135: Why I’m Obsessed With The Macabre

Direct from the Brozki Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Brozki Report with your host, Brittany Brozki. They say you catch more flies with honey. Dead bodies also work. Though the question remains why you want flies at all. Trust me, they will come soon enough. And I've heard they go for the eyes first. Welcome, my dear fellows, ghouls, goblins and gals, to the Brozki Nation Emporium and Macabre Oddities Department. I'm your host and owner, Brittany Brozki. And here today, I'm enjoying a delightful oat milk vanilla cortado. A Victorian favourite. A Victorian favourite, a lavender matcha oak latte. Welcome, as I've previously stated, to the new and improved Brozki Report set. Here on my table, you will find an eccentricity and a sense of humor. An eclectic collection of Victorian oddities. And can I just say, I've never felt more myself. Look at this. Unironically, this is my look. Are you out of your fucking mind? Look at me. I've never looked better. In all my 20 years of living, I've never truly looked better. Wow. Welcome back, guys. Y'all know my mom. My mother is a ghost hunter. She loves everything macabre, everything morbid. We wanted to do the catacombs, and we didn't have time. We ended up running out of time to do the catacombs because other things took precedence, and we spent way too long at the Louvre, because the Louvre, in and of itself, you could spend a whole week there and not see everything. So we prioritized art because that's what I kind of wanted to do. And also, the catacombs sell out so quickly. You can only have a certain amount of people down there in a day. So we finally did it, this trip around. And I didn't really know the tea. Like, I didn't know the history of it. I don't know why there's a fucking city of bones under the city of Paris. I never gave much thought to it other than, like, that's kind of creepy. We did a self-guided audio tour through it. And now this is, for reference, only a part of the catacombs. The catacombs goes under, I'm fairly certain, the majority of the city of Paris. It is massive, a complete, massive underground system that was built. What is it, like, 500 meters below the surface? Okay, so 20 meters. Okay, so 60 feet. Yes, hello, not 500 meters. That is a very, very long way. Maybe I meant 500 feet. Well, it's 66 feet. The Paris catacombs are about 66 feet deep, which is roughly the height of a five-story building. To get to the catacombs, visitors must descend 131 steps and climb back up 112. Now, that was crazy. 'Cause it's a spiral. Okay, you're going down, down, down, and you don't know where it's going. 'Cause I wasn't counting, my dumb ass isn't counting. I'm just like, "Ah, this is taking forever!" And it's just a constant spiral, and then you start to-- There's no windows, obviously, 'cause it's underground. You lose the natural light the more you descend, and then these, like, weird fucking archaeology lights come on, and it's so strange. You get to the very bottom, and then you see the steps change from, like, you know, "Oh, modern construction." to, like, "Oh, that's the Earth." And so you go down, you descend all those steps, and we did the self-guided audio tour. They do some, you know, like any sort of tourist attraction, spoken guides. And we thought about it, and then it was so expensive, and there was only room for one person. I was like, "We're not doing that." So they give you these little things that look like phones, and you just put it up to your ear. And so, okay, let me start at the beginning. Okay, so when you think about Paris around this time, this is 1780s Paris. Hygiene doesn't exist. There's really no public sanitation or any formidable public sanitation. There is disease rampant across the city and outside the city. Mass graves, okay? There is no proper hygienic way to dispose of bodies in this sort of amount. So they started moving bodies from the city to these graves sites outside the city walls, sort of the city borders. That started to become a problem. And so around this time, this is revolution time. This is a time of mass outbreak, of disease, plague, whatever. Someone made the executive decision to take all of these bodies, burn them, exhume them, and move them rather to a gravesite underneath the city. Why they did this, I don't know. I will read about it in a second. But there was a series of mass exhumations, evacuations, of all of these bones to under the city. And so they're literally digging up bodies. And it would become a public spectacle. They would have these huge open pits where they would lift out the bodies. And, I mean, there were so many, it's hard to identify them. Which also makes part of -- I have so much to say on this, but it makes part of the Paris Convention for those catacombs so interesting. It's because it's not a traditional gravesite or even a mass gravesite for places that I've visited before, historically, where it's a memoriam. It's in memoriam of a larger sort of tragedy. And they try to account for as many names as they can when it comes to, you know, major historical events like that. The catacombs is one of the only places I've ever been where it's like, this is a place of death. But it's not specific to honoring, like, a one person or this sort of "remember me" mentality that a lot of gravesites have. So you descend the steps, and if you've never seen a picture of the Paris catacombs, there are human bones, human femurs, human skulls, stacked in a way that resembles logs. Like the way that you might store lumber. And they are stacked so thick, so symmetrically and with such, like, intention. And it goes on forever. Forever. And they let you just walk down there. None of it's behind glass. None of it's behind netting. It's just there. Skulls, human skulls, have been arranged in different artistic ways. There used to be a little area where human skulls were arranged in the shape of the fucking Eiffel Tower. And tourists couldn't help themselves and touched it too much. It was not open to the public. Because the oils and grease on your fingers starts to corrode things after a while. You see this with statues, you see it with art, when people touch things all the time. It wears it down to the point where eventually there will be nothing left. And so my question is, why is, why are there no guard walking rails? You can bring kids down there. Kids are over there playing with the bones. "What are you talking about? Get your fucking sex roll out of here!" So we're walking through, and it's literally just human bones and it's there. I really can't put into words the feeling that it invoked in me, because y'all know I really obsess and spiral about my mortality. Like, I really do. I taught, this is not the first time that I have mentioned mortality and how precious life is, because immortality takes away the value of life, okay? I don't know why this is a continued talking point for me on this podcast. But when I talk about vampires, or when I talk about whatever, that immortality is a curse for a reason. And it's not something you should want to aspire to, whatever. And being in a temple of the dead in this sort of metaphorical way, 66 feet underground, absolute silence. The hustle and bustle of the city above you is silent. It's not to be heard. This is a place for the dead to rest, to rest. And so we're walking