October 25, 2022 • 64 mins
Part two of the Halloween Special includes the telling of various paranormal events and a UFO sighting. Happy Halloween!
Part Two's terrifying tales are told by filmmakers Mali Elfman (Next Exit), Joe Russo (Nightmare Cinema), Zeke Pinheiro (Fun Size Horror), and Bryan May.
Theme Music by Matt Glass https://www.glassbrain.com/
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Website: www.astudyofstrange.com
Hosted by Michael May
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©2022 Convergent Content, LLC
TIMESTAMPS
3:34 Mali Elfman: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1689712/
21:56 Zeke Pinheiro: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1755493/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
34:04 Bryan May
41:10 Joe Russo: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2349665/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3
52:00 Michael May
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
As exciting and fun as they are,
scary stories can inspire usto look inward, to learn something
about ourselves, especially when they'repersonal experiences, real or not.
Ghosts, monsters, aliens or not.
The experience affects our beliefsand our fears.
(00:21):
Tonight on parttwo of our terrifying tales,
all of our guestsshare personal experiences
and with the exception of two of them,I was around to witness the events.
And the last story in the episode
is my account of a very real strange
(00:41):
and terrifying incidentI experienced years ago.
Still, the scariest moment in my life.
This is a study of strange.
(01:10):
Welcome to the show.
I'm Michael May.
Thank you all for listening tothe Halloween special, Terrifying Tales.
It is part two tonight.
If you haven't listened to part one,I encourage you to do so.
Now, a little bit of businessbefore we get started.
I announced that I'll be readingnew reviews a few weeks ago,
so I'm going to read two tonightto start that off.
(01:31):
And if you want a review read,make sure to subscribe or leave a review
and you can take a screengrab of thatin an email me a study of strange
at gmail.com and I want to thanka handful of podcasters.
You know who you arewho suggested that I do this
to start.
This is from Jim B, who says Awesome.
(01:53):
Looking forward to more.
Thank you, Jim B and then another reviewfrom Thomson who says Love it.
Really looking forward to more episodes.
Reviews are so important for podcastand I really appreciate it.
So the last bit of business tonightbecause I really want to get into
the stories quick.
This eveningwe have a an additional Halloween special,
(02:14):
an in-depth interview with horrorfilmmaker icon Tom Holland,
who's behind Child's Play and Fright Nightand many, many other great movies.
I got to talk to him about his careeras well as his new book,
Fright Night Origins.
That interview will be releaseda few days before Halloween.
I don't know exactly which day.
(02:35):
So if you want to listen to itand I hope that you do
make surethat you're subscribed to the show
so it'll pop up in your feedwhen that episode drops.
And now to the terrifying taleswe're going to start tonight
with Molly Elfman,a filmmaker and an old friend of mine.
And a lot of her current work,
which she will talk aboutin this interview, deals with questioning
(02:56):
what ghosts areand our relationship to them.
So we ended up having a bit of a longerconversation than will be in the episode.
If you're interestedto hear the whole thing.
I have put that out on Patreon
so you can find information for thatfrom our website.
A Study of Strange Gqom.
Now, the only tip I'm going to give tothis story is that it happened years ago
(03:16):
when we first met,when we were working on the production
of a short film called The Price,and we were filming that in an old studio
in downtownLos Angeles, which is supposedly haunted.
Here's the story.
Hey, Molly, thanks for sharing this story.
(03:37):
You're going to actually tell a storythat involves me.
So that's true.
That's right.
It's somethingthat may have been paranormal.
And I was around for and I always sayI want to experience something ghostly.
And this might have been a thing.I don't know. So. Yeah.
How do you want to start?Do you want to just dove into it or.
Yeah, I guess so.
It's also interestingbecause this is how we first met
(03:59):
it 12 years, I think it's 12 years ago.
But it's funny because I mean,
we have gone onto work on a number of projects together.
I don't even know.
But this was our bonding experience,I guess brought us together,
which is I guess it's it'sactually a really daunting thing.
(04:20):
What you ask is like tell a ghost story.
And I'm like, okay, well, which onewhat type of ghost story?
What's involved? Because I, you know,I grew up with ghosts.
I am a firm believer in ghosts.
And and not in a waythat I'm afraid of them and at most times.
But I do believe in experiences justbecause I've had so many at this point.
Can I can I interrupt you for a second?
(04:40):
Because I actually forgot about this,because I've been asking so many people,
hey, do you have a scary storyyou want to tell?
And obviouslyI'm going to go to you with that.
So you were one of the first peopleI asked,
but I actually forgot about yourupbringing and the house you lived in.
Is that something you can share?
Do you want me to cut that question out?
I know you can.
(05:01):
I can talk about that.
I like to have conversations as on fear
and how we learn to be afraidand where fear comes from.
I wasn't afraid of the thingsthat most other people were afraid of
because I was dealing with iton an everyday basis.
I grew up in a house that was notorious
for having a woman murdered in it.
