March 29, 2024 • 44 mins
Continual drought in Nevada led to some firghtening an unexpected consequences in recent years. As the waters of Lake Mead fell, ruins of Native sites, abandoned towns and forgotten cars emerged from the waters. And then, one by one, visitors started discovering the bodies... some of whom have yet to be identified. Join Ben, Matt and Noel to learn more about the mysterious Lake Mead bodies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined as
always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly,
you are you. You are here. That makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know and what will
probably be the last of our sort of Hoover Dam phase.
So apologies to everybody who is saying, Okay, we get it.
(00:49):
You guys like the damn Along with Lake Mead, Hoover
Dam is one of the coolest parts of Vegas. If
you want the history of the Hoover Dam, check out
our two parts reason it in our peer podcast Ridiculous History.
And we talked a little bit about today's show in
I Think a listener mail, so thanks to Jasmine out
(01:11):
in Vegas. We we mentioned a darker phenomenon at play
in this amazing place, a strange unforeseen consequence of ongoing
drought and climate change. As conspirators or as investigators, he
could say, because it turns out Lake Mead is a
tourist attraction with some disturbing secrets. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, the Mafia. Sorry, I mean, that's that's true.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That's that is a fact. The mafia. Especially in decades past,
the Mafia was nearly synonymous with Las Vegas and the Strip,
and it was kind of Authorities always downplayed it, but
it was pretty much an open secret. And yeah, we'll
keep the cat in.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
He gets it, just that joke of we where did
that person disappear to? Well, you should check the lake. Well,
we're gonna get to it, but let's start off by
talking about the lake itself and that amazing dam.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, yeah, yes, and keep me honest here. We don't
want too much ranting about the astonishing nature of the
Hoover Dam. You can again learn about it in depth,
get it in those ridiculous history episodes. But I think
we have to say, if you do get a chance
visit the dam, be careful around the lake and shout
out to our favorite damn historian, Hoover Matt. Ah. Yes,
(02:33):
how can we forget whover? Matt? What a lovely fellow
and excellent tour guy he was, Yes, yes, and sorry,
we cornered you and interviewed you on the fly there man.
But yeah, Lake Meat it is huge. It's human made,
it's a reservoir. It's a consequence of the dam's construction,
and it's well, it's not an unforeseen consequence. They built
(02:54):
the dam to make the lake and it's just a
few miles outside of Vegas. Lake Mead is huge. It
can be one hundred and twelve miles long, and it
gets pretty deep when it's at full capacity. And that's
a fact that's going to be important later. It's it
is the reason American civilization exists the way it does.
(03:18):
In California, Arizona, and Nevada. Millions and millions of thirsty
people depend on the lake for their source of water,
and a lot of farms depend on the lake as well.
It's weird when you think about it. If you live
in the United States, you have probably eaten something from
one of those farms that depend on Lake Mead at
some point in your life. So even if you never visit,
(03:41):
you have it interacted with Lake Mead in some way,
oh for sure.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And the lake is in fact named after a gentleman
named Elwood.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Mead Shout out. Elwood is a real.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Gentlemanly named Ellwood. He was the Commissioner of the US
Bureau of Reclamation from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty six.
Self was created in that time frame. Nowadays it is
a kind of a chill place to take the kids
of an afternoon to get out on the water, do
a little water ski. And remember actually in the videos
(04:13):
we saw at the Hoover Dam, they were really promoting
this Lake Mead situation as lake you know.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Fun in the sun with the family, get out on
the water and have a good old time, play frisbee,
cast you real, reel in some fish, all that good stuff.
But of course, like many things that project an image
of squeaky cleanliness, there is of course the dark underbelly.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, lakes are deep and dark the water.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But before these are literally a cover up.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, well, before you even get to that, let's talk
about the dark side of that little bureau that we
just mentioned, the Bureau of Reclamation that we talked about
a little while back on another episode where you're talking
about land rights and reclaiming, reclaiming the land really.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, yeah, manifests claim from what about nature itself?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We claimed this land he is ours now.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yes, then he did an old thing that for us.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I don't know it was Arnold.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Oh, I thought that was Elwood.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's
it's it's crazy to think that. You know, that bureau
went across the United State what was not the United States,
what was the land of North America, what we called
North America, and said, hey, this this hours now and
uh we we're going to drown this entire area in
water splash.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, let's seeius the communities that live there for thousands
of years. Yeah, and that's not like a that's not
a hot take, that's not a political ideology, and you
sort of that's exactly what happened. And you know, a
lot of lakes do have these darker stories. For comparison,
here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, or near
(06:02):
the city, there's a man made lake called Lake Lanier,
and we mentioned it on the show in the past. Matt,
I think you probably have the most familiarity with it
because of where you grew up. You're a little closer
to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, my neighborhood had a doc I would go chill
on that lake like every time, and he survived, of
course I did.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I cross over it on the way back to my
hometown of Augusta. It's almost like the not the midway point,
but it's how you kind of know you're you're you're
out of a city.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You know, you're sort of.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Like on the way when you cross over that bridge
and you see Lake Lanier on either side and it
is beautiful once again, idyllic. During the summer, tons of
you know, personal watercrafts were all of a sudden, like
a boat salesman out there. But yeah, big time. The
whole city was flooded and people lost their lives, and
you know, we're they're down there still.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Perhaps well, people were buried there when it got flooded, right,
so like those bodies are certainly there. And then people
go missing in Lake Lanier all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Every single year. Yeah, especially when the weather gets nicer
and there are more people out because we can often
you know, people, I think know the ocean can be dangerous,
but I think we can sometimes underestimate the dangers posed
by anybody of water, including a lake, including a river
or a creek. There's one in I want to say,
(07:22):
in the United Kingdom one of the most dangerous creeks.
It looks it looks like you could just get a
running start and jump over it. But it's a very
deep cleft of land and uh like it's got such
a pull to it that if you stick your foot in,
it will be as if the water has grabbed your
ankle and pulls you down.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh my god, that's terrifying.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, I'll show you a picture.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, I but the water is a rodent, like the
edges on the like you know below where you could
literally get stuck under the rock. Yeah, so be careful
out there on the lake.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Have fun. We don't want to be the fun police.
But it is true that, just like Lake Lanier, the
creation of Lake Mead to your point in No literally
drowned parts of history. The Anasazi ruins were there because
those communities have been in that area for thousands of years,
right before the concept of America was a thing.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Well so when there's this thing called the Colorado River,
huge very important snake of water.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yes, yeah, it wiggles around, Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
But it was there the whole time, right that water
was constantly flowing and then you know, some humans decided
to dam it up to create this lake thing. But
they've been using that sorts of water that river for
thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, and it makes sense because you look at the
surrounding environment pre dam and it's a little mad MAXI
it's I mean, it's beautiful, but it's it's kind of arid,
so you would naturally congregate towards the water. A lot
of these ruins left by these ancient peoples were submerged,
(09:08):
were drowned by the creation of Lake Mead, And the
most famous is something with the cool name the Lost City.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Oh Lost City. The National Park Service puts it nicely.
Not all sites were drowned by the lake, but the
most representative, Pueblo Grande den Nevada. The Lost City was Luckily,
hundreds of sites remained above water and various artifacts were
saved from the Lost City to be housed in the
Lost City Museum of Archaeology in Overtent, Nevada. But for
(09:40):
every discovery saved, myriad others were lost.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Dude, the National Park Service is so funny.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It's cool.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It's talking about this guy who discovered it again, not
discovered it. I think they put it well like that.
They say it was documented in History in eighteen twenty
seven by Jebediah Smith to diet. But you know, but
it does say it was first seen by whites in
eighteen sixty side flats. Well, but it's just yeah again,
(10:12):
it's that thing. It's that same thing. Goes back to
the reclamation stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah yeah. And there's also first off, we can't say
enough good stuff about the National Park Service. We're the
current iteration of it. We're big fans of the work
they do, and and you know, I think it speaks
to the organization's credit that they're not trying to cover
up some of the nastier sides of history. And then
there were other more recent communities that had to be
(10:42):
evacuated as the watchers rose. One of the most notable
is Saint Thomas, Nevada. Saint Thomas, Nevada, excuse me, it
went under. And this is the first controversy about lake meat.