through, it is bones stacked up to above your head. I mean, literally I'm eye level with the top of where these bones end. It is just halls and halls and halls. And there are markers on the walls in the catacombs when you're down there that correspond to the matching avenue that's above you. And now, because of history and because of, you know, governmental whatever, the names have changed, but the little audio guide would tell you, like, you're now turning right onto a rude avenue day, whatever, and the name has changed, obviously, since the 1800s. But it's the same street. It's the same exact street where it used to be cobblestone and horse and carriage and, you know, torches and vendors and whatever. And then not even 100 feet below you is this silent city of resting souls who have not even been identified. So we're walking through. There are skulls arranged in a heart. There are skulls arranged in stars and crosses and temples. Every so often as you're walking through area that they've designated tourists can visit, there will be a little plaque that has things in either French, Italian, Latin. There's a whole bunch of languages. I mean, I saw a lot in Latin that are little ponderings or musings about death and about mortality. And I wished that I had service down there because there's this app that you can scan something and it'll translate it immediately. And all of these little plaques were, you know, in French and they all had something to do with death. And that's my shit. I want to read people's musings on death and on letting the dead rest and on how all of us are going to be this one day. And the way that I am looking at these bones that were exhumed in 1786, and I'm thinking, God, that's so fucking old. Like, this person has been dead longer than America has been a country. Like, I'm having this mental, existential come to Jesus, for lack of a better term, about my mortality and my youth and how is youth really something that should be sought after? And is it an honor to have lived and died for something as notable and respectable as the French Revolution? You know what I mean? Like, I'm sat here with these old ass brown bones. and then you have to just walk on you know then you have to just like leave them there it's a very weird thing and not to get too poetic or whatever but anytime you visit a site like that it's hard not to get attached to i don't know if y'all do this but i'll go to like a cemetery or a memoriam site and i just by accident will hyper focus on one name because i think it helps me sort of imagine okay if i were them or if i knew them what was this person like you know if it was a woman if it was a child if it was a soldier like i try to imagine what was their life like and it humanizes it to me because you walk through the catacombs it probably takes you about an hour and a half and it's easy at the end to be like well that was creepy all right let's go get a croissant you know it's like this should be a it is it is so contextualizing if you get me if you make if that makes sense it put my life in context of everything that has come before me and will come after me and i'm just i'm gagged that that's just there and it's open because the catacombs used to be something that only royalty and only government officials could go visit you know it was a sort of exclusive thing it wasn't open to the public until i want to say you know the 1900s the 1920s and they would invite you down you have to buy a ticket i believe and you would have to bring your own candle you'd have to have a candle to go walk through because there's no electrical lighting that shit probably was scary as fuck back then damn shit holy shit that was probably so scary if your candle went out holy shit okay can i tell you something i've been actually kind of worried about what the fuck is the lamp dream what is the lamp dream and why are people why are women on tiktok having i feel like i know but i'd like to sort of explore it girl the first fucking thing is a reddit and creepypasta link what are y'all talking about how have we somehow landed back on creepypasta how how actually this it that checks out okay uh the internet is captivated by eerie lamp story the lamp story reddit creepypasta guys fuck you let's read it all right fbi agents i'm entering back into creepypasta you're gonna have to pull me out by my fucking ankles because i'm diving head deep into this bitch head first scary monkey notice this is an allegedly true story posted in the comment section of an r slash ask reddit post okay one second okay go ahead and rewind for me let's go back to that original google search because r slash glitch in the matrix let me go ahead and cut to the chase of what we're talking about i i feel like i'm an apparition i am on i have so much caffeine in my system right now i feel like a ghostly form you know when you go on a ghost tour in like a city do y'all do that when you go to a new city are you like gonna check out the local haunts i always go on a ghost tour in the city i'm going to one of the best ones i've ever been on was in san antonio texas y'all need to go on that walking tour i wish i remembered the name of the company that puts it on but the guy dressed up like a fucking ghost and that's how you know it's gonna be good that's how you know he takes his job seriously and they took us to this hotel called i think i've talked about this before a long time ago they took us to this hotel called the yellow rose like the yellow rose of texas or maybe it's called the elizabeth i don't remember it's one of those super high-rise hotels and downtown san antonio apparently the top just picked a booger that's cool the very top floor used to be uh the surgery level okay and now it is permanently stained in the walls it smells like formaldehyde or like that anesthesia smell to sterilize things and the service elevator in that hotel was the old body chute because at the very basement of this hotel was a mortuarium it was a crematorium you know i'm trying to say they would burn the bodies the sick dead bodies so have a great sleep tonight here's the lamp story creepy pasta creepy pasta time this is an allegedly true story posted in the comment section of an r slash ask reddit post the question was have you ever felt a deep connection to a person you've met in a dream the original post was made years ago on a throwaway account a screenshot can be found here throwaway account because this is really personal okay okay okay this story is also known as a parallel life or awoken by a lamp here we go my last semester at a certain college oh jesus christ trigger warning guys my last semester at a certain college i was assaulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive note he was 325 pounds i was 120 while unconscious on the ground i lived a different life i met a wonderful young lady she made my heart skip and my face red i pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before i finally won her over after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter hey why'd you type it like that after two years she graced me with her seed okay i had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house when my daughter was two she bore me a son what when my daughter was two my wife bore me a son my son was the joy of my life i would walk into his room every morning before i left for work and