think it's really interesting to see how he's been able to do that and i think it's really interesting to see how he's been able to do that and he's been able to do that and i think he's been able to do that and i think he's been able to do that and i think he's been able to do that and i think he's been able to do that and i think he's been able to do that and to the point where he stopped on his atv to just listen and he's got places to go and he's stopping to listen to this thing but he couldn't hear anything and so he's driving along he's driving along and then he sees what is it i think it's a cougar a mountain lion that's what it was so he ends up seeing a mountain lion and mountain lions apparently make a really bizarre screeching noise i think it's a mountain lion i guarantee i think i'm like 99 sure it's a mountain lion they sound like like women screaming okay then there you go okay perfect then this is the right animal so he sees this cougar this mountain lion it comes bolting up onto this branch that's sitting over the trail he's on it's pretty high up but it's a branch that's just overhanging and it's this mountain lion and it's perched and it's staring right at mike as he stopped looking around for it he sees this thing and he's like oh my god it's a mountain lion and he's like oh my god he's like oh fuck like that's it's kind of gnarly i'm in the middle of nowhere this mountain lion staring at me but he knew he can just blaze right through it he's on his atv it is what it is so he stares at this thing he's fairly convinced that has to be the sounds i was hearing although he couldn't really tell if there was more than one he drives underneath the uh the screech the mountain lion and the mountain lion doesn't do anything it turns around and watches him but mike carries on down the trail and then he eventually reaches where he can tell the trail is bending too far in the wrong direction it's not going to put him in the position where he can get a good look at this fire or the smoke or whatever he needed he could just tell this was a good idea but i'm pretty much gonna have to turn around and go back but right at that point he notices that off the road on the other side like tucked away in the woods is this cabin and there this is protected land there shouldn't have been anything built out here that wasn't official like parkland and so it just seemed odd that there looked to be a cabin that somebody was living in this didn't look like a facilities building and so he he thinks that's weird enough that he stops and he gets off and he goes over to just tell him that there's a cabin there's a fire you gotta get out of here so he walks up to this cabin which is again it's right in the middle of a pretty thick forest and he sees that right away it looks like it's in bad bad repair like it's badly beaten up on the outside it's got glass windows that are intact but the door which is like this old heavy door has a fresh padlock on it and the padlock's been snapped like it's like a it looks like someone had like screwed on a brand new like with the padlock and the lock is is either on the ground or it snapped but it looked like it had been forced open but the door is still shut and he's like that's weird that's all this is weird he's thinking maybe somebody like had to break the lock to go inside to make sure like nobody was in here like what's going on he goes up to the window and he looks inside and he sees that there's like you know clearly like furniture and there's like chairs there's no one in there but it looks lived in someone's definitely living here it's not a facilities building and he's like man that's that's that's fucking weird like there's no one in there and he's like oh my god there's no one in there this whole thing is just weird to me but he's like you know no big deal i i just gotta go back like this it just doesn't concern me so he hops back on his atv he's stopping quite a bit he's wasting a lot of time here and he goes back up the trail and he starts hearing that screeching sound again but he knows like it's probably that fucking mountain lion he turns the corner and as he's driving expecting to look up and see the mountain lion probably still on the branch he sees that there is something on the branch but it's not a mountain lion it's a woman a woman who was perched on the branch she was looking at him and she's vocalizing the sound that he's been hearing she's she's like screeching into the air native native american like it looked indigenous yeah it looks something like that and so he he sees her and he's so scared because he's like what the fuck is this that he just blazes right underneath it and like she turns around and she's watching him from the branch almost like she's an animal on the branch and he drives off he reconnects with his team and they ended up actually not even going in the fight the fire they had landed in such a bad spot yeah they were pulled out but so that story in and of itself creepy but the dude his team they had to stay in that area because they had to go back out like the next day to actually go try to quell this fire yeah and so he goes to a local tavern this guy mike and he's just like he's got this crazy story about like this fucking weirdo out in the middle of the cabin the screeching lady and he sits down next to this guy a local and he starts talking about this this fire and he doesn't bring up the lady he just has this story in his mind and at some point mike talks to this guy how he's a firefighter and that the area they were in in in the forest was over here we need to go over here and the guy's like oh you were over in whatever the name of it is that section of the the park and he's like yeah yeah yeah it's the wrong spot the fire was over here so we got to go tomorrow over here and he's like oh have you heard the story of like what's out there and he's like what do you mean and he's like oh yeah like apparently there's this there's a cabin out there and there's apparently a skin walker which is like this old native folklore thing about this woman who can shape shift who lives in the cabin out there and everyone says you don't go out to that part of the forest because there's a skin walker out there but that's probably bullshit you know what i mean and mike was like holy shit i think i saw a skin walker mark will believe these I believe it's Native American. Sure. And I believe they're capable of being animals or whatever. Wait, what? What do you mean, like spirit animals? Yeah, like they can be whatever their name is. Like Screeching Lady. Screeching Lady or Cougar Foot or whatever their things are. So I believe they're capable of doing that sort of shape-shifting. Probably should have done that a few hundred years ago. Yep. Maybe should have shape-shifted into a gun or something. That would have been helpful. But now that we're here, you know, you shape-shift into a cougar or whatever and you scare the people away. That's right. Who knows what the screeching was? Could have been a rain dance. Yeah. That's how you get rid of the fire. I feel like that's the angle no one's considering. That's actually super smart. What happened to the fire, guys? It didn't seem like the fire was a priority in that story. Yeah. It really felt like it was down the list. How did he stop so many times? And heavy rainfall came immediately after and put the fire out? Immediately. He protected the cabin? Let her cook. Damn. Let her cook. Now, you believe in skinwalkers. Well, hold on. Hold on. I don't know if I believe in skinwalkers. Is there anything you don't believe in? The true story about 9-11? But that's not here or there, okay? That's not here or there. I'm talking about, like, demons might be out there and might be doing some fishy stuff. Maybe. I've never seen one, but people be talking about it. I believe in demons. Why not, dude? What about, like, the Ammons haunting? Latoya Ammons? You know about that. I don't know about that one. No. I mean, this one's corroborated by a nurse and a doctor. Stop smiling like that, dude. This is serious, scary stuff. Okay, go, go. Where is this? I think it's in Indiana. Okay. Or, like, Illinois, maybe out near Chicago. I mean, I can pull up all the. Is this the one. Let's see your storytelling skin right now. I don't want to spoil it, but is this, like, the house that is, like, very famous for what happened in there in Indiana, that, like, some crazy stuff was actually corroborated to have happened in that house? That's why it's weird to me, dude. It became a movie. It became Deliverance. Deliverance. Oh! Wait, squeal like a pig. Not Deliverance. