Monthly Spooky | Yuba County Five Mystery, Creepy Closet Note, and Venomous Sea Slugs - Weekly Spooky: Scary Horror Stories — Ghosts, Monsters & Urban Legends

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cheese of nightmares. You heard me right, five missing men
on a strange mountain road, venomous creatures on a Spanish beach,
and threatening messages carved in your closet.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Get comfortable, turn off the lights. It's monthly spooky.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Hello everybody, it it is that time of the month.
It's monthly spooky. I am, of course your host, Enrique
Kuto here with my good buddy and co host Michelle. Michelle,
how are you. We have gotten request that you don't whimper? Answers, Oh, no,

(00:58):
like they said, they were like, if you're gonna whimper,
it has to be at least eighty percent of a word.
It can't. It can't be like sixty percent wimper forty percent. Response. Oh,
I love the term whimper. When you when you did that,
I immediately thought, I was like, that's a whimper, And
I was like, whimper is a funny term. But I

(01:20):
I Michelle has been having a child. We've both been
having challenging weeks. I lost my voice, which is just
nothing worse really that can happen. And Chelle is having
problems with her mosaic.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, it's it's like a me problem. Where I use
instead of instead of grout, I used like concrete patch
just because my brain stopped working and I was like,
this feels weird, this doesn't feel like usual. Let me
just do it for three hours.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I mean, I'm glad you didn't mistake it for you know, mayonnaise.
That would have been a lot harder of a day.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well no, I mean well if it had gone in
the other direction and I was like, huh, this is
really soft, I guess I'm just gonna do it. All
they would if I had to do was just wash
it off.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Oh I meant that you put concrete on your sandwich.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Oh. I don't really use a lot of mayonnaise, so
it would be hard.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Oh, Lottie dat madam fancy You're like, I use aolie.
But for those who don't understand a mosaic in this context,
because I didn't know what you were talking about when
you first started it, I had to ask you, is
you're creating like a mosaic art piece on your on
your front steps?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Mm hmm. Well yeah, I was doing one front step
and then I did parts of my foundation, and then
I'm doing this step closest to my door. That's the
one I fucked up today. Oh okay, yeah, the other
ones are done, so I just I didn't even have
to do this one. I just was like, let's do
another one because it's fun and also not going to

(02:57):
stress me out more.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Uh. But the only thing I've noticed about the process
of you mosaic in the front of your house is
that it stressed you out immensely.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, it did at the beginning, and then I like
kind of got used to it and I was like, Okay,
this is kind of relaxing. I just have to sit
here for hours and stick these pieces of glass on
this wall. So and I got plates. Yeah exactly, I
got cocky. So I fucked up a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
I like to imagine that you're like making this mosaic,
You're just like listening to Limp Biscuit and just like
shattering plates.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Excuse me, no, but I have been listening to the
the the New Jersey Metal radio station while it so.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is that what it's called New Jersey Metal Radio or no,
it's called it's something else.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
It's the it's the station out of.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Curiell.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
No, No, it's no, it's out of one of the oranges.
It's a really important metal station, and yeah, to listen
to it in real life sometimes, like when you go
up north, you can catch it. So I was like, oh,
I could just listen to it on my phone. So
I was listening to like corn and stuff. But there

(04:19):
it's a really good station. And for some reason, my
brain just like stopped remembering what it's called. So I
can't even tell everyone. And I'm sad.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Now you weren't sad before, huh No, I was.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
I'm a little bit more sad now that I don't
remember what the station is.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'm sorry, buddy. Uh No, That's why I was. I
kept naming uh cities near you because at first I
thought you met you were listening to it over the air.
So I was like, oh, then it has to be
like Cherry Hill or Trenton or you know, if it's
going to reach you in Philly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
No, it's w S O U coming from Seaton Hall University.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Oh okay, I've heard of Hall.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
They they just have like a I think for like
the last thirty years or so, they just had a
total metal station basically.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Thirty years, I think.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
I think, so just like forever.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, well yeah, And then I say thirty years and go,
oh wait, thirty years It was not that long ago. Yeah,
I still think thirty years ago was thirty years ago.
In two thousand and five, Yeah, I was watching you
know how I know I'm getting old. I'm going to
be thirty nine next month. And the way I really

(05:31):
feel like I'm getting old is not even having my
thyroid go bad, which the medication is making me feel
way better. Last time we recorded the show, it was
my first day on the med so they hadn't started
making me horribly sick yet. Oh so I lucked out
because it would have been really hard to do the
show if I had been all sick. But the way

(05:51):
I really feel old now is I was watching a
movie that was set in two thousand oh and I
was like, okay, like it was like a thriller, but
they said it in two thousands, so like people are
pulling out like weird Panasonic handicams and stuff, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
I know, I oh not care. But my favorite was

(06:12):
they kept playing like you know, early two thousands music cues,
and at one point they played up in Here by DMX,
and I felt so old. I was like, I was
just about he was like, Yo, gonna give me some
heartburn up in here. Here, I've got an appointment with
an osteopath up and here. So that's how it felt anyway.

(06:37):
But actually the movie was Holland on Amazon Prime was
actually really fun thriller from so but yeah, yeah, other
than being sick on my thyroid medicine, which now I'm not,
and now I feel like a lot better, like really well,
and supposedly it's not even done absorbing, like it's gonna
be another month before I'm like really where I'm supposed

(06:59):
to be with it. So I'm very happy with that,
very happy. My voice is mostly back because October is
looming and I have so much recording to do, just
an obscene amount of recording to do. So yeah, it's
it's good times like that. But with that all being said,
I'm very excited because we have some great spooky news

(07:21):
to get into, including a story that made me think
of you immediately. Oh no, I know, no, it's bad news.
And our topic is something I had never heard of
that I'm really excited to dive deep into, which is
the Yuba County five.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
I don't know where Yuba County is.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
California I'm pretty sure, watch me be wrong, but the
Yuba County five has been referred to as the summertime
Yetlav Past incident. Hu, And I know you know about
did y'all plastic because you actually wrote the terrifying true
episode about yet Lava?

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, so that's what it said. Like when I when
I was looking at option, what'd.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
You say it was an avalanche?

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh yeah, definitely, but in this one it couldn't because
there's no ice or snow. But yeah, but like when
I was looking up, yeah, you, but County five had
just said like summer dietlav past incident basically. So so
that'll be our topic after we talk about some spooky
news stories, and we have plenty of them and uh

(08:23):
so much more. So we'll get to all of that
right after this and we are back before we dive
into the news that is spooky. I did promise us

(08:44):
and Aaron Patterson update right Aaron Patterson of course, the
death cap mushroom murderer in Australia and unfortunately, as of
the time of this recording, she has not been sentenced.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
So she was found guilty on July seventh of twenty
twenty five and a two day pre sentenced hearing is
scheduled four tomorrow, oh man, so and tomorrow of when
this is airing, so Tuesday of this week. So, and
that doesn't mean that she'll be sentenced in that day

(09:22):
or so. So hopefully next month on Monthly Spooky, we'll
have a final update on what her fate is. Because
what a saga. Yeah yeah, that has been still I
still can't believe. For those who missed that episode, you
really should listen to the episode where we discovered the

(09:43):
deathcat mushroom thing because the article was super long and
we were so engrossed. It ended up taking up like
five or six segments when most stories take up one
maybe one and a half, because it just kept getting crazier.
The more we read, the more we were like, wait, what,
hold on what because like every time we take a break,
I'd be like, Shell, I think I'm just gonna keep going.

(10:04):
I need to know what happens, and you're like, yeah,
me too, me too. So but with that all being said,
it's time for the spooky news.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
The spooky news.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
So Cell, it's not often I see a spooky news
story that feels like it would happen to you.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
I mean, it just sounds like the kind of thing
that would happen to you, huh, or that, or more
so that you would think would happen to you. I
guess the better way to put it. So this is
from the New York Post. Headline is Massachusetts woman hit
with five figure medical bill after a wild bat flew

(10:52):
into her mouth on vacation.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Oh man, yeah, I'm scared that would happen.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
This was a news story I heard just like Living Life.
I just heard about it. Oh really, And I kind
of had to go and save it for the show
because I was like it, like, this just sounds like
something Michelle would be like, I don't want to go
on vacation. What if a bat flies in my mouth?

Speaker 3 (11:19):
And everyone want to be like, come on, flown in
someone's mouth before?

Speaker 1 (11:26):
So this story is pretty interesting. A woman on vacation
whose employer sponsored health plan had lapsed after recently being
laid off wound up with over twenty thousand dollars in
medical bills after a bat flew into her mouth.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Erica Khan, thirty three, was visiting Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
What a what a name Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, I think it's good.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
It doesn't even have like a good acronym. For a second,
I was like, maybe it's the acronym. No, it's GCNRA.
That's a good actronow Okay, I mean if you like
it in Arizona. Sorry, what do you say?

Speaker 3 (12:08):
I don't know?

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Okay. When the horrific encounter with the winged mammal took place,
the former biomedical engineer that's just extra funny noticed a
number of bats flying around while she was outside taking
pictures of the night sky, but didn't think much of it.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
She didn't close her mouth, that.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Is, until one got too close for comfort, winding up
trapped between her camera and face. What when she please?

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Like, what do you mean between your camera and faith? Dude,
you know that you can move both your face and
the camera right.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm guessing this happened in a matter of seconds. Yeah,
like split seconds. When she screamed in terror, an unknown
part of the bat wound up in her mouth for
a few seconds.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Oh wow. See that's good though, because I when I'm
like scared, I don't scream, so I would be fine
in this situation.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
You just WinCE right, I just.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
No, I just either freeze or freeze, So.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Either one.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, okay, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Her father, a physician who had been traveling with her,
said she should immediately start a course of rabies treatments,
even though she wasn't sure she had been bitten. She
quickly went online to purchase a medical insurance plan before
going to a hospital and Flagstaff to begin treatments, under
the impression it would cover her two week course of

(13:44):
raby shots, which she received at clinics in Arizona, Massachusetts,
and Colorado. But her biggest shock of all came when
the bill arrived, showing she owed twenty thousand, seven hundred
and forty nine dollars between the four facilities for treatment,
including four dots of the rabies vaccine and three shots
of immunoglubin to increase antibodies against the virus, which is

(14:06):
fatal if left untreated. I mean, I am not surprised
by I am surprised because medical billing just never makes
any sense. Yeah, because like that's more than my entire
gallbladder surgery costs, by like a huge margin.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, why is it that expensive?

Speaker 1 (14:26):
I mean, I think don't well, because the prices don't matter.
It's yeah in the medical world. It take it from
somebody who was uninsured for like his entire adult life.
It's whose line is it? Anyway, the rules don't matter,
and the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Like they'll be like, oh, this is gonna be twenty
four thousand dollars and they're like, well, I don't have

(14:47):
twenty four thousand dollars. And they're like, oh, this is
gonna be two thousand dollars. And you're like, you didn't
even talk to anybody or look at anything. The number
changed that fast. What is going on? And I have
a friend who works in radiology, and he told me
that at the hospital network he works at, they expect
to collect roughly eight percent of everything they build. Wow,

(15:13):
which was extra funny because when I looked at the
bill for my hospital stay for the surgery, it was
eight percent of it was about it was eight or
seven percent of what they what the cost was. Wow,
that was like what they that was what they build
me like it said like with discount, and then it
was like the discount was like eighteen thousand dollars or

(15:34):
something ridiculous. So it's It's weird, is what I'm saying.
And I hope she doesn't end up saddled with this
whole thing. It's really ridiculous. But also going from to
multiple clinics, that's really going to be confusing.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
To I mean, I think maybe what the problem was.
I mean obviously I don't know, but a lot of
insurance policies, you can't just go to a different state
and get treatment. I mean if it's not an emergency,
I mean like a like at a hospital. Yeah, you
just go into like a place it's probably not going
to be under a policy.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
That's the other tricky thing is unfortunately, like you shouldn't
use the emergency bill. You should use the emergency over
for this in my opinion, but like yeah, but like
you know, there's talk about how some people will use
the emergency room for all their medical care because they
can't turn you away, and they basically will often let
go of the bill if you don't have insurance. So
and I'm not this is not like advice. I've had

(16:27):
experiences where I've had medical bills just disappear too. Like
I was like, oh, I'm not ready to pay this yet,
Like I don't have any money, and I didn't even
tell anybody. I was just like, oh, well, I'll wait
till I send the next bill. And then another bill
never came, and then years later I even looked for
the bill and I still can't. I mean, like I
went on, like I checked if I owed anything to anybody,

(16:50):
and it was just gone, wow. So I was like, okay, cool,
I couldn't pay this if I wanted to, because the
bill's gone.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
I thought you meant like you couldn't. You kept the
bill in your house and then you couldn't find it.
It was like it never happened.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Oh man, glitching the matrix. Yeah, well, we'll look into
some more of the gory details from a financial standpoint
of this story. Right after this, we are back talking

(17:24):
about the only thing scarier than Rabi's medical billing, and
the piece continues with she didn't realize the insurance plan
she had purchased a day before started treatment before starting
treatment required a thirty day waiting period before coverage would
kick in. An explanation of benefits letter she got in

(17:44):
the mail grimly explained when I got I actually got
insurance due to emergency basically, and it was thirty days
when I did it last year.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, no, I believe that. I honestly like, if you're
going on this kind of a trip where she's you know,
going to be out in nature and stuff, you should
have insurance. I know that not everybody can. And her
insurance went away because she got but like she was
obviously able to pay for it when you know this happened.

