Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, October 27, 2017

 

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 270 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I am Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are Amanda and Carrie and Elyse and Redheadedgirl! All of the Bitches have assembled, and we are here to talk about ghosts.

We’re going to talk about ghost tours, starting with the 1.5 ghost tours that Redheadedgirl went on in York on a recent vacation. She just got back, and she’s a little jetlagged during this conversation, which also makes it fun. We talk about what makes a good ghost tour guide and which stories were the best and the creepiest. Amanda shares her own recommendations for ghostly, creepy television shows – don’t worry, we have links to everything we talk about. We also talk about a ghost tour that Amanda went on in school in fourth grade as part of her Florida state history curriculum. Elyse explains why creepy stuff has to work really hard to impress her, and Carrie talks about all the ghostly stories of Northern California that she knows and the lessons that we can learn from them. And as a bonus, Elyse takes us on a tour of the creepy things on her Kindle.

Now, because we’re talking about ghosts and murders and things like that, I want to sort of issue a general trigger warning? We talk about murder and violence intermittently when talking about who haunts what and where and why they might be doing that haunting, so there aren’t any specific grisly details, except for one small section, but we talk about death and haunting on and off throughout this episode.

Plus, there’s a special background appearance of Wilbur, who’s the one cat who really hasn’t shown up much on the podcast. He wanted to lend some atmosphere to the show, so you’ll hear him meeping in the background. What he actually wanted was for his brother to get his meds so that he would also get treats, but I would also like to think it was lending atmosphere. Orville is here on the desk with me helping me record, so he’s going to start hitting the microphone with his tail momentarily.

Now, if you have cats or a creepy book, better yet, or a ghost story, even better, to tell us about, please, please do that. You can email us at [email protected]. You can record a voice memo and email it to us because you’ll sound awesome, trust me. Or you can leave a voicemail at 1-201-371-3272. I would love to hear your creepy book recommendations and if you have ghost stories to share.

Now we have a sponsor for the podcast and a sponsor for the transcript, and I have received a number of thank-yous for the transcript from different people, so if you are one of the people who reads the podcast rather than listens to it, that’s awesome, and you can thank garlicknitter for her hard work. Each time we get a transcript sponsor, it makes the show a little bit more exciting. I am really, really pleased to have both the podcast and transcript sponsors, so let’s get started. Shall we do the thing? Let’s do the thing!

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the newly released audio version of Hopeful by Louise Bay. If you like Christina Lauren, Emma Chase, and Kristen Proby, you will love this contemporary second-chance romance. Ava Elliot has been in love with Joel Wentworth since their secret passionate love affair at university, which ended when he left for New York after graduation. Despite Joel’s wanting her to go with him, Ava stayed in London to pursue her career. She never really got over her first love and she’s been single ever since, but eight years later, Joel is back in London. Is he ready to forgive Ava, or has he moved on from a love he promised would last forever? Described as a true love story and as having a combination of humor and heartbreak, Hopeful by Louise Bay is on sale now at all major retailers, and the audio edition is on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. You can find out more at louisebay.com.

Every transcript is handcrafted by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [You’re very welcome! – gk] Today’s podcast transcript is sponsored by Twice as Wicked by Elizabeth Bright. All’s fair in love and revenge – or is it? Alice Bursnell is determined to wreak revenge on Nathaniel Eastwood, Viscount Abingdon, for the seduction, ruin, and death of her beloved twin sister. But how to expose a seducer without falling prey herself? As she gets closer to Nathaniel, she finds she is in serious danger of following in her sister’s much-too-tempted footsteps. The man is nothing like the heartless rake that she expected, and his kisses are truly divine. Could she be wrong about him? When a mysterious and beautiful woman confronts Nathaniel at a fancy ball, he suspects that she has murder on his mind – his own murder – but the more he tries to determine who the deceptively innocent beauty is and what she’s up to, the deeper he falls under her alluring spell. Nathaniel fears that he is in imminent danger of losing his life, or worse, his heart. Elizabeth Bright’s debut is a witty and heartwarming romance that readers won’t soon forget. For more information, please visit entangledpublishing.com, and thank you to Elizabeth Bright for sponsoring the transcript for this episode!

Now, I have compliments! Yay, compliments!

To Becky M.: Historians have discovered that the original coat of arms representing you and your ancestors was so incredible, the minute souvenirs were made of it, they sold out. You are that cool.

Now, if you would like a compliment or you would like to support the podcast, there are a number of ways to do that. One is to head over to our Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches. You make a pledge – even as little as a dollar a month, it makes a sizable and deeply appreciated difference in the show, and I thank you personally very much! There are different rewards at different levels, so have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of this episode, along with, if you haven’t been listening to the end, bad jokes at the very end of this episode. And I have a terrible one this week; I’m very excited.

All of the books that we talk about, along with television shows and movies, will be in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and we have a page on iTunes as well: iTunes.com/DBSA. We talk about a lot of creepy things, so I hope you enjoy it. We’ll also have links to all of the places and different stories and creepy Twitter storifies and BuzzFeed channels and, seriously, there’s so much creepy going on, I’m just going to link to all of it. You know, it’s the internet: there’s no shortage of creepy.

So are you ready for our special Halloween podcast? It’s time: let’s do this.

[music]

Sarah: Would you be interested in telling us all the things about your ghost tour?

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Cause seriously, I have been, like, holding back from asking questions. I want to hear all about it.

Redheadedgirl: Okay, well, which, which one? ‘Cause I went on one and two halves.

Sarah: Wait, two half tours?

Redheadedgirl: One of them was so bad I ditched it in the middle and hopped onto another one.

Sarah: Whoa. Was the second one better?

Redheadedgirl: Oh, much better.

Sarah: Okay. So why did you ditch the first one?

Redheadedgirl: Are you recording now?

Sarah: I am recording now.

Redheadedgirl: Okay. [Laughs]

Sarah: Bring it on. I wish to hear all of the terrible things.

Redheadedgirl: Ah. Okay, so this was in York, and first, York is amazing, and you should all go.

Sarah: How do you fuck up a tour of York? It’s, like, inherently old and creepy!

Redheadedgirl: Well, you start off by pointing to York Minster and saying, this was built as a Protestant church in the 1100s.

Sarah: Wait. That’s –

Redheadedgirl: Right.

Sarah: Wh-, what?!

Redheadedgirl: That’s what he said.

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: So this guy knew nothing.

Redheadedgirl: Nothing. Now, he started, he started, he started off by saying, well, there’s going to be some history and some ghosts, and we’re going to have some fun, and I was like, cool, I like all of these things.

Sarah: Those are all good words in that order.

Redheadedgirl: Right. And then he started off with that, and I was like, oh, shit, I have wasted six pounds. [Laughs] And –

Sarah: And a lot of time and walking.

Redheadedgirl: And a lot of time and walking. I mean, that was at the very beginning, and when you start off by, like, defining Protestant-, Protestantism – I’m severely jetlagged, you guys; I’m just saying. By the time I ditched him, forty-five minutes later, we had gone maybe halfway around the Minster. He had told three stories? Yeah, three. He told them badly. Like, he was trying so hard to play to the crowd, like, he couldn’t find the point with both hands and a smart pencil sharpener.

Sarah: [Laughs] So was he trying too hard, or was he just a really bad storyteller?

Redheadedgirl: He was trying way too hard!

Sarah: Way too hard.

Redheadedgirl: And he was a bad storyteller. And –

Sarah: See, it seems like that’s kind of like a job requirement, right?

Redheadedgirl: Right. After the third story, and he was, like, describing the alleged ghost of a girl who died in the plague, and he couldn’t remember if it was 1348 or 1349, which I suppose I shouldn’t be, like, too up in myself by saying, you don’t, you mean you don’t know that the Black Death didn’t come to York until 1349? But at that point I was. And he was like, and she looked like this little girl who was in the tour too! She was, had a blue hood, and I’m like, no, she didn’t, and –

[Laughter]

Sarah: So he lost you, basically. You were just right out.

Redheadedgirl: Oh, yeah, like, ages ago, and I just sort of kept, like, sunk cost fallacy and, like, I may as well see this to the end, and then another tour kind of came up behind us, and the guy was telling the story, and my tour went around the corner, and I went to the other one and literally said to the tour guide, “That tour is shit. Can I join yours?”

Sarah: [Laughs] So you were just like, yeah, this sucks; I’m out of here?

Redheadedgirl: Like, can I join yours? And he’s like, um, sure. [Laughs]

Sarah: And did, did Bad Tour Guide hear you, or was he, like, too busy badly storytelling to notice?

Redheadedgirl: I think he was around the corner. If he heard me, I don’t care. Like, you can, you can get away with a lot of rudeness with an American accent, and people are just like, okay, that’s just the way you are.

Sarah: I’ve never tried getting away with rudeness with an American accent. I’m usually overly polite, because American accent.

Redheadedgirl: Right, and that was generally what I did, but at that point, nineteen thousand steps into my day, I didn’t care. [Laughs] I was just so pissed off. And the second tour was much better, so if you are in York and you want to –

Sarah: As you do.

Redheadedgirl: – do a ghost tour, do not hop on the one that meets by the Minster. What you want is Ghost Hunt? It meets in the Shambles. They’re both six pounds. Ghost Hunt is so much better.

Sarah: Okay, a Ghost Hunt that meets in the Shambles is, like, the best assembly of words. Like, that speaks clearly for itself. What’s a Shambles, and what made it good?

Redheadedgirl: The Shambles is a very narrow street in York that’s, like, it, it’s a medieval street. It’s the street that’s been there for, like, a thousand years, and –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: Shambly.