There were things that appearedin the mirror.
(05:23):
There were
footsteps every singlenight, kind of almost cliche ghost things
that I would come to see later in moviesand be like, Well, that's not scary.
That's just every single night
sounds of shattering glass in thesame room that the woman was murdered in
bullet holes appearing in the glassone day right before Christmas.
(05:44):
And it was very funnybecause I'll never forget that experience.
My mom, just
seeing this a ghost storyto preempt the ghost story,
but was me and my momsitting in the TV room watching TV.
And it was a hugeit was like a horseshoe shaped house.
There was a big hallwaythrough the middle of it.
And all of a sudden,all of the animals running in and about
(06:05):
I mean, all the animals we had dogs,big cats, we had guinea pigs and birds
and so it was like Ace Ventura,like coming through the hallway
or running towards us,which is quite a sight unto itself.
And then we walked back.
We followed them from where they camefrom.
In the living roomwere these holes on the glass.
It was this whole living roomthat had these big glass doors
(06:28):
and what was interestingis only the inside panel
had the bullet holes where the outsidepanel hadn't been touched.
So it would have been
a bullet or something of that naturethat would have had that force.
And I think this says a lotabout my upbringing.
My mom just covered it with the curtainsbecause Crystal,
there was a Christmas party coming upand she said, don't tell anybody.
We'll come over for the party.
(06:49):
And that'skind of how we dealt with fear in my house
and that's howwe dealt with scary moments.
And so I think it gives me a little bitof a different perspective.
And I've often wonderedand this goes to when we met and something
that I was thinking about earlierwhen you asked me
is what this connectionI have to the other side is.
(07:10):
It's something that I always feltvery willing to be open
to, willing to exploreand willing to experience.
I seem to have no control overwhen I experience it or who I'm around
when I experience it.
So it it's something that I only nowas I've gotten older, I'm
starting to kind of question what it wasthat I experienced when I was a kid.
(07:32):
Yeah.
And it's funny what we can talkabout this later after the story, but
it's a nice tieand to the work that you now do.
All right? Yeah.
So why don't you tell us about the story
that happened with me aroundand maybe even start with where it was.
Do you remember the name of the studio.
We were at?
Yeah, Lacey Street Studios.
We were shooting the price.
(07:56):
And it was very funnybecause at that time I was still an actor
back in the day when I was acting
and I actually got cast in it,which is crazy to me that anybody cast me.
Thanks for that.
You and Ashley and.
Yeah, that's crazy.
James and Zach were directingand they were that it was such a fun time.
(08:17):
It was also we were all very young.
We were all just starting out
as one of the first shortsthat I think I ever acted in.
And the being me and you,being you at the end of the day,
after both of our jobswere technically finished,
I was hanging around just kind of
wondering what I could do to help.
And you being the producer on setand also an actor in it,
(08:40):
we're also kind of hanging aroundand both of us started to go from set
and be like,
Oh, all of these systems and all of thisequipment needs to get back to the truck.
All right.
Well, let's go ahead and let's grab themand let's do it, which I think really lays
the groundwork for whatour future relationship story would be.
I did, indeed.
But, you know, I just
remember chatting and I wasyou know, it was late at night.
(09:04):
Everybody was trying to get out of thereas quickly as possible.
This is a studiothat's kind of notoriously haunted,
I guess that's had a lot of horrorfilm shot there.
And I just remember being very excitedto be there,
very young, very enthusiastic,going to help out this other producer.
And I, we decided
maybe, I don't know for what reasonthat we were going to go
(09:26):
through another piece of the studioinstead of going back to the trucks.
Everybody else was.We were going to make a shortcut.
And so you grab some of the gearand led the way
and then I grab some gearand I was following you
and we were walking and we went around,you know, it's a film set.
So at first there's a lot of people
and there's kind of bustlingand there's a lot going on.
And then we kind of got to this the backof the studio or to this other area.
(09:49):
And I was still kind
of, you know, dropping thingsas I was walking, you know, very clumsily.
And I just remember seeing youprobably about
40 feet ahead stop very abruptly.
And there was something
about the way that you did it that I itit signified danger.
I didn't know what was going on, but
(10:09):
it was it was scary to me.
And I remember I stopped because I didn'twant to go forward anymore.
And you slowly turned.
But it was weirdbecause you didn't turn to where I was.
You turned
and looked at somebody or somethingthat should have been right behind you.
And I remember taking that in.
And then all of a sudden you looked at meand you said, Did you just say, my name?
(10:31):
And I said, No, I didn't say your name.
And then I walked over to youand you said,
I heard you say my name, but it wasas if you were directly next to me.
And I, I didn't know what to say to that.
And I said, Well, it wasn't me.
And you said, but it was your voice.
(10:52):
And I rememberboth of us about at the same moment
looking over, and there was this door
that was slightly ajar.
And I don't know if it openedwhile we were sitting there.
I can't remember thator if it was just ajar.