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The Deliverance 2024 American Supernatural Horror Film? It came out in 2024. No, that's not a Supernatural Horror Film. Wrong Deliverance. Yeah. Different Deliverance. The Deliverance we're thinking about is the Appalachian Mountains. Not that one. That's the 70s. Not that one. The Deliverance. The guitar riffs immediately. Yeah, that's the one. So, this is 2011. Latoya Ammons is living in a house with three kids. They're describing poltergeist activity. Okay. They get a priest over there. They got all these people who go over there and start trying to exorcise these demons. Yeah. And they're getting weird stuff. Doorknobs are shaking. Hearing creaking. Typical kind of ghost activity. Well, could it be the baby daddy? Maybe he goes. I think they dimpled it up. Why would you assume baby daddy based off the story and the names? Just saying. It's possible, right? All these things are possible. Her name's Latoya Ammons, and you're assuming a lot and inferencing a lot about who she is. I thought she was native. We don't know anything about her background. Yeah. As socioeconomic status or race. Probably a great, great granddaughter of Samuel. Samuel who? Samuel Adams. Okay. Maybe. Yeah, that's where I was going with it. I said Ammons, but I like where your head's at. All right. That works too. Hey. All right. Go on. And the reason why it's weird to me is that according to the story, I'd see you already have this unbelievable habit. What do you want me to do? I don't know. Just bend this belief and just kind of just be like, oh, demons are real. Okay. You should do a Ouija board. Okay. I wouldn't do that. Oh, why not? Because I'm superstitious. How is that different than demons? It's very different. It's the same. No, because it's like, it could happen. That's how I feel. I don't feel that way about demons. It could. If you do a Ouija board right now, what happens? Bad luck exists. Demons, I don't know if that exists. You've seen bad luck before. You've seen someone miss a field goal they should hit. Yeah, fair. Probably caused by demons. It could be demonic, dude. If demons are related, maybe. I just don't even know. I don't even understand what a demon is. It's too conceptual for me. Well. Anyway, tell your story about Latoya Ammons and her three children and the ghost. According to the story. Yeah. The nurse that was there reported two child protective services. So they get moved to the hospital because they think that maybe the kids are having like epileptic episodes or some type of like material type of medical cause that's causing these children to act and behave strangely. Because doctors and nurses and even child protective services are going to the house and the kids are like growling. Their eyes are rolling back on their head. They're behaving very strangely. What would seem like demonic possession. So they get moved to a hospital. At the hospital. This is where? This is in Illinois. No, this is in Indiana. This is in Indiana. United States of America. Recently. First world country. The doctor that's there and the nurse both independently report that the child, in their words, I could find the New York Post article, climbed up the wall, did a flip, and then they had to restrain the child. And they reported this. To the police. Medical personnel that are not necessarily stitious. Asian? What are you talking about? I see you guys on the fucking six train do this all the time. This is like a very normal. Showtime. Showtime. Back flip on the subway. This is a very normal occurrence. Okay. And they corroborate the story. They eventually move out of the house. And then the haunting stops. And then the house gets demolished. To this day, the nurse and the doctor still maintain the story that the child did something that was inexplicable and supernatural. Such as climbing up the wall. What was the reason? Who knows? Maybe they're athletic. Maybe they did a little flip. We don't know the whole story. But all I'm saying is it could be demonic. Who knows? I don't know if it is. You don't know either. That's the point. But if you were a demon, that's what you would make a kid do? Well, you're commanded by the spiritual domain. Yeah, but what I'm saying is, as a demon, the worst thing that you can make a kid do is a back flip off of a wall? I don't know what demons are up to. They're instilling fear, and then they're feeding off the fear. Yeah, but wouldn't you make them sew together? Sew together clothing and sneakers. It's like a kickflip. It's like doing a kickflip. Yeah, but there's also that potential. What I'm saying is there's way better things that you can make a kid do. Demons aren't concerned with capitalism, dude. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. When your friend gets cheated on and upgrades immediately after the breakup, do you know what that is? That's a power move. Just like hiring Morgan & Morgan, that's a power move. Morgan & Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. Okay? They have over. 100 offices nationwide, more than 1,000 lawyers, with over $30 billion recovered for over 500,000 clients. Morgan & Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. 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What are your feelings? not getting into it well i'll say this i'll say that that was a huge proponent of why i wanted to join the military so played a massive outsized role in my life and then i found when i came home from afghanistan not immediately but years later i'm like hmm things don't feel that connected anymore so but neither here nor there the reason that story stuck with me is i actually didn't really expect i didn't really expect the 9-11 story it's something that's been so prevalent it was all over the news we watched it in real time there's been so many documentaries it's talked about relentlessly and that's great but it's like it's it's not something that would be necessarily shocking but there was this one guy who now i feel bad that i don't remember his name but there's only one story i covered like this where i i broke from the model that i had been using this is like back in 2022 where basically the only stories i would tell was the one that i had been using was the one that i had been using and i had been where if i could find like reliable source material and i don't need to talk to the people involved great if i can but i can just do the research on my own because i need to turn this around in like a day yeah and so really just from this this the space of doing it quickly but i read this guy's pov in a magazine from having been in i think the north tower and he and i read this guy's pov in a magazine from having been in i think the north tower and he devastating accounts of of the attack because it wasn't really about the actual attack it was about what were people doing inside of the building and the i read it and then i spoke to him and i got more context and he's not someone that did interviews this is a singular time that he'd been pushed to tell the story he uh he has this part where he describes what it was like to see people jumping um he had made it down to the lobby before the tower collapsed and he's looking out at the other tower and he's like i don't know what's going on and he's like i don't know what's going on and he's like i don't know what's going on and he's like i don't know what's going on and he's like and um i'm probably getting the details a little bit wrong but he was there as impact people are hitting the ground and the way he described it was not like the gruesomeness of it he talked about i looked up and i like he described seeing people in their last moments they're falling to their death and there are these people these mothers and fathers who have like went to work that day and like it's just a normal day for them and now they're leaping to their death in their final act it's like this one woman as she's falling she's pushing her skirt down as she's tumbling towards the ground and he just said it was like people are they were put in the most impossible situation and to just see them making that choice and watching them end their lives over and over and over again he was like a handsome you know to this day and so i think that like when i told the story a lot of it was about his perspective of watching people jump to their deaths and when you think about people ending their lives a lot of times it feels like it's over there it's some story but this felt like intimate and it felt like something we all you know for better or worse experienced because we were i certainly was alive for 9-11 and i've watched that stuff on tv and it was like you're seeing a side of it that's the really human side and i think about like somebody who just goes to work drop their kids off at daycare goes to work and then that day your choices either burn to death or jump out to your death and then your last moment you're holding your skirt down before you die it's just like really striking yeah so the little details are are the most brutal brutal i weirdly feel the same way when i read about pompeii i've not read much about pompeii it's my bro by the way i saw people jump out really yeah he was down there at school he was like in middle school or something like that then like he went to like call the family because you're you know everybody gets to go to the payphone i guess the payphone was like near you know window or the entry to school or whatever but like yeah holy shit dude crazy damn crazy the loudest snack ever by the way yeah i was thinking they were you my mic what's up it's the loudest jim he's telling the saddest story ever well i got i guess i'm starving dude i had a overnight oath but they can just mute my mic what are you doing what are you doing with these cords over here michael wright if i'm not mistaken michael wright oh is he okay i mean he's okay in the sense that he lived i think no that was his name michael wright yes did you look that up yeah that's michael wright you should read it his his perspective is crazy the article he did is crazy but i i have a i have a a clicky that that is it is that is way better on is that disrespectful yes to the victims in 9-11 to be crunching on popcorners and our guests no dude eat away this is we're by the fucking bonfire this is chill dude honestly it's probably weird to tell these epic stories without the crunch of a graham cracker or the chew of a marshmallow i'm trying to supplement that right now with some popcorners describing the most horrific day of modern america people are eating