Redheadedgirl: Shambly. I don’t remember the word that it kind of derived from, but the specific street has these lovely medieval and Tudor buildings, and they all used to be butcher shops.

Sarah: Oooh!

Redheadedgirl: So you’d walk down the street, and you would, you know, buy your hunks of meat.

Sarah: Okay, I just Googled a picture. It looks like a movie set.

Redheadedgirl: Doesn’t it? Like –

Sarah: Like, this looks like Diagon Alley.

Redheadedgirl: Yes. It’s not the street that allegedly inspired Diagon Alley. That’s Victoria Street in Edinburgh, where I also was, because J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in Edinburgh –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – and we’ll get to that. But, yeah, and there is a shop towards the north – eh, south – one of the ends of the Shambles –

Sarah: One end, right.

Redheadedgirl: – that’s called The Shop That Shall Not Be Named, or The Shop That Will Not Be Named [The Shop That Must Not Be Named], and it’s a Harry Potter store, and it’s adorable.

Carrie: Ooh!

Redheadedgirl: I know! So, yes, go to York. There’s a castle. There’s a good ghost tour. There is a bad one. There are a bunch of others that I have no experience of, but those two, Ghost Hunt, the Shambles, 7:30, they’re great.

Sarah: So what made Ghost Hunt a good ghost tour? Like, do you go on these things and get actually creeped out? Because I wouldn’t sleep if I went on a ghost tour, especially one that started in a place called the Shambles.

Redheadedgirl: Weirdly, no. I don’t get creeped out by ghost tours. I get creeped out by ghost books. I have a whole bunch. Y’all know I have a whole bunch. But I get creeped out by them, but I don’t get creeped out by the tours. The Ghost Hunt, the storyteller in The Ghost Hunt was just much better. He was not, like, up his own ass. He was just there to tell the stories. And he was charming, which was helpful.

Sarah: And for six pounds, you want some charm.

Redheadedgirl: Exactly. He didn’t make me pay. I offered to pay, and he’s like, you only got two stories out of me; it’s fine. [Laughs]

Sarah: So what were the stories that he told?

Redheadedgirl: See, there’s another tour I went on in York.

Sarah: Well, you know, if you need to juxtapose any tour and just say, here’s what a good ghost story on a ghost tour is –

Redheadedgirl: Okay.

Sarah: – that’s also fine, so go ahead.

Redheadedgirl: Well, he, there’s also a building in York called the Treasurer’s House that used to be the house of the treasurer of the, of York Minster, and it sits right on top of an old Roman road, ‘cause York was a Roman settlement, and in the 1950s, a, a guy was working in the cellar of this house, and he heard a trumpet and then watched a Roman legion march through, out of the wall and through the cellar, and he was able to describe these things in incredible detail.

Sarah: Whoa!

Redheadedgirl: Yeah. And they, they figured, they didn’t know at the time exactly where the road was. They figured out –

Sarah: Well, he knows now.

Redheadedgirl: – where the – yeah.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Redheadedgirl: In the intervening decades, they figured out exactly what the layout was, and yes, there is a road that goes straight through the cellar. And –

Sarah: Whoa.

Redheadedgirl: – the – I mean, it was to the point that the scholarship at the time that he saw it was like, that is not what people in Rome, in York were wearing, that’s not what legionnaires were wearing, and then more research happened, and his vision, his version of what he saw was confirmed? And other people have seen these? And I got to go on a tour of the cellar and see it? I didn’t see the ghosts; they apparently only tend to show up in February, when the house is closed, but they do take you on a tour of the cellar so you can see exactly where it was, and that was super awesome. And not only that, I knew that story; I had read that story. So that was super cool.

Sarah: Whoa. And that’s, like, all of your catnip.

Redheadedgirl: That’s, like, all of it, yeah.

Sarah: Right, I mean, like, the only thing they needed was also to do, to do some baking?

Redheadedgirl: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Possibly also some sewing.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: They could, they could have been walking, baking, sewing, and marching; that would have been ideal.

Redheadedgirl: That would have been weird for legionnaires, but sure.

Sarah: Hey, you never know. This could be historically proven later.

Redheadedgirl: It could be.

Sarah: Which would be cool.

Redheadedgirl: It would be cool. So, yes, York is amazing, and you should go, and it doesn’t, like, the whole city just doesn’t look real.

Sarah: Which did you like best? Did you like London, York, Edinburgh? Did you have a preference?

Redheadedgirl: No, I liked, liked every single minute of the whole trip.

Sarah: That’s excellent, considering how much time you put into planning it.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: Happy birthday to you!

Redheadedgirl: Happy birthday to me.

Sarah: Fuck yeah!

Redheadedgirl: It was great.

Sarah: And you got to hang out with somebody who you usually just talk to on the internet, which is always very cool, and a little scary, but always cool.

Redheadedgirl: Two of ‘em! Alina came, too.

Sarah: No way, I didn’t know that!

Redheadedgirl: Yeah! Alina came, and the last five days in Edinburgh was me, Kayleigh, and Alina. And Alina’s husband, who we couldn’t always tell if he was enjoying himself, and then we’d, like, leave whatever we were doing, and he’d go, yeah, it was pretty cool.

Sarah: [Laughs] So, story checks out. So, of the ghost tours that you went on, the one with the Romans in the basement was probably the best or the most memorable?

Redheadedgirl: Yes. The one we went on in Edinburgh was also, was really well done, because, among other things, they really thought about the route that they followed?

Sarah: Ooh!

Redheadedgirl: ‘Cause Edinburgh is on an extinct volcano.

Sarah: You know, as you do.

Redheadedgirl: There’re a lot of very steep hills –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – so they really thought about how they were going to plan this route so there wasn’t a lot of steep uphill –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – and the downhill wasn’t dire –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – and you still ended at a point where, yeah, you had to go uphill a little bit, but – to get to the Royal Mile – but it wasn’t, like, a climb. So that was really well done of them, and there were a bunch of stories that I’d never heard before. They’re, you know, the, the various and sundry, this woman was burned as a witch in the plaza in front of St. Giles’ Cathedral, and you’d see her sometimes, and occasionally there was this one close where a lawyer got murdered, and then his murderer, who was like, I’m not so-, I ain’t even sorry. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do it, ‘cause I did it. I told y’all I was going to do it, and then I did it, and he kind of got dismembered a little bit, so sometimes, like, there’s a ghost of his hand tugging on people’s pant legs on Advocate’s Close for some reason; no one really understands why. Or the most haunted graveyard in Britain, which is Greyfriars Kirkyard. J. K. Rowling got some of the names from Harry Potter from that graveyard.

Sarah: Whoa.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: So that was both creepy history and cool history at the same time. So you mentioned that you have ghost books that scare the shit out of you, but you still have them. Do you have any –

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: – that you would recommend?

Redheadedgirl: I, what I do is I, I travel, and then I buy a local ghost stories book from where I’ve been. Although – [laughs] – I kind of, I overpacked, and I didn’t get one from Edinburgh because I was afraid that I was overweight on my luggage, and I was.

Sarah: Oh, no!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs] So I literally did not have room for one more thing.

Sarah: For one more book.

Redheadedgirl: For one more book.

Sarah: Well, you got Mrs. Beeton’s.

Redheadedgirl: I got, yeah. Do you know how much that weighs? Three and a half pounds.

Sarah: I am sure that it is not a lightweight.

Redheadedgirl: It’s not; it’s three and a half –

Sarah: That book is not messing around.

Redheadedgirl: No. No. It’s in a place of honor now, though, so it’s all good.

Sarah: I’m really glad you had such a good time on your trip.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah, I really did.

Sarah: Yay! Who wants to go next to talk about ghost stories and book recommendations? Amanda, I know you have a list. Do you want to go?

Amanda: Yeah, I guess it’s a list. It’s not many books, ‘cause I don’t read a lot of ghost stories? That doesn’t do it for me, but I watch a lot of, like, ghost TV. [Laughs]

Sarah: Wait, wait, wait –

Amanda: Like –

Sarah: – ghost TV, like there’s going to be an overly dramatic re-enactment with lots of staring?

Amanda: No. There’re no re-enactments in my ghost television. It’s like –

Redheadedgirl: This is serious ghost television, Sarah.

Elyse: It’s like –

Sarah: All right, what is serious ghost TV? ‘Cause every time I’ve watched something with ghosts, it’s like, and then she opened the door, and they show footage of a woman open a door, opening a door, like, before the commercial break, after the commercial break –

Someone: Yeah.

Sarah: – in the middle of the next segment.

[Laughter]

Amanda: I don’t like re-enactments in any of my TV shows.

Sarah: No, me neither, so what ghost TV do you watch?

Amanda: [Laughs] So, my boyfriend went out of town for a bachelor party about, I don’t know, two or three weeks ago, and so that weekend, I’m just going to live in my own filth and not move –

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Amanda: – and not shower, and –

Sarah: As you do.

Amanda: [Laughs] And that Friday, they were showing the entire season one of this show called Kindred Spirits that’s on TLC before the second –

Sarah: Oh, my gosh.

Amanda: – before the second season starts, and I had never heard of this show before, and I just remember lying in bed for four straight hours watching this show before I got up.