(18:18):
So this is unfortunately, this is kind of on her
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
Well it is, I mean, but it's still very unfortunate circumstance.
But it also went viral because it's bizarre. Yeah, it's
about a bat, yeah, flying into your mouth. You know,
most people worry about bats flying into your hair.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I don't think they really want to fly into your anything.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
I mean, this story kind of makes it sound like
you might be wrong on that one.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Think the bat got scared because she screamed and it
didn't know what to do, so it fell into the sound.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yes, it was just like I feel really awkward right now,
I'll just go into your mouth. Yeah, but I will
say like that is a little bit like to think
that you would like sign up for medical insurance and
then that day have medical insurance is a little a
little silly and actually the next quote she says is,

(19:12):
I thought it must have been a mistake. I guess
I was naive. You're thirty three years old. I'm not
trying to be a jerk, but like you're an adult,
you you know. But part of me thinks she's like
playing dumb. I don't know a lot of people just
I mean, insurance is confusing and annoying. I mean, I'm

(19:33):
glad I have good insurance, and I'm really glad I
have it, but like it took, it was a lot
of learning curve for me. You've been buying independently insurance
for a really long time.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean on and off. I did have
at one pointed job that, yeah, gave me insurance, but yeah,
in general, I've been just buying my own insurance.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah. Were you doing it before the healthcare marketplace?

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
I thought so. Yeah, Yeah it sucked. It sucked before
the marketplace. Would you have to have like a like
a person, like a middleman?

Speaker 3 (20:03):
No, it was just really expensive.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh okay, see, I see a lot of my independent
contractor friends that it went it got more expensive after
the marketplace.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
I think it probably depends on how much income you
make because like for for a low low income individuals
such as myself, it is less expensive, significantly less expensive
than it was for me before the marketplace. But that
doesn't mean that the actual cost of insurance isn't like
a hundred times more or whatever. It's because yeah, but

(20:34):
like I was, I was like covered back when you
could still deny people for pre existing conditions, and shit, yeah,
I almost didn't get my shoulder surgery covered because I
had just gotten health insurance, not surgery when I went
to the hospital because I dislocated it. I had just
bought insurance like a couple of months before or like

(20:56):
a month before, and they were like, it's a pre
existing It's like, no, it's a dislocated shoulder. Like I
don't understand, Like what do you like I couldn't walk
around like this?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah? Yeah, No. When I got insurance, the first thing
I thought was I was like, well, my health is insured.
Time to go skiing? Yeah exactly, let's go.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
After being laid off from her engineer position the previous month,
she opted against her insurance under Cobra for six hundred
and fifty dollars a month, rolling the dice that she
would not wind up facing an unexpected medical emergency. Con
told the knowledge. She's since gotten a new job and
once again has health insurance, so that's good. She's negotiated

(21:39):
some of the bills down a bit, but says she
still owed more than nineteen thousand dollars for retreatment a
bit and you didn't even get like two grand off.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Uh, but it does say she plans to continue appealing.
She should. There's no way they're going to actually expect
her to pay that. Yeah, no chance. I mean a
lot of have you ever noticed that, Like some bills,
it's like they'll just send it to you to see
if you'd pay it. No, They're just they're just well no, no,
but I mean like they'll just be like, gee, I
wonder if you'd pay this. Like I like got my

(22:12):
apartment in Jersey. They kept my massive, my massive. They
tried to keep my entire deposit and then tried to
bill me like a little bit more, and I when
I complained until he gave me back a third of
my deposit. But they kept over twelve hundred dollars because
the carpets were dirty after three years of living there,
So like fuck that guy. But uh, my point is

(22:33):
like I was like, Wow, if I had just had money,
I would just pay this, like dar okay, and like
like it's like they're like, come on, dumb money, Come on,
dumb money. Despite her horrifying encounter with wildlife ripped from
the stuff of nightmares, con said it hasn't put a
damper on her love for the great outdoors. Quote, I

(22:56):
know what bats take taste like now, it's an earthy,
sweet kind of flavor, she joked to the outlet. It's
actually a pretty funny story if it weren't for the
horrible medical bill that came with it. Around four thousand
animal rabies cases are reported each year in the US,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with

(23:16):
less than ten people dying of the virus per anim
More than ninety percent occur in animals like skunks, raccoons, foxes,
and bats. Bats account for the highest proportion of reported
animal rabies cases at thirty three percent. I know, yeah,
you're very afraid of getting rabies, right, Yes, yeah, it's scary.

(23:40):
You ever watch those videos of people with rabies? No
were they're like afraid of water. Literally, I don't want
to see you want a couple of water in front
of them. They're like terrified.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
No, I'm scared. No, I would never watch that.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
No, yeah, don't know. I'm not saying you should. I'm
saying I did, and I regret it.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Geez.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, jeez, how would you do that? Yeah? Because I'm
a fool.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Why would somebody film.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
That to document health? I mean maybe so, Chelle, I
know you're not much of a late night snacker, right, Yeah,
Well I found out through this news story that we're
going to cover after the break, that a very popular

(24:28):
late night snack could be the stuff of nightmares.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Good.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
We're gonna talk about that and much more right after this.
All right, this article is from the Huffington Post, and
the headline you know, of course, because the Huffington Post
is always so clever. If you love cheese, this new

(25:00):
study is an absolute nightmare. Oh, you may want to
put that many baby bell you eat before bedtime down.
A new study suggests that consuming cheese before you drift
off may help fuel nightmares. Fine, It's long been suggested
that eating certain foods can cause nightmares, or at least

(25:23):
some pretty strange dreams, but up until recently, that belief
was largely anecdotal. I have had experiences with wild dreams
after eating ice cream late at night.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
In fact, one of the most vivid memories of having
a crazy dream because of eating ice cream fifteen years ago.
Whatever I was dead broke, I used to occasionally I
had a change jar, and occasionally I would just take
the change to the grocery store at like one in
the morning, and I would buy like a pint of

(25:59):
ice cream to like cheer myself up, and I would
pay for it with coins. But because it was self checkout,
it wasn't as obnoxious, you know, yea to like sit
there and put quarters in because and there's no line.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, I remember talking about this before with you.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
We've been friends so long. I can't believe you remember that.
But no, I just didn't feel bad yet because I
could just sit there, there's no line behind me. It's
one in the morning, and I'm just paying with dimes
and quarters and it's fine. You know, nobody cares. And
you know, this is twenty fourteen, So a tub of
ice cream was like two dollars and eighty five cents, right,
you know, as opposed to one point seven million dollars

(26:34):
in today's money. So but I remember I came home.
I must have had a bad day or something, and
I ate the entire pint. And I don't usually do that.
I mean, especially even when I was younger. Now I
don't do that because I just can't. Like last night,
I ordered some fried chicken and I was like, oh, yeah,

(26:57):
I'm gonna have a wing and a thigh and a
leg and a breast. I barely got through. I had
the breast, a leg, and I barely got through the thigh,
and I was like, oh, go on full. And when
I was twenty two, one time I ate an entire
bucket of KFC and then went dancing all night like
it was a frigging monster.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, And yet somehow I'm just as fat, So what
the hell? No? But uh but no. I came home
that night and I had insane dreams after I ate
that pinto ice cream and it was like I literally
like put the spoon into the empty carton and like
just conked out. And I had like I had dreams
that like friends of mine were trying to kill me.

(27:40):
I had dreams that I was like in a car
driving like speeding down the highway, trying to escape something
I didn't know. I just had all these crazy dreams.
And that was when I was like, Okay, no ice
cream before bed unless you're feeling adventurous in your sleep. Yeah,
so let's see. Oh yeah, So the belief was largely

(28:01):
anecdotal until about twelve years ago, when dream neuroscientist Tor
Nielsen of the University of Montreal and Russ Powell, a
professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at McEwan University
in Canada, decided to conduct some good, hard research on
the topic.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Quote. We were particularly interested in whether cheese might be
indicated as one such food, as it is often identified
in various folklore traditions as resulting in bizarre dreams or nightmares.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
I have heard about this, that there are people, like
in Scotland, people called nightmare cheese cheese that they save
to eat at night if they want to have interesting dreams.
I've heard of that.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, I love folklore. It's one of the reasons I
started doing Terrifying and True on this channel is I
love folklore. I love the idea of like, you know
that a town has these conversations about like, oh, the
old hat that does this and this and this, or
you know, oh, you have to put a tennis racket
on your door because that's how you keep the what
I'm like fascinated by shit like that tennis racket thing

(29:09):
I made up, but still I find that stuff fascinating.
The results revealed that it was dairy in general, not
just cheese, that was the food group most often identified
by students as affecting their dreams. See yeah, look at me, Yeah,
I know what's up. In the new correlational study published

(29:29):
in the Journal of Frontiers in Psychology in June, the
researchers dug a little deeper into why that is. Namely,
Powell and Nielsen wanted to see if lactose intolerance and
the resultant gastro intestinal distress might be at the heart
of those disturbing post cheese eating dreams. That's interesting, well,
and I will say so because I've always had my

(29:51):
issues with food. I am so aware of how much
better I sleep if I stop eating by eight o'clock,
like there's nothing in system. Like even if I go
to bed at like one in the morning, I'll just
sleep so much better if there's just nothing in my system.
But gosh, sometimes it's so comforting to like eat something

(30:12):
close to bedtime. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm
not one of those people who will like eat something
like like get out of bed and eat something and
go back to bed. I might. I just will sometimes
be like, boyish, I would love a sandwich right now,
and I'm gonna go to bed in like an hour
and a half. And it's like that's not ideal. You know.
I'm not a crawl out of bed and eat, but
I am like eat somewhat close to bed person. And

(30:35):
I got really good at not doing that for a while,
and then it broke when I started taking my thyroid
medicine because it made my appetite so freaking high. Yeah,
it's a lot better now it's evening out. But like
I was, like, I felt like I was just a
frigging furnace that you throw coal into, except the coal
was jujubes and ham sandwiches. I didn't I didn't eat

(30:59):
either of these, Like, never eaten either of those things.
Why did I say that? To conduct the study, they
recruited one thousand and eighty two psychology students from the
McEwan University and asked them to complete an online survey
that examined their food habits, sleep time and quality dreams

(31:21):
and nightmares. Oh sorry, sleep time and quality dreams and nightmares.
They also probe the student's perception of how certain kinds
of foods and time of eating impacted their sleep and dreams,
if at all. As in the original study, the results
revealed that eating dairy rich foods was associated with disturbing

(31:41):
dreams and lo and behold, yep, there was a correlation
between lactose intolerance, gastrointestinal symptoms, and nightmare severity.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
This is extra weird when you consider I don't know
about you. When I was growing up, like if you
had trouble sleeping, they'd be like, drink a big glass
of milk.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, well it helps you sleep, but then you just
have really bad dreams.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I don't like milk very much.
So as an adult, Yeah, I like almond milk in
stuff Like if I'm gonna have cereal or like dip cookies,
then I'm going I'm all almond milk about it. Okay,
But even that, I don't do that often, Like one
one like carton of almond milk will last me months

(32:26):
because like it's just occasionally I need that, and then
I have cream for cooking, because I do cook with cream,
you know, Okay, like I make forritatas and stuff and
you need to put heavy cream in the eggs to
fluff them up. Oh, I made an amazing fritada last week. Anyway,
that makes sense?

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Wait, that makes sense is the first Oh, the researcher said,
it's not in quotes. Oh, thanks a lot of it
to post. Because it's known that other bodily sensations can
affect dreaming, our brain can sometimes incorporate external sensory stimuli sound, smells,
or physical sensations into the content and plots points of
our dreams, either directly or indirectly. For example, grinding your

(33:07):
teeth can lead to dreams about your teeth falling out,
said one study in twenty eighteen. We're gonna dive deeper
into this cheesy, pleasy dream story after a quick break.