It's the controversy on the erasure of history. It's unfortunately
all too familiar to those of us in the US.
(11:03):
But this is not, by any means the only issue
facing the lake. Environmental problems we talked about earlier. The
lake is huge. When it's at full capacity a surface
area of two hundred and forty seven square miles, but
it hasn't been at full capacity for like more than
forty years.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh yeah, well, let's let's go through some of these numbers.
So early, early on, in February nineteen thirty five, when
the lake first begins to fill up at its highest point,
according to the National Park Service, it is at seven
hundred and eight point seven feet highest point in all
of Lake Mead, and it fills and fills and fills,
(11:46):
and then it gets up to its highest point in
nineteen eighty three, so almost fifty years later, and the
height is one thy two hundred and twenty five point
four to four feet. That is the highest it ever got.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And we don't know when it will return to that
point because in the intervening decades the lake has struggled
against increasingly disturbing drought conditions. The water kept going down
because you know, it's a source of water for a
lot of very thirsty people. And right now it's about
(12:21):
one hundred and fifty feet lower than it was in
the year two thousand. The shoreline is shifting, just like
the Colorado River used to do. It still does, and
this meant the lake's secrets were slowly revealed. In fact,
in recent years, how creepy is this? You could see
this submerged the once submerged ruins of Saint Thomas, and
(12:42):
as those waters continue to fall, we started finding bodies.
We'll pause for a word from our sponsor, then dive in.
I don't know, maybe not. Here's where it gets crazy.
(13:02):
Let's go back to the summer of twenty twenty two. Wow, yes,
it was a good year.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well, let's talk about just the height there we were
talking about. You know, two hundred and twenty five feet
is the highest. Then in the summer of twenty twenty two,
the lake is at about one thousand and forty feet,
like roughly around there. So just that difference in height,
think about really, think about that one hundred feet difference.
(13:27):
What could be hidden in a hundred feet.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's a lot of feet. That's a cetipede's worth of feet.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well do you guys, do you guys remember Agrophobia I
think is the name of the ride at six Flags.
Oh take you, yeah, But for me, it stands two
hundred feet tall and if you imagine half of that ride,
and it's massive. When you look at it. Imagine half
of that ride being submerged in water, and then all
of a sudden it comes down like just for me,
(13:55):
visualizing it like that blows my mind exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, And this also finds me of an episode we
did years ago on car Stuff, which was entirely about
cars being found in lakes and rivers as as water recedes,
because as empty as those things may look, you know,
the still waters literally do run deep. And people who
(14:22):
visited the lake around this time, this summer of twenty
twenty two, they were doing the you know, they were
having a picnic, they were fishing, they were doing some
water sports and along the shore they started finding skeletal remains.
And when they started finding them, they found a lot
in quick succession. These were not one off incidents by
(14:44):
any means, and The Guardian. The Guardian has a great
description of how this started happening. Beginning last spring.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
They say human remains surfaced at Lake Meat in quick succession,
a body with a gunshot wound in a barrel in May,
jawbone in the sand the following week, and in July,
partial skeletal remains encased in mud along the shorelines. Like
what you were talking about ben. In October, contractors working
near a marine found more remains, and then they offer
(15:15):
a quick timeline. The first body, being pretty much the
most sinister and ominous of these, was discovered on May first,
twenty twenty two, the second just six days later on
May seventh, Another July twenty fifth, and then another on
August sixth, pretty quick succession, and one final one well
not final but for this run another on August fifteen.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, So when people are hearing this is important to remember.
When people are hearing about this, locals in the area,
they are not getting a lot of information. They don't
know if these bodies are recent, and that, you know,
that sparks public concern and the population is asking is
there a crime wave? Are there you know, a real
(16:00):
killers or something active here? And police move quickly to
shut down that speculation, and they quote in a public
statement they say the back to back discoveries are not
an indication of a serial killer, but rather the consequences
of the environmental disaster, draining the lake and uncovering bodies
that have been lost to the water. Most are suspected
(16:20):
to be accidental deaths, but one case, the remains found
in a barrel. That case is being investigated as a homicide,
and it should. It sounds downright ghoulish, doesn't it. I mean,
the only the only times, the only times people consensually
die in barrels in the water is when they're trying
(16:41):
to do that Niagara falls stunt you know, which is illegal,
by the way, don't do it.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Or that scene from the Hobbit. Isn't that a thing
where they're flowing down the barrels? Yeah, they survived, but
they were also you know, I think a good size for.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
It, Yes, they were the Hobbits or barrel size.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Oh yeah. In general, people don't take firearms into a
barrel they're being encased in.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
No, well, I mean, you know, we wouldn't recommend it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
No, probably a bad idea.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
There are other things. Go to an amusement park instead
if you're if you're trying to get out and do stunts.
But uh yeah, it shows us a fact that people
don't really acknowledge. We talked about at the top. Lakes
can be very dangerous. It's easy to fall from a boat,
to miscalculate a swim, to injure yourself somewhere beyond the
reach of help. And so people can just disappear in
(17:33):
these large lakes.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there's a real danger. And just going back to
lake linear of people who are just hanging out, playing
right off, swimming off a boat. But then there's this
desire to like touch the bottom. I don't know if
you guys had that when you're a kid.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Thank you, No kid, I get it, but the bottom
freaks me out. I always found it slimy and gross,
and I would do anything I could to avoid touching
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yes, this is mean speak off the top of the
dome here, but I think there's a real problem where
people underestimate the depth of some of these lakes. They
would try and go down and you can either get
caught on something down there, or you've just overestimate. You
thought you were gonna be able to push up from
the bottom and get this tremendous amount of force going
(18:17):
back up, but you're unable to breach the bottom, so
you can't and it's and then it's it's over. It's
just ra god, it's it's scary.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Oh. Now I remember the name of that name, that
creepy river I was talking about the United Kingdom. It's
called the strid If anybody wants to look that up too.
It's st r I D And everything that we just
said about lakes applies to that thing too, so be careful. Uh. Yeah,
it's it's misleading because the lake can look calm and
(18:49):
as we said, sedate, but unfortunately, unfortunately people made some
fatal mistakes. The first corpse discovered, the first remains. As
you said, no, they're by far the most ominous. It's
a corpse in a metal barrel, think like an oil drum,
and you can see photographs of this online. The person
inside was not a recent death. They had been murdered
(19:13):
with a gunshot to the head forty years ago, and
authorities knew that. The only way they found this person,
who remains unidentified, it's due to the ongoing drought because
water levels were lower. Yeah, And Lieutenant Ray Spencer spoke
with the public and with the press about this. He
(19:36):
is a part of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,
and speaking to the New York Times, he said, it's
really odd in the sense that had the lake never receded,
we would never have discovered this body. The killers would
have gotten away.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wow. And that would have been around the time like
nineteen eighty four, right nineteen eighty three, that's when the
lake was at its highest. So it does make sense
that whoever killed this person put him in a barrel
and then put the barrel in the lake would have
felt super confident that that body's gone forever.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And yeah, there were a couple of things that in
a murder mystery might be considered almost red herrings too,
because shortly after the discovery of that body in the barrel,
some other people found a barrel, but it was empty,
so we don't know if, like the there was a
body in it or if it's just a random barrel.
(20:29):
And then a journalist later found I was reading this
on the police department's twitter a journalist found a gun
near where the barrel with a body was discovered. And
then they said something weird that stood out to me.
I think it's just a strange side note, the police said, hey,
firearms are often found at the lake, so we don't
(20:51):
know whether this one's related to the murder or any murders.
How often are people leaving guns at the lake?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Ah, dude, I bet it's way more often than.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Am I a sucker for guns? Should I just like
go to a lake?
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And wait, well, you do often hear and see people
throwing guns into rivers and lakes off of bridges, and
it's a pretty popular way of getting rid of a gun.
The chances are if you drag a lake or a river,
you're gonna find some firearms, probably that have some bodies
on them.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well, if we've talked before, one of the yeah that's grizzly,
one of the ways to get rid of evidence is
to have water interact with it.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's up pretty high.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, especially anything that has an organic component to it.