[Laughter]

Amanda: And it made me cry a lot – [laughs] – not out of fear, but it’s about these two paranorm-, paranormal investigators, Amy and Adam, who investigate these haunted houses after they get emails or phone calls from people living in the houses saying that they’re scared or they’re frightened or their kids are frightened, so they kind of go in to figure out what is haunting these houses to give the families a better understanding of the spirits and so they aren’t so scared and to figure out, like, why the people are there. So it’s kind of really sweet. Oftentimes it’s a previous homeowner or, like, someone’s grandmother, like, watching over them, and I’m dealing with the own death of my grandmother, so I would love for her to, like, haunt my house, to be honest.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Amanda: So I’ve been watching a lot of that, and BuzzFeed does a really great paranormal series that you can find on YouTube called BuzzFeed Unsolved, and it’s these two men. One really believes in ghosts and paranormal activity, and the other’s a huge skeptic. So they’ll go to these haunted places and kind of check it out and usually stay the night, and it’s really just kind of funny. [Laughs]

But I have been on ghost tours, which I think they’re super fun, and I would do them every day if I could. I, when I first moved to Boston, there was a Boston By Foot tour around Halloween that I went with two women from grad school who are my dearest friends now, and it wasn’t so much like hauntings and stuff like that but more of, people were murdered here! The more, like, grisly stuff, like we went to where one of the victims of the Boston Strangler lived –

Sarah: Aaahhh!

Amanda: – the Boston Common – yeah. The Boston Common is full of places where, you know, witches were hanged, so we went to a few of those places. One of my –

Redheadedgirl: Yeah, sad-, sadly, the, the old hanging tree got knocked down in a hurricane in, like –

Amanda: Yeah. One of my favorite creepy stories that I heard on that tour was, we have this building called, called the Boston Athenaeum, which is, has a collection of super rare and fancy books, and there’s a membership involved, and I think they only let people into an open house a few times a year, but they have one of maybe, like, two or three books in existence that was made out of, that’s bound with the author’s skin?

Elyse: Ugh!

Sarah: Aaaahhhhh!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Sarah: That has very negative connotations on many levels!

Amanda: [Laughs] So, the author was a highwayman, and he was captured, and while in prison, he kind of wrote his life story, but he was so poor that he didn’t have the money to bind the book, so when he passed, he left instructions for the warden to use his skin in the binding of his book, and he left the book to the warden.

Elyse: And I love that the warden was just like, oh, yeah, sure.

Amanda: Yeah, sure, why not?

Sarah: Okay.

Elyse: No, no problem, dude. That’s not, that’s not fucking weird at all. We’ll totally honor your last wishes.

Sarah: And, and that’s totally something that would happen in a book you read, Elyse?

Elyse: It is, and I just want to –

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Elyse: First of all, I want to say that it is like a cold, stormy, October Wisconsin night here, and my husband went outside and bought me Coke Zero in the rain so that I could stay awake for this?

Sarah: Aww!

Elyse: And I’m still really tired, and I have a serious case of the giggles coming on, ‘cause I’m tired?

Sarah: Yes!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Elyse: So, be warned. But, yeah –

Sarah: Awesome!

Elyse: – a book bound in your own skin is, like, a thing I would read, yes.

Redheadedgirl: I, I also saw a book bound with human skin. It was Burke, who was one of the guys who would, first they, he and his buddy – I, I, I don’t remember what his buddy’s name was; I could look it up, but I don’t want to – he and his buddy first started robbing graves and selling them to the medical school? This is in, like, the, the 1800s –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – when people were, you know, figuring out that anatomy was a thing and they needed to figure out how anatomy worked, but it was hard to get willing models, shall we say? And then they figured out, wait a second, we get more money if the bodies are really fresh, so, like, what if we killed people and robbed –

Sarah: Again, this sounds like a book that Elyse would read.

Redheadedgirl: Right! Only it really happened.

Elyse: I, you know what, I admire their entrepreneurial spirit.

[Laughter]

Redheadedgirl: Well –

Carrie: You can’t fault them on that. It was William Burke and William Hare.

Redheadedgirl: There you go, Burke and Hare. There is now a strip club in Edinburgh called Burke and Hare.

Sarah: Wait –

Amanda: Wait, like –

Sarah: Right?

Redheadedgirl: Yes. Burke and Hare.

Sarah: Ooo-kay!

Redheadedgirl: So, they eventually, the doctor that they were selling bodies to got suspicious and was like, I think you might actually be killing these people, and they were like, no! Why would you think that? [Laughs] Anyway, they got arrested. Hare immediately ratted out Burke, fled the country; no one ever saw him again. Burke got himself hanged. He was dissected, because why not?

Carrie: Karma!

Elyse: Irony.

Redheadedgirl: Also had a small book bound with his skin, which is now in the Surgeons’ Hall Museum, and I saw it –

Sarah: Creepy!

Redheadedgirl: – with a lot of other really disturbing things; that museum is not for Sarahs.

Sarah: No, I, I’m, yeah, no. Nah.

Redheadedgirl: It’s not.

Sarah: No.

Amanda: I also remember my first ghost tour. I was in fourth grade, and I think –

Sarah: Fourth grade? Hold the phone!

Amanda: I was in fourth grade. So, in Florida, I don’t know if it still goes now, but in Florida –

Elyse: It’s required by law.

[Laughter]

Amanda: It is. No, in fourth grade, you all have to do, like, a –

Sarah: Is it led by Florida Man? [Laughs]

Amanda: – a curriculum block about the history of Florida. I still remember, like, what Florida’s state bird, state flower, state tree, state animal. Like, that’s something that I have retained for two decades. And it culminates in a trip to St. Augustine, which is rich in history. It has, like, a cool old Spanish fort; it’s, like, the oldest city in the U.S.; and we did a ghost tour! And I remember it was, like, dusk, and I don’t even remember the story any more, but it had to do with this old woman who haunts this inn, and I just remember, like, seeing a creepy figure in this top window and, like, a curtain moving, and I freaked out and, like, bolted down the street with my friends. They’re just addicting! I love them so much!

Redheadedgirl: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: But, yeah, I don’t read a lot of books; I watch a lot of ghost things. I’m, I wrote down in one of my notes High Spirits with Steve Guttenberg. [Laughs] It’s an old, it’s an old movie. I think it’s in the early ‘90s or late ‘80s? I want to Google it right now.

Sarah: Wait, is this like hi –

Redheadedgirl: Right, that’s super old. [Laughs]

Sarah: – hi as in hello, spirits, or high as in they all smoked a joint together?

Amanda: I think it takes place in Ireland or Scotland, so I think it might, it’s like high, the Highlands? But it’s H-I-G-H. It’s got Peter O’Toole, and Daryl Hannah and Liam Neeson are ghosts.

Redheadedgirl: Oh, my gosh! [Laughs]

Sarah: How have I missed this?!

Amanda: It was made in ’88, and it’s got Steve Guttenberg as the main character.

Redheadedgirl: All right, movie matinee for next fall.

Sarah: Fuck that! Next month!

Amanda: And I just, it was on, like, HBO or Starz for a month straight, and I just remember watching it so much. [Laughs] And I’ve never seen it on TV since, since I watched it when I was a child. So, yeah, High Spirits. It was made in 1988. It’s a comedy horror, according to –

Redheadedgirl: Okay.

Amanda: – Wikipedia.

Sarah: It has a seventeen percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Daryl Hannah –

Elyse: Oh, it –

Redheadedgirl: This movie sounds amazing!

Sarah: – and Daryl Hannah was nominated for a Razzy but lost to Kristy McNichol. This is like, this is like heritage-level history right here.

Amanda: So, give it a watch. But if anyone wants a really cool modern ghost story, this is the last thing I have in my notes – no books, sorry. There is an illustrator who used to do web comics; he now works for BuzzFeed. You can find him on Twitter @moby_dickhead.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Amanda: His name is Adam Ellis, and he’s kind of been documenting on Twitter this saga of, he thinks his apartment is haunted by the spirit of a child. It is so creepy. He –

Redheadedgirl: Nope.

Amanda: – he has set up, like, motion sensor web cams –

Redheadedgirl: Nope.

Amanda: – and in some of the videos you can see, like –

Redheadedgirl: Nope.

Amanda: – cups moving and things falling off the wall, and he has two adorable cats, Pepper and then Maxwell, who has three legs, and his cats freak out and, like, meow at the door at midnight every night. But I’ll have Sarah link to the tweet thread in the show notes, because I am glued to this saga. My boyfriend thinks it’s a load of bullshit, but I’m like, shut up, I need this! Like, don’t ruin this for me!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Amanda: And I have, like, Twitter notifications turned on, so every time he tweets, I get a little alert so I can read it immediately. But it’s just so creepy and amazing. I really like the, the real life stuff, which is maybe why I don’t do a lot of reading or fictionalized ghost stories. I’m really invested in, you know, proof and seeing things and getting things on monitors or whatever kind of tools these people have. So, yeah, that’s it for me.

Sarah: This is seriously creepy.

Amanda: [Laughs] Are you looking at the Dear David saga on Twitter right now?

Sarah: Yes. Does it have an end?

Amanda: Nah, it’s ongoing. He went to Japan for a few weeks and then came back and, like, stuff was still happening. So his, like, last update was October 14th.

Sarah: Holy shit.

Amanda: Yeah, and it’s been going on for, I don’t know, maybe like a month now?

Sarah: Did you guys see, this was – I have no concept of time, so I can’t even tell you how long ago this was. I remember seeing this on Reddit, and then I saw it picked up by a whole bunch of blogs, that there was this guy who was getting strangely weird, random, babbling messages on Facebook Messenger from his dead fiancée?

Amanda: What?!

Redheadedgirl: No!

Elyse: Oh, yeah, I remember that.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I love how Elyse is like, oh, yeah, that happened last week!

Elyse: So, I, I consume a lot of creepy shit, though. Like, I feel like I’m the least impressed by creepy shit?

Sarah: Yeah, I know. I feel like it would take some serious, serious planning to scare the shit out of you.