(33:27):
All right, let's find out more about the nightmares that
Cheese Cause, which by the way, sounds like a really
like a really lame conceptual album that somebody's like that
somebody's like, please listen to my CD, and Nightmares that
Cheese Cause as in the original study. Oh wait, no,
uh oh, Before we get to that, I did want

(33:48):
to mention they mentioned how other bodily sensations can affect dreaming.
You've had that right, where like external factors make you dream.
Do you have any funny examples of that.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
I'm not sure if I understand what you.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Mean, but like like hearing a sound and you start
dreaming about the sound or something like that.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Oh. Usually it's the other way for me, where I
think I hear a real sound and then I wake up.
But yeah, auditory hallucination. Yeah, but I do have that thing,
you know, when you're just about to like you're kind
of falling asleep, and then you have like an involuntary
leg movement and whatever happens in the dream and you

(34:28):
like fall or something.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Oh yeah. The worst one of those I ever had
was when I was a kid, because I suffered from
sleep paralysis occasionally as well. And one of the worst
experiences of that I ever had. I remember it so
vividly because it was so scary. I dreamt I was
like eight or nine years old, and I dreamt I
was standing on my dresser in my bedroom and decided

(34:52):
to jump from my dress dresser to my bunk bed
and missed the didn't make the distance and went headfirst
into the wood of my bunk bed, and I, like
my whole body like leapt up out of the bed
and it scared the shit out of my car in Terrier.
He was just like, what the ship I was asleep? Man. No,

(35:15):
Toto was not the nicest dog. He growled at me
for oh, and I'm like, I'm just a child. He's like,
I know, I'll bite you. He was. He was a
mean old bastard, that dog. I loved him to death,
but he was a mean old bastard anyway. But No,
I've had like like little things where like obviously if

(35:38):
my body's really stressed, are really sore, it'll make my
dreams more you know, stressful, I guess, you know, Like
I've had little things like that, but you know, and
I have had a few times where I felt like
my alarm clock kind of became a part of the
dream for a minute before I woke up. Okay, but
it's hard to describe what that means. Like, like, the

(36:00):
only way I could describe it would be that like
in my dream, I thought I was hearing that sound
m yeah. Well, actually, sometimes when I'm almost asleep, I
swear I start to like to see images of like,
cause I go to sleep watching like or listening to
television and stuff. Sometimes when I'm about to fall asleep,
i will close my eyes, and I swear I'll start
to see images that are matching the sound I'm hearing. Okay,

(36:23):
but like I'm only half listening to the sound too,
So like if I start to like look too closely
for lack of a better term, then I'll realize, like, oh,
this is gibberish, and so is what I'm seeing, Like,
like I'm seeing gibberish too. Yeah, it's really weird.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, I like sometimes when I'm falling asleep because I
don't watch TV or anything when I'm going to sleep,
but I'll be thinking about stuff because that's what I'm doing,
and then all of a sudden, my thoughts will get
like totally nonsensical, and I won't realize for a minute.
I'll be like, what even does any of that mean?

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Uh? Sleep is weird? Oh. Cheese wasn't the only nightmare
of culprit in this study, though. Whereas the first study
found that dairy was the food type most strongly associated
with disturbing dreams. This one found that it was desserts
and sweets that are most strongly associated with messed up dreams.

(37:19):
That sucks, I mean, but that makes sense because like
ice cream for real, m fill your stomach with ice
cream before bed and see how you dream. I mean,
come on, no, oh, okay, fine. I was gonna ask
you if you would eat a bunch of cheese before
bed tonight and report back.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Oh I can't because I'm not supposed to eat right
before I go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, me neither. Let me join the club. Yeah, none
of us are supposed to. Now be found that the
doctor was like, all right, so you're gonna you're gonna
exercise a little bit more, you're gonna drink more water,
and you're gonna eat like a full meal right before
you go to bed.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Quote dairy placed second. Powell said, we don't know why
there is a difference from the first study, but it
may be that the culture in general is becoming increasingly
concerned about the unhealthy effects of junk food, and students
are therefore more inclined to attribute negative outcomes to such food.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
I would I would think that's probably it.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Powell's advice for those who are loath to give up
cheese past a certain hour, try eating hard cheeses that
are relatively low in the amount of lactose they can contain,
such as Swiss cheddar and Monterey jack.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
Or oh sorry, oh you should just get like a
handful of like grated parmeanan cheese.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, or lactose free cheeses cheeses in which the lactose
has been artificially removed. Sounds sounds really bad. Quote. It
may be that even some lactose tolerant individuals might still
need to avoid cheese, since we also found that food
allergies and sense nativities were associated with nightmares, though to

(39:04):
a lesser extent than lactose intolerance. So you're telling me,
if I eat a bunch of bee stings, I'm gonna
have weird dreams because of my allergic reaction.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
I mean, I would think I would think, so, yeah, okay,
you might like be like really like hallucinating though, but you.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Know probably yeah you might also die. Yeah, you might die.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
I'm not sure if you ate the bee stings, if
you die, or if that would be okay.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
I can't imagine it would be okay, it would be okay.
I feel like okay is too strong, like would it
be survivable?

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Okay? Yeah, exactly, that's.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Okay to you. Oh all right, I thought okay was
like below good but better than than bad or neutral?

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, survivable.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Oh my god, we're all very worried about you, Michelle.
This isn't actually a podcast. This has all along been
an intervention.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Oh okay, I mean that seems about right.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
So let's bring your family in now, Okay, it'll just
pop up on the screen.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
When it comes to quality sleep, though, some may actually
benefit from a little cheddar or bree. A study published
in December found that eating cheese may reduce the risk
of sleep apnea.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yay, let's eat some cheese.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
How would that work?

Speaker 3 (40:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
I mean, I mean, first of all, I know from
experienced feet too much cheese you'll end up with sleep
apnia because, yeah, because your weight affects your sleep. Apnea
a lot, a common sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly stops
and starts during sleep. The authors of that study suggested
that essential nutrients found in cheese, including calcium, protein, and vitamins,
could influence metabolic and cardiovascular health, which are both factors

(40:55):
associated with sleep apnea. I mean, but you also, I
mean another element is like my esophagus is skinny, Like
that's the other reason I have sleeping Like I mean,
I mean if I because they told me, they were like,
if you lost a ton of weight, you would just
have way better sleep apnea. Oh okay, but they were like,
you would probably still have it because age combined with

(41:19):
weight usually leads to sleep apnea for men. So and
they believe that. There's some people that believe that, like,
once you're past like sixty six or sixty seven, if
you're a man, just regardless, you probably have it. It's
just like it's just a part of the body trying
to kill you. It's just like you've had a good run. Now,
stop breathing while you're sleeping.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
To turn our attention back to dreams, the researchers here
also found that those eat who eat healthy tend to
have calmer dreams and better dream recall in the morning.
Though if you're having cheese induced nightmares, it's probably a
good thing your recall is a little off. I guess,
uh huh. Quote. We found that people who engage in
healthy eating patterns which include not only eating healthy foods,

(42:01):
but also eating mostly in response to internal feelings of
hunger and not eating late in the evening are less
likely to have disturbing dreams. Powell set, Okay, all right, yeah,
good for those people, we guess, but we'll take our
nighttime cheese and the consequences. Thanks huff Post. You're always
so clever, so creative. Well that's given me a lot

(42:25):
to think about. I do I am a string cheese
eater at night. Oh okay, I like me some string cheese.
You like string cheese?

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah? I do.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Do you like food you get to play with?

Speaker 3 (42:36):
I don't know, not particularly. I just like that string
cheese takes a long time to eat.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, that's my favorite part.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
For longer.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
I will pull like the smallest strings, like I'm like
challenging myself to pull like the littlest strings off. So well,
we're gonna take a quick break and we'll we get back.
We're gonna talk about a family that move into a
new house and they find an interesting message hidden in
a closed door. Yay, right after this. Okay, we're back

(43:17):
with a story from Newsweek. I love doing house like
haunted house stories. And stuff. Because you are a certified
home inspector, you always bring something extra that I wouldn't
expect to, like to like the concept of like, you know,

(43:37):
there the cabinets open on their own, and you're just
kind of like, is it very humid? You know, like so,
but this headline was I kind of grabbed me. It
said family move into new house, chills at message found
scratched inside closet.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
That's where you put your messages.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
So it's true. So when I was kid, when I
was like eight seven or eight years old, we moved
into a townhouse and my closet was the weirdest closet.
It you walk in and it's just a closet, but
then there was like like on like maybe three feet

(44:18):
like square that went in further like a shelf, but
it went in like three or four feet. Like I
could go in there. I could climb up in there
and like sit there.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
And it was like my secret hideout. That wasn't the secret.
I mean, it's just straight there. Yeah, but like I
thought it was the coolest thing. I could like climb
up there. It was just a little cutout, you know,
like it looked normal, It looked you know, it like
matched the wall and everything. It was like clearly done
on purpose. But I guess that was just like extra
backstorage or something.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah. Maybe maybe the where the wall was there, like
there was just an area that you know, wasn't in
a room and so they could push it back a
little bit further or whatever.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, or like pipes were below it, or I don't
fucking know. I mean, it's been a really long time.
I couldn't even tell you, you know, how close I was
to the bathroom because I was like seven. But I
just remember how cool I thought that was. I would
like sit up there and like read books and stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Lucky.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, it was my own little secret hideout.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
I was a cool kid. I had no friends, all right.
So a homeowner endured a few sleepless nights after discovering
an unsettling message scratched in the back of a closet
in her nineteen twenties home. Okay, you deal with a
lot of homes that are older, right, Yeah, because you're

(45:32):
out in that part of the country, Like out here,
there are very few nineteen twenties homes in Ohio. Like,
we don't do that. We knock them down and build
them again. Whatever you people in your love of the
old drafty houses with no central air. I don't know
what you people are thinking.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
It's good, they're really sturdy sometimes and then they get
lots of rot and things.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
You listed that like the positive.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
I mean, it's just true.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
No, it is true. It is true. Did your elementary
school have air conditioning?

Speaker 3 (46:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Mine did not.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Mine probably didn't because it was a really old building.
Same huh, No, you know what part of it was
old and then there was like a newer section, so
I bet, I bet it did have air conditioning.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
So my elementary school, which was super old, did not
have air conditioning. Then my middle school, which was super new,
was a three story building and it had air conditioning.
And then the high school was you know, kind of
that typical like big, one level, you know, flat spread
out building. Okay, that didn't have air conditioning.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
No, that sucks. My high school was brand new. We
were the first graduating class from it, and air conditioning.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Yeah, that area was really new at the time.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
No.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
What was going on was we already had high school,
but our population just boomed so much that we needed
to build a second high school.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Oh well, that's kind of what what I met was
the area had like when I met by knew was
that like it had grown a lot. Yeah, it is
more what I meant, like you were kind of in
a like newer communities inside that area where like burgeoning. Yeah,
so I was right. I just had to lawyer my
way to it. I just I just said the lawyer
to it. Madeline Jones and her family moved into their

(47:28):
new home in Arlington, Massachusetts. That's why the house is
so old. They're in the Massachusetts a year ago, but
didn't notice anything was a miss until she recently began
reorganizing her clothes. That was when she saw the chilling
fifteen word message written in the back.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
It's quick, somebody count how many words there are so
we can put it in the article quote.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
It's way in the back of a probably three foot closet,
scratched into the contact paper, Jones told Newsweek. It totally
creeped me out, all right, etched crudely into the wood
at the back of the vintage piece of furniture, where
the following words, A red river clogs my eyes as

(48:16):
I slide down deeper from despair to death.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Awe, awe, someone was trying to be really edgy.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Nineteen twenties edgy.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
I mean it could have been in the nineteen eighties.
It could have been nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
That does scream the cure? You're right, Yeah, that like
screams the cure.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
That to me, that's like, oh, you're a teenager and
you think you really like that word in.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
My chemical romance.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Jones's home dates back to nineteen twenty four, meaning the
message could have been written anytime in the past century.
So far, her efforts at finding the origins of meaning
behind it have been fruitless. Quote. I initially thought it
must be song lyrics, but my Google search didn't turn
up anything. Joan said, that's because it's underground. You wouldn't
know it. It's like it's not your thing. I showed

(49:15):
the photo of to all my friends and family who
were equally spooked. It is creepy, though, like out of
with no context whatsoever, Like you just found it in
you're in the home you own, it's just written on
the wall. Would be a little weird.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
I guess I just like houses just have shit written
in them all the time.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, well, didn't your house come with like a like
murderous looking dagger.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
No, it wasn't a dagger, and it's not this house.
It was the last one.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
I know it was the last one because I almost
took it with you. I almost took it with us,
and you're like, no, no, that was here when I
moved in and leave it, and I was like, oh, okay,
oh you can't make stuff like that out. That's too much.
Oh man. The lack of answers and the fact it
felt like something out of a horror movie left Jones

(50:11):
suffering from a few sleepless nights. Quote. Who could sleep
five feet away from something like that? She said me, Yeah,
you're like I find like thing. I find things in
my closets say I'm gonna kill you and stuff every day.
I'm just like, yeah, like.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
I mean you haven't yet, Like what's taken you so long?
I'm right here.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Nice story, bro.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Jones would be forgiven for thinking something paranormal was at play.
While it's not the majority, A significant proportion of Americans
do believe in the supernatural world. We ripped we uh
dug deep into that gallup pol a couple. Was that
last month or the month before I think it was
last month. Yeah, slightly fewer than thirty nine percent believe
in ghost, while between twenty four and twenty nine percent

(50:57):
say they believe in six other paranormal phenomena. Yeah, we know, telepathy,
communication with the dead, clairvoyance, astrology, reincredation, witches. I love
that witches. Eager to get answers, Jones took to Reddit,
posting a picture of the message under the handle you
slash of vitamin mm okay, sure, yeah, it's as good

(51:24):
as any at least it doesn't have any slurs in it. Well,
we're gonna find out how she dove into Reddit after
this quick break. But it would have been hilarious if
you'd been like, uh so as far as the Reddit
stuff I found this week and then it was just
as well, that would have been really funny. But yeah,
we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll find
out what Reddit has to say. Is this a message

(51:45):
of murder or emo tane angst? Hopefully we'll find out
after this. All right, we're back. Let's find out what
the brain trust at Reddit has to say. Quick aside,

(52:10):
have you ever looked at any of the RBI stuff?