during 9-11 i mean they can't stop what's lost those are guys selling falafel and celebrating that morning okay no that's that's racist no that's probably wasn't celebrating he was fucking furious about it 9-11 is a couple days away bro i don't know this comes wait again i don't know this comes wait again i'm trying to supplement that right now with some popcorn stop it out wait what the hell listen we were there if you were there and you endured it you get to eat whatever you want to tell those stories if you're not from there yeah obviously you know treat it with a little bit of respect but like if you were there and you endured it we endured it yeah it gives you eating rights the loudest what about a soft snack what about just a marshmallow you could do a marshmallow then they win then the terrorists win because why do they hit us because of our freedom i'm not free to have a popcorn i'm not free to devour a pop corner while you tell these stories of gravity the crunch you can hear don't listen to it don't eat it a sad story no just mute my mic unless i'm chewing they need to turn that bitch as high as it goes that popcorn is commercial view at a funeral and someone's giving a eulogy and you just hear good for every occasion a crunch for every occasion that's a great commercial oh god all right wait all right so go go absolute yeah we have a good good easy nice one uh yeah so there's this one yeah yeah we're not going nice this one this one doesn't feel nice though okay it ends up having a really startling and surprising end okay do you need special effects crunching sound i'm here for it so this uh i like dark and fucked up yeah this this feels like that you'll see the direction it goes is not that but it feels that way the whole time you'll see it's a good one so there's this lady ellie lobel who in the 90s she's like this high powered attorney she lives in connecticut with her husband and two kids and she's just like living the american dream right she's she's making good money she's like moving up in her firm where is she what part of this connecticut i don't know i don't know what part of connecticut connecticut so she's a big health enthusiast in addition to working a bunch she's a big health enthusiast and one day after her run she comes home and she just feels a little bit off she's a little sick um she uh she ends up like going to work as is the next couple of days but over the next couple of days you just you can't shake this this malaise that's come over her that she kind of attributes to when she went on this run and uh so she ends up going to the doctor and the doctor's like oh you know you're overworked you just gotta take some time off you know you're like there's nothing wrong with you you just gotta you just gotta rest and she's like i don't know like i feel i definitely feel physically ill i don't feel overworked but it's so bad i'll i already took the last couple of days and didn't really work much i just take the week off so she takes the rest of the week off and her symptoms don't really get worse but they don't get better and she just she just doesn't feel good and so she is again like a very high-powered lawyer like she doesn't want to take more time off she also feels a little bit embarrassed that her symptoms are not so pronounced that it's easy to point to what's wrong with her it's like yeah i just don't feel good and so she like goes back to work after a week but she's just like fumbling around at work she can't focus and she's being told by her boss like hey you know go take a little more time you're you're doing a lot of work and she's like yeah i just don't feel fine here you're in good standing and so she takes more time off she goes to see more doctors and really no one's giving her any like concrete sort of diagnosis it's all like well you know maybe when you went on the run you overdid it and it taxed your system whatever it's all this stuff around like you just need to rest that's what everyone's saying but she's like yeah like what did you say tick bite you never know dude so she's like totally fucked up and she can't seem to like figure out what's wrong no doctor has been able to give her anything and months go on and it just never really gets better and she ultimately has to take time away from work for so long that she ends up doing i guess a furlough or whatever she ends up like leaving her firm and like at the same time for her kids and her husband it became sort of awkward for them because no one really believed outside of the family that there was something seriously wrong with her it just sort of seemed like she was faking it to a degree which you know that's just the way people felt and so they're everyone's like awkward about it and she's like taking time off and then her and her husband actually get into a really big fight about it and they get divorced over over this spat they're having they were already struggling so they get divorced and then like the kids who are like teenagers they sort of side the dad not aggressively but they're like come on mom you gotta get your shit together and so before long like ellie's living alone she's not working anymore she's still a lawyer but she's not practicing and like her whole life is sort of falling apart all around her but her reaction is well i still feel horrible all the time i really just need to solve this problem i need to solve this problem i need to solve this I gotta figure out what's wrong with me. And so she, you know, goes to all these specialists. And again, still, no matter who she goes to, no one give her anything. And for years, it just persists. Her life just gets worse and worse and worse over time. And the symptoms never get horrible, but they're always there. She's always, like, you know, lethargic and sore. And so she basically loses her whole life. Her life has just gone down the tubes. And, you know, her kids, they're sort of estranged from her at this point. And her husband's moved on. And she's single. And at about, I think it was like the 15-year mark from when this all began, she began going into much more serious symptoms or symptoms that she assumed were the same ones she's had. Like, they got worse, this mystery illness she had. And she began showing signs of organ failure. Like, and she was going to the doctor. And they were like, we don't really know. This does seem pretty serious now. Still don't know what it is. And they told her, like, we don't know what to tell you, but you're showing signs that you could be shutting down here. Unfortunately, you're in your 50s. But, unfortunately, that's the end. That's going to be the end for you. And they gave her all these options for basically palliative care or hospice care because at this point they didn't even know how to treat her. Wow. And, you know, it's like she's devastated. But in a way, she actually was so bitter about the way her life had gone that she was actually sort of relieved at the prospect of, fuck this, like, I'll just die. I'm done. So over the coming days, you know, she decides, I'm actually going to lean into this. Like, end-of-life position I'm taking. And so she doesn't tell her husband or her kids. She just up and moves to this house in Southern California because that was, like, her favorite place in the world and she had not gotten back for years. She goes to this house and she rents it out. And she hires an end-of-life care person whose job is to be with you when you die. So take care of your affairs. And she gives them the instructions of, like, I'm just going to go to this house. You know, she's very frail at this point. She needs help moving around. And I'm just. I'm just going to die there. And I want you to just allow me to die. And so they're like, okay. They go to the house. And she literally gets to the house and climbs into bed and just waits to die. And she's, like, laying in bed, you know, waiting to die. And for three days she lays there. You know, it wasn't clear if she was this close to death. But it felt like she was close. And she doesn't die. For three days she just doesn't die. And at that point she's like, well, I'm going to take a break from active dying. I'm going to go out and take a quick walk. You know, and she tells her care person to come with her and go for a quick walk. And then he'll come back and I'll die. So out the door they go. And it's a beautiful day. And they're walking very slowly because he has a supporter. And they're walking down this road. And on the right side there's this wooden fence and this beautiful field full of flowers. And it's just, like, gorgeous, beautiful day. And Ellie is so struck by the beauty of this field. And just like the flowers, she stops. And she's like, I'm going to just look at the field for a minute and take it in, you know. And so she's just looking at the field and the care person's next to her. And at some point, Ellie, hears a buzzing sound above her head. And she looks up and she sees there's a bee over her head, which is, you know, if you're near flowers, it's not that weird. But the bee was pretty big. But Ellie's like, okay, whatever. Goes back to looking at the field. And then a second later, she hears, like, a much louder buzzing sound. And she looks up and she sees it's a swarm of what would actually be these African killer bees, which are, like, the really nasty ones. And almost, like, for no reason, they just swoop down and they start stinging Ellie Lobel. So, predominantly, on her face, over and over and over again, she falls to the ground. She's getting attacked by these bees. And the care person just turns and runs, just