And both of us had a sensethat there was something through that door
and there was this moment of,do we open the door?
(11:14):
Do we go through this?
And then instead both of us picked up ourC stands and we just kind of hurried on.
But the interesting thing about thiswas the idea of it being my voice,
and this is actually somethingthat has happened to me
a few times in my lifewhere I have had people turn
and tell me
(11:34):
that I said their nameand it was my voice.
Oh, so this is not actually the only timethat this has happened to me.
And in fact, it recently happened to meon this production that I just got done
with, which is somethingthat of this high intensity in this high
adrenalized place that I'm in,
I have often wondered what this is.
(11:56):
You know, is this
you know, people talk about a dark shadowthat follows you.
Is this a ghost that is imitating me?
Is it mocking me or is there somebody elsewho is similar to me
that is following me around?
But everybody seems towho has had this experience genuinely
feel like it's me, but it's not.
(12:18):
Or is it? You know?
So that's kind of like, I guess it's moreor less a little bit of the story.
But I guess one of the thingsthat I'm always curious about is
what is a ghost?
Where does it ghost come from?
And I also
believe that when we die,there are reasons why we stick around.
(12:39):
There are I don't believethat everybody becomes a ghost.
I don't believe that we just sit around.
I do believe that there is a reasonI often think that that reason
is us on earth.
We can't let go of something.
There is some type of trauma.
There is something that is needed.
There is some type of unfinished business.
So the question is, why am I still here?
(13:03):
What am I doing? What?
What am I holding on to?
And why is it that it's reaching outto certain people at certain times?
There is a piece of me that wondersif it was the place that we were at,
if it had something to do with Laci.
You know, I used to think it wasthe haunted places that I was going to.
But I think the scarier thingthat I realized is it's
(13:25):
not the places, it's me.
And then certain placeswhere I am, it can access me
and or those around me more easily.
You can make sense of this if you'd like.
I don't know that I can.
I mean, Idon't I don't know if I can either, but I.
I love that.
I had you come on and tell thisbecause you
(13:47):
talk about thisso much more wisely and intellectually
than I do and emotionally as well.
So I'm already really loving this.
And it is an interesting
there's a lot of interesting thoughtsand questions
that you bring up, but most of thatis exactly the way I remember it.
The only thing I, I would add tothat is I don't remember
(14:08):
looking at a door and exceptit may have been because we were right
where the bathrooms werein this hallway of Lacy Street studios.
Lacy Street is basically an old warehousein downtown Los Angeles, and they use it
for film and TV productionsnow, and it can be its own studio.
They use it for sets.It looks like an old warehouse.
(14:28):
So if you see an old warehouse
in a TV show shot in L.A.,it's likely shot at Lacy Street.
That's true.
And it's like you said,
it's famously haunted the people aroundrun the place, claim that it's haunted.
The movie sawthe first one was shot there.
And there's apparently there's
stories of weird happeningsduring that movie in Lacy Street Studios.
Apparently, a lot of the activityis in that hallway with the bathrooms.
(14:52):
I swear, and I can still feel it.
I can see it, I can visualize everything.
If hearing your voice right behind meand the voice wasn't scary,
it was turning around and noticingthat you were 30 to 40 feet behind me.
That's what freaked me out.
And I remember just trying to playthat off as like, Oh, well, oh,
it just sounded likeyou were right behind me.
It's like trying to be nonchalantabout it.
(15:14):
And we continued on.
But the one thing I kind of want to addto that
is afterwe dropped off the C stands and equipment
and we turned around to go back downthrough that hallway to return to set.
And there was one of our peopleand I can't remember her name right now.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I totally forgot about.
Yeah, how did I forget about this?
(15:36):
So she was coming downthat hallway that we were just in,
and she had, like, stopped.
It was looking around oddly when we sawher, like, something had happened to her.
And so it's just this weird.
This weird energy.
Well, she said the same thing.
Do you not remember? Yeah.
She stopped in the hallway
and we looked back and she goes, Molly,did you just say my name?
(15:59):
And Iremember both of us looking at each other.
How did I forget that? Yeah.
And realizing it wasn't just.
It wasn't just you hearing my name.
It was my voicethat was somehow locked in that.
It was so clearly your voice.
Like, it sounded just like you. And.
And all I heard was Mikey.
(16:20):
And I heard that right behind me.
And, yeah, it was really weird.
And I'm glad you brought this upwhen you were trying
to think of stories and asked about this,or maybe I even brought it up.
I can't remember who,
but just by the nature of asking you tocome on the podcast and share
a scary story made me think about it.
Because I keep saying,because I've been doing all these
like paranormal episodesthis month and I keep saying, like,
(16:40):
I haven't really experienced anythingand I forgot about this, which is weird
to forget about because you also madea segment for an anthology horror film.
We produced Franchise Horror.
That was in the short film I directed.
Inspired, but I played a version of myselfwith a bad haircut.
I had it said, but yes,
it's so it's
interestingthat I have not forgotten about it.