doted on him and my daughter one day while sitting on the couch i noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd like inverted it was still in 3d but just wrong i was sitting on the couch and i it was a square lamp base red with gold trim on four legs and a white square shade i was transfixed i couldn't look away from it i stayed up all night staring at it the next morning i didn't go to work something was just not right about that lamp i stopped eating i left the couch only to use the bathroom at first soon i stopped that too as i wasn't eating or drinking i stared at the fucking lamp for three days before my wife got really worried she had someone come and try to talk to me by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out she took the kids to her mother's house just before i had my epiphany the lamp is not real the house is not real my wife my kids none of that is real the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real the lamp started to grow wider and deeper it was still inverted dimensions it took up my entire perspective and all i could see was red i heard voices screams all kinds of weird noises and i became aware of pain a fucking shit ton of pain the first words i said were i'm missing teeth and i opened my eyes i was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that i didn't know lots were freaking out i was completely confused at some point a cop scooped me up dragged walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car i was still confused i was taken to the hospital by the cop and gave ct scans and shit i went through about three years of horrid depression i was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed holy shit i was scared that i was going insane as i would cry myself to sleep hoping i would see her in my dreams i never have but sometimes i see my son usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision he's perpetually five years old and i can never hear what he says holy shit okay this was a little addendum a little postscript that the author wrote about me and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm the author added i've had many private messages describing similar experiences and three posters stating such experiences are impossible i'd say more research needs to be done on brain functions pre-meds students don't assume you know everything holy shit i feel like purgatory is scarier than hell well hold on let's talk about this is purgatory meaning you're stuck between ends stuck between worlds is that limbo state scarier than the torture of hell like being a lost soul let's see what dante has to say about purgatory dante purgatorio summary in dante allegory's purgatorio purgatory is a mountain where souls are purified from sin and prepare for heaven guided by virgil and consists of terraces that spiral spiral upwards the mountain has terraces that spiral upwards each representing a different level of purification where souls are purified from sin and prepare for heaven guided by virgil and consists of terraces cleansed of specific vices and virtues dante guided by the roman poet virgil travels up the mountain of purgatory encountering souls who are undergoing purification and learning about the nature of sin vice and virtue dante and virgil meet repentant excommunicate souls including souls who delayed repentance and souls who died violently the journey through purgatory is a quest for freedom and a preparation for entering paradise where souls can finally achieve eternal happiness when i think of purgatory i think you're trapped there you are a wandering soul who will not and has not been laid to rest purgatory meaning in the roman catholic doctrine this is what purgatory is a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven oh so it's an in-between oh like atoning expiate expiate great word purgatory is also referred to as mental anguish or suffering is purgatory a good or bad thing okay this is from corpus christi phx the corpus christi catholic church of phoenix arizona purgatory provides us with hope because god in his justice does not simply cast us out of his presence for all the messes we've made rather in his mercy he gives us an opportunity to cooperate with the redemptive work of jesus and together with him we can clean up those messes why can't you do isn't the point of you do that while you're alive right because if you wanted to convert you'd do it while you're alive well what if you weren't given the chance what if you died before you were given the chance i don't know dude i'd rather be in purgatory than hell but what is involved in purifying purification what is involved in purification purgatory funny googling the purification involves suffering and a sense of fire but the exact nature of this cleansing is not fully defined by the church the pain of purgatory is a pain of love a purifying suffering that atones for sins and reestablishes holiness and justice see this is where y'all start to lose me pain is not the way to i don't i just like that shit makes my skin crawl i don't know i'm not the one the souls in purgatory are conscious of their personal responsibility for the delay in seeing god but this is right this is the eternal philosophical question if you have never been exposed to god or to christ or to any organized religion and you die that way you live and die never knowing who jesus christ is are you damned to hell and is that your fault or is that the missionaries fault the missionaries never got to you then they should be punished i just have never understood this idea i remember someone saying that to me when i was still going to church of like yes they're going to hell but they have an opportunity to an opportunity what are we fucking talking about it's it's this sort of dumbass lacking like not all-encompassing doctrine that really makes me question like how can you dedicate your whole life to something like this when there are such big plot holes there's plot holes in the religion this feels so exclusionary in an a religion that is by definition inclusionary i will never understand it and i've tried i've tried to understand it anyway i've been thinking a lot about death because what's new i've been thinking a lot about death recently because cersei is addicted to mortals she loves them and she finds them to be very interesting and intriguing and how emotional they are how weak they are but at the same time so strong and how there's beauty in the imperfection because when you are surrounded by beautiful immortal gods goddesses nymphs dryads niads whatever the fuck if beauty is the norm then somewhere along that path it the roles become reversed right if that's all you see then something off the beaten path or out of the norm is the new beautiful so for her when she sees marred skin or sunburn or age lines or smile lines or scabs or calloused hands she thinks it's the most beautiful thing in the world and honestly been freaking out a lot about this because as a kid quote unquote i say she's thousands of years old as a child when she first realized that mortals die and not only do they die but their lifespans are so short she was like why is no one pitying them like why is how can this happen like it's this very innocent what do you mean they die because immortality is the norm and i've just been thinking a lot about death recently because what the fuck hold