Speaker 3 (52:13):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Reddit Bureau of Investigation. No, oh yeah, where there are
like actual crimes that have been solved by Reddit. Oh yeah,
it's pretty interesting if you ever want to look into
RBI stories. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe next year I'm going
to do a tear like a deep dive, terrifying and
true about like all the the like true like crime

(52:35):
stuff that's happened on Reddit, like when it was actually
a murderer posting or whatever, because I know stuff like
that's happened quite a bit so.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Or when Reddit like fucked up and incriminated somebody who
wasn't the right person, because that's happened before.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Oh I would I would. That surprises me less than
actually catching somebody, Like I believe that they would accuse
people of being a murderer or something more than they'd
actually be one. Yeah, because we all think that murderers
are just everywhere.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
All the.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Right behind you right now.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
I'm not gonna look because then it doesn't become real
how that works.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Don't wave what I'm supposed to be rude? Now?

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Oh that's my cell quote. I love posting on Reddit.
You get such a wide range of reactions. My personal
favorite of the people who accuse you of staging something
like this for up votes. Joan said, well, now I
think she had staged it for up votes.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
I think she staged it.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
You know the moment she said I love posting on Reddit.
I was like, oh, this is about clout now, got it?
Got him. One user described the message as an example
of quote high school teenage angst. See yeah, see, it's
just as you flash. Michelle antisocial said like hey, Another

(54:05):
meanwhile shared a memory of doing similar quote when I
was twelvesh I distinctly remember what writing weird things on
the wall of my closet over the door where they'd
never really be seen. They said things like I will
burn this house down, and I hear voices at night.
Why I wanted someone to be scared if they stumbled

(54:26):
upon it. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, we'll have to
check if it's still there next time I visit. Okay. No,
at first I was like, oh, what you wanted to
sound like a psycho. Now I'm like, oh, you wanted
people to find it exactly be creeped out. That's funny. Yeah.
Have you seen those memes where it's like, uh, where
it's like ran to a party city? The day after
Halloween to get a cheap skeleton to put behind this

(54:47):
uh dry wall, just in case the next just for
the next just as a gift to the next person
who renovates this house. Yeah, like I would, I would
do that. M That would be so mean. That would
scare you so.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Bad, you know what. I think it's totally acceptable.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Oh really yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Yeah, just leave in a little gift for the next person.
And now I'm going to be scared for like a
minute in and they're going to think it's really funny.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
So yeah, yeah, Now it would be different if you
got like, you know, if you got like a skeleton
that looked like it was like still had flesh still
on it, and it was an animatronic that was motion censored,
and you wired it into the house's power so it
would work no matter what. That Oh, that's how you
really do it.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
We're gonna have to do that now.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
I my cousin Jeff, who can like build anything, he's
building an animatronic. He's almost done. He built an animatronic
Jurassic Park display for his house for Halloween. It has
a raptor cage where when you walk by it, the
raptor's head starts banging around and it makes sounds. Wow,
he can build anything. He could build that for me,
and he would because he'd be like, screw that contract

(55:57):
or whoever he may be, because he has a little
bit of angst himself. I wish I was kidding though,
he like built this crazy thing. I'll send you the
video later. Yeah, it turns out that may that that
may not be a million miles from the truth of
Jones's situation. Quote. I talked to our neighbors who have
lived next door since the nineteen seventies, and they told

(56:19):
me that three daughters shared our bedroom, which is a
maximum of one hundred square feet in the seventies and
early eighties. One hundred. That's tight. That's not that tight.
That's so yeah. I just like, why why is that?
That must not be the biggest bedroom in the house. Then, like,
why are you staying in that one? And he bought

(56:39):
a house, like.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
I mean, there's just not maybe it's a two bedroom house.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
You people, I swear you coastal people. Quote upon further
investigation of the closet, there are a number of things
written inside there. You go, that's not one is a
leen a four and I love Gary with Gary crossed out.

(57:05):
Oh no, Houston, we have teenagers. Man, I'm mad that
shell caught like you just freaking nailed this instantly.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Well, I mean that's because that's I don't.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
I don't because that's what you were. You were that.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
Oh, I mean kind of, but I would. I didn't
write on my closets, no, but but like, yeah, no,
I mean that's just what this is.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
My ultimate conclusion is that this was the early nineteen
eighties emo musings of a teenage girl. Still not the
kind of thing you want to find etched into your
one hundred year old closet wall. Though. Yeah, despite the
unsettling nature of what was written, Jones has no plans
to get rid of the wardrobe quote. It's a closet,
so we're pretty stuck with it, she said, I may

(57:54):
wallpaper over it at some point, but I'm enjoying the
creep factor for the time being.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Good.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Okay, that ended on a nice note. I love that
I heard that. I was like, ooh, I wonder what
that could be about. And you were just like teenager
did it? And I was like, oh, sorry, no, you
were right. I was wrong. I got what I deserved. Yeah,
hope you're happy.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
I mean, I'm pretty happy just at this exact second.
Not not happy anymore.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Okay, Well, that lasted longer than I was expecting. So
we're gonna take a quick break. But when we get back,
we're going to talk about something kind of crazy going
on in the beaches of Spain. Oh yeah, something venomous spiders. No,

(58:45):
that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
No.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Oh, so we're gonna find out right after this. All right,
we're heading to a spanya eh a spinya a spinya Spain.

(59:10):
CNN dot com headline beaches in Spanish tourist hotspot shut
down after rare venomous sea slugs found.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Hey, sea slugs.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
You like sea slugs, don't you?

Speaker 3 (59:22):
I need you cute.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
I'm not gonna lie. I had never I guess I
had never seen a sea slug because this is them.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Look how cute he is it.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
It's extremely cute. It looks like it has little wings
and a tail. I'd never seen anything that looked like
that before. So I'm still weird about the Michelle's like,
oh boy, so cute. But beaches in the town of
Guardademar del Segura in southeastern Spain closed earlier this week

(59:55):
after the discovery of two venomous sea slugs in the water.
Local authorities announced due to the appearance quote of the
blue dragon, that's what they're called, blue dragon, and for
motives of citizenry safety, we have banned all swimming on
all of the municipal beaches until a new order, like
Guatemar Police Force said in a post on Facebook on Wednesday.

(01:00:18):
The blue drag dragon colloquially named for its resemblance to
the mythical creatures. I guess there was a blue dragon mythical.
I mean, I know about dragons, but I know there's
a blue dragon.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Well, I think it's just because it's blue and dragons.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Okay, is about is only about three centimeters or one
point two inches long, but it feeds on venomous animals
like the Portuguese man o' war before recycling and concentrating
that venom. That's cool. That's really cool, allowing it to
paralyze prey three hundred times its size. Wow, So it's

(01:00:55):
Its survival method is to attach to one of the
most venomous things on earth, the Portuguese man o War,
suck venom from it, and then concentrate it more.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Wow, that is so metal, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Quote
contact with this marine animal can be dangerous and provoke
painful burns on the skin, police said, adding that beach
goers should quote take extreme caution and avoid direct contact
with those that could appear on the sand. By Thursday,

(01:01:29):
the band had been lifted and swimming was allowed, but
authorities still urged caution. The town mayor, Jose Luisayas told
the police or told the public to notify the authorities
if they saw one of the creatures, and to avoid
touching it, even if wearing gloves. He advised anyone getting
stung to rinse the affected area with salt water and
seek medical attention. Yet, don't use urine. That's a myth.

(01:01:53):
That's a myth. And I knew a woman who had
to pee on someone's jellyfish and they could have just
used the seawater that was all around them, but they
thought that that was what to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Yeah for everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
With its sunny climate, rocky cliffs, and plethora of beaches,
the Mediterranean coastline surrounding Alecante is one of Spain's tourist hotspots.
Blue dragons are rarely seen in the Mediterranean, being more
often found in the temperate and tropical waters of the Atlantic,
Pacific and Indian oceans, where they are carried along by
ocean currents and wind.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
They're just hanging out.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
They're just chilling, man.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
Yay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
I had never seen a sea slug before. That was
the weirdest thing. When you were like, they're so cute,
I was like, what the hell?

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
I mean, there's a lot of different kinds of sea slugs.
Sure some of them are more cute than others.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Hmmm, so shell.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
This story is from Mirror dot co dot uk, of course, yeah,
this one. I really want to see where this goes
because this headline grabbed me. But the Mirror headlines can
mislead for fun, not for fun, for malice. And this
headline says family forced to lock bed and Breakfast bedroom

(01:03:15):
after finding painting of their son inside.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
I mean, that sounds like probably not a good thing.
But maybe it's because somebody painted him and they I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I all I know is that sounds very strange.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
I bet it's not even really a painting of him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, it's just like a ham sandwich or something like him,
like that toast of the Virgin Mary or the grilled cheese.
A fun holiday soon turned into a creepy encounter for
one family when they discovered an unsettling quote painting of
their son in a quote spooky bed and breakfast. Oh wait,

(01:03:59):
so is it supposed to be spooky? Because then I'm like, oh,
it's like a gag.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Well did you say quote spooky.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
That they put quotes on it?

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
So I have no idea now actually, because if you
could go either way, you're.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Like, oh, that clarified less, that subtracted clarity. The Stevenson family,
who moved to Sweden from the United Kingdom in twenty
twenty one, were on the way home from a skiing
holiday and needed a pit stop on the long drive home,
but none of them could have predicted what they'd find
inside their holiday let. I don't know that word let

(01:04:33):
like that, but I'm guessing it's like a quick short rental.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
Yeah that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Yeah, like a sublet like sublet Yeah, yeah, okay. Mom.
Jenny explained that they stayed at a quote secluded property
for the night in a bid to get some rest.
Why would you choose a secluded prime by, like if
you're on a major like major travel way. Then just
get a hotel. No oh sorry, okay, jeez, Shell, And

(01:05:00):
why why are you so far?

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Do you have to go to the secluded place so
you can have a story about a really creepy picture
of your son?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
I guess I mean when you put it that way,
it checks out. Yeah, But after making a strange and
unsettling discovery, sleep was the last thing on their minds.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
There should get some sleep.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
I just saw the painting. Now I'm angry the family.
The family were getting ready to sit down to dinner
in the communal dining room when they noticed something wasn't
quite right. Quote, my daughter just went, mum, there's a
picture of Barney on the wall, Jenny recalled. When the
mum of three took a closer look, she found a

(01:05:45):
painting of a child that looked almost identical to her
seven year old son. The mum said it was disconcerting
and the family were left freaked out. Here's the painting. Shell,
it's a little girl. It's not even a little boy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
I mean I obviously see a resemblance.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Yeah, a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Yeah, it's a fucking I mean, I wouldn't even call
it painting. It's like a drawing a kid. I mean,
they look kind of similar, but they're not the same person.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
No, no, not at all, Like I mean, the things
they have in common are like blonde hair, wow, yeah,
big eyes, but kids have big eyes. That's part of
being a child is you have big eyes generally. And
again it's a little girl.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Yeah, and her hair isn't even that blonde like, no,
the living child's hair is very very blonde.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Like living instead of the actual You went with the living.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
The living child because the other one was probably alive
one time too, or just to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Me, it looks like an old advertisement painting or something. Yeah,
but yeah it doesn't. It just don't look that much alike.
I mean, it's just they're both like little white kids.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Yeah, you know, like his nose is substantially wider than.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Her nose too, Yeah, and his ears are are more
sticking out than her.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
They protrude, yeah yeah, and and her ears protruding. She's
wearing a hat, so like her ears are protruding slightly,
and that would be from wearing a hat if that
picture was painted from like a photograph or you know,
a model. So, oh yeah, that's that's an advertisement. Ignore

(01:07:38):
that the artwork. The artwork called Flowers in the Meadow
by Swedish painter Carl Larson, depicts a little girl, but
she looks remarkably similar to the youngster except for her
long hair. Well, we don't agree. In the painting, the
child can be seen wearing a hat and is surrounded

(01:07:59):
by flower so it's even like not even a mysterious painting,
it's just a painting that exists. This is why oh sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Please, oh no, I'm just gonna say, how does this
end up as an article?

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
That's the thing. This is why Mirror dot co dot
uk has reduced a lot as to how many of
their articles we talk about on the show is they've
really declined in the last two years, like to the
point where this doesn't even isn't even really a story.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Yeah, it's like, I mean, you could tell like your
friend about it, like, oh, we went to this place
and there was painting that kind of looked like my son,
but like that's not even that good of a story,
Like okay, sure, it even.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Says thankfully they weren't too spooked by the painting, and
Barney found it funny. The parents did describe the BnB
as old fashioned with creaky floors, and then and then
under here it says when they were talking on social
media about it, uh, they said we locked the door obviously,
but were tempted to, you know, lock the h in
their own room. And they're joking. So the headline of
the article is about a joke. Yeah I've had I've

(01:09:08):
had britt listeners right in and say, yeah, Mirror dot
co dot uk is a joke, by the way, like, yeah,
so Mirror dot co dot uk, you failed us again.
Hopefully roasting you was amusing. So we're gonna take a
quick break and we're going to talk about something I've
really wanted to talk to you about, cell because it's
about Pennsylvania. Oh yeah, so we'll talk about Old Pa

(01:09:34):
right after this. We are back and the article I
was referencing, it turns out it was kind of like
it was super misleading. So I'm not gonna there is
no shocking new evidence, but I do want to cover

(01:09:57):
the fact that there is a UFO festival going on
in Pennsylvania and talk about that a little bit because
I think it's really cool. Are you familiar, Michelle with
the Kexsburg UFO incident? I don't think so in Kexsburg, PA.
They call it the Roswell of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Where even is it?