(17:03):
I wonder if I justdon't want to think about it.
I wonder if, like,the skeptic in me is like,
I'm just going to write that off or noteven think about it anymore.
But yeah, that was that is easilythe strangest experience
I've ever had by far.
And it wasit was one that was truly paranormal.
And again, this idea of fear,it wasn't innately
(17:23):
it's not scary to hear somebody voicesay your name.
It's the ideathat they're not connected to it.
I'm going to choose to say that it's you
years, many, many, many moons from nowwhen you've passed on, because time isn't
isn't linear, you've chosen to come backand haunt me in that moment.
That's what I'm going to choose happen.
(17:46):
And I think it does make
sense that I would like peoplelike I'm not going to scare you too much,
but I do justkind of want to mess with your day.
I find these portals and placesthat I come back through.
Yeah. And I'm always just excited.
I was like, Hey, Mikey, I can't.
I remember this.
Yeah, I remember.You remember that moment?
(18:06):
Yeah.
But I do wonder, like, I.
I always wondered what would have happenedif we would have gone back and gone
through that doorway. Yeah.
Yeah, maybe that's an episode of somethingwe need to go to.
Maybe. Yeah, that is.
That's a good question, Molly.
That is a very good question.
Well,thank you so much for sharing this story.
Before we go, though,just because it ties in so perfectly,
(18:30):
you've completed a moviethat's coming out soon, Next Exit,
which actually dealswith the afterlife itself.
And it actually addresses some of thethe topics that you are bringing up.
When is when does that movie come out?
It comes out November 4th.
It'll be in limited select theaters andit'll be on demand at that point as well.
Yeah.
(18:51):
And it's it's about a congressman who.
Yes, it's all about this congressman.
It's all about one overture.
Yeah.
That's a played played by myself. So.
Yes, everybody check it out.But not for that. Not for that.
Check it out for the whole movie.
I'm very I'm in the background. Right.
So that was that was very fun.
It was really funto have you on set that day.
I appreciate it so much.
(19:12):
I'll be sending you a headshot later. So
and then you also just to plugeverything else, you also just wrapped
a movie called Birth Rebirth, which is aIt's Shudder exclusive, isn't it?
Yes, it'll be.
Well, it's Shudder
and it'll have additional distribution,which we can't quite announce yet.
(19:33):
And that should probably be ready in 2023.
That's an allfemale Frankenstein adaptation
about a woman who wants to birtha child with her mind and not her body.
Yeah. Ensues.
And sex with director Laura moss
and so yeah it's been
and yeah,the ghosting is actually right next to it
(19:54):
because that's one that I wroteand directed.
You're you're going to see me working outsome of the literal literally.
It's you know what?
I'm really glad that I came on this show
because sometimes I forget the experiencesthat added into the things that I did.
And boy,oh boy, did this play a very small
but important part on an elementthat is definitely in next exit,
(20:14):
a world in which we know Ghost existsand we can see you track
and record them on the other side.
And you know,if you want to be one of the pioneers,
you can go and join themand become any type of celebrity.
Yeah, indeed.
Well, I'll provide some linksto all those things and where to see stuff
like that in the show notes and yeah.
Thank you so much, Molly.
(20:35):
We talked more than I intended to,but I should.
Assume. I should.
I should have just assumed.
But I really appreciatewhat you brought to this.
So thank you again for sharing that storyand scaring me again.
Thank you.
And that's something I'm really here for,you know, whether I'm in this world or
the next
next step.
We have Zeke Pinero,another old friend of mine.
(20:57):
And here's where things get interesting,at least for me.
Zeke is the co-director of The Price,the film
that was happeningduring Molly Elfman's story.
And Zeke and Molly and I had a companycalled Fun Size Horror, where we produced
and distributed and promoteda lot of short digital horror content.
(21:18):
And I actually interviewed him awhile agofor this episode
because I knew he would have a scary storyand it's completely unintentional
what happened, which is he sharedsome stories that also took place
in Lacy Street studios at the same timeas Molly's Story.
And again, I did not knowhe would tell those stories.
(21:40):
I had no intention of connecting
Mollyand Zeke together in their experiences.
It just happened.And I find it fascinating.
It also makes me questionmy own beliefs about these things.
So without furtherado, here is Zeke Pineiro.
Isaac, good to see you.
(22:00):
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
But I have no ideaof what you're going to share.
What type of storyare you going to talk about?
I mean, it's a couple ofI've got to they're short stories.
So I've got I've got two. Yeah.
And one is an experiencethat I had at the Disneyland Hotel.
(22:22):
Oh, nice.
And the other is a storywith with Go Lacey Street Studios.
I also had my own
little
strange occurrence that I experienced
while I was there, actually a couple,because that place is is undoubtedly
haunted.
(22:43):
So yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll share those,those, those two and then yeah.
Yeah, let's, let's dove into it.
The Lacey Street Studio One's Bill.
The first onewas our first night of shooting.