on let me read this i underlined something because it made me fucking spiral and if the real broski nation comrades remember when i went on uh mythical kitchens last meals and me and josh had bonded over mythical chef josh had bonded over how death is our biggest fear because what do you mean it's just over and also being raised religious and being ex-religious now any sense of comfort or certainty that i had has been ripped from under me the rug has been pulled so now it really is me versus the darkness it's me versus nothingness and there is nothing i don't know why i'm laughing it's not funny there's nothing scarier to me genuinely than the great beyond then this is it and while it fills me with a sense of optimism and i want to live my life to the fullest the flip side of that coin is just eternal dread and a childlike fear of pain of darkness of loneliness all of it kind of balls up into one big tumbleweed of anxiety and that's kind of what's going on in my head so anyway let me find this passage sorry here's the passage from cersei okay it's on page 159 and i'm about to butcher these names so just bear with me icarus datalus ariadne all gone to those dark fields where hands worked nothing but air where feet no more touched the earth if i had been there i thought but what would it have changed it was true what ermys said every moment morals died by shipwreck and sword by wild beasts and wild men by illness neglect and age it was their fate as prometheus had told me the story that they all shared no matter how vivid they were in life no matter how brilliant no matter the wonders they made they came to dust and smoke meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark okay so i just kind of read that and i had to close the book and honestly the episode that i did when i came back from the reading this book i'm finding myself back down in the catacombs and that just wash over me of this cannot be it's like an incredulous disbelief of this cannot be me one day like the catacombs is such a visceral experience you are face to face with death these skulls and human bones are not behind wire they're not behind net you can go up and touch it don't don't do that but it's that close and it's on eye level and it is a human person's skull and i just it made me freak out i don't know what makes me freak out more actually the fact that it'll end or the fact that this is all i get or life is so fragile like you could die before you're meant to or the oblivion of it all like death is loneliness and that's why it's so important during life to to bask in the comfort and love of your own presence up here and in the end this is dark and i don't know if i really agree with this but like you are all that you have in your mind that's why dementia scares the fuck out of me anyway i'm actually gonna here here was where i was going with this okay i want to look up both on this podcast and in my free time what is the solution to that spiral of thinking because it's not a fun one to go down and i i don't find myself following the spiral often but it does hit me especially with books like this where i'm like fucking hell also the story being told from an immortal's point of view is like it's not necessarily um preferable to being mortal so just throw that out there but i i want to know a metaphorical salve or a serum to quell those thoughts when they start or some form of just comfort and outside the bounds of religion i know the simple answer is oh just believe in god believe in eternal life you know find your way to any of these prophetic deities and confess your your loyalty to god and i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that okay now what it's also one of those things where i don't really believe it as i'm saying it because i'm saying it for a selfish purpose and that is what my issue with christianity was from the moment that i was acquainted with the idea of baptism or of salvation it was from a purely selfish point of view when i told y'all that story my pastor said if you're not sure if you died tonight you're going to heaven put your fucking hand in the air and i said well hell girl i'm 11 you know what i mean that was bred out of a sense of helplessness and selfish worry for my own soul not because i believe that jesus is the light in the way and this and that whatever it's that's the disconnect and i feel like the puzzle pieces never really fit together for me and i'm i'm struggling for that to to find and keep that sense of certainty and security that i used to have and also the validation of a church community telling you you're doing everything right you know you are not alone he walks beside you all these things where you're getting positive echo chamber feedback from people who believe the same or would like to believe the same for themselves and it helps with the delusion but being so far away from the truth of the gospel i have none of that now and i don't miss the church but this solitary solitude it's it's too much sometimes let's look up some superstitions in america some people believe in the magical powers of black cats i do i do and i know that a lot of you are going to say it's unfair prejudice or towards black cats i don't know man i don't know i don't walk under ladders i don't do the broken mirror shit when i see a black cat okay they're cute they are cute i will admit that and they look like toothless especially if i can see their teeth to eat but i don't i'm not going to touch it i don't know i don't know it's how i was raised i don't put a hat on a bed we've talked about this before that's an old cowboy uh superstition i don't do that like there's just some things where it's like i don't know if it's real or not but i'm not going to do it just be sick and it makes me sound stupid but i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know stupid as fuck but i'm not going to do it okay in north america it is bad luck if a black cat crosses your path and good luck if a white cat crosses your path now that's racist in britain and ireland it's exactly the opposite the blue cat in russia brings good luck the blue is often viewed as a gray cat what the hell owls many people used to believe that owls swoop down to eat the souls of the dying if they heard an owl hooting they would become frightened a common remedy was thought to be turning your pockets inside out and you would be safe humans are so dumb like what do you mean this cat bad this cat good see an owl turn my pockets inside out lick a salt lick what are you talking about but i get it at the same time i get it because like i want i can't put a hat on a bed i can't do it i don't know some believe if you catch a snail on halloween night and lock it into a flat bed you can't do it i don't know some believe if you catch a snail on halloween night that in the morning you will see the first letter of your sweetheart written in the snail slime and i know some of you freak weirdos are going to do that tonight i know some of y'all are going to do that dumb supper no talking at the dinner table the dumb supper was brought to america by the africans this is an eerie hallow muss meal where nobody is allowed to speak not even whisper it encourages spirits to come to the table in britain people believe that the devil was a nut gatherer at halloween and nuts were used as magic charms peel an apple from top to bottom