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
I don't know. You're the one who lives in PA.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
It's a big states.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
It's a small community in Mount Pleasant Township.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
Where's that?

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
I don't know you live there, geez. But apparently in
nineteen sixty five there was a UFO crash. That's the
scuttle button. So I want to read this article from
trib Live dot com. Twentieth annual Kexsburg UFO Festival promises

(01:10:52):
update on nineteen sixty five crash sixty years ago a
December day changed the course of history for Kexsburg, a
small community in Mount Pleasant Township. People in seven states
and Canada reported seeing a fireball in the night sky
on December ninth, nineteen sixty five, according to an article
that appeared in the Tribune Review. Quote back in sixty five,

(01:11:15):
I was there, said Ronnie Struble, eighty two, founder of
the Kexburg UFO Festival. And I want to say, these
pictures are great. They're like people dressing up like in
fun costumes as aliens and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
I think that that's fun, like I do. That's why
I wanted to talk about it because I just think, like,
what you know, Americana, You know, like we have aliens.
Of course, reports at the time said locals felt the
objects landing and rushed to the scene. Felt the objects,
felt the objects landing and rush to the scene. Context

(01:11:50):
can be challenging. They were kept away by military officials
who claimed nothing happened. According to the reports, Those who
got their first described I have the unidentified flying object
as an acorn shaped hiroglyph adorned object. Wow quote. I
heard it on radio and TV. Strubel said he saw

(01:12:13):
the soldiers who restricted the access to the site of
the impact. To this day, believers and theorists in Kesburg
continue to pursue the truth about what really landed in
their backyard. This year, their hopes may finally come true,
Strubel said. Kexburg Volunteer Fire Department in Mount Pleasant Township

(01:12:36):
will host the twentieth annual UFO Festival Friday through Sunday,
commemorating sixty years since the reported landing of the UFO.
Attendees on Friday can speak with UFO investigators, hunters, researchers,
and experts. I like to think that they're just hunters
it's like there's like these UFO experts and there's just
like a guy with a rifle and a tamohat and
he's like, yeah, mostly go for ELK.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Yeah, immediately, Hunters vendors will offer half priced burgers, fries,
and hot dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
Wow, Shell, we should go to this next year.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
Okay, we don't know where it is though.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
It's in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
It could be I don't know, it could be anywhere
in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
No, it's in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Where the hell is that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
You're being very dismissive about the fine folks of Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania,
And I don't know why. What did they do to
deserve this treatment?

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Probably nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Hell, it's by Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
See I figured it's uh.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
It's out by, it's right off seventy six. Huh yeah,
it's it's yeah, it's uh, it's a ways away from you.
And that's your own fault. I know, I know, like that,
No for real, excuse me. So. Other highlights of the
three day event include a parade at two pm, a

(01:13:59):
bed race at four pm.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
Okay, make sure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
What a bed race is? Actually? I think it's like, yeah,
what were you gonna say?

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
No, no, no, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
I think it's like when oh yeah, it's it's it's beds.
You make a bed, you take a bed and put
wheels on it and race it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
I was hoping you just go home and go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Whoever can sleep the fastest while eating the most cheese.
And it all concludes with a fireworks show at ten pm.
A UFO conference is scheduled for one pm on Sunday,
when visitors will hear an update about the nineteen sixty
five crash. According to Struble, he did not reveal the
new information to trib Love. So that's it must not

(01:14:45):
be that big because it's been a month and nothing
has come out from it. Not just dedicated to a moment,
a single moment in the town's history. The festival promises
to gather community and feature ample alien and Bigfoot centered
material as well. Last year's celebration saw attendees from all
over the country. Strubel said it's something for everyone. He said,

(01:15:08):
more than one hundred crafted food vendors will be at
the festival. Wow, that's pretty fun. Oh and parking and
entry to the event is free. All other proceeds will
be donated to the KEXVERG Kexsburg VFD. Okay, that's nice.
Sadly it's already over. Otherwise I'd say go, I mean
to everybody, and and you, I'd be like, go, Michelle, go,

(01:15:31):
just go. You're like, I don't want to go. You
have to. You have no choice in the matter. So
let's see. There was one more I wanted to talk about,
and this one is in my home state of Ohio.
This is from w h IO TV, which is actually

(01:15:53):
a local news here, but it's it's not local local,
it's like nearby. The full story excuse me, oh, the
full story of bones found under porch likely to remain
a mystery, coroner says in Green County, Ohio new information

(01:16:13):
about remains found under a porch in Green County. The
bones found under the home are historic, meaning they are
more than one hundred years old.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Investigators had to use an excavator to dig up the bones.
The homeowner stated that he has owned the home for
over two years and he was just curious about the
history of the bones. He was just as curious about
the history of the bones as the Green County Corner
Office quote. I don't anticipate that we'll ever know the
full story of these bones, Kevin Sherett, Green County Corner said.

(01:16:41):
Shrett said the most important part was finding out if
the bones were recent and if they belonged to a
missing person or child. Sure checks out right, he said,
he knows they are adult bones greater than one hundred
years old, likely from the sixteen hundred to nineteen hundreds.
Well that's pretty broad. Wow, Yeah, that's a yeah, that's
quite arranged. It's like when the cable company is like,

(01:17:03):
we'll be there between eleven am and six thirty pm.
You're like, great as well, just said the day Yeah. Quote.
We were able to retrieve two molars, two teeth, which
has been very helpful because they helped us confirm that
they are not prehistoric bones. They aren't caveman bones, share
It said, but it's not clear if they are male

(01:17:26):
or female. Quote. Our investigative team has put a lot
of time and effort into researching the history of the area,
share It said. News articles from the eighteen hundreds reveal
that twenty five tons of black powder exploded at a
black powder company nearby. Oh wow, many died and some
bodies were found more than two miles from the explosion

(01:17:47):
side wow, and then he put that's just one potential explanation.

Speaker 3 (01:17:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Quote. Over the years and back in the day, that
was a really heavily traveled area, he said. Sharrett said,
they will have more questions than answers, and some may
not be answered. I just found that really interesting, and
it's rare when I find a news story presented to
me and it's from Whio, which is my local. Yeah,

(01:18:16):
my local news. So but we're gonna take a break
and then we're going to talk about the Yuba County
five right after this. So many of us have heard
of the Dietlov Pass incident where some hikers I believe, disappeared.

(01:18:42):
They were found frozen.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Cross country skiers I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Yeah, yeah, they were cross country skiers. You're right, And
there's a lot of mystery around it. Michelle believes it
was just an avalanche, and she did do quite a
bit of research. So yeah, Well, the Yuba County five,
which I had never heard about until recently, is kind

(01:19:05):
of called the Ditlav Pass of summertime or the dit
Lov Pass of America, and I skimmed a little bit.
There's a lot of weird details, just kind of odd
things and it made me really curious about it. So
I thought we would talk about it tonight, learn about
it together. And of course I'll use a source of

(01:19:29):
information that is as accurate as it is infallible Wikipedia. Yeah,
of course. The Yuba County Five were a group of
young men from Yuba County, California. Huh. I wonder if
that's a coincidence. Oh if like they all met in
like Colorado, Like, let's call ourselves the Yuba County five.

(01:19:51):
And then and then they go to California and they're like, guys,
you're never gonna believe where the apartment is. It's in
Yuba County, California, and they all like high five. Here's
where it gets us funny. Each with mild intellectual disabilities
or psychiatric conditions, okay, who were reported missing after attending

(01:20:13):
a college basketball game at the California State University Chico
also known as Chico State, on the night of February
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight. Four of them, Bill Sterling
twenty nine, Jack Hewitt twenty four, Ted Weir thirty two,
and Jack Madruga thirty were later found dead. The fifth,

(01:20:34):
Gary Matthias, twenty five, has never been found.

Speaker 3 (01:20:39):
Oh has he killed them all?

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
I that is my first thought, without knowing anything else.
Several days after their disappearance, Madruga's car, a nineteen sixty
nine Mercury Montego in which the group had driven to Chico,
was found abandoned in a remote area of Pluma National
Forest on a high mountain dirt road that was far

(01:21:03):
out of their way back to Yuba County. Investigators could
not determine why the car was abandoned, as it was
in good working order and could easily have been pushed
out of the snow pack it was in. Oh wait,
there was snow. I'm so confused at that. Oh wait,
they're in a mountain. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah. At that time,

(01:21:23):
no trace of the men was found. In June of
nineteen seventy eight, four of the men's bodies were discovered
after the snow had melted. Oh, it really is like
literally an America, an American dietlav pass thing. I guess
it's because their bodies were found in the summer. It was.
It was listed as a summertime thing, which is strange.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
Ted Weir was found inside a United States Forest Service
trailer some twenty miles north of the abandoned car. Only
bones were left of Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, and Jackie Hewitt.
As a result of scavenging animals, Weir had. Apparently he
lived for as long as three months after the men

(01:22:04):
were last seen, starving to death. Despite an ample supply
of food and heating materials in the nearby trailer. Weird
was missing his shoes. Investigators found Matthias's own shoes in
the USFS trailer, suggesting Matthias also survived for some time

(01:22:25):
beyond the group's last sighting. Uh huh, yeah, this is
one of those mystery, weird, weird mysteries. Yeah, yeah, what
you have a thought?

Speaker 3 (01:22:39):
Well, I just figure that that one dude killed everyone
and they and he dragged that one guy to that place,
but then like tied him up so we couldn't eat anything.
And then he died.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
And then he lived for like three months potentially, so
he hadn't eat it for a while. Well, so he's
feeding him.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Yeah, and then he stopped. Then he left, Oh okay,
and he died. But then the something came and untied
the ropes, so didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Okay, solid solid, I don't see any holes to poke
in this theory good. A local man later came forward
claiming he had spent the same night in his own
car a short distance away from where the mercury was found.
The witness told police that he had seen and heard

(01:23:29):
people around his car that night and twice called for help,
only for them to grow silent and turn off their flashlights.
This and the considerable distance from the car to where
the bodies were found, has led to suspicions of foul play.

(01:23:52):
So another guy was stuck in his car in the
snow and was sleeping in it, heard people around, called
for their help, and supposedly they didn't say a word,
and they turned off their flashlights. I hide from him. Yeah,
that's pretty weird.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
It is pretty weird.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
So let's dive into the background of some of these folks. Actually,
it looks like it's mostly just about Matthias. Gary Matthias,
while he was stationed in West Germany as part of
the United States Army Service in the early nineteen seventies,
Gary Matthias, a resident of Marysville, California, developed drug problems.

(01:24:32):
This eventually led to him being diagnosed with schizophrenia and
being given a psychiatric discharge. Now remember, all of these
gentlemen have some kind of psychiatric issue or disability. Matthias
returned to his parents' home in Marysville and began treatment
at a local mental hospital. While it had been difficult

(01:24:53):
at first, he was nearly arrested for assault twice and
often experienced psychotic episodes, landed him in a local Veterans
Administration Hospital m. By nineteen seventy eight, he was being
treated on an outpatient basin basis with triflu operanzine and
benza trophine, and was considered by his physicians to be

(01:25:16):
one of our Sterling success cases. M. What. You don't
believe him?

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
No, I do. It's just that that's great until you
stopped taking the medication.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
So I mean, that's pretty pretty accurate.

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Matthias supplemented his army disability pay by working in his
stepfather's gardening business. Off the job. Outside of his family,
he was close friends with four men who either had
intellectual disabilities we are in Hewitt or were informally considered
slow learners. It's in quotes because you know that's the
way they said it back then. Sterling and Madruga, the

(01:25:54):
latter also an Army veteran. The men lived in ub
City and nearby Marysville. Like Matthias, each man lived with
his parents, all of whom referred to them collectively as
the Boys. Oh no, I'm sad because that sounds awesome.
These guys all became friends that started calling themselves the boys. Yeah, man,

(01:26:16):
that's sad, Like it just sounds like they were like
dudes who needed friends, and they came together and then
died mysteriously mostly together.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
The men's favorite leisure activity was sports. Their family said
that when the five of them got together, it was
usually to play a game or go watch one. They
played basketball together on a team called the Gateway Gators,
a team supported by a local program for people with disabilities. Okay, so,
on February twenty fifth, the Gators were due to play

(01:26:50):
their first game in a week long tournament sponsored by
the Special Olympics, for which the winners would get a
free week in Los Angeles. The five men had prepared
the night before, some even like laying out their uniforms
and asking their parents to wake them up on time. Man,
that that makes me extra sad to Yeah, Like when
I was a kid, that was like what I did

(01:27:11):
if I if something was really important, you know, I
would I would ask my mom, like, Mom, make sure
I'm awake at seven. You know, some stories are sad. Yeah,
thanks a lot, Michelle for picking this one. Jeez.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):
Let's see. They decided to drive to Chico that same
night to cheer on the UC Davis basketball team in
an away game against Chico State. Madruga, the only member
of the group besides Matthias, who had a driver's license,
drove the group fifty miles north to the Chico State
campus in his turquoise in white nineteen sixty nine Mercury
Montego coop. The men wore only light coats against the

(01:27:52):
cool temperatures in the Upper Sacramento Valley at night that
time of year. After the Davis team won the game,
the group returned to madrigaz uh Madruga's car and drove
a short distance from Chico State to Bear's Market in
downtown Chico, where they bought snacks, sodas, and cartons of milk.
It was shortly before the store's ten PM closing time.