There you go to Lacey Streetand like you could just you look at it,
you're like, okay, this place is haunted.
It's all old brick.
(23:03):
It's an old textile factory from like,you know,
turn of the century,turn it into the 18th or 19th century.
And yeah, and then it got convertedto a studio and then it became this weird
hodgepodge, just people being like,Oh, let's build a stage on this thing.
And it's stages. On top of stages.
And then, yeah, and there's, there'sthis like kind of creepy warehouse
(23:25):
that is connected to this even creepierlooking like furnace chimney
that that's like rightfront and center in the studio.
And behind that
is like, you know, some bathrooms
and we were shooting the price
and we had a lot of make shoots there.
(23:46):
And it was our first night shoot.
And I went to go use the bathroomand I was sitting in one of the.
Stalls.
And I heard conversation.
Like I was like,
you know, crew's going around, there'sthis weird, like, we've broken for lunch.
I would use the bathroom.
And then I said,I heard some people come in
(24:06):
and talk, start talking.
And I was like, it was weird
because I couldn't quite understandwhat was being said.
And, you know, and obviously,like Director on the first thing I'm like,
is this the crew?Are they going to be talking shit on me?
Like what?
What info am I going to get?
And I couldn't quite understood.
But it was clearly like whispered voices
(24:26):
in this room, in this bathroom.
And you know, I then, you know,
the finish up, I open, I hear nobody exit,I open up the door
and no what is thereno one is there nobody exits?
Nobody.
It's like the voices just kind of gotcut off and stopped, so.
(24:47):
And then. And then later.
What was the guy's name? Rusty.
He was a caretaker.They're talking to him about coming.
Yeah, the caretaker had all the stories.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the stories.
And he was like,that bathroom in particular.
That is a regular occurrence that happens.
And talking to him later on.
And then the second
one was our last night there.
(25:09):
And that was
that was it.
We were his last night there.We were running late.
We're running short on time
the way the lighting scheme ofit was just taking too much time.
And I went to goI was trying to find, you know, our DP
so I could talk to him and be like,all right,
we got to, you know, kind of nickthis and get moving.
(25:31):
And yeah, so the shot was,you know, it's an outdoor shot.
So we, you know, is kind of in this,you know, a little enclave,
you know, between buildings.
And so they were setting upall the lights on the roofs
and and I, you know,so then I, I was like, you know,
trying to he was he was up on the roof.
(25:52):
I was down on the ground.
And so I. Saw.
The grips unloading
equipment from the trucks andand bringing it upstairs.
So I went to go follow a gripthat I followed a grip.
And I started following this figure
up these stairs, at these windy stairs,and then through these
different corridors.
And I kept, you know,it's like just a little bit ahead.
(26:13):
So every time I turn the corner, you know,you'd see the tail end of the person
turning the corner.
And I followed that shape
into a completely empty roomand there was nothing there I like.
Yeah, there was. There was no other.
There was no other wayI could have lost the person.
It was just like a straight staircase,like, I kind of, like, wound up around it,
(26:35):
like, just.
Yeah, yeah.
So I found there was a shape,
you know, like,I followed the shape into a
totally empty room where it was like,you know, windows and stuff.
And I could see the crewon the other side of the building, but.
But there was no way for me to get to themfrom where I was.
Yeah.
And so that was very eerie.
(26:58):
I have forgotten about the stories untiljust now and the one in the bathroom.
I don't even knowif you ever shared that with me.
I may have just forgotten about it,but it is so interesting
because that is outside of that dooris where Molly and I had
our experience,where I heard her voice behind me.
(27:19):
So that
is that is so interesting to hear that.
And I now I do also remember the storyof you following the figure upstairs.
I remember
I think you told me that night,
like at the end of the nightor the next day,
because I remember that happeningright away.
Yeah, that is.
Wow, wow.
Lacy Street Studios, ladies and gentlemen.
(27:39):
Yeah, cool.
Well, yeah,let's move on to the Disneyland, then.
Yes. Hear that one?
Good Disneyland.
I think it's like the most, you know,I think probably the most visceral.
Experience I've had.
With something that could be consideredsupernatural.
(28:04):
You know, I'm sure I'm sure
Procter skeptics can come upwith the reasoning for it and everything.
But, you know,
for those unfamiliar with the DisneylandHotel, you know, you've got
a couple of hotels that are newer.
But there were originallythese three buildings.
And at the time, I was staying there,
(28:24):
this was the main there was a main hotel
which is called the marina,which is where you check in.
And there's another onethat's facing the park.
And at the time, like,it wasn't long after,
after the downtownDisney and stuff had been built.
So it was overlooking downtown Disneyand that was called the Sierra.
And then there was another onecalled The Big Bonita.
(28:46):
But yeah, we were staying in the Sierra.
So that's it's been there since I thinkthe late fifties, maybe early sixties.
Late fifties sounds more right.