the person with the longest unbroken peel would be assured the longest life oh that's scary if you threw the apple peel over your shoulder the initial it forms upon landing is the initial of your future mate see that shit's stupid because what if you're already married what are you supposed to do now now you're fighting with your husband now now you're laying in bed fighting this i told you that we weren't supposed to be together i told you that this wasn't gonna work out and we look like we've worked through it and i know that we had the kids i just feel like my soulmate's out there i just feel like he's out there in fighting with your partner in ancient i'm gonna mispronounce this and i'm sorry it's the irish word for the festival shamhain s-a-m-h-a-i-n shamhain festivals bats would swoop over blazing fires to eat the mosquitoes if a bat flies around a house three times it's a death omen bats come out early and fly around playfully it's a sign of good weather to come if a bat flies into a house it is a sign that ghosts are about and maybe the ghost let the bat in if a bat flew into my house i'd kill myself if a bat flew into my fucking house call the police call fire department and set my house on fire i can't i can't live there anymore that's the bat's house it's not mine knock on wood oh my god i do this all the time if a girl puts a sprig of rosemary herb and a silver six pence under her pillow on halloween night she will see her future husband in a dream all right let me repeat that for all you weirdos if a girl puts a sprig of rosemary and a silver six pence under her pillow what is six pence not in general circulation and has no face value in the uk fuck though a decimal six pence was briefly valued at 2.5 new pence okay well what would it be it's 146.5 of a pound or half a shilling 140th of a pound i can't even do that math and i don't give a fuck and i don't care too knocking on wood keeps bad luck away you should walk around your home three times backwards and counterclockwise before sunset on halloween to ward off evil spirits but here's the thing right there's so many conflicting customs and traditions and best practices because sometimes on halloween as we've read you're inviting the spirit of the spirit of spirits in okay like reconnecting with loved ones or lost souls now other times you're warding away bad spirits so are you inviting them in or are you making them go away pick one and you know what's really actually the most scary of all is that i put this white ass face paint on my face and my hands match and i i didn't paint my hands i'm just that fucking white i'm just simply that white it's upsetting why knock on wood a superstition with roots in pagan and christian beliefs and by the way we can't say lives it's lives but we can say belief beliefs well i guess there's not an e on the end of that word never mind answered my own question knocking on wood is an apotropaic tradition of literally touching tapping or knocking on wood or merely stating that one is doing or intending to do so in order to avoid tempting fate after making a favorable prediction or boast or a declaration concerning one's own death or another unfavorable situation apotropaic magic or protective magic is a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye apotropaic observances may also be practiced out of superstition or out of tradition as in good luck charms amulets or gestures such as crossed fingers or knocking on wood many different objects and charms are used for protection by people throughout the world yeah whoa that is nuts honestly because all this shit permeates every single religion and they're all pagan superstitions and that like by definition is what's the word a religious it's um blasphemous it's blasphemous but we still do it there are connections between ancient spirituality and trees influencing fortune in the pre-christian beliefs of the germanic people for example, three norns set fate up into the universe through a tree. Languages descended from these people include concepts such as knock on wood, touch wood, or three times wood, although only the first two expressions are in the descended English language specifically. Meanwhile, the ancient Celtic peoples also believed that the act of touching wood called on spirits or gods of the trees. Christians tie the practice to the symbolism of the wood of the cross of crucifixion. So much to keep up with. Pick your poison, whatever makes you feel protected. I knock on wood, I don't walk under ladders, I dress up as Uncle Fester, and I have my period. Okay, those are the four things that I kind of do to make myself feel protected. Sometimes having your period is a form of divine protection because what are you doing? What are you doing down there? You need to protect what's going on down there. There is a hotel in Austin called the Driscoll, and I know a lot, about the Driscoll because I've done ghost tours of Austin, I've done a couple, and the Driscoll's always a hot spot. And it's a very interesting history with the Driscoll because it's that old, like, cattle, oil baron money that built it. And I think the history is like, they built it, and they kind of went in the red, and then it was so expensive because they were trying to recoup their money that no one could stay there, and then it kind of shut down, and so on and so forth. And I think that's a very interesting history. And I think that's a very someone else bought it, and it was, you know, whatever. And Driscoll, I believe, was, he was a cattle baron. The Driscoll Hotel, one of the premier historic hotels in Texas, was opened in 1886 by Colonel Driscoll, a wealthy cattle baron. I'm so smart. The hotel cost $400,000 to build, which is equivalent to $92 million today. It's a Romanesque-style building with 60 rooms. Look at that. It's so cute. I love it. It's hosted many high society and political events. Okay, so this is, these are the ghost stories, because that's what, of course, that's where I was going with this. The Driscoll is always a hot spot on ghost tours because there's a very famous story, two very famous stories, of a little girl who stayed there, I think named Samantha, who was the daughter of, I think, a politician or one of the wealthy guests who stayed there. And she was playing on the staircase while her father was, you know, at the top of the stairs, something like that. And she had this little wood, and she was playing on the staircase while her father was, you know, that she was playing with. And I don't know what happened. I don't know if it was a spirit that pushed her or something like that, or if it was just, you know, a child's sort of lack of coordination. But she sadly fell down the stairs and died. And the wooden ball rolled down the stairs. And that's how I think the father found her or something like that. They always tell that story because sometimes the hotel staff late at night have reported they hear a wooden ball like rolling down the stairs. And they're like, oh, my God, that's a ghost. And they're like, oh, you're like plopping. And then they look and nothing's there. It sounds like a wooden ball. And so that's one of the stories. Very sad. The second story is, it's right here. It has to do with room 525. It's the story of a dead bride who killed herself in room 525 after her fiance called off their wedding. And I don't know what the