But even with a gun, if you're talking about fingerprints
or you know, it's rust developing on something that's metal,
waters probably a smart way to go.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Unfortunately, I think you're right. Yeah, it makes me we
haven't talked about this on air, but I've been deep
into a lot of the weird stuff that happens in
Hurricane Katrina. To your point, there's a lot of opportunity
for chaos there, you know, and crime. Maybe a story
for another day, but I think you're I think you're
(22:13):
absolutely right. I mean, it is grizzly, but it's also honest.
And Spencer acknowledges this. He makes a chilling prediction. In
his conversations with The New York Times and other members
of the press. He says, look, the drop in the
lake's water level is going to continue, which means we're
going to find other bodies. And he was on the
(22:35):
money with it.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And dude, I'm sorry, added back to the firearm thing.
I'm sure there's a ton of guns in.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Lake me It's the perfect place.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You know, people do a crime in the desert and
they tossed the gun. That's exactly what happens. I bet
you they would.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, and for a long time you could drive You
could just drive right by Lake met right, we drive
over the Hoover Dam. You don't even have to stop
the car.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Ben, I'm I think I've mentioned Ben and Matt. I'm
taking a trip where I'm doing a driving thing from
Vegas to l A, going through Joshua Tree.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Is that on the way?
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Is am I going to pass Lake Mead on that journey.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
If you're leaving Las Vegas? Hah, I think it'd be
worth it if you have time, just a little detour
and do it.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Yeah, we're going through Joshua Tree and then all the
way to La so Joshua Tree is on the on
the way, but we can there's a couple of little detours.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We can make.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
We're actually not in a rush, So I rented as
a Mini Cooper convertible, y'all.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Isn't that the y thing? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Lake Mead is just so you know, to the east
and then you're headed like southwest. Basically, Yeah, sour got it.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Well, detour, I think so.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I remember, guys, when we saw the Hoover Dam, just
when we came up on it from a distance, it
was like, you know, genuinely quite breathtaking.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah. Ok, what did my dad called it? The audacity
or something. It's like it's as if we spat in
the face of God or something like that. It's a dramatic, dude,
But yeah, it's also there's another chilling thing that Spencer
mentions at the conclusion of his interview. He said that
(24:17):
the National Park Service finds one or two bodies at
Lake Mead every year minimum, and so it's not uncommon
to work a homicide out by the lake. And this
is something the locals of the town are all aware of,
right and given the timeframe of the disappearance of the
body and the barrel. It's not implausible to imagine that
(24:38):
this person may have been murdered by the mob, or
may have been murdered by another kind of organized crime,
like a motorcycle gang. We really don't know. We do
know the mob had a lot of influence over Vegas
at the time. According to the police. This person's clothing
and footwear it looks to be from the seventies or
(25:02):
the early nineteen eighties. And that's at this point, that's
one of our best clues, just because it helps us
figure out, you know, who the who the murderers might
have been, who was an active murderer at that time.
And this puts the Vagus Mob Museum in a really
(25:23):
intriguing position because it turns out they're the perfect resource
on mob murders and they they actually know the truth,
you know, pass the fiction and past the the tropes. Right,
Like the old idea of giving someone cement shoes, it's
very dramatic, It looks great on film, it has happened
in real life, but it's not as good as putting
(25:45):
someone in a container.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Especially you put other stuff in that container, you know,
like some cement or something to make it super heavy,
or something that dissolves bodies.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
M yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the problem logically, and
this is a bit grulish, but the problem with putting
concrete on people's feet and tie them up and dropping
them in water is that as the body decays, limbs
will start to separate and they will float the surface,
right right right. So the body in a barrel is
(26:21):
a good it's a container method, you know, and it
lengthens your window of time before the decay sets in
and the barrel erodes and you start to see things
float to the surface. So the more you know, I guess. Also,
don't they bury a lot of people in the desert
(26:42):
in Vegas are didn't they during this time? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
They did all I don't know. I don't know if
they did or not, but sure it makes sense. I
imagine the wildlife that you know isn't isn't super plentiful
out in the desert or or eat you know, in
the lake even probably, But scavengers will help get the
job done as well.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
That's true. That's true. And we know that this person
found in a barrel is a peak example of the
problems with identifying bodies recovered this way, especially at Lake Mead.
Lake Mead is a more difficult environment than a lot
of other lakes, and we learned this from a forensic anthropologist,
(27:26):
doctor Jennifer Burns. Burns says, the reservoir is so large
that it had you know, has currents, so it can
move a body from where it was drowned or dumped
and then cause it to break apart. So at least
some of the bodies that were in the lake are
never going to be found because they were essentially like
(27:48):
dismembered than disintegrated by the natural motions of the water.
And then, like you said, Matt, scavengers. Scavengers will feed
on a body and it will make it very difficult
to determine an identity, right because fingerprints are going to
be out. You can't always rely on dental records, and
(28:09):
if someone has died before the advent of DNA testing,
then you don't really have a way to conduct those tests,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, this is creeping out, guys, It's it's creepy stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, this is ominous and creepy again, chilling, But we
do have somewhat good news. We don't want to have
it all be a march into the dark. So we're
gonna pause for a word from our sponsors, and we'll
return with a little bit of good news, and we're back, guys.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Is part of the creepiness of this, the act of
kind of imagine yourself being under there, being eaten by.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Crabs, sort of. I don't know, just like there's something
there's there's something about a watery grave.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I think in general that is just very unsettling and
very Edgar Allan Poe esque or something, you know, very
uh yeah, goth.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Well, yeah, I mean, we all have such tremendous imaginations.
Some people are listening to this imagining that right drowning.
Some people are imagining, uh, you know, hiding a body there.
It just depends on I guess.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We're all gonna have weird dreams tonight, I think, uh,
and tell us about yours, fellow conspiracy realist. Uh, yeah,
it is. There is something haunting about the concept, right
that this tourist attraction, this local hangout spot, this source
of economy and life for so many people, is also
(30:03):
essentially a graveyard, a watery graveyard. Okay, we said good news,
we promised something like good news. Thankfully, despite all the
difficulties some of the bodies recovered from Lake Mead over
time have been identified. One is like folks like Donald Smith,
who drowned in nineteen seventy four when he's thirty nine
(30:25):
years old, or Thomas Earned, a forty two year old
who disappeared at the lake in August of two thousand
and two, and then Claude Russell Pensinger who disappeared in
July of nineteen ninety eight. Those last three, all those
identifications were made using DNA analysis.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, and while it's still tragic, at the very least,
it is a closing of the loop for loved ones
who know at least know what happened.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
To these people. Yeah, Yeah, and I think that's really
important thing.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Yeah, I think more more important, more important than anyone
who has never been through something like this might ever realize.
You know, just have knowing what happened. You see it
all the time, you know, and stories are people just
you know, what's the word, carrying a torch for somebody
for the rest of their life because they had no
I have no idea what actually happened to them. And
it can be something that haunts you daily and can
(31:21):
like really ruin your quality of life. So just the
knowing sometimes at the very least, allows people to move on.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
And we see that the police are not the only
folks who are investigating. They're not the only folks who
are making predictions here. Steve Schaeffer is a longtime local
resident and owns an environmental services company called Earth Resource Group.
He spoke to the press his company is working to
uncover bodies and he predicts there will definitely be more
(31:50):
as the water continues to fall.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, and the question is is it going to continue
to fall? We were by some of the reporting we
were looking at back in twenty twenty three was projecting,
or at least the research and people, i'm sure like
Steve Schaeffer who's looking at water levels and monitoring them
very closely along with the National Park Service, they were
(32:12):
projecting that the lake is just going to continue to
fall and fall and fall. But thankfully, since some of
these bodies have been discovered, though, lake has risen a bit.
Back in Gosh it was twenty twenty two. In the
summer of twenty twenty two, projections were that in July
of this year twenty twenty four, Lake Mead would be
(32:35):
way down to one thy thirteen feet, but thankfully in March.