bails. Is she a little bit overweight? She was, like, riddled with this mystery illness and couldn't reasonably run. She sort of, like, collapses to the ground. And so the care person, he bolts. Yeah. And so she's getting stung. But then the care person, he realizes this is, like, an ethical dilemma. I mean, you're the end-of-life care person, but this seems pretty fucked up. So he comes back and he scoops her up and he's running with her now to get her back to the house. And she's telling him through all these bee stings now, she's like, don't take me to the hospital. Let me die. Put me back in bed. And so he rushes her in the house. He puts her in the bed. And she's just like, well, at least now I'll die faster. I might have an allergic reaction to this. And so she's laying in the bed with a puffed-up face from getting stung all these times. And for the next few days, she doesn't die. She actually starts to get better. Not hugely better, but a little better. And she is not thinking, oh, it's a miracle. I'm magically cured. She's like, what is going on here? Like, that, if nothing else, should have shocked my system and likely, like, put it into overdrive. Probably killed me. You know, why didn't it? And so she starts doing research. And she discovers there was this really obscure study that was done in Australia in the 90s. And it was about the effects of Lyme disease. Ticks, Lyme disease. And they had concluded that very likely certain bee venom could cure Lyme disease. It was unethical to run the trial. So they never actually stung somebody with end-stage Lyme disease to see if it would cure them. And so Ellie Lobel accidentally conducted the study on herself. It worked. Fully cured. Made a complete recovery. And now Ellie Lobel tours the country advocating for bee stings for Lyme disease patients. Whoa. Didn't Lyme disease get. She got bit by a tick on a run. That wasn't already apparent. But the tick, like, Lyme disease is even manufactured, right? Isn't that like a lab. Well, that's the story. It's kind of conspiratorial. I don't know. We're getting into conspiracy land. But it comes from, like, Lyme, Connecticut or whatever. I actually have no idea where it comes from. All I know is ticks can give it to you. Yeah, but it's like. I mean, the conspiracy is that the CIA is developing a way, you know, some sort of bioweapon and it leaks. But it's interesting that it. This. She gets bitten in Connecticut. Oh. Weird. Yeah, because isn't Lyme Connecticut? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A place? That's weird. That's weird, actually. That's where it's named after. It's all connecting. Yeah. That's wild. So now do they do this as therapy? I believe that she is one of the main reasons that that is now an. That's a treatment plan. You can get stung by bees if you have Lyme disease. Whoa. And so she doesn't just tour the country advocating. She, like, gives speeches about it. Whoa. Yeah. I got to put my sister on this because I think she got Lyme. Ellie Lobel, dude. She got Lyme? She's cool. Oh, really? Oh, that's so funny. That's why I was like. I was hearing some of the symptoms, like, yep. Check it out. Ellie Lobel. She's, like, famous in the Lyme disease world. Okay. Okay. One more banger. I know we've gone on for a while, but this has been very interesting. A banger, and then we go. I got one. I don't know if it's a banger, but it's a good one. It's a demon-centric. It's quite good. If nothing else, it's a fucking weird story. Okay. So there's this dude. Actually, before I do that, let me think if there's a better one to tell. Because I have a few that I have to stash. Well, you can go. We can go more than one. Like, we need. But we need a fucking. I got a quick one. A quick one, and then we'll do the demon one. Free throw line. Dunk. There was this cave out in South Africa called the Sterkfontein Cave. It's an underground cave, but what was noteworthy about it is there was this huge underground lake within this cave. So imagine. I think you really come up to this hole in the ground, this nondescript hole in the ground that looks like a manhole, and you go down into it. And probably people are going to chew me out for being wrong about this, but you basically go underground, and it opens up to this. Like, huge, like, lake. And there's separation from the surface of the lake to the underside of, I guess, like, the ground, the floor, whatever. But it's like you're looking out at almost like an indoor swimming pool, if that makes sense. It's huge. And I believe they put lights down there because it's a really. You look it up. Sterkfontein Cave. S-T-E-R-K-F-O-N-T-E-I-N. Sterkfontein Cave in South Africa. Whoa, this looks crazy. Let me see that. Let me see that. Okay. All right, so Sterkfontein Cave. This is back, I think it was in the 80s or 90s. South Africa. South Africa. Right there. That's a good one. That's a good way to look at it. So they call the inside of this cave Swiss cheese because underwater. And also, so you can do two types of caving in this cave. There's wet caving and dry caving. Wet is just cave diving, scuba gear, go underwater, search the caves, or just walking around and splunk in other parts of it. Anyways, it was very popular. And there were these three guys, Peter Verhussel and then his two buddies, that came to Sterkfontein Cave, I think in like the 80s or 90s. I think it was whatever. Either way, to go wet caving, to go cave diving. And this was something that they did on a fairly regular occasion. They're the crazy dudes that would like go in these crazy underground. Yeah, crazy. Just retarded these people. And so this one in particular, it was called Swiss cheese because as you went down, there was like sort of a main cavity that went straight down in the water. And there was a guideline. That was anchored to the, I think the ceiling that went straight down. So you could always hold it and get back up. But as you go down, there's all these holes like everywhere that could branch off into like miles long tunnels that hadn't been explored or they dead ended like six feet away that you didn't know. And so the allure of Sterkfontein Cave for cave divers is if you wanted to, you could leave the guideline and go explore uncharted territory in the water. And now, not that I've done any cave diving, but having covered quite a few cave diving stories, it's sort of a known thing that you never let go of the guideline. You actually will clip yourself onto the guideline if you. Because have you done any scuba diving in like not a pool? Like silt gets kicked up, see ya. You can't see. It ain't going away anytime soon. You can't even tell which one's up. You can't do a flashlight, nothing. You have to like release bubbles to figure out where it is. Yes. So it's really to protect you in those types of environments. There's a famous picture actually in Florida. If you want to look it up, there's like do underwater cave, Florida warning sign. Cause it's one of the most intense images. When you put it in context, you go down to the bottom of this underwater cave. This is Devil's Den. Devil's Den, is that what it is? I've seen this. And there's a picture that's underwater right now that is a real warning sign telling you not to, like, death will follow if you go past this point. This is a true sign right now, underwater, that's actually for cave divers when they get down to this point. I've seen this sign. In real life? Yeah. You've gone to this thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No shit. This is underwater? Yeah. So you were snowboarding? Dude, that's intense. Scuba diving in Devil's Den. You've been in Devil's Den? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, like, a popular scuba diving spot. But we did this for scuba diving certification in college. Holy cow, dude. And we went there, and it's, like, freezing cold, and you go to the bottom, and they tell you, like, you can't use your fins at the bottom. Because if you use your fins, you kick up all the silt, and then not only do you fuck it up for you, but there's other people. So now, like, for the next hour, like, you can't go down lower to a certain point. Dude, I can't believe you've seen that. That's such a famous sign. It's crazy. So, yeah, it's a very intense thing. I hate people's shit. No, because I'm white, and I think they deserve what they get. Yeah. So these three, they show up to Sterkfontein Cave, and they go in, they put on their equipment, and they go down. And Peter was known amongst his two other buddies as being a guy that would periodically leave a guideline and go rogue on their dives. And it was really frustrating for the other two, because they would have to be like, come on, dude, stop. Like, you're putting us all in danger. And so they're going down, and twice, they saw him begin to veer off, and they literally grabbed him and pulled him back. Like, stop fucking leaving the guideline. Don't do it. And then finally, when they got fairly deep into the cave, where, you know, you're relying entirely on artificial light, they turned, and Peter's gone. And they didn't see him leave the guideline, and so he's just gone. They considered doing, you know, some sort of search for him, but they're like, can't really do that. It's too many different places he could go. So they waited for a little bit, but they're watching their gauge. They're running out of air, and they're like, I guess we'll just surface and hope that he figures it out, right? I would hope he would. Learn his lesson, dude. I would leave him. He moves so fast, it's unbelievable. They go to the surface. What an