full story is. The gist of it is this. Exactly 20 years to the day, and in the same hotel room, she was killed. And she was killed. And she was killed. And the hotel room is the original suicide bride. A second young bride took her life in the bathroom while on her honeymoon. After this second rumored death gathered some attention, the hotel's room 525 has become notorious for its bad karma. It's like this has been on ghost shows and stuff. Like it's really something sinister in that room. There's also a hotel in San Antonio, which I've always known it as the Yellow Rose Hotel, but it's actually called the Emily Morgan Hotel. And Emily Morgan, her nickname was the Yellow Rose, which is like the Yellow Rose of Texas. It's like a thing. If you're from Texas, you know. So the haunted hotel San Antonio, named for the young woman they call the Yellow Rose of Texas, Emily Morgan, holds more than the spirit of its namesake, especially on the ninth floor. The Emily Morgan Hotel is opposite the Alamo, perhaps San Antonio's most famous historical destination. And the story is, so this building, this hotel used to be a hospital. During the time of like Battle of the Alamo. And the top floor was like the very top floor was the surgery and like emergency, you know, surgery floor. There was what is now the service elevator used to be a body shoot down to the crematorium on the very bottom floor. Now it is a fully operational, like it's like owned by Hilton or Hyatt. Or something like that. And I went on this ghost tour and they told us about it. And I literally got a chill down my spine because he was like, you can see for yourself, you go up to the top floor and it smells different than the lobby. You know, you go in the lobby, it's a normal, like it's a beautiful, you know, Texan themed touristy hotel. Go up to the top floor, permanently in the walls, it smells like formaldehyde. It smells like antiseptic and like that sort of medicinal smell. And sure enough, we went up the elevator and we went up to the top floor and it has that smell. It smells like a fucking hospital. And I was like, oh, guests have reported that they hear gurneys going down the hallways in the middle of the night. Dude, be serious. They have reported that they hear screaming, like people being operated on because back in those days there was no anesthesia. Okay. Banging on walls, the squeaky wheels of a gurney or like, you know, little beds being wheeled down the hallways. And then of course the service elevator, which it's always a service elevator, bitch. The body shoot. And so we went up there. Also, I need to confirm this. I need to Google it. But the swimming pool, which is on the roof is particular because it's made out of metal. Like the bottom of it is made out of that silver metal that I think used to be, the hospital bed, something like that. Let me look it up. Okay. Among the most famous is the apparition of a nurse from the 1920s or 1930s. Guests have claimed to see her in the hallways, tending to her unseen duties. Yet when approached, she vanishes into thin air, leaving behind a palpable sense of the supernatural. Additionally, elevators within the hotel have exhibited peculiar, peculiar behavior. Guests have reported elevators inexplicably stopping on the seventh floor, a floor unoccupied and inaccessible to guests. A cold chill and a sense of unease often accompany these elevator anomalies, leaving guests with goosebumps and a sense that something otherworldly is afoot. Room 810, where shadows watch and whispers haunt. If you dare to stay in room 810, prepare for an encounter with the unknown. Guests have described waking up in the middle of the night with an unsettling feeling of being watched. You always gotta chill. Others have heard faint whispers in the room where they were alone. Guests have described waking up in the middle of the night alone, adding to the room's eerie reputation. The mysterious phenomena extend to unexplained noises, like footsteps echoing in the night. On the ninth floor, a guest reported hearing distinct footsteps in the hallway, prompting an eerie investigation that revealed no one in sight. A particularly chilling experience took place in the lobby, where a lone guest felt a sudden cold touch on their shoulder while seated in an armchair. The touch was undeniable, yet when he turned around, no one was around, leading the guest to question, whether a spectral presence had made itself known. This, I think all this shit's real. Like, sorry, I do think that there are, my mom refers to it as residual hauntings, where those ghosts, ghosts, spirits, whatever, are stuck in a loop associated with this building, and they're doomed to experience that same loop for whatever reason forever and ever. Maybe there's something tethering them there, maybe it's unfinished business, maybe the tragedy of the- what happened to them is- is just forever gonna link them to that place, I don't know. The hotel's lobby has seen its share of otherworldly apparitions. Guests and staff have reported witnessing shadowy figures or misty forms late at night. These apparitions often appear and disappear mysteriously. For some, shadowy figures are a haunting reality. In one reported incident, a guest encountered a dark, indistinct silhouette in their guest room. As they watched, the figure slowly dissipated, leaving them shaken and bewildered. And it's always like, you know, when a ghost, quote-unquote, is present, the temperature in the room drops. That's a thing that- that my mom has also kind of confirmed, is that you can feel the room get colder. While the seventh floor, ninth floor, and room 810 may steal the spotlight, paranormal activity has been documented on various other floors. Guests have recounted hearing footsteps, voices, or whispers in hallway rooms. When no one else is around. Some have described an eerie and oppressive atmosphere that lingers in certain corridors, as though the past refuses to rest. Electronic devices have been known to act on their own accord within the hotel. Guests have reported TVs and lights turning on or off by themselves in their rooms. Some guests have even experienced unexpected malfunctions of their electronic devices while staying at the hotel. Even the hotel's meeting and conference rooms have not been spared from paranormal reports. Attendees of events and events have been seen hearing strange noises. Witnessing objects moving on their own. and encountering unexplained cold spots within these spaces. It seems that the supernatural doesn't discriminate when it comes to business or pleasure. Ew. And then a bunch of reports of like guests feeling like someone's watching them sleep. I mean, look at this hotel, dude. It's beautiful. It is so beautiful. But we went in there and knowing that the basement used to be the mortuary, the morgue, like literally it was refrigerated like the morgue. The surgery on the top floor and for any failed surgeries, they just throw them in the body chute directly down to the morgue, down to the crematorium. It's just like, who the fuck was like, you know what? Hotel. Okay, we got all these rooms. How about a hotel? I'm thinking Hyatt. I'm thinking Hilton. Crazy. How did I get started talking about ghost stories? Oh, the Driscoll. If you're ever in Austin, I would recommend staying at the Driscoll. It is beautiful. It's in the heart of downtown. The