As of March eighteenth, lake Mead was at one thousand
and seventy six feet roughly, which is again not the
height that anyone really wants it to be. They want
it to be quite a bit higher than that, but
it is better. And when summertime comes around, the snow
(32:59):
melt is one of the major things that actually fills
Lake Mead because it increases flow from the Colorado River
heading into the lake. So hopefully it's actually gonna build
itself back up a little bit. Hopefully.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Hopefully we'll see because the big question, for the big
question for all the experts now is something like is
that a one step forward, two steps back situation, you
know what I mean? Like, will the will it fill
up the way it does with the snow melt as
you mentioned, and then will we still have the same
(33:35):
amount of snowfall year over year as the years continue.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
But there was also a record rainfall for quite a
bit at the beginning of twenty twenty four where they
were getting like zero point three point four inches of rain,
which is big, way higher, way higher than they usually get.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, so there are two concepts of play here. One
is that when the waters rise, it's better for the communities,
right as water becomes an increasingly precious resource in the Southwest.
And then the problem with that is as waters rise,
it becomes increasingly impossible to find the bodies of these victims.
(34:15):
So sometimes there are conflicting interest you know.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But yeah, yeah, guys, did you read about the bomber.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
That yeah, yeah, yeah, like a plane strata fortress?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, well, what are the super fortress what they call
super fortres, Yeah, is a B twenty nine bomber. This huge.
If you've ever watched a World War two movie that
gets out in especially into the Pacific conflict out there,
you know, by Japan and all of that, you have
seen this airplane or depictions of this airplane iconic. It's huge.
(34:50):
It's a huge bomber that's supposed to fly at pretty
crazy altitudes. And one of these is just sitting in
Lake Mead and as the waters went down, you could
the dang things sticking.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Out, Yeah, crashed into the lake. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
This is this is, by the way, the plane that
dropped the only it's the only vehicle that's ever dropped
atomic bombs in the history of mankind, at least on
as an attack rather than.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
A test, and it got buried. It got it got
a watery grave. It got buried in the lake. Yep,
so this is a graveyard that accepts more than just humans.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Oh yeah, but the humans who were flying that thing
did survive all five.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, it's the plane that was the fatality there. And look,
there's something else. There is a larger issue at play
because Lake Meat is not the only place where the
water has been dropping. Elephant well, we'll say Elephant Button
Reservoir in New Mexico. These guys were having a bachelor
party and they walked past the shoreline of the reservoir
(35:53):
and they found a fossilized mastodon skull. It's like millions
of years old. What a cool bachelor party.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
How did they get it back to their apartment?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
No? I think they were like, it belongs in the
museum type dudes.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You really?
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, So they didn't do a mastodon heist. But then
we saw in Utah in twenty twenty one Lake Powell
the waters receded and scientists were able to access these
newly emerged indigenous dwellings that are ancient. And then they
also found a car that had plunged off a cliff earlier,
(36:33):
and people thought it disappeared.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
WHOA.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
There are a lot of abandoned vehicles and rivers and
lakes across the US, and most of these are the
result of purposeful abandonment or accidents, but statistically speaking, some
of them are also the result of foul play. If
you think about it, the car is working like a
bigger barrel, which is also pretty gruesome.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, should we tell anybody what are the strategies if
your vehicle ever gets in the water.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
First thing you should do is have one of those
handy little devices. You can buy them anywhere, like you
probably find them on Amazon, and you're looking for something
that has a small blade in the handle so that
you can cut the seat belt and break the window right, Yeah,
and they'll have a little metal nubbin on there and
(37:25):
you can use that to crack the glass.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yep, because you will get stuck in that pressurized you know.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
You can't just open the door, and that glass is
kind of breakaway. It's not going to like slice you
up if you're careful.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, it's it's also not a situation you ever want
to be in. It's startling, and it's the stuff of nightmares,
right to realize just how how many cars in particular
out there under the water. And this leads us to
ask a question we asked a few years back with
(37:59):
the South Pole, right, what's under the Antarctic ice? What
else is going to emerge from the water in the
coming years? And speaking of haunting images, I can't get
it out of my head, you guys. The barrel gets discovered,
and then there's you know, a nice enough gentleman retired,
still lives in Vegas, a quiet life as a businessman.
(38:21):
You know, he probably has grandkids. He hears the news
and he starts to lose sleep because the past returns
to us, you know what I mean, Like what if
the killers are still out there? And this is where
we leave it. As investigations continue, the authorities are cooperating
(38:42):
with multiple academics and experts to try to figure out
the identity of so many of these people, and public
speculation is increasingly verging into the realm of conspiracy. But
everyone seems to agree on at least one thing. More
bodies are on the way, their identities, ander of their deaths,
and the motives behind those deaths. That's the stuff that
(39:04):
someone doesn't want you to know, and we at this point,
you know, I think here's a good question we could
ask our fellow listeners today, guys, for people who hike
a lot, who have traveled out in the wild, what's
the weirdest random thing you've seen in the woods. You know,
like remember the stories about someone just finding staircases in
(39:27):
the woods.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, that's okay, whoa, Yeah that is greedy. Found little
kids shoes one time on a hike, and again you
know it's probably family went camping or something and like
was moving their stuff and kid left it. But man,
that was an uncomfortable moment.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Well, this is a location where you're gonna find this stuff,
and we've talked about it on the show, but there's
a very weird walking trail here in Atlanta called Doll's
Head Trail, and it is decorated with like super pet cemetery.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We ask creepy.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Dismembered dolls and children's you know toys, you know, vintage
kind of stuff, and it's all exposed to the element,
so they're all kind of rotted and like one eyed,
and it's yeah, I wouldn't necessarily take that hike at night,
but it's a really cool one during the day.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I'll give you one more weird example of a thing
I found at the river. This time, I was hiking
with a buddy of mine and just to go meet
out for a little bit. Had my son with me,
he had his daughters with him, and we were just
walking along the river and we stumbled upon I guess
it was a couple doing a photo shoot that was
(40:38):
very risky while waiting in the river, and we were
all very confused and couldn't figure out why it was
happening out in the open, just with a bunch of
families walking around that risk Well, okay, it was risky
for me maybe.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Okay, dude, do you guys remember the band Toady's or
the Toady's.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Actually, they had one kind of radio song. It was
called Possum Kingdom, which I always thought was a really
creepy and unsettling name, And in the video it depicts
a dude like dragging a body to a lake and
the lyrics are like behind the boat house, I will
show you my dark secret, and then it goes to
at the end, do.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
You want to die? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Do you want to die? It's like totally about murdering
somebody and Barry and and dumping their body.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
In a lake.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
But I just googled it because I just have this
nostalgia blast. And it's named after a state park in
Texas called Possum Kingdom Lake State Park. What a name
for a place, The idea of a possum kingdom that
just sounds so sinister to me.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Well, I'm proud of them. More rights for the possums, indeed. Good. Yeah,
and uh oh man, I've seen some strange things out there,
but I probably wouldn't sitting on air just weird stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Man.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I found a body one time, like like, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Just just say kind of where.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Okay, No, but if you do want to see bodies
in the woods, you can go to the Tennessee Body Farm.
That's still there, right.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. Josh and Chuck having a Stuff you should know
rather has an episode on that, and I think we've
talked about it quite a bit at least the Old
House of Work todays we were all about bodies and
how they decay at the Old Body Farm.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yes, yes, we've had We've had quite a few interests
over the course of our careers. We want you to
share your interest with us. What's the strangest thing you've
seen out there in the wild. We try to be
easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Indeed, you'd find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist, on Facebook, on Twitter, fka X no other
way around, you know the one, and also on YouTube,
where you can find a new video content of fabulous
second addition to the George Washington Time travel series is
out now. Check it out, share it with your friends.
(43:11):
Get Maddie's song stuck in your head, and get Ben's
shrieking existentially horrified George Washington haunting your dreams.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Oh but this one, this one's all about No, you're right.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
It is the joy of why this one is like, Oh,
that's what makes me smile.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
You're right. Check it out. Just just be surprised the
emotional roller coaster.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Indeed, you can also find into the handle Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Hey, you want to call us? Call one eight three
three st d wyt K. That's a W. I don't
know why I say it that way, guys, w Maybe
that's it. Maybe that's it. It's a voicemail system. When
you call in, you've got three minutes. Give yourself a
cool nickname and say whatever you'd like. Just do tell
us if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you've got more to say they can
(43:57):
fit in that message. Why not instead send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
We are the folks who read every email we get
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Send
us your links, send us the photographs. Be warned sometimes
the void rights back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined as
always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly,
you are you. You are here. That makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know and what will
probably be the last of our sort of Hoover Dam phase.