Elyse: I don’t know. I, I think because I don’t believe in it, it doesn’t scare me.

Sarah: Right. That makes sense!

Elyse: But, but, like, last, like, last night, we watched, like, I don’t know, four straight hours of American Horror Story, and then I went directly to bed.

Sarah: Oh, my God. So, do you have any ghost stories that have stuck with you?

Elyse: I don’t think so. I don’t read a lot of ghost stories. I do like fiction with a supernatural element to it. Before I started reading romance novels, I read Gothic novels, like Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney, and those always had, like, a little bit of a supernatural element to them? There’s usually, like, a curse or a ghost or – I love how in Gothic novels the manors or castles or chateaus always have names like Corpseblood Manor –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – and nobody stops to be like, you know, maybe I don’t want to live there.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Sarah: Intestines Row. Right.

Redheadedgirl: Right!

Elyse: Right!

Redheadedgirl: Hey, don’t go to Crimson Peak! Okay, great. Where’s that?

Elyse: I feel like so much of the horror genre would be erased if people just did their due diligence while shopping for property. Like, we’re watching season six of American Horror Story, and so when you, when there’s, like, a beautiful three-story farmhouse in the middle of the Carolina wilderness and, like, nobody wants it and you have to pay for it, like, as is in cash, that should be a warning that you don’t fucking buy that farmhouse. Right, like –

Redheadedgirl: Okay, but, like, is there a clawfoot tub?

Elyse: Probably! Like, with real claws, though.

Redheadedgirl: I mean, though.

Elyse: And then also, like, the couple’s wandering through the house, and they’re like, oh, my God, look at this camcorder with a tape in it! And it’s like, how, during your walkthrough, did he not notice AV equipment from 1992? How did that escape you?

Sarah: I don’t have an answer!

Redheadedgirl: No.

Elyse: I just, yeah. I, I just think if someone came to me and was like, you can have this property for cash, but you’re not allowed to ask any questions, I’d be like, you know, I’m not comfortable with this transaction.

Sarah: [Laughs] You would, you, you admire their entrepreneurial spirit, but only so far?

Elyse: Our house, growing up, I don’t think it was haunted or anything, but it was kind of weird. Like, they remodeled it in ways that didn’t necessarily make sense, and we found this giant concrete slab under all this decorative rock after we moved out, and I was convinced that, like, there had been a murder and there was a body under that slab, ‘cause there was no reason for that slab to be there. Like –

Amanda: Dig it up! Dig it up!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Redheadedgirl: It’s – no! Don’t do that!

Sarah: Definitely not.

Elyse: My parents won’t let me! Like, don’t you want to know? They’re like, no! Like, come on!

Amanda: Like, I’m that person – I can’t remember where we were going. I think we were on, like, Alligator Alley in Florida when I went down there recently, and Alligator Alley is a strip of road in Florida that is surrounded by Everglades on both sides, and it’s really fucking dark at night. We were there during the day. But I just remember it being really creepy and my parents threatening my brother and me that they were going to leave us on the side of the road if we don’t stop fighting in the car. So, that was, like, a fear, a childhood fear of mine, that strip of road, but I’m one of those people where if I see a garbage bag or a box hanging out on the side of the road, I, like, what if there’s a dead body in there? What if there are body –

Sarah: That’s totally someone’s head.

Redheadedgirl: Hmm.

Amanda: There was, Elyse and I just listened to – maybe I, I think maybe it was, like, Sword and Scale. I don’t know if you listened to it recently, Elyse, but there was just an episode of a podcast I listen to where a woman – TRIGGER WARNING probably for this next part? – this woman had chopped up her adult son and put his body parts in garbage bags and just left them on the side of the highway, and so that’s what I always think if there’s, like, a deserted or thrown away bag or box just hanging out on the side of the road, and every time I pass one I mention it out loud to whoever is driving the car, and it’s unsettling, I guess, for –

[Laughter]

Amanda: – for the driver.

Sarah: Not for you, but for them!

Elyse: You know, I think that too, though, and I, you know, that’s part of the reason, like, I don’t jog, because it’s always some fucking early-morning jogger that stumbles across the body, every single Goddamn time.

Amanda: But I would love to stumble across a body!

Carrie: It’s true!

Sarah: Seriously, Elyse and Amanda –

Redheadedgirl: You say that now!

Sarah: – Elyse and Amanda, how is there not a crime solving show starring the two of you? Like, Elyse would be like, I wasn’t fucking jogging –

Amanda: We have the same thoughts, but one wants to find the body, and the other one really doesn’t. [Laughs]

Sarah: Exactly, there’s your tension. You could sustain that for hours.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Elyse: There would just be video of Amanda and me standing in a ditch, and, like, there’s something blurred out and one of us is poking it with a stick.

[Laughter]

Elyse: It would be so inappropriate.

Carrie: I just feel strongly that it’s bad enough to, like, murder and dismember somebody, but stooping to littering is, like –

[Laughter]

Carrie: – uncool! That is not okay!

Sarah: It just crossed the line, right?

Carrie: Take a stand, yeah, yeah.

Elyse: You had, like, the best dead body story ever in Sacramento recently. Didn’t you have, like, some random woman walking around with a human head on a stick?

Carrie: Oh, my God, no! That was – oh, geeze, what was the story with that? No, that was basically the story. There was –

Elyse: Yeah!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Carrie: With-, within the last calendar year – I can’t remember when it was, but, yeah – it was, this woman was walking around with, like, a head on a stick, and I, I never, I actually learn more about murders in Sacramento from you guys than I do from myself, ‘cause I don’t read the local paper very much. Sometimes I find it’s best just not to know. I mean, there’s, like, like, I do walk a lot around, like, downtown Sacramento and stuff, so everybody knows where Dolores Huerta’s house is, you know, and it’s just, like, this house. She was a, a serial killer in Sacramento and, you know, like, it’s just a house, and no one makes a big deal of it anymore, and every now and then someone walks around with a head on a stick.

Elyse: Right.

Carrie: I don’t remember how that all panned out, but –

Elyse: I think being from Wisconsin, if it’s not a cannibal, we’re just not impressed. Like, you didn’t bring your A game.

Amanda: Well, a lot of serial killers have come from Wisconsin.

Elyse: Yeah, because it’s cold as shit here and really dark in the winter, and people get kind of crazy!

Redheadedgirl: You know, it’s cold as shit in Minnesota and it gets really dark and people go kind of crazy, and yet they don’t kill people.

Sarah: Yeah, you’ve got –

Elyse: They do.

Sarah: – Tater Tots. You’ve got Tater Tots –

Redheadedgirl: Not like that. Not like that.

Sarah: – and, you know –

Elyse: No, they just, they just don’t –

Carrie: Not, like, with a head on a stick.

Redheadedgirl: We just don’t get caught, ‘cause we’re better at it!

Elyse: Yeah, that could be.

Amanda: Florida has the same thing, but, like, with the heat. Like, when it gets hotter, people go bananas.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Elyse: Plus, you’ve just got the Florida rule where if it’s super weird it happened in Florida.

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Elyse: Like, man arrested for having sex with picnic table: Florida.

Sarah: Florida Man arrested for having sex with a picnic table.

Elyse: Picnic table, right.

Redheadedgirl: Right. I used to, back in the days when LiveJournal was, like, you know, a thing? There was a journal that I followed –

Sarah: I miss those days.

Redheadedgirl: – that would occasionally play Florida Man or Ohio Man?

Sarah: [Gasps!] Oh, that’s just mean!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs] It’s mean, but he had, he had a really good balance between the two. So.

Carrie: If you, if you do want to hear the whole story. It wasn’t, like, a whole head; it was the skull, which makes all the difference, I think. So, she showed them where a body was, and unfortunately, we will probably never know who it was, because it was somebody in a, a homeless camp, so that is the exciting story of the woman with the skull on the stick in Sacramento.

Elyse: Yeah, if I remember right, like, the, like, she was nonverbal or something, so she wanted to show people that there was this dead body, but then also you don’t want to, like, touch it, so, ergo –

Sarah: But at least she didn’t litter.

Elyse: Right.

Carrie: She didn’t litter, and, and it was, like, right near Halloween last year.

Sarah: So that story checks out! You know.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: You work with what you’ve got.

Carrie: Yeah!

Sarah: If you’re nonverbal, you parade until you get attention, and then you’re like, all right, guys, come over here! Dead body; found it!

Elyse: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: Right, yeah! Yeah!

Sarah: This makes perfect sense to me.

Redheadedgirl: Sure!

Sarah: Oh, that doesn’t say great things about me anyway, so.

Redheadedgirl: Not really, no.

Sarah: No, not really.

Elyse: You know, I was thinking today about this podcast – I, I actually put thought into it, believe it or not – and I think one of the things that appeals to me about spooky shit, and specifically, like, the horror genre, is that there’s always this element of kind of getting justice or making things right. Like, we talked about how female ghosts in fiction are really, really powerful, and I was thinking about the fact, like I said, we’re watching American Horror Story season six, and, like, basically, the crux of the whole thing is that back in the day, some dudes didn’t fucking listen to Kathy Bates and Lady Gaga, and now they have to kill a lot of people, and I’m down with that plotline.

Sarah: I, I, I see nothing wrong here.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: I mean, why would you not listen to Kathy Bates? What’s wrong with you?

Redheadedgirl: And Lady Gaga.

Sarah: And Lady Gaga. What’s wrong with you?

Elyse: Right. When Kathy Bates and Lady Gaga tell you to do some shit, you do it, and when you don’t, they come back as, like, you know, demonic figures that will kill you, but you had it coming. Should’ve fucking listened.