And yeah, we were staying there,staying in the side that faces the parks
and at the time, you know, downtown Disneyand it was know we were sleeping
(29:08):
and I woke up feeling
feet walking over me like child
like child sized feetstepping over me like
several of them.
And like a kid
walking over the bed,not realizing I was there.
(29:29):
And I woke up
and was still,you know, feeling that sensation.
And I look up
at the window and facing of the window,
I see a clear outline
of a woman with a beehive haircut.
She's some kind of a bouffant,you know, haircut.
(29:51):
And she's looking out the window.
And I was just staring at her.
And then she turnedlike I could see it turn and look at me.
And it was, it wasit was weird because suddenly
this, this, this, this,
this urge came over me that like,I wasn't thinking this at all.
(30:12):
I wasn't feeling any sort of.
But it was I
and I've heard of people that have hadother of their ghostly experiences before,
where they they encounter somethingand they see something as if it's
almost like it's like being transferredinto your brain.
It's kind of what it felt likebecause it was like it wasn't there.
And then suddenly I like we make I guesswhat could be considered eye contact
(30:34):
and I just sayyou got to be fucking kidding me.
And, and, and then it it dissipated
and like,
everything went away,sensations went away, everything.
And yeah, that's,that's the entirety of the,
of the experience.
(30:56):
But yeah, it felt, it felt very much like,like I've had the experience
where you wake upand like you kind of have that like you're
stuck in a bed and you're,and you feel the bed tremble and stuff.
There's kind of thoselike nightmare experiences.
And there was a documentaryon Night Terrors that was
that was really well done. And I'm like,okay, yeah.
(31:17):
That's,that's probably what that was like.
That wasn't like that was that was
probably a weird, you know,
waking dream,you know, experience that happened.
But this felt like
there was a presence in the roomand it wasn't like a malevolent presence.
(31:37):
It wasn't anything.
But it definitely felt likeI had experienced something that was.
Supernaturaland so just ask a question on that
because you bring up,you know, the nightmare thing.
But like sleep paralysis
typically happens.
People can't move, right?
So yeah, could you move your body equally?
Because it sounds like you did because youeven like looked over at her and stuff.
(31:58):
So yes, yeah.
Yeah. I was able to,I was able to move and
whereas like in the, the experience thatI kind of referred to, I could not move.
Yeah, but,
but this, I could,I could absolutely move.
And so there wasn't anythingthat like yeah, like I felt like
(32:18):
I was laying there for a whileand you know, I had
at the time I had, I had a £20 cat,you know, back home.
And so, you know, sometimes when you sleepin a strange room in a in a hotel room,
you're asleep and you kind of wake upand you think that, like,
you know, you'rehome and then you readjust.
(32:38):
You know, at first I thought it was that
I thought it was I thought it was my catLogan walking over me.
And then I, you know, as I was coming to,
I realized, wait, I'm in a hotel,Logan is not here.
And then I kind of, you know, that'swhat I stirred and I sat up and yeah,
then the foot defeat, the sensationof feet walking over me went away.
But that's when I saw the woman. Yeah.
(33:00):
Well, thank you so much for sharingthe stories and happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween.
Thanks for having me.
Up next is a story from my brother Brian.
Now, this story is actuallyjust an excerpt from a longer episode
that I recorded for our Patreon channel,
but I wanted to include itin the Halloween specials
(33:21):
because it's an unexplained eventthat happened to
a handful of skeptics my brother, myselfand his girlfriend at the time.
And I need to take this up a little bit,since you're just hearing an excerpt.
But I interviewed my brotherabout these three unexplained events
that happened in the housewe grew up in when he was an adult.
And what happened was, is our parentshad moved out of the house.
(33:43):
My brother moved infor a short period of time
in a house where nothing hadnormal had ever happened.
Suddenly my brother experiencesthree different things, and you're
only going to hear one of those tonight.
And what's also interesting about it isit was never my brother alone.
There were always witnessesto these events
and the one you're going to hear tonightdeals with some moving furniture.
(34:07):
So let's let's get on to the next things.
The next thing. The couch.
Yeah, the next thing, the big thing.
This is one of the few experiencesin my life where I'm like,
Ooh, maybe, maybe I did experiencesomething paranormal.
You know, I don't.
I don't 100% know.
But what I'm extra curious about withthis story is hearing
(34:27):
you tell itand then how I may remember it.
And I'm going to I'mjust I'm just fascinated with that.
I may be exactly the same.
I may be a really good storyteller.
So there's parts of this that you mightjust shut up and say, you know, the end.
That's a better way to remember it.
But here, let me let me tee it upa little bit.
You're not the movie producer,so it doesn't matter.
(34:47):
I was in town visiting family,
and I would always stay with youin my old bedroom in this house.
And the one thing that you can go backand start at an earlier place than this,
but I just want to say it as a brother,because it's such a brotherly thing.
We were going to go out to dinnerand you wanted to wait
because you had to move furniture aroundbefore we left.
And I was upset about that.