bar. If you don't stay there, go to the bar. It is so Texan. It's exactly how I want my house to look. And cocktails are delicious. The staff is really, really nice. And they'll answer any questions. I love staying at haunted hotels because you can ask them and everyone always has a story. Like, it's crazy. I recently rewatched the first Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. Not the Benedict Cumberbatch TV show. The movie, the 2009 Guy Ritchie directed, the film Sherlock Holmes starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. I recently rewatched it. I've seen that movie probably 150 times. And I watched it through my 26-year-old gaze. And I just, like, I appreciate, I think, on such a more, more than just a topical level, the attention to detail of doing a film like that, like, based in Victorian London. And there's such a, like, camp-ness of doing a film based on, you know, a Victorian writer, a Victorian author, and doing it in, like, just time period. I don't, maybe I'm just gagged by time period accurate movies. Maybe I'm just, like, really impressed by that. But, like, the attention to detail was so good. They brought in a Sherlock Holmes expert, which didn't know those existed. And I guess it's just one guy who just, like, really fucking loves Sherlock Holmes. Gets, like, like, his peeners just really hard for Sherlock Holmes for some reason. And they brought him in and, like, had him counsel RDJ on how to accurately play, you know, Sherlock would never do this. He would do this. And the dynamic between him and Watson would be more so this, not that. And it was such a delicate balance that they struck between the two characters and the chemistry between Jude Law and RDJ is just fantastic. If you haven't seen the movie, please go watch it. It's very important to me and my lore. Don't know why. I recently rewatched it and I was like, like, here is the thing. It's exactly what I want to be. It's exactly, I want to be Sherlock Holmes, dude. Okay? It's not even, like, I don't even want to fuck him. I don't want to, I want to be Sherlock Holmes. In my mind, I could be. Okay? Plus size, size G tit, Sherlock Holmes. All right, guys. Pitching this show to HBO. We are going to do a plus size American, Southern American remake of Sherlock Holmes starring yours truly. And guess who my Watson is? Sam Hartman. And I'm fucking him. Okay? And this is when Holmes and Watson are fucking. Okay? That's beside the point. That is a B-plot to the A-plot line of me being Sherlock Holmes. Stay with me. What I love about how RDJ played Sherlock Holmes, because I'll talk about Benedict Cumberbatch in a second, is. It's a beautiful mix of. Of course, he is wickedly intelligent. His deduction techniques and skills are unrivaled. You know, he is a weapon to be utilized by Scotland Yard or whoever, you know, these private people who hire him as a private investigator, whatever. Like, of course, he's like the detective. He solves the mysteries, whatever. I appreciate how observant. Beyond, you know, deducing things about a crime scene or a person to come to a conclusion or, you know, one of the facts sort of thing. I appreciate how observant he is as a person. There is a scene in the first Sherlock Holmes. He's sitting at dinner. And he's early. He's waiting for Watson and Mary, his wife, to arrive. And he's just sitting there. And he's got his clock open. And he's, like, just listening to the clock. And he's observing and listening to every single thing. That's going on in the room. I know this is a movie, dude. I know it's a movie based on a fucking book. Indulge me. He's sitting there at the dinner table, dressed to the nines. And he's looking around. And he hears how loud and fucking boisterous all these rich people are in this thing. And he's not impressed by it. And then he looks over here. And he sees a busboy shining some of the silver and looking around and making sure no one's watching. And he slips one of the spoons in his pocket. Okay? He's going to go pawn off the silver for money. And then he sees someone. And he sees someone else, you know, scars that someone has or, you know, maybe a hidden weapon or a hidden tattoo or maybe some skin. There's a scene where he's making deductions about Watson's wife. And he goes, you know, you're wearing all these gems and pearls. But what I'm more interested in is the stones you're not wearing. And then she immediately kind of goes to cover her left hand. And he goes, you were engaged. You were betrothed. And on her skin is like a tan line of where she used to wear her engagement ring. And then he goes on to deduce, honestly, incorrectly, that she left her husband because she wanted to marry a rich doctor. Because he's trying to preserve his friend's integrity, you know, whatever. Or his pride. And she pours wine on him. I'm just kind of telling you the plot of the movie at this point. But she goes, right on all counts, apart from one, Mr. Holmes. I didn't leave him. He died. Right? And so now he's humbled and he feels like a dick. And then she gets up and leaves. But it's things like that of like you are so almost you are observant to a fault. And again, I know this is a movie. But I want to be more like that. I could have fucking slayed in 20th century London. Okay? No baths. Big dresses to hide fupa. Okay? You're not showing fupa, dude. You don't gotta show fupa. I would have been smearing. I would have been smearing that like mercury and lead makeup all over my face. I would have had rotted teeth. Hey, but they would have wanted me. Okay? Who want me? Victorian Britney. Who want me? Yeah, dude. I would have slayed so much of the society back then. It was so, I mean, like any, truly any society is. It was a caste system. It was, you know, classes. And the wealth gap was so stark. This was industrial revolution. It was the turn of the 20th century Victorian England. You know, this is, it's, it's a corrupt government and, and it's patriotism, but also revolution is happening. And, and it kind of swells with this, like, there's a weird, uh, uh, socialist movement that's going on in the teens and the twenties and the thirties. And then there's the rise of fascist leaders in the teens, twenties and thirties. And it's like so much is happening. I could have slayed as a brain dead housewife. I would have worn one of those little, the. The, the, the big, uh, but dresses and I would have had one of those fancy little fascinator hats and I would have had just mercury led in my mouth, just oozing drooling all over my chest. Okay. And I would have been wet off to some fat, ugly man, but he would have been rich and I would have gossiped with my girls. I would have ate sweets, just sweet as sugar. The Coca-Cola had cocaine in it, dude. I would have been living high and mighty. Take me back. Take me back to 1893. I really would have slayed. Like it really would have been a moment. Would I have smelled like puss? Yeah. Well, yeah. What's wrong? Hold on. Wait, what's wrong? Everyone smelled like puss. No, come back. Where are you going? Wait, where are you going? Oh, it's me. I smell like puss. Oh, sorry. A lot of you bitches are disturbed. A lot of you bitches are spooky and weird. And that's why I like you. You are. You have stories to tell. You have things to say. And this is, above all else, a kind of forum for the weird, spooky, disturbed bitches