So apologies to everybody who is saying, Okay, we get it.
(00:49):
You guys like the damn Along with Lake Mead, Hoover
Dam is one of the coolest parts of Vegas. If
you want the history of the Hoover Dam, check out
our two parts reason it in our peer podcast Ridiculous History.
And we talked a little bit about today's show in
I Think a listener mail, so thanks to Jasmine out
(01:11):
in Vegas. We we mentioned a darker phenomenon at play
in this amazing place, a strange unforeseen consequence of ongoing
drought and climate change. As conspirators or as investigators, he
could say, because it turns out Lake Mead is a
tourist attraction with some disturbing secrets. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, the Mafia. Sorry, I mean, that's that's true.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That's that is a fact. The mafia. Especially in decades past,
the Mafia was nearly synonymous with Las Vegas and the Strip,
and it was kind of Authorities always downplayed it, but
it was pretty much an open secret. And yeah, we'll
keep the cat in.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
He gets it, just that joke of we where did
that person disappear to? Well, you should check the lake. Well,
we're gonna get to it, but let's start off by
talking about the lake itself and that amazing dam.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, yeah, yes, and keep me honest here. We don't
want too much ranting about the astonishing nature of the
Hoover Dam. You can again learn about it in depth,
get it in those ridiculous history episodes. But I think
we have to say, if you do get a chance
visit the dam, be careful around the lake and shout
out to our favorite damn historian, Hoover Matt. Ah. Yes,
(02:33):
how can we forget whover? Matt? What a lovely fellow
and excellent tour guy he was, Yes, yes, and sorry,
we cornered you and interviewed you on the fly there man.
But yeah, Lake Meat it is huge. It's human made,
it's a reservoir. It's a consequence of the dam's construction,
and it's well, it's not an unforeseen consequence. They built
(02:54):
the dam to make the lake and it's just a
few miles outside of Vegas. Lake Mead is huge. It
can be one hundred and twelve miles long, and it
gets pretty deep when it's at full capacity. And that's
a fact that's going to be important later. It's it
is the reason American civilization exists the way it does.
(03:18):
In California, Arizona, and Nevada. Millions and millions of thirsty
people depend on the lake for their source of water,
and a lot of farms depend on the lake as well.
It's weird when you think about it. If you live
in the United States, you have probably eaten something from
one of those farms that depend on Lake Mead at
some point in your life. So even if you never visit,
(03:41):
you have it interacted with Lake Mead in some way,
oh for sure.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
And the lake is in fact named after a gentleman
named Elwood.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Mead Shout out. Elwood is a real.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Gentlemanly named Ellwood. He was the Commissioner of the US
Bureau of Reclamation from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty six.
Self was created in that time frame. Nowadays it is
a kind of a chill place to take the kids
of an afternoon to get out on the water, do
a little water ski. And remember actually in the videos
(04:13):
we saw at the Hoover Dam, they were really promoting
this Lake Mead situation as lake you know.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Fun in the sun with the family, get out on
the water and have a good old time, play frisbee,
cast you real, reel in some fish, all that good stuff.
But of course, like many things that project an image
of squeaky cleanliness, there is of course the dark underbelly.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, lakes are deep and dark the water.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But before these are literally a cover up.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, well, before you even get to that, let's talk
about the dark side of that little bureau that we
just mentioned, the Bureau of Reclamation that we talked about
a little while back on another episode where you're talking
about land rights and reclaiming, reclaiming the land really.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, yeah, manifests claim from what about nature itself?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
We claimed this land he is ours now.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yes, then he did an old thing that for us.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I don't know it was Arnold.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Oh, I thought that was Elwood.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's
it's it's crazy to think that. You know, that bureau
went across the United State what was not the United States,
what was the land of North America, what we called
North America, and said, hey, this this hours now and
uh we we're going to drown this entire area in
water splash.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, let's seeius the communities that live there for thousands
of years. Yeah, and that's not like a that's not
a hot take, that's not a political ideology, and you
sort of that's exactly what happened. And you know, a
lot of lakes do have these darker stories. For comparison,
here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, or near
(06:02):
the city, there's a man made lake called Lake Lanier,
and we mentioned it on the show in the past. Matt,
I think you probably have the most familiarity with it
because of where you grew up. You're a little closer
to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, my neighborhood had a doc I would go chill
on that lake like every time, and he survived, of
course I did.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I cross over it on the way back to my
hometown of Augusta. It's almost like the not the midway point,
but it's how you kind of know you're you're you're
out of a city.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You know, you're sort of.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Like on the way when you cross over that bridge
and you see Lake Lanier on either side and it
is beautiful once again, idyllic. During the summer, tons of
you know, personal watercrafts were all of a sudden, like
a boat salesman out there. But yeah, big time. The
whole city was flooded and people lost their lives, and
you know, we're they're down there still.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Perhaps well, people were buried there when it got flooded, right,
so like those bodies are certainly there. And then people
go missing in Lake Lanier all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Every single year. Yeah, especially when the weather gets nicer
and there are more people out because we can often
you know, people, I think know the ocean can be dangerous,
but I think we can sometimes underestimate the dangers posed
by anybody of water, including a lake, including a river
or a creek. There's one in I want to say,
(07:22):
in the United Kingdom one of the most dangerous creeks.
It looks it looks like you could just get a
running start and jump over it. But it's a very
deep cleft of land and uh like it's got such
a pull to it that if you stick your foot in,
it will be as if the water has grabbed your
ankle and pulls you down.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh my god, that's terrifying.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, I'll show you a picture.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, I but the water is a rodent, like the
edges on the like you know below where you could
literally get stuck under the rock. Yeah, so be careful
out there on the lake.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Have fun. We don't want to be the fun police.
But it is true that, just like Lake Lanier, the
creation of Lake Mead to your point in No literally
drowned parts of history. The Anasazi ruins were there because
those communities have been in that area for thousands of years,
right before the concept of America was a thing.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Well so when there's this thing called the Colorado River,
huge very important snake of water.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yes, yeah, it wiggles around, Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
But it was there the whole time, right that water
was constantly flowing and then you know, some humans decided
to dam it up to create this lake thing. But
they've been using that sorts of water that river for
thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, and it makes sense because you look at the
surrounding environment pre dam and it's a little mad MAXI
it's I mean, it's beautiful, but it's it's kind of arid,
so you would naturally congregate towards the water. A lot
of these ruins left by these ancient peoples were submerged,
(09:08):
were drowned by the creation of Lake Mead, And the
most famous is something with the cool name the Lost City.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Oh Lost City. The National Park Service puts it nicely.
Not all sites were drowned by the lake, but the
most representative, Pueblo Grande den Nevada. The Lost City was Luckily,
hundreds of sites remained above water and various artifacts were
saved from the Lost City to be housed in the
Lost City Museum of Archaeology in Overtent, Nevada. But for
(09:40):
every discovery saved, myriad others were lost.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Dude, the National Park Service is so funny.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It's cool.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It's talking about this guy who discovered it again, not
discovered it. I think they put it well like that.
They say it was documented in History in eighteen twenty
seven by Jebediah Smith to diet. But you know, but
it does say it was first seen by whites in
eighteen sixty side flats. Well, but it's just yeah again,
(10:12):
it's that thing. It's that same thing. Goes back to
the reclamation stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah yeah. And there's also first off, we can't say
enough good stuff about the National Park Service. We're the
current iteration of it. We're big fans of the work
they do, and and you know, I think it speaks
to the organization's credit that they're not trying to cover
up some of the nastier sides of history. And then
there were other more recent communities that had to be
(10:42):
evacuated as the watchers rose. One of the most notable
is Saint Thomas, Nevada. Saint Thomas, Nevada, excuse me, it
went under. And this is the first controversy about lake meat.
It's the controversy on the erasure of history. It's unfortunately
all too familiar to those of us in the US.