(35:09):
I said I wanted to just go to dinnerand we can come back and move this around.
But you were like, No, we got to moveall this. Before we go to dinner.
You got to afterparty.I don't want to work before we come back.
So anyway, here you go aheadand tell the story and I'll I'll shut up.
Yet another scenario you're in.
You're in town for a week or two.
(35:31):
I had my girlfriend at the time.
I can't remember who else.
There wasdefinitely somebody else with us, too.
I think the
the scenario was I had just been given
our parents
furniturethat they were no longer going to use or.
No, it was it was in this house.It was somewhere else.
(35:53):
I had moved out other furnitureand I was moving into the room
a lot of heavier, more robust furniture.
So to set it up, right.
So when you come into the backdoor of our home, which is the door,
we mostly leave and come in from,we never go through the front
traditional Florida home.
(36:15):
We have a sun room.
The Sun room is on the back of the house.
It's open windowslooking out over the lake.
Attached to the sun room is like alittle bar area that's a total see through
and a walk space to walk from the sun roominto the kitchen, out of the house.
Right.
So this is where 95% of your life is spentis your Florida room, you know?
(36:38):
So we called it a sun room.
It's a Florida room.I mean, that's that's really what it is.
I had slid out and moved other furnitureout of the way.
And what I wanted you to do is help meput up these two big Ralph Lauren couches.
There was big white shag wool rug
that I put down and a cast iron table
with a solid chunk of glass on it,
as well as two tables that were castiron with solid glass chunks.
(37:02):
And so you had helped me center the rug,
put the couches on it,put the table on it, took the chair in it.
All this shit was heavy.
And once you put it down, thereain't no sliding it or moving it around.
And especially if it was foryou and me to bitch about it.
We're beastly men.
This was not.
(37:24):
This was not.
Yeah. No, I mean, you're cut.
I mean, I just think a Brad Pittfight club.
I see you just put another £50, but,you know, like this,
this stuff ain't going anywhere.
Once we set it downand that's exactly what we did.
We set up the room, we looked at it,we said, Great job.
You sweating our asses offand you yelling at me.
(37:47):
And we go out to dinner.
And so all of us leave the house,
and Iswear there was somebody else with us.
But you know, that personhas been replaced by this ghost
that is taking over the story.
So at least three of us
walk out of the houseadmiring our accomplishments.
(38:08):
And when we return from dinner,
flip on the lights.
I was not the first person in the house.I think you were.
And I think it was youthat turned the lights on and said,
Brian, did you move the furniture?
And that's when I go, Fuck you,let me walk in
and I peer over, walk into the backdoor, peering over the bar.
(38:32):
All the furniture had been pushed upand moved over, slid
across the room, buckling up the carpet,you know, just
something that not easily
done, definitelythe air conditioner breeze did not do it.
But, you know, we all sat there like,what?
Don't suck.
So what I know.
(38:53):
Know this is great, you know?
So the only thing different in my story,not all the furniture was moved.
The couch, the big couchthat was on the wall
that faces the TV was jutted outfrom the wall on an angle.
So it wasn't. Washing the carpetand the cast.
Iron. Yeah.
That, that, yeah.
I don't know the leather chair.
I don't think the leather chair was moved,but definitely the big couch
(39:15):
pushed out towards the loveseat to the opposite corner.
The big couch was like the back.
If you're looking at it, the back leftside was in the in the correct place
and the right sidehad been kind of jutted out from the wall.
And I don't rememberany other furniture being moved.
But it caused that fat ass carpet
(39:36):
to have buckle up and move the castiron table with a glass.
I don't remember the table being moved.That's yeah.
It all, it all shifted over.
I see that there's. A photographon a BlackBerry so.
Yeah.
No, I don't remember anything elsebeing moved.
Just the couch.
But regardless of the fact,whoever remembers that correctly or not,
stuff was moved, whether it's the couch,the couch and the table or whatever,
(39:59):
the couch was moved.
And I kept thinking, oh, maybe the thethe carpet thing,
the rug caught up under a legand it like tilted over.
And I was like, well,
even if that was true,it wouldn't have moved as much as it did.
Second of all, that carpet
didn't go all the way to the backleg of the cart of the the the couch.
Right.
It was a it was like a halfwayit was like an area rug.
(40:20):
So didn't go all the way to the back ofthe wall where the couches back legs were.
Thoughwe do both remember the couch being moved.
Your girlfriend who was with us,I remember her being like, well, no,
maybe you did you not push itall the way back before he left?
And it's like, no, we werewe put that hard effort.
We put that all all where it wassupposed to go before we left for dinner.
We're all sitting here,we're logical people going.
(40:43):
And something really happened herethat we can't explain.
And that's the foundationof the whole lights and furniture.
If you want to hear about all three of theexperiences that Brian had in that home,
besides the furniture,
we would love to see you over on Patreonand listen to that whole episode.
Now, next up, we're changing topics,getting away from ghost and paranormal.