(01:28:13):
The clerk later remembered the men because she was annoyed
that such a large group had come in and delayed
her from beginning the process of closing the store for
the night. Yeah, Michelle's like, yeah, I hate those people too.

Speaker 3 (01:28:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
None of the five were seen alive again after that point.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Some of their concerned parents waited up for their return home.
When morning came and the men had not returned, the
police were notified, we're going to take a quick break
and then we'll talk about the investigation into the Yuba
County five right after this. So when it comes to

(01:28:57):
the Yuba County five, police in and Yuba Counties began
searching along the route for the men took to Chico.
They found no sign of them, but a few days later,
a Plumus National Forest ranger told investigators that he had
seen a Mercury parked in the forest along Oroville Quincy
Road on February twenty fifth. At the time, he had

(01:29:19):
not considered it significant, since many residents often drive up
that road into the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range on winter
weekends to go cross country skiing like the dietlav Pass
people yeah on the extensive trail system, But after reading
the missing person's bulletin, he recognized the car and led
deputies to it. On February twenty eighth. Evidence found inside

(01:29:44):
the car suggested the men had been in it between
the time they were last seen and when it was abandoned.
Had been in it, Okay, they had been in it
between the time they were last seen in when it
was abandoned. The empty wrappers and containers from the food
and drinks they had purchased from the store in Chico
were present, along with programs from the basketball game they

(01:30:06):
had attended, and a neatly folded roadmap of California. Do
you ever think, Michelle, no good, me neither? No? Uh?
Do you ever think about how lucky we are? We
at least had map quests to start with. Yeah, Like
we didn't have to sit with a map and like
and do the thing where you like run your finger

(01:30:27):
across and like decide where to go. Like, I just
blows my mind. I know that lots of people traveled
lots of places like that, but it blows my mind
the idea of doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):
Yeah, Yeah, Like I.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Do sometimes wonder like how did you get anywhere? I mean,
I guess you'd have to use a map to know, Like, oh,
I need to take sixty to seventy one to seventy,
you know, six to whatever. But like then you'd have
to like call your friend and be like, I need
you to give me directions from the highway to your
house exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Yeah. Yeah, there was one time when we had, you know,
hadn't lived in Plainsboro for very long. We were trying
to find the back way to like Toys r Us
and we got super lost because there's like a there's
like a pond. It's it's the important pond, you know,

(01:31:17):
the really important one, Grover's Mill pond from the from
the the thing with the radio broadcast the world. Yeah,
so right around that pond, like you could go either way,
and we kept like looping around and around. That was hell.

(01:31:38):
Like how did we even get back home? I don't know,
because we never got to We never got to Toys
r Us.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
Oh that's sad. Then. Yeah, well I've told you before
that the entire reason I bought my first GPS was
I went to visit you and I got so I
got for the first time in life, I got so lost.
I wasn't sure if I could get unlost.

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
Yeah, yeah, and I did.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
I mean, you know, then I calmed down and just
turned around. I was like just drive until you see
something and I gotta figure it out. But that scared
me off. I was like, I'm gonna go and buy
a Garmin, you know, like a GPS back before they
were all on your phone, because I was like, yeah,
I don't ever want to not know where I'm going
or where I am as a better way to put it.
So yeah, good times. Yeah, but yeah, I just thought

(01:32:22):
about that. When it's a neatly folded roadmap, I was like,
oh yeah, they had to like make they had to
like go through it with their finger and like write
down the directions and stuff. It's wild, you know, to
think of how spoiled we are, is my point.

Speaker 3 (01:32:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
Yeah. However, the discovery of the car raised more questions
than it answered. One question was its location, seventy miles
from Chico, far off any direct route to Yuba City
or Marysville. None of the men's families could speculate as
to why they might have driven up a law and

(01:33:00):
winding dirt road on a winter night, deep into a
high elevation, remote forest without any extra clothing.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
Madrugas's parents said he did not like cold weather and
had never been had never been up into the mountains.
Sterling's father had once taken his son to the area
near where the car was found for a fishing weekend,
but the younger man had not enjoyed it and remained
at home when his father took later trips there. Police
were puzzled why the car had been abandoned. The road

(01:33:31):
was four four hundred feet in elevation, about where the
snow line was at that time last year of the year,
a short distance from where the road was closed for
the winter. The car had become stuck in some snow drifts,
and there was evidence that the men had tried to
spin the wheels to get it out. Police noted that
the snow was not very deep and that five healthy

(01:33:54):
young men should have easily been able to push the
car out.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
You don't buy that, no, I just like, what was
it doing there? I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Why they got there, why they drove all the way there?
Is the yeah is really strange. The car keys were
not present, suggesting at first that the car had been
abandoned because it might not have been operating properly, with
the intention of returning later with help. When police hot
wired the car, the engine started immediately and the fuel
gage indicated the tank was one quarter full.

Speaker 3 (01:34:32):
Okay, so it didn't just stop.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Yeah, the car was functional, it was just stuck. The
police had deepened or the mystery deepened. After police towed
the car back to the station for a more thorough examination,
the Mercury's undercarriage had no dents, gouges, or even mud scrapes,
not even on its low hanging muffler, despite having been
driven a long distance up a mountain road with many bumps, ruts,

(01:34:59):
and potholes. Either the driver had been extremely careful or
it was someone familiar with the road, a familiarity Madruga
was not known to have. His family said that Madruga
would not have let someone else drive his car. The
car was unlocked and had a window rolled down when
it was found. Madruga's family indicated it was unlike him

(01:35:24):
to leave the car so unsecured.

Speaker 3 (01:35:29):
So so somebody somebody like kind of kidnap them, maybe
driving them.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Somewhere maybe, But how would you have kept like you
if it wasn't one of them. Then you have five
able bodied men who were athletic and young. Yeah, you know,
so it gets tricky.

Speaker 3 (01:35:52):
Yeah, Well, the problem is they they found the bodies
near the car, right, and they were bones basically, so
we don't know if they were okay when this happened.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
Well, I mean, we would know if they had been
shot or anything, though, I guess, and maybe we maybe
will find me that I don't know yet. You're like,
I blame society.

Speaker 3 (01:36:17):
It's always our fault.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
Efforts to search the vicinity were hampered by a severe
snowstorm that day. Two days later, after searchers and snowcats
nearly became lost themselves, further search efforts were called off
due to continuing bad weather. Other than the car, no
trace of the men was found. In response to local

(01:36:42):
media coverage of the case, police received several ports of
some or all of the men being sighted after they
had left Chico, including some reports of them being seen
elsewhere in California or the country. Most of the reports
were easily dismissed, but two of the sightings stood out,
and we'll get to those sightings after this quick break.

(01:37:04):
Oh yeah, now you're stuck. You have to come back
or else. Ah, all right, we're back talking about the
Yuba County five. So apparently the one sighting of two
sightings that stood out where Joseph Sean, Scan's Shawn's schons.

(01:37:31):
I don't know of Sacramento.

Speaker 3 (01:37:33):
Sorry, yeah, it's okay, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Know Shawn's sure, Shawn's I think it might be Shawn's
actually of Sacramento. Told police he inadvertently wound up spending
the night of February twenty fourth and twenty fifth near
where the Montego was found. We mentioned him a little bit.
He had driven up there where he had a cabin
to check the snowpack in advance of a weekend ski
trip with his family. At five thirty pm, about one

(01:37:58):
hundred and fifty feet up the road, Shawn's too had
gotten stuck in the snow. In the process of trying
to free it, he realized he was beginning to experience
the early symptoms of a heart attack. That's why he
was calling for help, and went back in, keeping the
engine running to provide heat. Six hours later, lying in

(01:38:19):
the car and experiencing severe pain. God, what a nightmare.
Terrifying friggin Seans saw headlights coming up behind him. Looking out,
he saw a car parked behind him, headlights on, with
a group of people around it, one of whom seemed
to him to be a woman holding a baby.

Speaker 3 (01:38:41):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38:43):
He called to the party for help, but they stopped
talking and switched their headlights off. Later, he saw more
lights from behind him, this time flashlights. That's also that's
also when that also went out when he called to them.
After that, Sean said, at first he recalled a pickup

(01:39:03):
truck parking twenty feet behind him briefly and then continuing
on down the road. Later, he clarified to police that
he could not be sure of that, since at the
time he was almost delirious from pain. After Sean's car
ran out of fuel in the early morning hours, his
pain subsided enough for him to walk eight miles down

(01:39:24):
the road.

Speaker 3 (01:39:25):
To a lodge Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
Where the manager drove him home, passing the abandoned Montego
at the place where he had recalled hearing the voices originate.
Doctors later confirmed he had indeed experienced a mild heart attack.

Speaker 3 (01:39:41):
Poor guy.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
What a crazy side note in this thing. Yeah, his
pain had subsided enough to walk eight miles in the snow.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
Yeah, because there's no cell phones. So what else is
he gonna do?

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
Just die? That's what you do. He die back, then
you just die. That's what you had that was the plan. Man,
that's friggin that like gave me. That made me creeped
out as much as anything. Where's mother said ignoring someone's
please for help was not like her son, if indeed
he had been present. She recalled how he and Sterling

(01:40:15):
had helped someone they knew get to the hospital once
after overdosing on valume. Well, it makes sense too, if
they're like in psychiatric treatment, I might know somebody who
took too much medicine. The other notable report was from
a woman who worked at a store in the small
town of Brownsville, thirty miles from where the car had
been abandoned, which they had reached when they had continued

(01:40:36):
down the road, which they would have reached if they
continue down the road. On March third, the woman who
saw flyers that had been distributed with the men's picture
and information about a and fifteen dollars reward the families
had put out or had put up, told deputies that
four men, four of them, had stopped at the store
in a red pickup truck. So there's only four mm hmm,

(01:41:01):
and we got a pickup truck again. Yeah, weird, And
I doubt that she would have heard anything about Showan's
report because he was just a guy who had had
a heart attack the day after, and this was the
day after the disappearance, so the next day the store owner.

(01:41:21):
The store owner corroborated her account. The woman said she
immediately realized that the men were not from the area
because of their big eyes and facial expressions. What it
says that in quotes, two of the men, whom she
identified as Hewitt and Sterling, were in a telephone booth

(01:41:43):
outside the store while the other two went inside. Police
said she was a credible witness and they took her
account seriously. Additional details came from the store owner, who
told investigators that the men who he believed whom he
believed to be weird and Ifwitt came in and bought burritos, chocolate, milk,
and soft drinks, that kind of fits the like the

(01:42:09):
place that they shopped at before, Like the kind of
food they were buying, like milk and sodas. I mean,
I know everybody buy sodas. Yeah, I'm just saying that
made me a little nervous that chocolate milk was in there,
like because they had bought milk before and I thought
milk stood out before at the other store to me
that they bought milk. Where's brother told the Los Angeles

(01:42:29):
Times that while driving to Brownsville in a different car
in apparent ignorance of the basketball game. Wait, sorry, that's
confused me. Were's brother told the Los Angeles Times that
while driving in Brownsville in a different car and apparent
ignorance of the basketball game seemed completely out of character
for them. The owner's description of the two men's behavior
seemed consistent with them, as Wears would quote eat anything

(01:42:52):
he could get his hands on, and was often accompanied
by Hewitt more than any of the other four. H
that's really interesting too, because she identified the two men
who came into the store as two men who happened
to be the close the closest friends of the group.
Hewitt's brother said Jack hated using telephones to the point

(01:43:14):
that he would answer calls for Jack whenever he received
any from any from the other men in the group. Okay,
so this is getting interesting, Like yeah, and yeah, a
lot of it could be mistaken identity, it could be
you know whatever, but some of that really did feel

(01:43:35):
really specific, and the fact that she saw four men
she was like, well, I remember seeing four men who
looked like that. She did. If she was making it
up or something, she would have said five because there
were five missing. Yeah, but she saw four men, and
she also knew that they were in a sedan, but
she saw.

Speaker 3 (01:43:53):
A truck right exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
Yeah, So it does sound like she's credible, Like it
sounds like worst case, she'd be mistake.

Speaker 3 (01:44:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
With the evidence not pointing to any clear conclusion about
what happened the night the five men disappeared, police and
the families were not ruling out the possibility that they
had been met with foul play. The eventual discovery of
four of the five men's bodies seemed to suggest otherwise,
but raised even more questions about what had happened l
night and whether at least one of them might have

(01:44:24):
been rescued. On June fourth, with most of the higher
elevation snow melted, a group of motorcyclists went to a
trailer maintained by the USFS at a campsite off the road,
about nineteen point four miles from where the mercury had
been found. The front window of the trailer had been broken.
When they opened the door, they were overcome by the
stench of what turned out to be a decating body

(01:44:46):
inside it was later identified as Weirs. Searchers returned to Plumas,
following the road between the trailer and where the mercury
was abandoned. The following day, remains that were later identified
as those of Madruga and Sterling were discovered on opposite
sides of the road, eleven point four miles from where
the car had been. So substantially far from where the

(01:45:07):
car had been, but we established a guy who had
had a heart attack the night before had walked eight
miles Yeah, out there. But they didn't have they didn't
have they had jackets, They didn't even have coats, they
didn't have any winter wear. I would guess shown had
been prepared because he was a skier, so he very
likely had at least a thick winter jacket.