asshole to not even tap you on your fin and be like, hey, I'm going over here. Because now you're putting me in danger for your selfish exploration. It is pretty bold to do that. You're kind of fucking everybody in a big way. It's like being on Columbus's ship. We're going, I'm sorry, where? Yeah, that's bold. It's a bold move by Columbus. But the guys on the ship don't know, right? They think they're just going out and fishing for whatever they're fishing for. And then he's like, no, we're going to India. And they're like, what is that? We don't know. We don't know. Anyway, continue. So he leaves the guideline. He doesn't come up. And so they get in touch with authorities. It takes forever for them to get out there. They only have so much air. They know he only has so much air. And so the police finally show up, and it's like, you know, there's no way he could be alive at this point. So ultimately, they leave the cave. The rescue diver does go down and does a curfew. Cursory check. But they're like, look, it's too dangerous to just be looking for him. If we're going to really recover his body, we need to really plan this out and come back with a bigger team. So the decision is like, let's just leave, and we'll come back and recover his body later. You know, you play stupid games, win stupid prizes. So they leave. The friends are devastated. You know, they don't give up hope that maybe he'll turn up. But, like, you know, at this point, it's done. A few weeks later, there is a group of dry cavers who are in Sturkfontein Cave. The lake section at this point has been shut down. But there's all these other areas within the cave that are just first blunkers, regular dry cavers. And they're making their way, you know, down into the earth. And at some point, they're navigating this narrow section. And either because they pushed on it or their body pushed against it, but the wall in front of them crumbles. It just, like, collapses in front of them. And it reveals this passageway, like, underground. There's, like, a tunnel right in front of them that was only exposed. Because this wall came down. And they shine their light. And they see there's what appear to be footprints on the ground that are, like, going around the corner. And, like, this tunnel sort of trails off. It goes somewhere. And so they're like, oh, my God. Like, what is this? Like, who could be down here? And so they take their light. And they walk through the crushed wall. And they go down this tunnel. And they turn the corner. And it opens up to this, like, you know, cavern, if you will. And there's water in the middle of it. Like, another underground lake, if you will. And in the middle of the lake is what appears to be, like, a mini island. Like, six feet across by six feet. It's a little jut of land. And there's someone on the land. And it's Peter Verhassel. And they go over. And he's dead. But the water in that room connected to the main diving area. But it was unexplored. And no one had been in here before. He had gotten lost, dove up into this air pocket, came out of the water. Was perfectly fine. And then documented while he was in the room that he was alive and well and waiting for rescue. And knew his friends would come get him. And he was there for two weeks. He was found, like, two weeks and a couple of days right after he had died. Damn. Yeah. That is awful. Pitch black. Pitch black in the cavern. Yeah, pitch black. Not good. Whoa. That's a brutal way to go. You ever hear the, there's a super short one, but it's a better one in terms of the ending. There was a ship. There was a ship off the coast to Africa. This is, like, in 2000. And you've probably heard this one. So the ship off the coast to Africa, fishing vessel. There's 12 people on board. What the hell is the guy's name? He's a Nigerian guy. There's a rogue wave or rough waters. Either way, the ship capsizes. Okay. And the bedrooms in the ship were all locked. Oh, yeah. This is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Six to the bottom, 11 of the guys die in their bedrooms. One guy survived. They sink. And he's caught in this air pocket in the ship, 100 feet down. And for 60 hours, he stayed in this pitch black. 60 hours? 60. Six zero hours. And he's alive. And the body recovery divers went into the ship to go pull the 12 bodies out. And they filmed it. And why would you think someone's alive down there? Imagine how fucking terrifying that is for the recovery divers. They're filming. And they're swimming up. And this is what they say. All right. You found one, yeah? He's alive. He's alive. Okay. Keep him there. Keep him there. All right. I mean, way too calm. Yeah, way too calm. Way too calm. Keep him there. And then they got to get him out. Yeah. Which is interesting because now he's pressurized for. Yes. Depth. Wait, wait. Is he pressurized for depth or is he pressurized? No, he's pressurized for depth. Even though the bubble was at the surface? He's been breathing. Oh, actually, you know what? I don't know. I think you could be right on that because the bubble is that depth. Yes. Yeah, I think you're right. Now, he's been breathing out carbon monoxide or whatever into this air, so his air quality is super low, but I imagine he's still pressurized for the surface, right? Yeah. But he fucking lived. And he, I don't know if this is sort of something that I don't know where I got this from, but I believe this happened. Crazy. So, but take this as could be total bullshit. I don't know the story. There was a report somewhere or I saw something. There was something that while he was down there, it's like quiet, right? Because there's no noise pollution. You're in this bubble 100 feet down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but he could hear the sound of large fish bumping into the walls as they were eating the other 11 people. Whoa. And so he was waiting to either be eaten or the bubble to collapse and kill him. Dude, that's like USS Indianapolis. Oh, God. The shark attacks? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the same, similar like eeriness. I mean, go, go, go, go. It's terrible. I mean, similar to this, the, uh, have you heard the stories of the catacombs in Paris? Yeah. I covered one of the stories out there. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Well, the one that I heard, they told us this when we were there, but like around the time of like, I think like 1700s when they really start to like set up all the bones and like the actual, like, uh, like the actual like art pieces that you see, they had people going around, I think in like the mid to like late 1800s, maybe even later. And they're going through one of the sections that's kind of like cordoned off where no one can go in and they go in and they find bones, which is not uncommon, obviously in the catacombs. But the bones are laying completely parallel with the rest of the path. And there's like fabric on the bones. Oh, weird. And it's a full skeleton, not just like femurs and skulls. And they're like, what is this? And they discovered that it was someone that was keeping like the main, maintaining it when they were originally building it, they got lost and got trapped in the catacombs and then eventually just died of starvation and was left there. And his body was never found for like 150 years. Oh, yikes. And he just died in the darkness of the catacombs. That's such a horrible thing. Crazy. There's this story that, I mean, they made a documentary about it, which is like absolutely unbelievable, but about Chris Lemons. Have you heard of him? No. He's a saturation diver. Oh, I watched it. Holy shit. That story's crazy. Holy shit, dude. Yeah. He got, he detached from the thing and he's like wandering around the fucking ocean. So there's these things called saturation divers, right? And basically what they do is they do like, um, mechanical repairs, like underwater welding for underwater welding, for like, uh, gas lines, et cetera, where they're like extracting like the North sea, they're like extracting oil, whatever. And what they, what they do is like, they bring them to depth while they're on the ship. And then you stay in these like chambers that like adjust your depth for like 30 days at a time or something like that. And so you're basically on sea level, but they're adjusting. so that you're at the whatever the I don't know what it's Is it the oxygen level? Is it the pressurization? Yes, the pressurization of being deep in the sea. It doesn't matter. And then when they go down and they do the welding, there's an umbilical cord that provides them their warmth, everything that they could possibly need, and they can be down there for an hour or whatever it is, and they come back up, and then they exist within this chamber. And you're doing it off of a ship, and the ship is using these different things to maintain its balance, I guess, like in the water. And as the waves start to do it, and there's all these different thrusters on the ship that are maintaining its course because, God forbid, it started to move away, and then the divers get pulled and whatever. Something happens with the waves where it can't maintain its course, and his umbilical cord gets severed. So now he has five minutes of oxygen or whatever the fuck it is, and he has another partner that I think is in the boat at the time or something. And he's dead. I mean, that's basically what happened. people think he's that he's absolutely dead i don't know i want to like i'm trying to think about how to tell the story because they tell it in a really compelling way his partner goes down and just