Redheadedgirl: Right.

Sarah: Isn’t that the, the foundation of a lot of female ghost stories, though? You should’ve fucking listened.

Redheadedgirl, Elyse, and Carrie: Yeah.

Sarah: I told you bad shit was going to happen.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Carrie: You know the one, right, about on my gravestone it’s going to say, I told you I was sick!

Redheadedgirl: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Carrie: You should listen!

Redheadedgirl: Right.

Carrie: The, the woman with, like, the ribbon around her neck –

Redheadedgirl: NO, I HATE THAT ONE!

Carrie: [Sings] I told you you’d be sorry!

Sarah: Creepy!

Redheadedgirl: That was creepy as fuck, Carrie. You need to never do that again.

Carrie: I, I, yeah. [Laughs] I was scarred! I was scarred by that story.

Redheadedgirl: So was I, so not ready for that.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: Just now!

[Laughter]

Carrie: All right.

Sarah: That was a delightful evil laugh, by the way. Well done.

Redheadedgirl: Uh-huh.

Carrie: Thank you.

Sarah: So –

Redheadedgirl: So, I have, I have one more story, which is ridiculous as fuck.

Elyse: Yes, please.

Redheadedgirl: Ok.

Sarah: Yes, please!

Redheadedgirl: It’s from Edinburgh. So, hold on; I need to sit up for this one.

Sarah: What, like your diaphragm needs space to, to get this story going?

[Laughter]

Redheadedgirl: Mostly that I just kind of, like, completely fell over.

Sarah: [Laughs] Jet lag! Whee!

Redheadedgirl: Jet lag!

Carrie: She has to get the flashlight and turn it on under, and hold it, like, under her chin.

Redheadedgirl: Right, so imagine I’m doing that.

Carrie: Yeah.

Sarah: Lock the doors.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah, ‘cause I’m totally doing that. Only this story is, as I say, bullshit. So, one of the last things that we saw in Edinburgh was the real Mary King’s Close.

Sarah: Whoa.

Redheadedgirl: And a close is those – like the Royal Mile is a mile long, and it goes from Edinburgh Castle to Holyroodhouse Palace, and it’s, you know, part of the, the old medieval part of Edinburgh, and there are, and the mile goes along the top ridge of this glacial mountain that comes down from this extinct volcano, and the closes are the narrow alleys and lanes that go off of the Royal Mile, and they go down and down and down and down until you die.

Sarah: Bleah!

Redheadedgirl: And on one side it goes down into what used to be the Nor Loch, which is the North Lake, which was a literal lake of shit –

Elyse: Nice!

Redheadedgirl: – which is not relevant to this story, but that’s where all of the, you know, waste went –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – because shit rolls downhill. Anyway, Mary King’s Close was one of these narrow little alleys that got sort of accidentally-on-purpose preserved when the city council chambers were built above them during the 1700s, and most of the other closes have been, you know, renovated and changed over the years, and these were covered over and, in such a way that you can still see a lot of the original walls and cobblestones where there used to be a cow pen where cows used to – there’s a lot of shit involved in Edinburgh history. I’m just going to let you know that right now. So if you ever go, just get ready to learn a lot about poop. Anyway – and the tour guide we had was, like, super into the historical stuff and, like, really excited about explaining things, and also there’s some sort of ridiculous touristy, like, talking to animatronic paintings.

Sarah: Oh, no.

Redheadedgirl: This is dumb. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, no.

Redheadedgirl: This is dumb; I need you to understand that this is dumb, but this is, you know, part of my job, and I like getting paid, so I will do it. But I need you to understand that I think this is dumb. And he was, you know, leading us through the various rooms, and then he’s like, okay, so this next room we’re going to go into is one of my very favorites, because, well, we’ll walk in and you’ll see. And everybody, everybody walked in, and I walked in, and I was like, oh, my God, because what it is is, it’s one of the best-preserved 1600s rooms, like, in existence. The original plaster is still on the walls –

Carrie: [Gasps]

Redheadedgirl: – you can – I know, right? And I walked in and I was like, holy fuck! And he’s like, I know, right?

[Laughter]

Redheadedgirl: So he’s like, so there’s, you know, this real, we can see exactly how people lived ‘cause there are these fireplaces and when, and, like, how the room was laid out and everything. However, in sort of one corner of the room is a pile of dolls.

Carrie: No, no.

Redheadedgirl: Yes.

Sarah: No.

Redheadedgirl: The reason for this –

Carrie: No!

Redheadedgirl: – is because some point, I want to say in the ‘80s or the early ‘90s, a Japanese medium was, like, going through and swore that she felt the spirit of a small child by the name of Annie in that room, so she brought a doll for the ghost of this small child, and of course the media picked this up, and humans gonna human. So now people are constantly, like, dropping off dolls and Minion toys. We saw – and I’m not kidding, guys – a One Direction Blu-ray.

Sarah: No!

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Sarah: That is –

Redheadedgirl: And poor Mark, our tour guide, was like, I need to tell you about this because otherwise you’re going to be like, what’s with the pile of random creepy dolls?

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: Here’s what’s with that.

Sarah: Justifiable question.

Elyse: Right.

Carrie: Yeah.

Redheadedgirl: Justifiable question, but, like, like, this room is amazing all its own, and then they fuck it up with this – he’s so mad about it.

Sarah: Oh, wow.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs] And he’s like, no, seriously, people just leave this shit all day long. We have piles of it in storage, and the –

Someone: Wow.

Redheadedgirl: – like, corner of nightmares in this amazing room with plaster that was made with, you know, five-hundred-year-old horsehair. So, like, humans gonna human. Like, sometimes humans are great; a lot of the times they’re terrible.

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: In the most Wisconsin story ever, this summer my husband got a call from his parents saying, hey, can you drive out to this country bar in the middle of fucking nowhere that’s closing to pick up the taxidermied coyote we loaned the owner, so we did that, and, like, down this country road where there’s absolutely nothing, there’s a hand-painted sign that says Rummage Sale with Dolls, and then an arrow pointing down, like, this windy, dark road –

Carrie: [Laughs]

Elyse: – and I’m like, who the fuck falls for that?

Sarah: And Amanda is about to ask you, okay, so where exactly was that sign?

Amanda: No, I don’t do dolls.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: That’s above me –

Carrie: I don’t do dolls.

Amanda: – a little bit. [Laughs]

Elyse: Like, there’s definitely not a serial killer at the end of that road. Definitely not.

Redheadedgirl: Definitely not, no.

Carrie: No.

Sarah: I would have stolen the sign, to be honest.

Elyse: I, we didn’t slow down enough for me to take a photo.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: I, I don’t think you – I’ve seen these movies, and I don’t think you want to incur the wrath of the –

Elyse: Of stealing the sign.

Carrie: – creepy doll taxidermist, okay? Just, just keep them happy.

Sarah: I told you –

Carrie: Don’t steal from them.

Sarah: I told you all the dolls in this house when we toured it, right?

Elyse: No?

Sarah: In my son’s room, the house had been sort of semi-staged, but the family was, hadn’t moved out, and this house is just over twenty years old. I’ve never lived in a house that’s younger than me, and it’s kind of refreshing; like, I really enjoy some parts of it, but not having ghosts that I’m aware of is, is a definite benefit? We tour the house, and in the front room are a little baby crib and a little, like, a little doll’s dresser and then a chair with perfectly positioned creepy dolls that the minute you walk in the room, they’re all staring at you. Like, why are you here?

Carrie: Oh, no.

Sarah: And this is now my older son’s room, so we, we were like, okay, this is going to be your room, and he’s like, I don’t want to be in here right now.

[Laughter]

Carrie: No.

Sarah: And I’m like, those, those will not be here. He’s like, they don’t come with the house, do they? I’m like, nonononono, they will be –

Carrie: No.

Sarah: – they will be gone. They will be gone. And the first thing he asked when we were, like, getting ready to go in the house, are the dolls gone? Yes. Child knows what’s up. You cannot have dolls.

Carrie: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, who stages a house with dolls that stare at you when you walk in a room?

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Elyse: Somebody doesn’t want to sell the house.

Redheadedgirl: Like, I’m surprised someone – yeah, exactly that! [Laughs]

Sarah: Somebody who doesn’t sell a lot of houses. Ugh.

Elyse: But, as we’ve established, because I do not believe in any of this stuff and I am apparently, like, spiritually obtuse, I would be the most frustrating person ever to haunt.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: I probably –

Redheadedgirl: That would be a hilarious comedy, actually.

Sarah: I would watch that.

Elyse: I, I would buy that house.

Sarah: I would watch that show. Ghosts try to haunt Elyse, and Elyse is like, eh, it’s fine.

Carrie: [Laughs]

Elyse: Clever.

Sarah: Elyse goes, oh, please, no, it’s fine. Just the wind.

Elyse: Like, I had, I mean, I had that thought. Like, why would you leave a non-corporeal spirit dolls that she can’t play with? Like, now that’s just pissing her off.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: Right? Like, that’s a dick move!

Carrie: Yeah.

Redheadedgirl: Hmm.

Elyse: And then throw a One Direction Blu-ray on there, I mean, that’s a giant fuck-you.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs] A One Direction Blu-ray without a Blu-ray player –

Carrie: Blu-ray player.

Redheadedgirl: – if there really was a ghost down there, she’d be real pissed. I’m –

Elyse: Exactly!

Sarah: So does anyone have any additional book recommendations? Or ghost stories?

Carrie: Well, so, I live in Gold Rush country, so we’re, like, all ghosts all the time. Like –

Sarah: There’re no ghosts there!