to speak to me. Come to me. Speak to me. And so my squire, Elizabeth, has put together a Google form, I think like two, three weeks ago at this point, wherein she asked Broski Nation to submit their ghost stories I am prepared to read one to three of those right now. And I'd like to incorporate this every week where we kind of end on a Broski Nation ghost story. And I either react to it and have some insight or it haunts me and I have to go to bed alone. So let's go ahead and do that. I think that this is a fun, a fun thing. Okay. This one is from Hannah. Pronoun she, her. Thank you for your submission, Hannah. Here's the story. growing up my dad took us kids camping a lot we grew up in a house in front of a woods this particular woods has been in my family for seven generations damn it holds all seven of their ashes as well i've slept in this woods countless times but i will never forget the first we set up camp deep in the woods in an area we call the rocks we call it this because there's a pile of boulders bigger than any other rocks in the woods it was late summer almost fall and the air was cool okay story building okay scene setting come on hannah i shared a tent with my older brother my dad slept in a hammock i woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee i was scared to go alone and i woke up my brother like a great big brother he told me to go by myself and quickly went back to sleep i unzipped the tent and crawled out the fire had gone out and it was pitch black all except the moon the stars and the man holding the torch he was about 20 feet away this isn't a ghost story bitch this is your he was about 20 feet away just standing there watching me holding a stick with one in wrapped in some fabric that was ablaze with fire except even though the fire was bright i couldn't see his face the outline of a man in the dark holding a torch i wasn't scared not in the slightest in fact i wanted to go to him hannah don't go to him and i want to get back here ew i don't want to finish this i'm freaking myself out in fact i wanted to go to him every fiber in my tiny body was so drawn to this man i wanted to go walk with him in the woods but i was cold so i peed right in front of him and went back in the tent the next morning i asked my dad if he had seen the torch man he told me i was dreaming soon my mom told me the same thing it was just a dream it didn't happen but my brother knows he remembered me waking him up in fact i even peed on the tent it was not a dream now that i'm older my mom thinks it was one of our ancestors and i was drawn to him because i am his blood others say it was a trick and that's how they trapped you they say if i went to him i never would have been seen again but i long for the day i see the torch man and next time i will learn his name hannah you better be fucking careful girl damn i don't do not go to the torch man the torch man oh i don't like that hannah peace and blessings to you and please universe keep your arm around and protect her from the powers that be amen okay let's find one or two more this one's from megan i grew up feeling connected to the paranormal and being a bit more aware of it i've had many more stories i could share but i think one that will stick with me forever was when i did a tarot reading after my dad died i wanted to feel him one last time i set my altar up lit a candle and offered him a space next to me the candle was flickering like crazy mind you no fan or ac vent i'm in a closet doing this once i asked if he was present the candle angled toward where i had offered him a seat i just got a chill i immediately got chills and i just knew it was him like i could genuinely feel him there i asked him if he had anything to tell me for closure for the both of us we had a very rocky relationship due to his alcoholism the cards i pulled relayed the following i'll just summarize that he was a he was supposed to be a figure of strength and was led astray in life that he knows he hurt those around him and wished he would have done better that he is sorry for his wrongdoings and that he knows i will be strong and fearless in my life moving forward and that i was loved oh my god i cried a lot i said he was free to go from the reading and the candle went back to flickering and i've been grateful for that moment ever since it has only strengthened my belief in him and i've been grateful for that belief in the paranormal and beyond wow wow you know stories like that it's like when people pass on i do believe that if they have unfinished business they absolutely will come back they will come back and communicate i don't know how long it takes i don't really know if they care how long it takes but he had unfinished business with you is what it sounds like and the fact that you were able to get such closure in a way that really was impactful that's that's amazing it really really is this is from lexi these are crazy you bitches are haunted and i love y'all for it the story that sold me was when i was very little probably around three i had two imaginary friends that i was very attached to i was an only child my family said that i would be outside for hours talking and playing with them one night when i was getting a bath my grandma had asked me why did you move over honey i had said oh to make room for sada she had brushed it off since this was a daily occurrence for me to be so insistent that my imaginary friends were real i had stated that her dad the chief was very mad and caught her smoking tobacco so she had to stay home and i had leaned over to my imaginary friend and cupped my ear as if she was telling me a secret and said sada said she died she had scarlet fever at age three my grandma was so distraught she had asked the city and had looked online for information about their house turns out their house was built right next to a sacred native american burial ground we still think to this day my imaginary friends were actually ghosts i could tell so many more but hearing that story still sends chills down my spine that's nuts i do think even about what i was talking about last episode when i said if i were to ever have a child which i won't but i have strict you know guidelines that i would follow if i ever had a child children are so pure and susceptible and open to a lot of things it's easier to learn a language when you're a child it's easier to learn an instrument you're just a sponge as as a baby as a youth that i do think when it comes to matters of the spirit or of the paranormal or of communication with different realms i know it sounds really woo-woo but i do think that children are the perfect conduit that's why it's so fucking creepy in scary movies when kids are the ones that are used as a vessel but i think that's because and guess what my house is creaking now and i'm gonna freak the fuck out no no very much no very much don't do that okay but i do think i believe every every word of this story because i do believe that kids because they're so pure-hearted have more access and so absolutely 100 i believe that wow okay y'all i think that'll do it for me for this episode i need to go turn on every single light in my house and go turn on music in every single room so thank you guys so much for joining me today and i love you very much if you want merch go to broski.shop and i'll see you on the next episode for now goodbye you