(11:03):
But this is not, by any means the only issue
facing the lake. Environmental problems we talked about earlier. The
lake is huge. When it's at full capacity a surface
area of two hundred and forty seven square miles, but
it hasn't been at full capacity for like more than
forty years.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh yeah, well, let's let's go through some of these numbers.
So early, early on, in February nineteen thirty five, when
the lake first begins to fill up at its highest point,
according to the National Park Service, it is at seven
hundred and eight point seven feet highest point in all
of Lake Mead, and it fills and fills and fills,
(11:46):
and then it gets up to its highest point in
nineteen eighty three, so almost fifty years later, and the
height is one thy two hundred and twenty five point
four to four feet. That is the highest it ever got.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And we don't know when it will return to that
point because in the intervening decades the lake has struggled
against increasingly disturbing drought conditions. The water kept going down
because you know, it's a source of water for a
lot of very thirsty people. And right now it's about
(12:21):
one hundred and fifty feet lower than it was in
the year two thousand. The shoreline is shifting, just like
the Colorado River used to do. It still does, and
this meant the lake's secrets were slowly revealed. In fact,
in recent years, how creepy is this? You could see
this submerged the once submerged ruins of Saint Thomas, and
(12:42):
as those waters continue to fall, we started finding bodies.
We'll pause for a word from our sponsor, then dive in.
I don't know, maybe not. Here's where it gets crazy.
(13:02):
Let's go back to the summer of twenty twenty two. Wow, yes,
it was a good year.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well, let's talk about just the height there we were
talking about. You know, two hundred and twenty five feet
is the highest. Then in the summer of twenty twenty two,
the lake is at about one thousand and forty feet,
like roughly around there. So just that difference in height,
think about really, think about that one hundred feet difference.
(13:27):
What could be hidden in a hundred feet.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's a lot of feet. That's a cetipede's worth of feet.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well do you guys, do you guys remember Agrophobia I
think is the name of the ride at six Flags.
Oh take you, yeah, But for me, it stands two
hundred feet tall and if you imagine half of that ride,
and it's massive. When you look at it. Imagine half
of that ride being submerged in water, and then all
of a sudden it comes down like just for me,
(13:55):
visualizing it like that blows my mind exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, And this also finds me of an episode we
did years ago on car Stuff, which was entirely about
cars being found in lakes and rivers as as water recedes,
because as empty as those things may look, you know,
the still waters literally do run deep. And people who
(14:22):
visited the lake around this time, this summer of twenty
twenty two, they were doing the you know, they were
having a picnic, they were fishing, they were doing some
water sports and along the shore they started finding skeletal remains.
And when they started finding them, they found a lot
in quick succession. These were not one off incidents by
(14:44):
any means, and The Guardian. The Guardian has a great
description of how this started happening. Beginning last spring.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
They say human remains surfaced at Lake Meat in quick succession,
a body with a gunshot wound in a barrel in May,
jawbone in the sand the following week, and in July,
partial skeletal remains encased in mud along the shorelines. Like
what you were talking about ben. In October, contractors working
near a marine found more remains, and then they offer
(15:15):
a quick timeline. The first body, being pretty much the
most sinister and ominous of these, was discovered on May first,
twenty twenty two, the second just six days later on
May seventh, Another July twenty fifth, and then another on
August sixth, pretty quick succession, and one final one well
not final but for this run another on August fifteen.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, So when people are hearing this is important to remember.
When people are hearing about this, locals in the area,
they are not getting a lot of information. They don't
know if these bodies are recent, and that, you know,
that sparks public concern and the population is asking is
there a crime wave? Are there you know, a real
(16:00):
killers or something active here? And police move quickly to
shut down that speculation, and they quote in a public
statement they say the back to back discoveries are not
an indication of a serial killer, but rather the consequences
of the environmental disaster, draining the lake and uncovering bodies
that have been lost to the water. Most are suspected
(16:20):
to be accidental deaths, but one case, the remains found
in a barrel. That case is being investigated as a homicide,
and it should. It sounds downright ghoulish, doesn't it. I mean,
the only the only times, the only times people consensually
die in barrels in the water is when they're trying
(16:41):
to do that Niagara falls stunt you know, which is illegal,
by the way, don't do it.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Or that scene from the Hobbit. Isn't that a thing
where they're flowing down the barrels? Yeah, they survived, but
they were also you know, I think a good size for.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
It, Yes, they were the Hobbits or barrel size.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Oh yeah. In general, people don't take firearms into a
barrel they're being encased in.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
No, well, I mean, you know, we wouldn't recommend it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
No, probably a bad idea.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
There are other things. Go to an amusement park instead
if you're if you're trying to get out and do stunts.
But uh yeah, it shows us a fact that people
don't really acknowledge. We talked about at the top. Lakes
can be very dangerous. It's easy to fall from a boat,
to miscalculate a swim, to injure yourself somewhere beyond the
reach of help. And so people can just disappear in
(17:33):
these large lakes.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there's a real danger. And just going back to
lake linear of people who are just hanging out, playing
right off, swimming off a boat. But then there's this
desire to like touch the bottom. I don't know if
you guys had that when you're a kid.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Thank you, No kid, I get it, but the bottom
freaks me out. I always found it slimy and gross,
and I would do anything I could to avoid touching
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yes, this is mean speak off the top of the
dome here, but I think there's a real problem where
people underestimate the depth of some of these lakes. They
would try and go down and you can either get
caught on something down there, or you've just overestimate. You
thought you were gonna be able to push up from
the bottom and get this tremendous amount of force going
(18:17):
back up, but you're unable to breach the bottom, so
you can't and it's and then it's it's over. It's
just ra god, it's it's scary.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Oh. Now I remember the name of that name, that
creepy river I was talking about the United Kingdom. It's
called the strid If anybody wants to look that up too.
It's st r I D And everything that we just
said about lakes applies to that thing too, so be careful. Uh. Yeah,
it's it's misleading because the lake can look calm and
(18:49):
as we said, sedate, but unfortunately, unfortunately people made some
fatal mistakes. The first corpse discovered, the first remains. As
you said, no, they're by far the most ominous. It's
a corpse in a metal barrel, think like an oil drum,
and you can see photographs of this online. The person
inside was not a recent death. They had been murdered
(19:13):
with a gunshot to the head forty years ago, and
authorities knew that. The only way they found this person,
who remains unidentified, it's due to the ongoing drought because
water levels were lower. Yeah, And Lieutenant Ray Spencer spoke
with the public and with the press about this. He
(19:36):
is a part of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,
and speaking to the New York Times, he said, it's
really odd in the sense that had the lake never receded,
we would never have discovered this body. The killers would
have gotten away.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Wow. And that would have been around the time like
nineteen eighty four, right nineteen eighty three, that's when the
lake was at its highest. So it does make sense
that whoever killed this person put him in a barrel
and then put the barrel in the lake would have
felt super confident that that body's gone forever.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And yeah, there were a couple of things that in
a murder mystery might be considered almost red herrings too,
because shortly after the discovery of that body in the barrel,
some other people found a barrel, but it was empty,
so we don't know if, like the there was a
body in it or if it's just a random barrel.
(20:29):
And then a journalist later found I was reading this
on the police department's twitter a journalist found a gun
near where the barrel with a body was discovered. And
then they said something weird that stood out to me.
I think it's just a strange side note, the police said, hey,
firearms are often found at the lake, so we don't
(20:51):
know whether this one's related to the murder or any murders.
How often are people leaving guns at the lake?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Ah, dude, I bet it's way more often than.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Am I a sucker for guns? Should I just like
go to a lake?
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And wait, well, you do often hear and see people
throwing guns into rivers and lakes off of bridges, and
it's a pretty popular way of getting rid of a gun.
The chances are if you drag a lake or a river,
you're gonna find some firearms, probably that have some bodies
on them.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well, if we've talked before, one of the yeah that's grizzly,
one of the ways to get rid of evidence is
to have water interact with it.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's up pretty high.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, especially anything that has an organic component to it.