Carrie: Oh, my God. So, like, every – but, but this is weird: for, well, okay, the first thing that’s weird is the fact that I read a really big book about the Donner party. Why? Why? Why? I – and it got –

Sarah: Isn’t that, like, down the road from your house?

Carrie: Yeah, well, it’s, like, two-, three-hour drive away.

Sarah: Ahhh.

Carrie: And, and, you, you know, at RT, you guys’ll probably see it if you do a tour. It’s really, really beautiful there. The, Donner Lake is, like, oh, my God, it’s gorgeous. But, you know, it’s gorgeous when you’re not stuck there and when it’s not the middle of winter. So what is weird is that I, like, learned – I got really, really into this, so I feel really ghoulish, and I’ve collected all these macabre details, but weirdly, there’s, like, very little ghost stuff associated. But we do have a very famous doll who is very, a nice vibe-y doll, not a creepy doll, and that’s Patty Reed’s doll. So, when the Donners left their wagons in the desert before the – they were already in trouble before they got to the mountains – and when that party left their, their, their wagons, the Reed children weren’t allowed to take anything with them, and Patty, who was eight, couldn’t stand to leave her doll behind. She had this really small little doll; it’s about maybe four inches tall, tops? A little china doll with a little fabric dress –

Redheadedgirl: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – so she, she hid it in the, in her apron, and she kept it with her, and she survived the winter, and when they finally got rescued, she revealed to her parents that she still had the doll, and they were really happy that she had the doll, and because she got assistance from Sutter’s Fort, she said when she died she wanted the doll to go to Sutter’s Fort, so it’s, like, this Sacramento ritual where you go to Sutter’s Fort and you see the doll. So that’s kind of cool to see. And it does look, it, it, it, in another context it would definitely fit the creepy doll mode, but it was a good doll; it did well.

Redheadedgirl: Mm.

Carrie: Yes, it did a good job.

Elyse: Have you guys seen the preview now, there’s going to be a movie coming out called Winchester about –

Carrie: Yeah!

Elyse: Sarah Winchester, starring Helen Mirren?

Carrie: Yes!

Sarah: Oh, God!

Carrie: I have feelings –

Redheadedgirl: She’s too tall!

Carrie: She’s too tall! And it’s not trivial! I mean, on the one hand I’m like, it’s Helen Mirren, right? Like, I’m fine with that. But also, but, like the fact that Sarah was really short, like that impacted her life and the way she built the house!

Elyse: Well –

Carrie: Are there no four-foot-nine actresses? I, maybe there aren’t.

Elyse: Wasn’t the rumor like, they spent thirty-some years adding onto this house, and it didn’t make any sense, and there were, like, lots of –

Carrie: Right.

Elyse: – passages that went to the middle of fucking nowhere, and the rumor was that the house was haunted by anyone who’d been killed by a Winchester rifle, and that she was kind of crazy.

Carrie: Well, here’s, here’s how it goes: there are variations on this, but the, the core legend is that she lost, had multiple losses and was devastated. She lived in New England, and she consulted a medium, who told her that she was being haunted by the spirits of the rifle, and in one version, the medium tells her that she can only appease the spirits by building them a giant house to live in, and in other versions the story is that she needs to build a giant house to trap them and confuse them, and that’s why it’s so –

Redheadedgirl: Bonkers?

Carrie: – convoluted and, and weird is so that they’ll get confused and lost and leave her alone. But in both versions she has to continually build on the house until she dies. Now, a biographer of, who wrote Captive of the Labyrinth somewhat anticlimactically indicated that the house was not continually built on, so now I’m all depressed, but that’s, like, California children are raised on, you know, certain motifs. Don’t take shortcuts, or you’ll eat your relatives; that’s the Donner party story.

Elyse: Right. That’s important.

Carrie: And Sarah Winchester was this loony, but it’s, also it’s weird because the idea is that she was both crazy and right, because everybody really thinks, dude, that house is totally haunted. ‘Cause it is a weird, it’s creepy, bizarre edifice.

Sarah: I mean, there’s a house on the corner of my street where, you ever notice that on some houses there’s a door on the second level that, like, opens out onto a drop that’ll really break your ankles?

Redheadedgirl: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And sometimes it’s a, right, sometimes it’s left over from a house that was adjoining; sometimes it was part of a barn. Sometimes there’s, there’s, there’s a reason why the door is there. It’s right near where my older son’s bus stop is, and we walk up to the bus stop and, you know, he’s going to be twelve, so sometimes I get really valuable information about what’s going on in his head as we stand there in the morning waiting for the bus in the cold, and looking at that door gives me the jibblies, just because it doesn’t fit. It’s not right. There’s a door in the middle of the ceiling, and then there’s, like, a birdhouse above it. Like, open the door, fall to your death, and then get shit on by a bird. Like, who –

Carrie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – what, what, why is that a thing?

Redheadedgirl: ‘Cause –

Carrie: I, I’ve never heard of that anywhere but the Winchester House, which has a higher up, like, you wouldn’t break an ankle, you would die. You open this door, and there’s, like, foo! That’s it. It’s, like, three or four stories up, but yeah, no.

Redheadedgirl: Oh, three or four stories, no, you’re just going to break things. It’s five stories or more that you’re going to die.

Carrie: All right, break things, whatever.

Sarah: Unless you dive; then you’re fucked. That would be another Winchester House lesson: don’t dive headfirst out of a door that’s not on the ground floor.

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the, the big thing with the Winchester House is take small steps. And I wrote extensively for Smart Bitches about what a great vibe I got from that house and I don’t think there’s anything bad about it; however, I would not sleep overnight there for, like, a billion dollars.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Carrie: I’m like, I’m not going to push my luck on this.

Sarah: I don’t know; I think that if you stayed the night, if there was a ghost of Sarah Winchester she would be like, oh, my goodness, tell me the world is better to short women now than it was then, and you would be like, girl, no, it is not, and then you would sit up all night –

Carrie: No, and then we would, we’d, like, trade arthritis remedies.

Sarah: Exactly! You would sit in and –

Carrie: This oil: try it, really!

Elyse: I, I’m willing to bet her arthritis remedy was laudanum.

Carrie: Probably.

Elyse: I mean, just, yeah, like a lot of, a lot of opioids.

Carrie: She had rheumatoid arthritis, so her –

Sarah: Ow.

Carrie: – her hands, like, stiffened into claws, so she looks like a cartoon witch –

Elyse: Nice!

Carrie: – even though she was actually a pretty benevolent human, but, you know, she looked like the kind of person that, like, kids would, like, freak out and run away from.

Sarah: Like, I dare you to go up to that house for, for trick or treat?

Carrie: You can, you can do a Friday the Thirteenth tour, you can do candlelight tours, and I do believe they have a Halloween tour.

Sarah: Whoa!

Carrie: A nighttime, candle-lit Halloween tour. Which actually, I’ve, I’ve heard – and then they have, like, specifically, like, more ghost-oriented tours, which I’ve heard are kind of cheesy, but maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re fabulous. I don’t know.

Sarah: Did I ever tell you guys about the, the, the house around the corner from where I grew up that was owned by Henry Clay Frick and his wife?

Carrie: No!

Elyse: I don’t think so?

Sarah: So, I grew up around the corner from Clayton, which was the Frick estate, and the Fricks had, like, shitloads of money from being robber barons and steel industry and shit like that, so they moved to New York. They really wanted to break into New York society, and the story that I heard on the tour of Clayton was that the people in New York were really not interested in these upstart yahoos from Pittsburgh and ostracized his wife. Now, he was fine, ‘cause he had money and he had a penis, but she was never admitted into society, so she moved back home to Pittsburgh and built her horse stables to look exactly like the house of the woman who had snubbed her.

Carrie: Ha!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So the house, like, her house was a place where horses shit, like, all day. But when I was really, really young – I have to look this up now, but when I was really young, Helen Clay Frick was still alive. That was their, their daughter, and she died when I was nine, but I remember, like, people used to be dared to go ring the door on this, ring, ring the doorbell on Halloween and, and, you know, go trick or treating because it was this massive, gorgeous, completely scary-looking Victorian house. Well, it’s now been turned into a museum, and I’ve toured it a whole bunch of times ‘cause it’s, you know, right down the street, or it was when I lived in Pittsburgh, but the thing about the, the Fricks and that era was that when their daughter died, they memorialized everything about her. This was Helen’s sister. Her picture was on their checks, so, like, if they wrote a, like, a check to pay the bill, the picture on the check was their dead daughter, and her hair was everywhere. It was braided, and it was coiled, and it was – and in every room, there were pictures of her, there were articles of her clothing. Like, the whole house, the way that they lived in it, had the little bits of memorial, you know, art from the Victorian era and later about their daughter. And I was more creeped out by that than I would ever have been going up to the doorbell to try to ring for trick or treat, which I was never allowed to do, ‘cause I was too little.

Redheadedgirl: Hmm.

Sarah: Like, the whole decorate with your dead child’s hair? Ugh! Like, that was –

Elyse: Yeah, that was common, though, wasn’t it?

Carrie: Very common, yeah.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: Very, very common, but when, man, when you see it everywhere you’re like, wow.

Carrie: It’s a lot of hair. Hey, I have to make a correction, because I have a terrible feeling that I said that we had a serial killer in Sacramento called Dolores Huerta, and she was actually this enormous hero of the farmworker movement. I am so sorry, Dolores. I suck.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: The serial killer was Dorothea Puente –

Elyse: Yes!