Speaker 3 (01:45:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
Madruga's body had been partially consumed by scavenging animals. Only
bones remained of Sterlings, scattered over a small area. Autopsies
showed that they both died of hypothermia. Oh this is tick,
Michelle off.

Speaker 3 (01:45:48):
No, I just so now, I just like don't believe
the I don't think that the person with the at
the convenience store, I don't think they saw them. I
think that these they were just trying to get like
the car was stuck and for whatever reason, they couldn't
unstick it, and they tried to get back to civilization

(01:46:09):
and they could not, and they died.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
And you think it's just like a cruel coincidence that
the fifth man just never was found.

Speaker 3 (01:46:18):
I think, yeah, I think he's just somewhere. Okay, Yeah,
I don't get the whole guy in the cabin thing,
but everything else.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Well, and the fact that there was food nearby but
he's still starved it out.

Speaker 3 (01:46:33):
That's weird and I don't know what that means though.

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
Yeah, no, definitely. Well we'll dive even deeper into it
after this quick break. All right, we're back, and things
are just getting thicker and weirder in this Yuba County

(01:46:56):
five thing. Michelle's been very annoyed. She's been making faces
as more details emerge. I don't think so, you don't
think so.

Speaker 3 (01:47:07):
I don't think I've been making faces.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
I mean you, okay, I mean when I said that
they both died of hypothermia, you made a face.

Speaker 3 (01:47:17):
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:47:20):
Fair, that's fair. No, but I'm curious. So two of
them died of hypothermia.

Speaker 3 (01:47:24):
M m, what about everybody else?

Speaker 1 (01:47:26):
Yeah, that's because I thought they said one of them
died of hunger, right.

Speaker 3 (01:47:30):
But yeah, but what about the other guy?

Speaker 1 (01:47:33):
Yeah? Yeah, let's see what let's see what else there
is to get into debies think that one of them
may have given in to the need to sleep that
comes with the late stages of hypothermia, while the others
stayed by his side and died the same way. Geez,
that's really sad. Two days later, as part as part
of one of the other search parties, Hewett's father found

(01:47:53):
his son's backbone under a Manzita brand.

Speaker 3 (01:47:57):
But he just knew it was him.

Speaker 1 (01:48:00):
Hey, you don't have a child, you don't, you just know? Yeah, No,
but that's yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48:05):
That's really sad and an upsetting.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
Two miles northeast of the trailer, His shoes and jeans
were nearby, which helped identify the body. The next day,
a deputy sheriff found a skull downhill from the bush
three hundred feet away, confirmed by dental records later to
have been Hewitt's. His death was also attributed to hypothermia.
Around a quarter mile northwest of the trailer, searchers found

(01:48:31):
three forest service blankets and a rusted flashlight next to
the road. It could not be determined how long those
items had been there, since Matthias had presumably not taken
his medication. His photograph was His photograph was distributed to
mental institutions all over California. However, no trace of him

(01:48:53):
has ever been found.

Speaker 3 (01:48:55):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:48:58):
Now, as far as evidence inside the trailer, where's body
wrapped in eight sheets, including the head, was found on
a bed inside the trailer. Okay, so you're making a face.

Speaker 3 (01:49:13):
Yeah, so so I was a very sad face. Yeah,
obviously some he died and someone else was around.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
Yeah, okay, and you think they wrapped him up to
like respect that his body or something. Yeah, yeah, out
of mourning or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:49:30):
Yeah, or like they didn't want to see it and
it was gross like I would do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
Oh yeah, you'd like, oh, you just pushed the corpse
right out of the building, you'd like, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:49:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:49:40):
The autopsy showed that he had died of a combination
of starvation and hypothermia. Now, that takes quite a bit
of time to die, to have starvation begin to kill you.

Speaker 3 (01:49:53):
Okay, so I have an idea.

Speaker 1 (01:49:55):
Yeah, maybe he.

Speaker 3 (01:49:57):
Wasn't in that. Maybe him and the other guy that
are a that they never found survived for a while
and they find they found that like cabin at the end,
and it was just too late.

Speaker 1 (01:50:09):
Hmm. It gets weirder. Weird had lost nearly half of
his two hundred pound body weight. The growth of his
beard suggested he had lived slightly more than three months
from when he had last shaved. Okay, that would be
my estimate too, because when you don't eat anything, you

(01:50:32):
generally don't lose more than about a pound a day,
and sometimes less. It's something like nine point eight or
point nine pounds a day is the average when you're
not eating anything. Okay, So for him to lose almost
one hundred pounds, you'd have to be alive a minimum
of one hundred days. Okay, probably more so, But the

(01:50:54):
beard growth is a really good point too. His feet
were badly frostbitten, almost gangrenous.

Speaker 3 (01:51:01):
Yeah, yeah, he'd been outside. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:51:06):
On the table next to the bed were some of
Weir's personal effects, including his wallet with cash inside, a
nickel ring with Ted engraved on it, and a gold
necklace he also wore. Also on the table was a
gold watch missing its crystal, which Weir's family said was
not his hmmm, and a partially melted candle. He was

(01:51:33):
wearing a valure shirt and lightweight pants, but his shoes
could not be found. Most puzzling to the investigators was
how Weir had come to his fate. The trailer's fireplace
had not been used, despite an ample supply of matches
and paperback novels to use his kindling. Heavy forestry clothing,

(01:51:59):
which could have up the men warm, was also remained
where it was stored. A dozen c ration cans from
a storage shed outside had been opened and their contents consumed.
But a locker in the same shed that held an
even greater assortment of dehydrated foods and enough to keep
which oh wow, listen to this, a greater assortment of

(01:52:22):
dehydrated foods enough to keep all fed men, all five
men fed for a year if necessary. Hmm, there was
there was enough food to feed five men for a year. Wow,
had not even been opened. Similarly, another shed nearby held

(01:52:42):
a butane tank with a valve that, had it been opened,
would have fed the trailer's heating system. Yeah, wow, weird, Sam, Sorry, please,
I just think it was too late.

Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
I think that like they got there and he died
almost immediately.

Speaker 1 (01:53:02):
And wait, so he got he got to the shed,
to the yeah, the shed, the trailer, whatever, and died
immediately pretty much, so he had lived in the in
the elements.

Speaker 3 (01:53:16):
Yeah, I don't know. You're right. That doesn't really make
sense either.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
Because yeah, because he had, because the fact that there
was food that had been eaten, but he also lost
nearly one hundred pounds. He just he really must have
lived like three months.

Speaker 3 (01:53:29):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:33):
And he never used the heating in there, He never
wore the clothes in there. Something I mean, not something.
A lot doesn't add up.

Speaker 3 (01:53:43):
Yeah, if it wasn't for the beard and the weight loss,
I would think that the other guy like carried him there.
Yeah sure, but I yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
Where's family said that he did lack common sense as
a result of his cognitive disability. For example, he often
asked why it was necessary to stop at a stop sign. Okay,
that's not common sense, that is arbitrary. There's the reason
to stop in a stop sign is because we tell
you too that's not sorry, just I'm just riffing on that,

(01:54:16):
but it's true. And one night he had to be
dragged out of bed while the ceiling of his bedroom
was burning in a house fire because he was afraid
he would miss his job if he didn't get ample sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:54:29):
Okay, so he just he just got there and he
just starved to death.

Speaker 1 (01:54:33):
He just didn't understand enough to like check everywhere or
use the tools available to him.

Speaker 3 (01:54:39):
That's really sad.

Speaker 1 (01:54:41):
Yeah. It also appeared that Weir had not been alone
in the trailer, and that Matthias and possibly Hewitt had
also been there. Matthias's tennis sneakers were in the trailer,
and the sea rations had been opened with a P

(01:55:01):
thirty eight can opener, with which only Matthias or Madruga
would have been familiar with from their military service.

Speaker 3 (01:55:08):
Humm.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
Matthias, his feet, perhaps also swollen from frostbite, could have
decided to put Weir's shoes on instead if he had
ventured outside. The sheets covering Weir's body also suggested that
one of the others had been there with him as
his gangreno. His feet would have caused too much pain
for him to pull them over. His body himself. Right, Wow,

(01:55:36):
We're going to take a quick break and then we'll
talk about the mainstream theories about this and wrap things
up on the bizarre case of the Yuba County five.
Bizarre and heartbreaking case of the Yuba County five right
after this. Now, as we wrap up this conversation about

(01:56:01):
the Yuba County five, I'm really curious to hear what
the official theories are as to what happened, and that
way I can hopefully taunt Michelle for just being wrong
as hell always, I mean fair, fair. After it was
determined that four of the five men had died in

(01:56:22):
the Sierras, investigators still had no explanation as to why
the men were there, although they learned that Matthias had
friends in the small town of Forbestown, and police believed
it was possible that in an attempt to visit them
on the way back home, the men may have taken
a wrong turn near Oroville that put them on the
Mountain Road. For whatever reason, the men had left the

(01:56:45):
Mercury instead of going back the way they came, where
they had passed the lodge that Shawn's later returned to,
they chose to continue along the road in the direction
they were originally headed. That's a good point too. They
when they were when their car was stuck, they kept
going the way they were heading, and not from back
from where they came, which is kind of an odd choice.

Speaker 3 (01:57:07):
I mean, it is, but I think that there are
just factors exacerbating this like that.

Speaker 1 (01:57:17):
I don't know, you don't want to say that because
they're mentally challenged.

Speaker 3 (01:57:21):
Yeah, yeah, but I think that's what we're heading for.

Speaker 1 (01:57:26):
Yeah, it's possible, you know, confusion, panic, Uh, there are
a lot of possibilities there. It's just the part where
at least one of them survived for months is the
part that really is weird to me, like confusing. Yeah,
it's just you just wouldn't ever expect that.

Speaker 3 (01:57:45):
Yeah, I mean, but we don't know that the others
didn't also survive to.

Speaker 1 (01:57:50):
No, any of them survived. But the more of them
that are alive, the more yeah, the less likely it
is that they would make the mistakes they made if
more of them were alive, because the more brain power
you have, the more ideas you're going to come up with.

Speaker 3 (01:58:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:58:03):
Yeah, So you know the fact that they were there
and they never used the heating in any way, they
didn't see the extra food there. They didn't go through
everything just to see what was available to them. Yeah,
if they all four, if all five of the five,
because to keep forgear, of there five of them, they
only they found four bodies, you would think that they
would come up with more solutions. So it makes me

(01:58:25):
think that it's more likely only two of them were alive,
or maybe one for the most part, jeez. The day
before the men went missing, the USFS SnowCat had gone
along the road in that direction to clear snow off
the trailer roof so it would not collapse. It was
possible police believed that the group had decided to follow

(01:58:48):
the tracks that left through snow drifts four to six
feet high to wherever they led, in the belief that
shelter was not too far away. Okay, most likely. Madruga
and Sterling died of hypothermia about halfway through the long
walk to the trailer, and Hewitt soon after. Okay, okay, yeah, hmm.

(01:59:11):
It is assumed that once they found the trailer, the
other two broke the window to enter since it was locked.
They may have feared a rest for burglary or theft.
If they used anything they found there. After Weir died
and after Matthias thought he had died, or after Matthias
thought he had died, he may have decided to try

(01:59:32):
to get back to civilization by different ways, such as
walking overland. Yeah, that checks out. So the fact that Matthias,
the idea that Matthias may have worn weird shoes because
his feet were swollen, that checks out. The fact that
he left the body in a respectful manner, that checks out. Maybe.

(01:59:55):
But Matthias is just a total mystery. We really don't
know where he where he is or anything.

Speaker 3 (02:00:01):
Pretty sure he just died and they just didn't joined
his body.

Speaker 1 (02:00:05):
It sounds likely, yeah, man, and and that, but that's
that's the that's it. That's those are the main theories
of the Yuba County five. That's rough, man, I guess.
The main reason so many details are focused on Matthias
is because it's not necessarily because he was a suspect.

(02:00:26):
So much is because he was the only one that
could be a lot.

Speaker 3 (02:00:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):
So they looked into him a ton, Yeah, and uh,
and put out, you know, photographs of him everywhere and
stuff trying to figure out where he was. He would
have turned up. By now, you'd think, yeah, yeah, but
I'm also just shocked they never found him.

Speaker 3 (02:00:46):
I'm not. Yeah, yeah, I mean we don't know even
what direction he walked in or how far he got,
and then things probably ate him, so.

Speaker 1 (02:00:57):
When things ate other people too exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:01:00):
But but they just kind of found But that doesn't
mean that his body can't still just be out there
somewhere like deep in the woods.

Speaker 1 (02:01:10):
Well by now, I mean it's it's very much just bones.