starts to look for him yeah right and five minutes goes by 10 minutes go by 20 minutes i think like 30 minutes goes by right so he's no oxygen nothing apparently what he managed to do was in pitch black work his way back towards what they were working on and then just kind of like sit on it and because of the cold they said that like it reduced i'm gonna completely butcher this that's pretty good but it put his body in some sort of like catonic state or like you know when you can like kind of like freeze something and like it will maintain this livelihood i guess i don't know what it did but his partner finds him they bring him back to the surface and he ends up fucking living yeah 30 minutes without oxygen it's crazy whoa like you got to watch the documentary it's an amazing documentary he went diving three weeks later he went back in but like you're looking at someone that shouldn't be alive it's creepy like you shouldn't be alive because of the grenade yeah that guy shouldn't be like there are people who have had like explosions happen to them and live we don't know anybody that's been dead for 30 minutes that's that's up there that's wild the north sea in general is like a terrifying vicious place terrifying yeah like the oil rigs out there holy shit like that that that is one of the gnarliest water bodies like i don't think people appreciate it that's one of the most treacherous spots in the whole world yeah and then he would go back three weeks later yeah these people love it though you know i mean this guy want to go back to afghanistan have you ever had a supernatural experience happen to you or something that's inexplicable i sort of i did it would take me an hour to tell it you know so probably a little too long for this but i had a i had something happen to me when i was 16 and i went up to this cabin in new hampshire it was a snowboarding cabin with some friends and going into the trip one of my friends of the two buddies i was with his father had very recently passed away and it was just it sort of cast a pall over the whole trip and when we got up there um the first night i was laying in bed and i i heard somebody come into the cabin and i'm like laying in bed and i hear footsteps through the cabin and i thought it was a relative who we were expecting to show up to the cabin but this thing comes in the room and it was like this dark silhouette that i looked sort of here and there and i was like oh my god what's going on here but it definitely didn't look like a person and it sort of bowed into the bed that was next to mine where nick the son of the deceased father was and he disappeared into the ground and i'm like a 16 year old kid i'm like what the fuck is going on like i think i'm dreaming i don't know what this is but the next morning when i got up i was like i fell asleep at some point after that i go into the kitchen and nick's mom is out there and i'm like shaken up from this whole experience because i've discovered now that the relative didn't come last night like what the fuck happened and i began asking her questions like hey did your older son did he come by last night and she just lost her husband you know and she just looks at me and she doesn't say anything and i'm like i just i could have sworn i heard something last night and she's like oh don't worry that was my husband i heard him here last night too and i was like oh great and i like fucked me up and i didn't want to talk to her about it because i'm like that can't be real maybe she misheard what i was saying you know maybe maybe this is wrong and so i tell the other nick and wolf that's my other buddy and that's that's fucking crazy dude but that's probably nothing we go out we snowboard for the day we come back i try to go to bed super early and i tell my buddies like let me fall asleep ahead of you so i can be like asleep for the night you know and they they were like fine but then i couldn't fall asleep that same night is the second night i'm out there same time like three in the morning i'm like wide awake and i had like stashed a knife in the springs of the bunk bed above me like to protect myself and i again we're expecting this relative the older brother to come by so and if anybody shows up i'm telling myself that's who it could be i hear footsteps out on the wraparound porch i hear the door open i hear a pot fall in the kitchen it's like clearly someone's coming into the cabin we're in the middle of fucking nowhere in new hampshire and then i hear the footsteps come through the house i hear them come down to our door again i'm so scared i can't even move like the idea i'm gonna like fetch my knife and like protect myself it's hilarious and again the door opens and this dark shadowy figure comes in and stops next to me and sort of bows into the ground again and disappears and you know you're not like oh good last night the ghost vanished into the ground it's happened again i'm safe you're more like where did it go like people don't do that and so again i'm like up all night eventually in the morning i hear the sound of nick's mom out in the kitchen and this time i go out there and the day before i was a little cautious about how i brought up the subject of did some weird shit happen because she just lost her dad or her husband i didn't want to even talk about ghosts although she sort of brought it up on her own and then this time i'm like frantic and i'm like i heard someone last night like what is going on and she's like don't worry i heard him again like it's just my husband he's walking around the house and i'm like what the fuck is going on here i'm like so scared i i thought that i would like call my parents and just have them come get me but we got one more night left out here i'm like there's no way this is actually happening this whole thing feels like a fucking fever dream or something and i ended up convincing myself mostly out of embarrassment like i don't want to call my parents be like hey you know that trip that i love doing every year come get me 24 hours early because ghosts are wandering the cabin right so i'm like i'll stay one more night uh that day we went out and got a coffee table and we helped load it into the car for the cabin and we dropped it off at the cabin and then we went out to the mountain for the day come back and it's our last night i couldn't can't wait to just like get up and be done and that's probably the fucking ghost right there and uh again i can't sleep 3 a.m rolls around i hear footsteps again door open pot falls again i'm like oh my god it's happening again but this time the footsteps they don't come down the hallway to my room they continue through the cabin and they end up walking up the stairs to the second floor and then they stop and i'm actually thinking oh fuck like that's right above me that's gonna like bow into the floor and like come through the ceiling uh and so i'm laying there so scared i eventually do fall asleep i barely slept the past two nights and i wake up at some point at like 5 a.m and i hear nick's mom out in the kitchen and i just want to get the fuck out of here like it's like it's the end i don't want to do this and i go out there and i'm ready to be like mad i don't even know what's going on and i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh what feelings i had i was just so exhausted and i hear that she's crying and i go out there and she's standing over at the foot of the stairs that leads to the second floor and the new coffee table we had got the day before was sitting at the base of the stairs it's like a wood wood nice coffee table and i look at her and she's crying and i thought like what the fuck's going on and then i could tell she was crying like happy happy tears and she's pointing at the table and she's like come over here and look at this and i walk over to the table and scratched into the table where the words i love you and she was like i didn't write that fucking way and so my interpretation is either the guardian who i love and respect has picked up on my nightmare i'm having and has turned it into a cope for you losing your husband and are acting out that your husband's ghost is traveling around the house at night and you're going so far as to scratch stuff into tables to fuck with me or go surreal i don't know you saw the thing in the coffee table yeah and i did actually ruin my relationship with my friends it was like i like i don't want to be anywhere near this i don't want to talk about it i like it wasn't i'm 16 it wasn't like i had an adult perspective i was like i don't even know what to do with this i i told my my parents about when i came home didn't believe me in the slightest no one believed it they're like oh really it's like dude ask ask her mom ask his mom she's she'll say she saw it and you tell wolf your snowboarding buddy yeah dude he was there and they all saw it and he looks at it what does he say he's like no that's that's fucked he's like so chilly man it's crazy dude that's fucking crazy dude and then nick handwriting match i mean it was like crude it was like it definitely looked fresh a deaf someone did it for sure for sure someone did that but like the the only if i really dig into it the only issue i have well there's several but one is like i don't know what to do with it i don't know what to do with it i don't know what to do with okay let's pretend that she's clearly in mourning you know she's lost her husband this cabin was very special to me like built the place i think and every time we went to that cabin every winter he would come with us so it was like really felt that he wasn't