Carrie: – so I –

Elyse: She was the one that, like, she –

Carrie: – apologize to –

Elyse: – she killed people for Social Security checks, right? Like, she would –

Carrie: Yes, she killed old people and buried them in the backyard –

Elyse: Yeah.

Carrie: – and I was, I, I found it ‘cause I was Googling, ‘cause it was like, can you trick or treat at her house? Like – but I’m not finding anything that says that you can trick or treat at her house, sadly, ‘cause that would be awesome! [Laughs]

Sarah: That would be pretty amazing.

Elyse: Sarah, would you like me to speed-round some creepy book recommendations?

Sarah: Oh, hell, yeah!

Elyse: All right. All right, garlicknitter, get ready.

[Laughter]

[My fingers and ears are warmed up! – gk]

Elyse: Okay, so, first of all, I, I highly recommend Jennifer McMahon, and she has a really, really creepy book called The Winter People, which is about –

Sarah: Ugh!

Elyse: – basically, like, zombies.

Sarah: Just the name, dude.

Redheadedgirl: Nope.

Elyse: Right, it takes place, it takes place in the present day but then also in the early 1900s in Vermont in a small town that kind of gets isolated in the winter.

Redheadedgirl: Nope.

Elyse: Holding with the winter theme, I think this was a release this year: Loreth Ann White; it’s L-O-R-E-F, or L-O-R-E-Eth. That’s a new letter, the Eth. L-O-R-E-T-H.

[Laughter]

Elyse: It’s called In, In the Barren Ground, and again, it’s like a murder mystery with supernatural elements that takes place in, like, the polar, polar area; hence the barren ground thing. Sorry, I’m rambling. I’m really tired, and I apologize. If you –

Redheadedgirl: You’re not even jetlagged.

Elyse: No, I’m just on a shitload duloxetine and muscle relaxers.

Sarah: Whoo!

Elyse: Whoo! If you like Gothic mysteries or Gothic romance, and these are romances, Jennifer St. Giles has some out. One of hers is Midnight Secrets. There is Eve Silver’s series, which has dark in the title, so His Dark Kiss, Dark Prince. There is, of course, Victoria Holt, who wrote, I think, in the ‘70s, so her books are kind of old. There’s Kat Sheridan, who wrote Echoes in Stone, which is another Gothic mystery, or Gothic romance, and then there’s a Gothic romance by Lillian Marek coming out in November called Lord Edward’s Mysterious Treasure. I assume the title refers to his penis, but I have not yet –

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs] You just ruined the mystery, Elyse!

Elyse: His mysterious, his mysterious treasure is that his penis hooks sharply to the right.

[Laughter]

Elyse: There’s also Amanda DeWees, who writes Gothic romance that we’re reading this month for book club, and I’m scrolling through to see what other creepy shit I have downloaded on here.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: All kinds of creepy shit; I love creepy shit. That’s, that’s what I got off the top of my head.

Sarah: That’s a lot of creepy, dude.

Redheadedgirl: Yeah.

Sarah: That is a lot of creepy.

Carrie: If you want to go with the classics, a ghost story that no one ever remembers is a ghost story is Jane Eyre; it has two ghosts in it.

Sarah: Yeah, Jane liked ghosts!

Carrie: Yeah! So, there’s, at one point, Jane gets guidance from the voice of her dead mother, and then the whole story is put in motion because Jane is a child and she’s locked in the room where her uncle died, and – which is called the Red Room, by the way – and she – believes that she sees his ghost, and she – it’s kind of left ambiguous whether she does or not – and she is so terrified that she falls into a fit, and that’s how she gets away from her evil aunt, who then sends her to school where, like, all this other stuff happens. And of course, like, a romance that’s not a romance that’s really just a horror story about horrible people is Wuthering Heights, and it has –

Sarah: I was just going to say –

Elyse: Okay –

Sarah: – oh, horrible people, it has to be Wuthering Heights.

Elyse: So –

Carrie: Horrible people, but Cathy and Heathcliff, much haunting.

Sarah: True.

Carrie: Moors –

Redheadedgirl: Mm.

Carrie: – yeah.

Elyse: I just read –

Redheadedgirl: Well, what else are you going to do on the moors? You wander around, and you haunt people.

Carrie: Right, like, I –

Elyse: I just –

Carrie: – I want to visit the moors for five seconds and, like, walk out there and yell, Cathy! And then walk back and be like, checked off bucket list: done with the moors.

Redheadedgirl: Yep, and, and then you go from the Yorkshire moors to York and wander around the Shambles –

Carrie: Yeah, that would be cool.

Redheadedgirl: – and visit the Harry Potter store.

Carrie: Absolutely.

Redheadedgirl: And, and have a cream. Oh, my God.

Carrie: Oh, okay. Sorry, Elyse. I, like, I, like.

Elyse: No, it’s okay. I, I just finished a book by Sophia Tobin that is a true Gothic mystery, and I swear to God, she sat down and was like, I want to make a cast of characters that are even shittier than the cast of Wuthering Heights.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: No!

Redheadedgirl: Aw!

Elyse: I was so mad at that book. There was not a single fucking person in that book that I liked by the end of it.

Redheadedgirl: That’s how I felt about Awaken, My Love.

Elyse: But at the same time, it was so well done on the mystery front that, like, I couldn’t give it a horrible grade, ‘cause it was like, well, it turned out everyone was awful, but also I didn’t see this coming.

Sarah: Wow.

Redheadedgirl: All right, that’s cool.

Sarah: I can’t read scary shit, so I have nothing to add, unfortunately.

Redheadedgirl: No, you, you’re facilitating the conversation. There’s nothing –

Carrie: Yeah!

Redheadedgirl: – unfortunate in that.

Sarah: This is true.

Elyse: Yeah, you told us about the house with all the dead person hair in it. That’s –

Redheadedgirl: That’s right.

Sarah: Dead child hair.

Carrie: And the door! The door! Like, that’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Carrie: What the hell?

Redheadedgirl: Right. So, do you guys know about witch windows, which show up in Vermont architecture?

Elyse: No.

Sarah: No?

Redheadedgirl: Their, like, windows that are at an angle under the eaves, and the story is that witches can only fly in straight lines, so those windows are there to confuse them, ‘cause it’s at an angle and they can’t fly at an angle, so they can’t get into your house. Why? And then, like, people recount this story and then like literally everyone goes, why wouldn’t they use, like, literally any of the other windows? Or the door?

Sarah: Right?

Redheadedgirl: So, yeah. So –

Sarah: Like, who says witches don’t know geometry? What sexist bullshit is this?

Carrie: [Laughs]

Redheadedgirl: Right? I, I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know! I got nothing for you! No one actually seems to think that that’s the real reason that these random crooked windows are put in. It’s more likely to maximize the amount of light that you’ll get into your attic or –

Sarah: Right.

Redheadedgirl: – in your, you know – so that actually makes sense, because Vermont is north, and it gets dark, and the light is kind of slant-y, so.

Sarah: Right, that makes, that does make sense. But, yeah, it’s much more interesting to be like, yeah, witches don’t have geometry.

Redheadedgirl: Right.

Elyse: And can only enter via one random window.

Redheadedgirl: Right, yeah.

Carrie: Yeah.

Redheadedgirl: Like, you put in this one random window; then that’s the only way they can enter your house, except that they can’t? So I don’t, I –

Elyse: Are any of you going to binge Stranger Things when it comes out?

Carrie: Yes!

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Are you a fan, Amanda?

Amanda: Oh, a huge fan. I, after this phone call, I was going to call Eric to see – ‘cause it comes out Friday – I was going to see his thoughts on me making a big batch of my, my family recipe chili. I make, like, a huge Crockpot of it. I was like, can we just eat chili on Friday and binge the next season of Stranger Things? I mean, he’ll probably say yes, and if he doesn’t – he’ll say yes eventually.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: Right, I’ll, I’ll be there. Forget him.

Amanda: So we’ll just –

Redheadedgirl: Right.

Amanda: – just message back and forth.

Redheadedgirl: You have to have Reese’s Pieces, too, in honor of E.T.

Amanda: [Laughs] And he just did a marathon, so I doubt he’s going to want to do anything, so.

Sarah: I don’t think, I don’t think this is a show for Sarah, but I am very curious about it.

Amanda: It’s really good.

Carrie: I, I couldn’t handle all the middle-schoolers in jeopardy, so I had to watch it, like, the first season, like, a little bit at a time, so it took me forever. Like, I just finished it, like, last week, ‘cause I would watch, like – ‘cause I really love it! It’s so well done! But I would get so tense! I wasn’t, like, scared-scared? I was stressed out.

Amanda: No one saw It here, right?

Redheadedgirl: Oh, God, no.

Carrie: Oh, God, no!

Amanda: It was so good!

Elyse: Man, I wanted to.

Redheadedgirl: I don’t care!

Carrie: I’m so glad that you enjoyed it, Amanda.

Amanda: You want to, Elyse?

Carrie: I hope that you enjoyed it on my behalf.

Elyse: Yes!

Amanda: You should. You should go watch it and let me know. It’s actually really funny, and it’s not that scary?

Elyse: I have no one to go with, because –

Amanda: I would go.

Elyse: I know you would, but you live in Boston, which is –

Amanda: I know.

Elyse: – very, very far away. Because as much as I love my husband, I did have to continually check in with him during our American Horror Story binge to make sure he was okay.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: And none of my friends do scary movies either.

Amanda: I’m getting into it. I wasn’t a huge scary movie fan, but after watching, like, The Babadook, which was really good –

Elyse: That was really good.

Amanda: – and then It, I’ve been, I’ve read the book, and I watched the miniseries, and it’s one of those movies where you know every time a child is onscreen, Pennywise is going to show up, so it’s not really super –

Sarah: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…

Amanda: – super shocking?