Speaker 3 (02:01:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:01:14):
Yeah, So because we're talking nineteen seventy eight, so that
was forty seven years, five months, and twenty eight days ago.
Because I'm a savant, and not because they automatically populate
that on Wikipedia. Yeah. So yeah, with that all being said, Hey,
sometimes when I strove to remember how old I am,
I check Wikipedia because it automatically populates my age.

Speaker 3 (02:01:36):
That's that's nice.

Speaker 1 (02:01:38):
For a month or so, you know, you're like, wait,
am I thirty seven or three? You know, Yeah, I'm dumb. Okay,
I'm stupid. It's fine, gonna be thirty nine next month,
go meet. Yeah, so I did it, but uh but yeah,
the Yuba County five thing, that's it's very eerie. I'm
actually curious, like after the show now, I kind of
want to like see if they're any cool documentaries about it,

(02:02:02):
you know, for when I'm not feeling when I'm feeling morbid.
I'm weird. I love spooky stuff, but like I can
get very affected by true crime, Like I can get
very very sad or whatever. I don't know if you
remember that year on Weekly Spooky, I was doing true
crime stories around Christmas, and after I did, when I
literally ended the show by saying, I'm not doing any

(02:02:24):
more this month because It's made me really really sad. Yeah,
so they can start to get to me. That's why
I try to sprinkle like it'll be sometimes true crime,
sometimes folklore, which is a little less harsh on my
old brain. Bean. So, but this was interesting. I'd never

(02:02:44):
heard of it before, and uh yeah, I unfortunately it
does sound like it's just misadventure with a lot of
odd extra steps that don't make sense to us because
of some of the participants' intellectual disabilities.

Speaker 3 (02:03:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:03:00):
Yeah, man, that's so sad.

Speaker 3 (02:03:05):
Yeah, it really really is.

Speaker 1 (02:03:06):
Great job shell way to keep the mood up. Well,
we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna
wrap things up. For the month by talking a little
bit about horror movies in the theater and some scariness
on Reddit and try to get the mood up. Geez gosh,
Chell's the worst. I swear I'm gonna I'm gonna act

(02:03:27):
like you pick these because I know you won't argue it.
You'll just be like I do. I'm sorry, We'll be
right back, all right, my spookies. We're wrapping up yet
another edition of Monthly Spooky, and I'm happy to be here.

(02:03:51):
I haven't been feeling very well this month, but I
was very excited to get back in the saddle and
talk to you cell and read some spooky news stories
and get really depressed by a true crime story. And
you know it wasn't even really a true crime story.
It's true tragedy story.

Speaker 3 (02:04:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:04:10):
Yeah, I feel like that's what you would host. You'd
be like, I don't do true crime. I Drew do
true tragedy. And it's just a sad story. And then
it ends like no no commentary to and then they
all died and wish they had had a chance to love. Yep, yeah,
email me at this by you know this that's just

(02:04:33):
true sads. You could just have a podcast called True
Sads and so true crime it's just sad stories. You're
just reading anything sad in the newspaper. Yeah, anyway, bye,
You're like, oh my god, my niche, my niche. Yeah,
I found it. So as far as horror and stuff

(02:04:53):
coming up, there's so much interesting stuff coming up. We've
got some really interesting horror movie. He's like Keeper that's
coming out later this year. We've got Night Bright. Elm
Street series is finally coming out in four K. They're
doing the entire seven movies in four K. Really excited
about that. Night of Living the nineteen ninety is getting

(02:05:13):
a four K release, and they're releasing the director's cut
for the first time ever, which is like really exciting
because the director's cut is legendary for being like really
gory and crazy because the movie was like destroyed by
the MPAA to get an R rating. They cut like
all the violence out of it, and it was directed
by like the greatest, one of the greatest special effects
artists of all time, and then they cut all the

(02:05:34):
effects out.

Speaker 3 (02:05:35):
That sucks.

Speaker 1 (02:05:37):
So there's a lot of interest stuff like that coming up.
October is gonna be really fun. I'm gonna try so
hard because I got to keep up with weekly Spooky's needs.
But I'm gonna try so hard to try and go
to a haunted house every weekend like a I did
almost every weekend last year and it was amazing. Yeah,
and you should go to a haunted house. No, they

(02:05:57):
still scare you.

Speaker 3 (02:05:59):
No, No, I just feel really awkward. I don't know
what I'm.

Speaker 1 (02:06:02):
As composed to what.

Speaker 3 (02:06:05):
Less? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:06:08):
Well, I feel like you would know exactly what to
do an AHNA trailer, like walk through this trail.

Speaker 3 (02:06:12):
Yeah, but then like people come out and I'm like, Okay,
what am I supposed to do? Now that you can
see me and I can also.

Speaker 1 (02:06:21):
See you, I feel like that's just you at the
grocery store as well.

Speaker 3 (02:06:25):
But okay, yeah, exactly why would I want to go
through that and pay money for it?

Speaker 1 (02:06:31):
Okay? Point taken, Point taken. But there were two horror
films in the theater in the last month that I
went and saw that I really enjoyed. And they were Together,
which is a horror romance movie about a married couple
who get exposed to a type of magical water basically

(02:06:55):
and whenever they touch their bodies start to graft Together.

Speaker 3 (02:06:59):
Oh, I feel like I heard about this.

Speaker 1 (02:07:01):
It was really good. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (02:07:04):
It's not that I heard about that, it's that I
know a comic artist that made a comic like that.
Oh yeah, I wonder if it was also called Together.
It was really really good.

Speaker 1 (02:07:19):
Hmmm huh. Yeah, this was not a comic based on
a comic book.

Speaker 3 (02:07:23):
Yeah, I mean I didn't. I would know if something
was based on his comics.

Speaker 1 (02:07:27):
I would know.

Speaker 3 (02:07:28):
I would know.

Speaker 1 (02:07:28):
I like that, I like that attitude. But it was
really good. I thought I had really interesting things to
say about love, marriage and life. And it was also
creepy and gross. Then the big hit horror movie of
the year, which might become the number one horror movie
of the year, Weapons from the directors from the director
of Barbarian.

Speaker 3 (02:07:50):
And sorry, I don't know what Barbarian. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:07:54):
It was an incredible, unexpectedly great movie, Like it came
out and everybody, that's the word of mouth was excellent
because people are like, whoa when they watched it, it
just blew their minds. But it's basically about a town
where a group of kids in an eighth grade class
all disappear except one boy, and the town is just
like torn apart by it. It's really interesting. Anything more

(02:08:15):
than that's the spoiler because it's so like the trailers
tell you so little. But I really enjoyed it. I'm
gonna try and go see it again this week. So cool,
But that's the horror I've seen this week in the
theater or this month in the theater. Chell, Do you have
anything spooky from Reddit to close us out?

Speaker 3 (02:08:32):
I can, but I do want to say that I
know about weapons from NPR.

Speaker 1 (02:08:39):
Of course you do.

Speaker 3 (02:08:40):
Yeah. Anyway, so there's one thing from Reddit that I
thought was okay, and I'm going to kind of try
to remember exactly what it was, but it was from
basically the person. So when she was a kid, her
mom used to make like silver jewelry, like handcrafted silver jewelry,
and she was really into solar rings. So she had

(02:09:01):
three silver rings from her mom that she used to
wear all the time. I think she was like a
teenager or something like that, like a young teenager. And
at one point they went to the beach and she
she's wearing all the rings. So she puts all her
rings in her shoe like and like way in the
back so that they can go in the water and
it'll be okay. When she gets out, the rings are

(02:09:21):
just gone. And they didn't see anybody. There was no
one else on the beach, so they don't really understand
what happened. But she like loved these rings, and she
was like trying to find them and like asking people,
like anyone seen my rings, like posting about it and
stuff like that. Never found the rings, obviously, and her
mom stopped doing her mom stopped using like silver to
make jewelry and started doing other stuff. But and there's

(02:09:45):
all this stuff, like she had a really weird childhood
and they had to like move in the middle of
the night one time, so they like didn't have any
of the same belongings from that period of time. It's
been like thirty years and they're living in a house
that they're about to move into a new house, but
they've living in a house, you know, with none of
the stuff that they used to have, and so they're

(02:10:06):
getting ready to move with cleaning out the shed and
in the back of the shed there's like a dresser
that has like all her moms Julia making stuff in it,
and there were one of the rings is just in there,
and she has no idea. No one has any idea.
No one on Reddit could say anything that like actually
made sense if we're assuming that these people didn't keep

(02:10:27):
their belongings, you know, from place to place, because I
don't remember what it was like it was like domestic abuse,
and I think that they ended up like, you know,
getting Uh why am I saying the wrong word? You know,
like uh, like it doesn't matter. But yeah, so like

(02:10:50):
they didn't have any of that stuff, So no, like,
how how could this ring get back there? And why
in this thing that's like way in the back shed
that no one can even get to anymore because it's
fl filled with stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:11:04):
Well here's here's my thought. Okay, when you have to
do things under duress, like move suddenly or whatever, you
forget minor details, like very much because of the adrenaline,
the fight or flight, everything's happening all at once. You
get overwhelmed and you have to kind of get by

(02:11:25):
as best you can. So it wouldn't surprise me to
have not to have like taken something or remembered something
or grabbed it and put it somewhere and forgotten. I
think that would totally be reasonable.

Speaker 3 (02:11:41):
I mean, I don't disagree with you, but this is
something that she had been searching for for years at
that point, So I'm pretty sure if she was the
one that did it, she would remember because it was
such a big deal to her.

Speaker 1 (02:11:54):
But okay, so she was searching for it, but it
shouldn't have been there if they never kept any thing, right.

Speaker 3 (02:12:01):
Oh no, No, she wasn't searching for it. They were
getting ready to move. Oh so they were just cleaning
things out. But she had been over the past thirty years,
just like trying to figure out like how what could
have happened and stuff. So this was a big deal.

Speaker 1 (02:12:15):
Okay, And it's a ring, right, Was there any markings
that made it clear that it was the ring she
was remembering? Because it's been thirty years, it could literally
be just any ring.

Speaker 3 (02:12:25):
Yeah, I know, she's the problem with.

Speaker 1 (02:12:27):
Memory is that's the story we tell ourselves.

Speaker 3 (02:12:30):
There shouldn't have been a silver ring in that drawer us.
Her mom doesn't use silver anymore, she doesn't make things
with silver. But yeah, I don't know. I mean I
saw she put a picture of it, and it honestly
did look like maybe it could have come from somewhere else,
like it didn't look so handmade to me that I
was like one hundred percent sure that like a person
made it and not like a factory.

Speaker 1 (02:12:52):
But like, yeah, plus, silver rings are like the most
common rings. Yeah, silver rings, they're not very expensive. So
that one, I think it could have been a mistake,
just a simple mistake and whatever, because like thirty years,
your memory is going to be not great. And rings,

(02:13:15):
little things like rings that could have been from a
previous owner or somebody, you know, you know what I mean,
Like I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:13:22):
I don't think it could be from a previous owner
because it was in their stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:13:26):
Oh oh well then hmmm, well then they probably just
I mean, I think that with thirty years of distance,
it'd be very hard to know exactly what happened. But
it just seems to me like somebody forgot something was
there or you know, yeah I would, I would, especially
if they if they were emphasizing that, like they had
to like leave places suddenly and rush around and stuff.

(02:13:47):
Then I think that it was just misplaced or misunderstood. Yeah,
that's my opinion. But it's boring or aliens because the
thing is, if this was you know, yet another multi
verse issue. Then why not find like a jewelry box
full full of the stuff your mom made that you
know still exists now that didn't before, as opposed to

(02:14:10):
like one buried somewhere where you wouldn't have noticed it anyway. Yeah,
that's all you're You're wow, you're really like standing for
these guys. You're like, no, I think this was ghosts.

Speaker 3 (02:14:19):
No, No, I'm not disagreeing with you.

Speaker 1 (02:14:25):
No, but that one is good. That is creepy and
and and odd silver ring. And the other thing is
with silver rings being so common, it's like, uh, who
knows why you find things? Yeah, you know. My first
thought would be test the ring, like, see if it's
actually made of silver, if it's like costume jewelry, like

(02:14:45):
I would be like checking, check if it's handmade, like
get it looked at. But but you know, or just
enjoy the reddit cloud.

Speaker 3 (02:14:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14:55):
And on that note about reddit Cloud, thank you guys
so much for joining us for another episode of Monthly Spooky.
This really is a lot of fun to do every month,
and I'm glad you guys enjoy it. I notice when
you guys post on social media and stuff. Somebody, I'm
so sorry. I can't Remember your Name listener, but had
commented on a movie comment on Weekly Spooky's Tube of

(02:15:17):
Terror on Facebook and said like, whatever gets me to
the next episode of Monthly Spooky and it made me
really happy. So but thank you guys for listening. We'll
be back next month, celebrating the end of September and
the beginning of spooky season. So yeah, and and email

(02:15:37):
me at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com if you
have something spooky you want us to talk about, or
you want to send me a birthday present, I'll take it.
But until next time, I've been in Enrique and you've
been I've been here too. We'll catch you guys next time.
Thank you,

All Episodes

Monthly Spooky | Yuba County Five Mystery, Creepy Closet Note, and Venomous Sea Slugs

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Monthly Spooky | Yuba County Five Mystery, Creepy Closet Note, and Venomous Sea Slugs