But even with a gun, if you're talking about fingerprints
or you know, it's rust developing on something that's metal,
waters probably a smart way to go.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Unfortunately, I think you're right. Yeah, it makes me we
haven't talked about this on air, but I've been deep
into a lot of the weird stuff that happens in
Hurricane Katrina. To your point, there's a lot of opportunity
for chaos there, you know, and crime. Maybe a story
for another day, but I think you're I think you're
(22:13):
absolutely right. I mean, it is grizzly, but it's also honest.
And Spencer acknowledges this. He makes a chilling prediction. In
his conversations with The New York Times and other members
of the press. He says, look, the drop in the
lake's water level is going to continue, which means we're
going to find other bodies. And he was on the
(22:35):
money with it.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And dude, I'm sorry, added back to the firearm thing.
I'm sure there's a ton of guns in.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Lake me It's the perfect place.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You know, people do a crime in the desert and
they tossed the gun. That's exactly what happens. I bet
you they would.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, and for a long time you could drive You
could just drive right by Lake met right, we drive
over the Hoover Dam. You don't even have to stop
the car.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Ben, I'm I think I've mentioned Ben and Matt. I'm
taking a trip where I'm doing a driving thing from
Vegas to l A, going through Joshua Tree.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Is that on the way?
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Is am I going to pass Lake Mead on that journey.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
If you're leaving Las Vegas? Hah, I think it'd be
worth it if you have time, just a little detour
and do it.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Yeah, we're going through Joshua Tree and then all the
way to La so Joshua Tree is on the on
the way, but we can there's a couple of little detours.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We can make.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
We're actually not in a rush, So I rented as
a Mini Cooper convertible, y'all.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Isn't that the y thing? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Lake Mead is just so you know, to the east
and then you're headed like southwest. Basically, Yeah, sour got it.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Well, detour, I think so.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I remember, guys, when we saw the Hoover Dam, just
when we came up on it from a distance, it
was like, you know, genuinely quite breathtaking.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah. Ok, what did my dad called it? The audacity
or something. It's like it's as if we spat in
the face of God or something like that. It's a dramatic, dude,
But yeah, it's also there's another chilling thing that Spencer
mentions at the conclusion of his interview. He said that
(24:17):
the National Park Service finds one or two bodies at
Lake Mead every year minimum, and so it's not uncommon
to work a homicide out by the lake. And this
is something the locals of the town are all aware of,
right and given the timeframe of the disappearance of the
body and the barrel. It's not implausible to imagine that
(24:38):
this person may have been murdered by the mob, or
may have been murdered by another kind of organized crime,
like a motorcycle gang. We really don't know. We do
know the mob had a lot of influence over Vegas
at the time. According to the police. This person's clothing
and footwear it looks to be from the seventies or
(25:02):
the early nineteen eighties. And that's at this point, that's
one of our best clues, just because it helps us
figure out, you know, who the who the murderers might
have been, who was an active murderer at that time.
And this puts the Vagus Mob Museum in a really
(25:23):
intriguing position because it turns out they're the perfect resource
on mob murders and they they actually know the truth,
you know, pass the fiction and past the the tropes. Right,
Like the old idea of giving someone cement shoes, it's
very dramatic, It looks great on film, it has happened
in real life, but it's not as good as putting
(25:45):
someone in a container.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Especially you put other stuff in that container, you know,
like some cement or something to make it super heavy,
or something that dissolves bodies.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
M yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the problem logically, and
this is a bit grulish, but the problem with putting
concrete on people's feet and tie them up and dropping
them in water is that as the body decays, limbs
will start to separate and they will float the surface,
right right right. So the body in a barrel is
(26:21):
a good it's a container method, you know, and it
lengthens your window of time before the decay sets in
and the barrel erodes and you start to see things
float to the surface. So the more you know, I guess. Also,
don't they bury a lot of people in the desert
(26:42):
in Vegas are didn't they during this time? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
They did all I don't know. I don't know if
they did or not, but sure it makes sense. I
imagine the wildlife that you know isn't isn't super plentiful
out in the desert or or eat you know, in
the lake even probably, But scavengers will help get the
job done as well.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
That's true. That's true. And we know that this person
found in a barrel is a peak example of the
problems with identifying bodies recovered this way, especially at Lake Mead.
Lake Mead is a more difficult environment than a lot
of other lakes, and we learned this from a forensic anthropologist,
(27:26):
doctor Jennifer Burns. Burns says, the reservoir is so large
that it had you know, has currents, so it can
move a body from where it was drowned or dumped
and then cause it to break apart. So at least
some of the bodies that were in the lake are
never going to be found because they were essentially like
(27:48):
dismembered than disintegrated by the natural motions of the water.
And then, like you said, Matt, scavengers. Scavengers will feed
on a body and it will make it very difficult
to determine an identity, right because fingerprints are going to
be out. You can't always rely on dental records, and
(28:09):
if someone has died before the advent of DNA testing,
then you don't really have a way to conduct those tests,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, this is creeping out, guys, It's it's creepy stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, this is ominous and creepy again, chilling, But we
do have somewhat good news. We don't want to have
it all be a march into the dark. So we're
gonna pause for a word from our sponsors, and we'll
return with a little bit of good news, and we're back, guys.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Is part of the creepiness of this, the act of
kind of imagine yourself being under there, being eaten by.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Crabs, sort of. I don't know, just like there's something
there's there's something about a watery grave.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I think in general that is just very unsettling and
very Edgar Allan Poe esque or something, you know, very
uh yeah, goth.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Well, yeah, I mean, we all have such tremendous imaginations.
Some people are listening to this imagining that right drowning.
Some people are imagining, uh, you know, hiding a body there.
It just depends on I guess.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We're all gonna have weird dreams tonight, I think, uh,
and tell us about yours, fellow conspiracy realist. Uh, yeah,
it is. There is something haunting about the concept, right
that this tourist attraction, this local hangout spot, this source
of economy and life for so many people, is also
(30:03):
essentially a graveyard, a watery graveyard. Okay, we said good news,
we promised something like good news. Thankfully, despite all the
difficulties some of the bodies recovered from Lake Mead over
time have been identified. One is like folks like Donald Smith,
who drowned in nineteen seventy four when he's thirty nine
(30:25):
years old, or Thomas Earned, a forty two year old
who disappeared at the lake in August of two thousand
and two, and then Claude Russell Pensinger who disappeared in
July of nineteen ninety eight. Those last three, all those
identifications were made using DNA analysis.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, and while it's still tragic, at the very least,
it is a closing of the loop for loved ones
who know at least know what happened.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
To these people. Yeah, Yeah, and I think that's really
important thing.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Yeah, I think more more important, more important than anyone
who has never been through something like this might ever realize.
You know, just have knowing what happened. You see it
all the time, you know, and stories are people just
you know, what's the word, carrying a torch for somebody
for the rest of their life because they had no
I have no idea what actually happened to them. And
it can be something that haunts you daily and can
(31:21):
like really ruin your quality of life. So just the
knowing sometimes at the very least, allows people to move on.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
And we see that the police are not the only
folks who are investigating. They're not the only folks who
are making predictions here. Steve Schaeffer is a longtime local
resident and owns an environmental services company called Earth Resource Group.
He spoke to the press his company is working to
uncover bodies and he predicts there will definitely be more
(31:50):
as the water continues to fall.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, and the question is is it going to continue
to fall? We were by some of the reporting we
were looking at back in twenty twenty three was projecting,
or at least the research and people, i'm sure like
Steve Schaeffer who's looking at water levels and monitoring them
very closely along with the National Park Service, they were
(32:12):
projecting that the lake is just going to continue to
fall and fall and fall. But thankfully, since some of
these bodies have been discovered, though, lake has risen a bit.
Back in Gosh it was twenty twenty two. In the
summer of twenty twenty two, projections were that in July
of this year twenty twenty four, Lake Mead would be
(32:35):
way down to one thy thirteen feet, but thankfully in March.