Elyse: You know what, what movie scared the shit out of me? This is, like, the only movie to ever really freak me out: Signs, and I only –

Amanda: Oh, my God. I would think about Aliens. Let’s not get into it.

Elyse: Like, I feel like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – because Mel Gibson was in the movie. Like, I had –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: – I had, like, a spidey sense that he was a secret awful person. I don’t know if his anti-

Amanda: Semitism?

Elyse: – -Semitic rage had come out at that point, but you know, that movie scared the, the bejesus out of me. That was one of the few movies where I left and I was like, mm, that was creepy.

Amanda: I watched a lot of Unsolved Mysteries as a child growing up during the summer –

Redheadedgirl: Yes!

Sarah: Oh, my God.

Amanda: – and they have a lot of alien abduction stories –

Elyse: Oh, yeah.

Amanda: – and, like, there’s something about aliens and, like, alien abductions that scare the shit out of me. Like, I, when I was a child I would never leave my blinds open at night, ‘cause I was just afraid I would, like, wake up in the middle of the night and see this creepy alien peeking in at me. So Signs creeped me out, and I, when there’s that shot of the alien walking into the alleyway, I screamed bloody murder when that – and I rarely have that reaction in scary movies, so –

Elyse: I think it’s because –

Amanda: – fuck that movie.

Elyse: I think it’s because, like, with ghosts and horror movies and stuff like that, there are rules, right? Like, we understand the rules of haunting and ghosts and witches, like they can’t go into certain sized windows or whatever. Aliens –

[Laughter]

Redheadedgirl: Certain angled windows.

Amanda and Elyse: Right.

Sarah: Right, right.

Elyse: Aliens, like, like, we, I don’t know what rules we’re playing by here.

Amanda: They have no limits!

Elyse: Exactly.

Carrie: Well, and you know, like, TV Tropes talks about being Genre Savvy and then being Wrong Genre Savvy. Those are two competing tropes, right? So with aliens you never really know. Are you in the Spielberg alien world or are you in the Independence Day alien world? Which one? You don’t know.

Elyse: I do remember being –

Carrie: Until they suck off your face, and then you’re like, crap!

Elyse: Right, then you know. I do remember being scared by the X-Files episode with the guy who could climb through the toilet.

Redheadedgirl: No!

Sarah: Is that the guy who eats your liver?

Elyse: Yes.

Carrie: So good! Oh, my God, that –

Redheadedgirl: No!

Sarah: Okay. The fact that you said so good makes me think that you’re now snacking on a liver.

Elyse: A liver.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  That one is what scared me, where the guy had the twin that would detach from his body at night and just, like creep around.

Elyse: That one was actually pretty funny.

Amanda: Oh, well, I was a kid when I saw that –

Elyse: Yeah.

Amanda: – and my parents would watch The X-Files –

Carrie: Oh, no!

Amanda: – and I would –

Sarah: Aaah!

Amanda: – creep out of my room and, like, peek around the hallway so I could see, like, the TV and what they were watching, and I remember it was that episode one time, and after that I was like, no, I’m done. This is okay; I’ll just stay in bed.

Elyse and Redheadedgirl: So –

Elyse: – not to get, like, super gross or anything, but –

Redheadedgirl: Too late.

Elyse: – I saw the scary toilet man episode; I was probably in middle school; I was home super, super sick. My mom knew I liked The X-Files, so she went to Blockbuster, which was a thing back then, and they would have, like, two or three episodes on a VHS, which was also a thing back then. So, sick Elyse with like 103 fever and chronically in the bathroom watches the episode about the guy who climbs through the toilet and kills you –

Carrie: Oh, no.

Sarah: Nooo.

Elyse: – is not a great thing.

Redheadedgirl: [Laughs]

Sarah: Nooo.

Redheadedgirl: Aw.

Sarah: Very bad. Did I ever tell you that I watched the, I finally binge watched The X-Files by finding a website that listed all of the romantic moments and then where they were in each episode, so I could skip all the –

Carrie: [Gasps] Send me that!

Sarah: I could get all the creepy shit out of the way, and I would fa- – leave that one with the, there was a whole family and, like, Mom lived under the bed or something? I fast-forwarded –

Carrie: Oh, no, no, no, no! We don’t watch that one, no.

Sarah: Right. Fast-forwarded through all of it, but if there was a moment, I knew exactly when it was, and I would watch the romantic movement, and then I would just fast-forward through the creepy shit, so I watched the romance of, of The X-Files: not very satisfying, but still okay. That was the only way I could watch that. There is no other way.

Elyse: The romance of The X-Files is less satisfying than David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s real-life tweet flirting.

Amanda: It’s adorable.

Sarah: Oh, their friendship is just lovely. Like, I really like to think that when you work that long and that hard on a show that is clearly that grueling –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – then you either come out of it hating each other or you come out of it and you’re like, yeah, we went through this cool thing, and we’re always going to be friends, and their Twitter together is just adorable.

Carrie: It almost sounds like they’ve got kind of a sibling thing going in the sense that by the end of the show they, they just hated each other, and now they’re, like, friends again. Like, they’ve had some space, and they’re like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Carrie: – no, no, it’s, we’re, we’re – like, like, whether they’re in a space where they can’t stand each other or they’re a space where they’re really good friends, they’ve, like, gone through this, you know, ten-year television ordeal – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah.

Carrie: – so they’re, like, bonded.

Sarah: Why were you laughing, Amanda? Did you think I sounded ridiculous?

Amanda: No, ‘cause you said the phrase long and hard in the sentence.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh, my God, I didn’t even notice!

Amanda: They worked real long and real hard on that show!

Sarah: That is amazing.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: I have to, I have to say, I don’t think it’s a sibling thing, because a fan asked her what animal she would be if she could be an animal, and she said she would be a fo-, a sheep so that Mulder the Fox could eat her, and then she had, like, a million winking faces.

Sarah: [Laughs] Okay, that’s hilarious.

[music]

Sarah: This was an extra-long episode – heh-heh – and I want to thank Amanda and Carrie and Elyse and Redheadedgirl for hanging out with me and talking about all the creepy things. As I said in the intro, if you would like to find links to any of the books or movies, especially that Steve Guttenberg movie, or the creepy things online – seriously, some of these things are sooo creepy – I will have links to all of them in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

This podcast was brought to you by the newly released audio version of Hopeful by Louise Bay. If you like Christina Lauren, Emma Chase, and Kristen Proby, you will love this contemporary, second-chance romance. Ava Elliot’s been in love with Joel Wentworth since their secret, passionate love affair at university, which ended when he left for New York after graduation. Despite Joel’s wanting her to go with him, Ava stayed in London to pursue her career, but Ava never got over her first love, and she’s been single ever since. Eight years later, Joel is back in London. Is he ready to forgive Ava, or has he moved on from a love that he promised would last forever? Described as a true love story and having a combination of humor and heartbreak, Hopeful by Louise Bay is on sale now at all major retailers, and the audio edition is on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. You can find out more at louisebay.com!

Each episode gets a transcript. Each transcript is compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter! – and this episode’s transcript is brought to you by Twice as Wicked by Elizabeth Bright. Alice Bursnell is determined to wreak revenge on Nathaniel Eastwood, Viscount Abingdon, for the seduction, ruin, and death of her beloved twin sister. But how to expose a seducer without falling prey herself? As she gets closer to Nathaniel, she finds she is in serious danger of following in her sister’s much-too-tempted footsteps. The man is nothing like the heartless rake she expected, and his kisses are truly divine. Could she be wrong about him? When a mysterious and gorgeous woman confronts Nathaniel at a fancy ball, he suspects that she has murder on his mind, specifically his own. The more he tries to determine who the deceptively innocent beauty is and what she’s up to, the deeper he falls under her alluring spell. Nathaniel fears he’s in imminent danger of losing his life, or worse, his heart. Elizabeth Bright’s debut is a witty and heartwarming romance that readers won’t soon forget. You can find out more at Entangled Publishing, and I will have links to both of these books in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find this particular track on Peatbog Faeries’ album Dust. This is called “Spigel and Nongo,” and it’s a little creepy, right? I was going for atmospheric. I can’t have Wilbur sing through the whole episode and the intro and the outro; his union contract does not permit such things. I will have links to Dust and all of the other fine Peatbog Faeries music on the show notes, but you can find them on Amazon and on iTunes or, you know, wherever you buy your funky tunes.

Now, if you have a ghost story or a creepy book or both to tell us about, please do! You can find us at [email protected]. You can record a voice memo and email it to me if you’d like to send me the audio – don’t be scared. Or you can leave a voicemail at 1-201-371-3272. I would love to hear from you.

I would also like to tell you about our podcast Patreon: patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support makes a deeply, deeply appreciated difference, and I really, really do thank you for having a look and sponsoring the show.

And if you’re not able to do that, just listening each week is so great. Like, I’m honored that you hang out with me, so thank you for that.

And, as I’ve been doing, I’ve got a bad joke for you. You ready? This is terrible. I’m so excited.

Why can’t ghosts procreate?

You ready? Why can’t ghosts procreate? Because they have hollow wieners! [Laughs]

Thank you to batmanjerkins on Reddit’s dad joke forum for that one. Hollow wieners! [Laughs more] I’m going to tell that joke all week, and try to remember who I’m telling it to. Okay, hmm, I am way too enjoying that; way too much enjoyment.

On behalf of Carrie and Elyse and Amanda and Redheadedgirl and myself and Orville and, of course, Wilbur, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and Happy Halloween.

[atmospheric music]