there and so i guess it's a place that's associated with him like i'm in fact we kind of still went on the trip so close to his death i think it was like to honor him or something that's sort of how it felt but i definitely knew that like okay she she's obviously in grief she's she's not even really processing it yet because this is so recent like it makes sense to me and even if she She wasn't doing it maliciously. It makes sense that maybe she's so desperate to like believe her husband's somehow still around that, you know, maybe she picked up that I had had a nightmare and like was able to construct this narrative that like allowed her to believe her husband was there. Fine. The problem with that is on the morning that I came out the first time, I didn't want to be offensive and say, hey, I heard footsteps in the cabin last night. Do you know what that was? Because invariably it lends itself to talking about ghosts and you just lost your husband. It just felt really inappropriate to even breach the subject. So I said, hey, did your older son ever come by last night? Did he ever come by? Like, that's it. I didn't tell you, boy, you wouldn't believe the nightmare I had last night. It was like a fairly innocuous question. And also we were expecting him the night before. That's a normal question to ask. How could you go from that to, oh, I heard my husband here last night too. Was Wolf in the room with you? Well, Wolf was in the bunk above me. And Nick was in the bed right next to the bed. OK, so it makes sense that the dad is visiting that room. Yeah, if we are to believe that's him, it sort of tracks. But I have tried to, in no way did that experience lead me to this. It's just sort of coincidental that I tell stories that fall into this camp. And I have a story that sort of resides in the strange, dark, and mysterious. Never have I had anything before or after. And even this. I'm relatively sure there's got to be some play here with grief dynamics. But the problem is there's just enough in terms of corroborating something odd happening in the house. Namely, I didn't tell you about really the specifics of what I heard or saw. I just asked, had your older son come through? And your reaction was, don't worry, I heard my husband here last night too. That's a very quick, devious reaction, if that's what that was. Yeah. You know? And then also my skeptical thought is, OK, she's walking around the house. She's in grief. Doing stuff. Who knows? Drop stuff. Maybe it's part of a ritual. Maybe it's a sleepwalking thing. Sure. Again, she's in a bizarre kind of period of her life. And then is playing out this thing again to kind of cope with the fact that she had this loss. But the issue is that you saw the door open. Yeah. And I saw a dark figure. Granted, I've told myself that it's like, I was so scared. Because I was actually thinking, if it's just an intruder, forget ghost. Forget anything. Lay in your bed. And hear a fucking door open. And wait for a stranger to walk into your room. Not a good feeling. And so I can totally believe that my mental state was so intensely fearful. I'm a 16-year-old kid. It's a pitch black room. And I'm seeing the space between the bed. My feet are closest to the bed. The door's like here. It opens inward. And you'd walk by the foot of my bunk bed. I'm on the bottom bunk. I can only see this much space as whoever walks into the room. And then there's a little gap on the right side of me between the bed. Where Nick, his son, is sleeping in me. And so there's just this little space here. And even a person, if they walked next to me, I'm laying in the bed. But the bunk above me obscures my view. So I can't really see the head of someone who was walking right here. And so my view's obscured. But I can infer the size of someone based on the. If you walked next to the bed and all I saw was your hips, I could probably infer roughly how tall you are. And so I picked up that. And someone who was really fucking tall was in the room. And they were so dark that even in a dark room, the only illumination was the little alarm clock, the little red alarm clock, that I could clearly break out a very human-like silhouette of a very tall person. I would say Nick's father was quite tall. Not through the roof all, but he was at least 6'2", 6'3". So I'm like, okay, maybe that adds to it. And the door didn't open on the way out. It wasn't like the mom coming in to give her kid a kiss on the forehead, dealing with. Dealing with grief and then leaving. No. Even if it was her, she didn't leave the room. You know what I mean? Like, someone came in. Just went into the bedroom. Bowed. Like, bowed. That's how I would describe it. And then they were gone. And if it happened one night, you're like, oh, I must have been imagining it because it was a dream. It played out identically the second night. And then the third night, the change was it didn't come in the room. It went upstairs. And lo and behold, the next day, she's calling out the scratching. And I also think it's like, okay, before I go out. I go out there on the third day, and I'm going out there. How could you know that my experience had changed the night before? Because the first two nights, it came into my room. If she had scrawled that into the table, it wouldn't have matched my interpretation of what happened. Because the first two nights, they didn't. Whatever it is, didn't go over to that part of the house, the cabin. It just came down the hallway and vanished into the bed. When would it have gone to the other side of the cabin? So if she's guessing, like her grief coping mechanism, that's a bold guess, because I walked out, and you didn't even give me a chance to say, oh, my gosh, guess what? Last night, this is a detail I've never thought through. I didn't tell you, oh, boy, last night it changed. It went over there. Oh, check it out. Look over here. That was the. She told me that. What did Nick say? Like, did he have any dreams or any types of weird experiences? Nick was very stoic, is very stoic. Like, one of the more stoic dudes I know, he really wouldn't even engage with it. I looked at it as, like, I'm not going to push you to talk about it. But me and Wolf. We've talked a lot about this, and he was very freaked out about it. But, like, in that way that he's not going to do anything. It's like, oh, wow, that's crazy. Who names one of their kids Nick and the other Wolf? Wolf was his nickname. He was actually named Nick as well. And they weren't brothers. They were just friends. Got it. Yeah. So I end up telling you, basically, the bastardized version of that story. Fuck. Weird, man. That's crazy. I fully believe it, bro. Yeah, it's crazy, man. Would you have been able to tell if it was a person, you think? Like, did it have sort of, like, an opaque, sort of a. It wasn't opaque, no. You think it was a demon? I don't know, dude. You think it was a ghost? I don't know if it was something. Supernatural?. that we know about. I don't know, man. I will say that, like, even though I professionally tell stories in this domain, I've never had anything even remotely close to that. Save for one time that I actually told a story that went pretty viral on Instagram. And I think this was just sleepwalking. So that's another thing that I should tell you, is I have really. really pronounced sleepwalking. Like, deeply problematic sleepwalking. I sleep in a different room than my wife with alarms on my doors because I literally get up and run out of my house. And, like, it's a very. It's an extremely bad version of. Nah, I don't believe it. Well, the thing is, is, like, I've told myself, well, that's all it is. I was sleepwalking. That's all it is. It still doesn't comport with the way she behaved and the things she called out. That is true. So, like, I want it to be sleepwalking. Yeah. I can still. Hold on. You run out of your house? Yeah. I've jumped downstairs and hurt myself. Like, and you'd think, they're like, oh, well, clearly, you know, PTSD. But no, this is pre-military. Do women ever sleepwalk? I think it's a fugue state thing. You just need a break. But they don't, right? Like, isn't it. It's only men who are married with kids who are like, I just ran out of my head. I was gone for a week, dude. Give me one story. The only story of a woman who sleepwalks is never once, right? No, it's just dudes. It's just us. We need a little bit of a break. That's all it is. Oh, yeah, it is. I think it's just fugue state. Yeah. But I, the other day, I. Not the other day. This was, like, last summer. I, so when I sleepwalk, it's, I know exactly how. Do you guys sleepwalk at all now as adults at all? No, but I know a bunch of dudes that sleepwalk. Okay, yeah. So it's, it's. It's just easier than saying, hey, babe, can I go hang out with my friends? Not sleepwalking. It's so much easier. It's huge, dude. It's so much easier, right? But I, I typically will sleepwalk one time a night. Yeah. And once I sleepwalk the one time, I won't do it again. It's almost like you get it out of the way. Get it out of the way. Get that, you hit the fugue. Right to the strip club. You go right to spearing. Exactly, dude. And then you're good after that. Then you're good. You're reset. You're reset. You come back, you don't gotta deal with it again. Yeah. And so I had this experience where I'm sleeping in my bed, and I, I hit the fugue, I wake up, I'm a little sleepwalky, but I have these weird moments where I don't necessarily bolt from the room. Sometimes I just like open my eyes, and I can't, I cannot figure out like, not where I am, but I know like there's something wrong. Like