As of March eighteenth, lake Mead was at one thousand
and seventy six feet roughly, which is again not the
height that anyone really wants it to be. They want
it to be quite a bit higher than that, but
it is better. And when summertime comes around, the snow
(32:59):
melt is one of the major things that actually fills
Lake Mead because it increases flow from the Colorado River
heading into the lake. So hopefully it's actually gonna build
itself back up a little bit. Hopefully.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Hopefully we'll see because the big question, for the big
question for all the experts now is something like is
that a one step forward, two steps back situation, you
know what I mean? Like, will the will it fill
up the way it does with the snow melt as
you mentioned, and then will we still have the same
(33:35):
amount of snowfall year over year as the years continue.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
But there was also a record rainfall for quite a
bit at the beginning of twenty twenty four where they
were getting like zero point three point four inches of rain,
which is big, way higher, way higher than they usually get.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, so there are two concepts of play here. One
is that when the waters rise, it's better for the communities,
right as water becomes an increasingly precious resource in the Southwest.
And then the problem with that is as waters rise,
it becomes increasingly impossible to find the bodies of these victims.
(34:15):
So sometimes there are conflicting interest you know.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But yeah, yeah, guys, did you read about the bomber.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
That yeah, yeah, yeah, like a plane strata fortress?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, well, what are the super fortress what they call
super fortres, Yeah, is a B twenty nine bomber. This huge.
If you've ever watched a World War two movie that
gets out in especially into the Pacific conflict out there,
you know, by Japan and all of that, you have
seen this airplane or depictions of this airplane iconic. It's huge.
(34:50):
It's a huge bomber that's supposed to fly at pretty
crazy altitudes. And one of these is just sitting in
Lake Mead and as the waters went down, you could
the dang things sticking.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Out, Yeah, crashed into the lake. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
This is this is, by the way, the plane that
dropped the only it's the only vehicle that's ever dropped
atomic bombs in the history of mankind, at least on
as an attack rather than.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
A test, and it got buried. It got it got
a watery grave. It got buried in the lake. Yep,
so this is a graveyard that accepts more than just humans.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Oh yeah, but the humans who were flying that thing
did survive all five.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, it's the plane that was the fatality there. And look,
there's something else. There is a larger issue at play
because Lake Meat is not the only place where the
water has been dropping. Elephant well, we'll say Elephant Button
Reservoir in New Mexico. These guys were having a bachelor
party and they walked past the shoreline of the reservoir
(35:53):
and they found a fossilized mastodon skull. It's like millions
of years old. What a cool bachelor party.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
How did they get it back to their apartment?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
No? I think they were like, it belongs in the
museum type dudes.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You really?
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, So they didn't do a mastodon heist. But then
we saw in Utah in twenty twenty one Lake Powell
the waters receded and scientists were able to access these
newly emerged indigenous dwellings that are ancient. And then they
also found a car that had plunged off a cliff earlier,
(36:33):
and people thought it disappeared.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
WHOA.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
There are a lot of abandoned vehicles and rivers and
lakes across the US, and most of these are the
result of purposeful abandonment or accidents, but statistically speaking, some
of them are also the result of foul play. If
you think about it, the car is working like a
bigger barrel, which is also pretty gruesome.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, should we tell anybody what are the strategies if
your vehicle ever gets in the water.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
First thing you should do is have one of those
handy little devices. You can buy them anywhere, like you
probably find them on Amazon, and you're looking for something
that has a small blade in the handle so that
you can cut the seat belt and break the window right, Yeah,
and they'll have a little metal nubbin on there and
(37:25):
you can use that to crack the glass.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yep, because you will get stuck in that pressurized you know.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
You can't just open the door, and that glass is
kind of breakaway. It's not going to like slice you
up if you're careful.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, it's it's also not a situation you ever want
to be in. It's startling, and it's the stuff of nightmares,
right to realize just how how many cars in particular
out there under the water. And this leads us to
ask a question we asked a few years back with
(37:59):
the South Pole, right, what's under the Antarctic ice? What
else is going to emerge from the water in the
coming years? And speaking of haunting images, I can't get
it out of my head, you guys. The barrel gets discovered,
and then there's you know, a nice enough gentleman retired,
still lives in Vegas, a quiet life as a businessman.
(38:21):
You know, he probably has grandkids. He hears the news
and he starts to lose sleep because the past returns
to us, you know what I mean, Like what if
the killers are still out there? And this is where
we leave it. As investigations continue, the authorities are cooperating
(38:42):
with multiple academics and experts to try to figure out
the identity of so many of these people, and public
speculation is increasingly verging into the realm of conspiracy. But
everyone seems to agree on at least one thing. More
bodies are on the way, their identities, ander of their deaths,
and the motives behind those deaths. That's the stuff that
(39:04):
someone doesn't want you to know, and we at this point,
you know, I think here's a good question we could
ask our fellow listeners today, guys, for people who hike
a lot, who have traveled out in the wild, what's
the weirdest random thing you've seen in the woods. You know,
like remember the stories about someone just finding staircases in
(39:27):
the woods.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, that's okay, whoa, Yeah that is greedy. Found little
kids shoes one time on a hike, and again you
know it's probably family went camping or something and like
was moving their stuff and kid left it. But man,
that was an uncomfortable moment.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Well, this is a location where you're gonna find this stuff,
and we've talked about it on the show, but there's
a very weird walking trail here in Atlanta called Doll's
Head Trail, and it is decorated with like super pet cemetery.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We ask creepy.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Dismembered dolls and children's you know toys, you know, vintage
kind of stuff, and it's all exposed to the element,
so they're all kind of rotted and like one eyed,
and it's yeah, I wouldn't necessarily take that hike at night,
but it's a really cool one during the day.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I'll give you one more weird example of a thing
I found at the river. This time, I was hiking
with a buddy of mine and just to go meet
out for a little bit. Had my son with me,
he had his daughters with him, and we were just
walking along the river and we stumbled upon I guess
it was a couple doing a photo shoot that was
(40:38):
very risky while waiting in the river, and we were
all very confused and couldn't figure out why it was
happening out in the open, just with a bunch of
families walking around that risk Well, okay, it was risky
for me maybe.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Okay, dude, do you guys remember the band Toady's or
the Toady's.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Actually, they had one kind of radio song. It was
called Possum Kingdom, which I always thought was a really
creepy and unsettling name, And in the video it depicts
a dude like dragging a body to a lake and
the lyrics are like behind the boat house, I will
show you my dark secret, and then it goes to
at the end, do.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
You want to die? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Do you want to die? It's like totally about murdering
somebody and Barry and and dumping their body.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
In a lake.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
But I just googled it because I just have this
nostalgia blast. And it's named after a state park in
Texas called Possum Kingdom Lake State Park. What a name
for a place, The idea of a possum kingdom that
just sounds so sinister to me.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Well, I'm proud of them. More rights for the possums, indeed. Good. Yeah,
and uh oh man, I've seen some strange things out there,
but I probably wouldn't sitting on air just weird stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Man.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I found a body one time, like like, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Just just say kind of where.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Okay, No, but if you do want to see bodies
in the woods, you can go to the Tennessee Body Farm.
That's still there, right.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. Josh and Chuck having a Stuff you should know
rather has an episode on that, and I think we've
talked about it quite a bit at least the Old
House of Work todays we were all about bodies and
how they decay at the Old Body Farm.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yes, yes, we've had We've had quite a few interests
over the course of our careers. We want you to
share your interest with us. What's the strangest thing you've
seen out there in the wild. We try to be
easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Indeed, you'd find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist, on Facebook, on Twitter, fka X no other
way around, you know the one, and also on YouTube,
where you can find a new video content of fabulous
second addition to the George Washington Time travel series is
out now. Check it out, share it with your friends.
(43:11):
Get Maddie's song stuck in your head, and get Ben's
shrieking existentially horrified George Washington haunting your dreams.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Oh but this one, this one's all about No, you're right.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
It is the joy of why this one is like, Oh,
that's what makes me smile.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
You're right. Check it out. Just just be surprised the
emotional roller coaster.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Indeed, you can also find into the handle Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Hey, you want to call us? Call one eight three
three st d wyt K. That's a W. I don't
know why I say it that way, guys, w Maybe
that's it. Maybe that's it. It's a voicemail system. When
you call in, you've got three minutes. Give yourself a
cool nickname and say whatever you'd like. Just do tell
us if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you've got more to say they can
(43:57):
fit in that message. Why not instead send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
We are the folks who read every email we get
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Send
us your links, send us the photographs. Be warned sometimes
the void rights back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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