my, my mental state is not correct. And I'm like sort of aware of sleepwalks. I sleepwalk so much. I can identify like, oh, just, just lay here. Don't do anything. Just wait. It'll pass. Can I just point out one thing? Yeah. Earlier in this podcast, you said, the best sleep you've ever had in your life was in Afghanistan. I didn't sleepwalk. Your wife was 10,000 miles away. I was in a pretty solid fugue. I'm just, I'm just putting this out. Yeah, dude. The best sleep you've ever had in your life was with a bunch of your brothers in Afghanistan. That's true. You could play video games all night if you want. You could do whatever you want. I'm just pointing out this information. Hey, hey, those are facts, dude. All right, continue. Data point. Continue, continue. So I, I wake up, and my dog was sleeping in the bed, like on the, on the cover, cover's like next to me. Yeah. And I, I sort of wake up, and I'm like, all right, I'm sleepwalking. Okay, fine. And there's a bathroom sort of like in the corner of my room. And in my sleepwalking state, I know I'm sleep, I know I am. I kind of like look, and I, I can swear I see someone standing in the bathroom that sort of vanishes out of view. Doesn't freak me out, because honestly, when I'm sleepwalking, very typical to like, think there's people around the corner, and I just, it goes away, you realize what it is, and it's not that big of a deal. But it like, I, I took, note of the fact that, that's weird, someone was in the bathroom. bathroom, but you're sleepwalking. And I'm like, all right. I see Maggie is my dog. She's just still laying there. At least she'd react if there was a fucking person in the room. Okay, it's been like 30 seconds here. I sort of realized, okay, I'm good. Just doing my little nightly sleepwalking thing. It's not even sleepwalking. It's sleep confusion. And now it's passed. And I'm like, okay, I'm good. I'll just go back to sleep. And at that point, and I also look at the time, this typically happens in the first 60 minutes I go to sleep. I'll have my event. So I'm like, all right, no big deal. So I go back to sleep. Then I wake up again and I know that it's not morning. It's like something's off again. I feel like I'm sleepwalking, but it's so rare to sleepwalk twice in a night for me that this one felt like it could be real. And I open my eyes and I sit up in bed and it's like two in the morning or something. And I immediately look over at the bathroom because I'm remembering that I had seen someone in the bathroom and there's no one there. And I'm like, phew, like, okay. I'm hypervigilant or something. And then I start to notice that there's a pillow that I put under the sheets next to me that sort of bunkers me from rolling over in my flailing sleepwalking state from hitting my dog. She sleeps in there a lot. And I feel the pillow is like pushing against my leg, like a little bit. Like just imagine if someone on the other side of the pillow is like nudging the pillow. And I'm sort of looking at the bathroom, but I'm sort of subconsciously aware of this pillow moving at my leg. And I had just in my mind thought, oh, Maggie is moving around on the bed. She's pushing, she's pushing the pillow because she's moving. And then I just like, look at Maggie and Maggie is far away from the pillow and like completely still not moving at all. And then I look at the bed and remember I could easily be sleepwalking. I imagine things. I see something moving under the covers near my bed and I completely like freak the fuck out. I jump out of bed at this point. This is a long sleepwalk. Normally it's like 15 seconds, maybe. And it just goes away. I'm, I'm, I'm well into 15, 20, 30 seconds. Now jump out of bed. I flip on the lights and I rip my fucking covers back and there's nothing there. And I have a shit ton of cats. I got six cats and I'm thinking a cat must've gotten in the bed. And like, there's really not much in my room in part because I sleepwalk and I want to trip over stuff. So there's not much like hide in my room. There's like a desk, there's nothing under the bed. And so I flip the lights on and I, I look under the bed. I'm like looking around the room and I'm like, I'm not sleepwalking. Like I, this is weird that I, just felt that and saw that there's no cat in my room. And Maggie's like on edge now. And so finally I'm like, I'm still a little freaked out by it. I go in the bathroom, I check in there, no one there. And I come back over to the bed and I'm like, man, like, I don't feel good about this, but I'm going to go to bed because I'm convincing myself that it's odd. I've had two episodes, but I'm convinced it's sleepwalking. But I'm like, one more time, I'm just going to look in the fucking bed and make sure nothing's in the bed. So the lights are on and the bed, when I flipped the covers off, it had only like half folded over. There was like a chunk of the bed. And I'm like, I'm not sleeping. I'm not sleeping. That was still covered by the sheets. And as I'm going to grab the sheet, I see something move. Like imagine a cat, like under the sheets moving, you would see like a lump moving in the sheets. I convinced myself in the light, I'm awake now for over probably a minute or two. I see something moving under the sheets towards the foot of the bed and I ripped the covers off. And for a second, I am convinced I see eyes looking back at me that go down the backside of the bed. And I'm like, it's a fucking cat. There's a cat in my bed. And I fucking throw the covers off. And I'm looking at the bed and I'm like, oh my God, there's a cat in my bed. I'm looking all around. No cat, dude. So that's it. That's the whole story. That's sort of how it works. But I'm convinced it could have been sleepwalking, but I will say that that fucked with me. And I told that and people thought that was pretty crazy. I'm going to say sleep paralysis. I mean, almost certainly. I want it to be that. Yeah, no, it doesn't feel like much more than that, but it was very, very felt very real though. I'll say that that fucking demon cat in my bed felt very real. What a horrifying experience. Did you go to sleep after that? No, I slept on the couch. So I just didn't want to be in there. Then I began to think, fuck, like I've never even thought like, what if there's like a spider in my bed? I began to like think that there was like creatures in my bed. I was like, I can't be in there. Damn. Somewhere else. Yeah. You went to war. Demon cats are the big problem here. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, John, you're the man. Thank you so much for indulging us for all this time. These are absolutely amazing stories. We didn't even start. We didn't even talk about your graphic novel. Where is the book? I actually didn't bring it here. You signed it. We need someone to bring in the book. There's a book. There's a book. There's a graphic novel that you are releasing and it's called the terror within, and it's coming out October 6th. So we have, uh, we've done two graphic novels so far. They're a compendium of nine stories that honestly, they're a lot like the stories I'm telling now. There it is. Thank you. Uh, so this is the terror within, uh, it's, it's amazing that other two were near times bestsellers. You can very easy to flip through it. Um, and their stories like the ones you've told. Yeah. Basically what you heard on this podcast, those types of stories put to, to visual format in a book. Oh, this is awesome. I mean, the goal really was to like, try to mimic like the art of what I'm doing on camera, but like we were going to do a narrative book, but like just text on a page. Oh, wow. That's awesome. So yeah, it comes out October 6th. You can, you can look it up anywhere. It's on Amazon, you know, you name it. Uh, it's called the terror within, and there's two other graphic novels. They're all great. Huge fan. Make sure you check out Mr. Bolling's YouTube, his podcast. I mean, you're putting out like four stories a week sometimes. Four uploads every week. Unbelievable. Where'd you get Mr. Bolling from? Yeah. It's so random, dude. I, uh, when I was doing the Navy SEAL posting and like, I'm Mr. Navy SEAL drawing the negative attention, the username that I just happened to have was John B. Allen, four one six, just the one I have. Uh, but because I was doing a lot of posting about being a Navy SEAL, even though I got a lot of negative attention, there was quite a few aspiring Navy SEALs, kids who like wanted to be SEALs and they want information about the pipeline. And what was this like? And they would send me these messages on Instagram where all they see is my username and there's no dots in it. It just looks like John Bolling, four one six. And out of an abundance of being very kind and polite, they'd say, dear Mr. Bolling, I have a question about that. And so when I made that post, I was like, I made my account on Tik TOK. I'd sort of needed a new name. You know, I was like, ah, fucking Mr. Bolling. Got it. Doesn't have anything to do with what I do. And it's sort of a stupid name. It's like a basketball channel that went a different direction. Um, well, listen, dude, you're the man. Thank you so much, brother. We really enjoyed this. This was awesome. Thank you, dude. Thank you guys. Thank you, man. Called free nights and cool summer. You get free nights every night all year long. Plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. TXU Energy, energy for everything. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Open soon. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT? 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