(41:05):
And we're talking about potential aliens
from the very talented Joe Russo.
Well, hi, Joe.
Thank you so muchfor coming on the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah.
And I'm very excited because you mentionedthat this is an alien story
you're going to share, correct?
That's that's right. That's right. Though.
(41:26):
There's there's not any like probingor anything like that.
But but I did havewhat I think some might refer to as,
you know, a close encounter,you know, with the third time.
Okay. All right.Can I ask you. A question for you?
I don't I don't know.Whatever you want to call it.
Yeah, well. We'll find out.
Can I ask you a question before you start,which is this you're from New Mexico,
(41:50):
is that correct?
No, I know.
Did you go maybe Arizona? I'm well.
So I grew up in Connecticut.
Oh, and then I went to school.
That's what it is. That's what it is.
And so this actuallyhappened while I was living in Arizona.
That's that's what I was going to ask
is apparently there's a lot of there'sa lot of UFO activity in the Southwest.
(42:13):
So that's why I asked that question,right?
Yeah, that's cool.
So I don't know if you're familiar witha phenomenon called the Phenix Lights.
I am, actually, yes. Okay.
So the Phenix Lights actually happened.
Years, years, yearsbefore I lived in Arizona.
But, you know,when I was finishing up at school
(42:36):
and before I moved to Los Angeles,I was working production
on a variety of different moviesand TV shows and commercials
and what have you and a lot ofthe TV was reality TV.
I found myself working with
a pretty consistentrotating crew of people out of L.A.
kept referring for jobs as as youknow, it goes with production. And
(43:01):
and so I
got offered the chanceto be a camera operator
on a kind of myth busterslike sci fi channel show.
I don't think I ever saw the end product,
but the, the, the gist of the episode waswe were going to try to prove
or disprove what people might have seenwhen they did the Phenix Lights.
(43:24):
So, you know, we went out thereand we were doing weather
balloon experiments and,you know, dropping things out of a plane
and seeing what they would look liketo the naked eye and different, you know,
we're trying to like replicateall of like what what could
people have actually seen with the Phenixlights and to give some maybe context.
(43:44):
Yeah the Phenix Lightswas this one of a mass UFO sighting events
where lots and lots and lots of peoplein Phenix all saw something in the sky
and so,
you know, we're we're we're doing thisand we basically have like
one big overnight shoot where we're goingto be out in the middle of the desert,
(44:06):
kind of near where people reportedly sawthe Phenix lights.
And so, you know,we're filming all sorts of different
things were filming the hosts were filmingdifferent experiments
and suddenly someone says,
what's that up in the sky?
Right.
(44:28):
And we all kind of turn and look.
And up there is a big, bright white light
and it zips to the left
fasterthan I've ever seen anything zip before.
And then it zips to the right fasterthan anything I've ever seen it before.
(44:48):
And and it starts doing thislike back and forth across the sky.
And all the producers are like, pointthe cameras
at the sky, stop staring at em, shoot it.
Right.
So we all saw me and all the other cameraoperators is reality TV.
So you have, you know,
a crew of four or five different peoplefilming everything, right?
(45:11):
We all whip our,you know, late digital cameras
up up into the air and and,you know, point them out with the sky.
And we're filming and we're filming.
And I can see this with my naked eye,can see this thing
zipping around the skylike nothing I've ever seen before.
No plane, no helicopter, no nothing.
(45:33):
And, you know, I'm shooting it
and and then it zips offand it disappears.
It's gone.
And we're all like like, wow.
We we just really see a UFO.
And everyone's like, Well,thank God we have the cameras.
Thank God we got it on tape
(45:54):
the next day.
There is nothing on the tapes.
Emirates couldn't pick up whateverwe were seeing with our naked eye.
So was there nothing on the tapeslike it were blacked out.
There was there was footage.
Yeah, there was nothere was no the the the light whatever
we were seeing,the cameras weren't strong enough.
(46:17):
To pick it up. Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, man. So all of that, that whole,
you know, experience
where we all literally sawsomething up in the sky
isn't in the episode,from what I understand,
because we had nothing to prove or showor, you know, so literally that happened.
We shot it, we all saw it.
(46:40):
And God, I, I went home and I was like,shoulder the ball, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll never forget.
Not, not only was it
just cold out in the desert,but like the feeling that, like, you know,
we might have seen something other,you know,
was, was, was,
was pretty,pretty exciting and scary and yeah.
(47:02):
And then yeah.
And the fact that,that none of the footage was, was usable
to prove us right or wrong was, was,I think probably the easiest part.
Yeah, it has to be.
And so what were your thoughts or beliefson UFOs before you experienced that?
Were you somebody that was just like,Oh, that would be cool?
(47:23):
Or were you hardcoreskeptic or hardcore believer?
I would say like in the middle, right.
I've I've I believethe universe is so big.
That's the odds of us
being the only intelligent life form.
And I think you could arguefor actually an intelligent life form.
(47:43):
But but, you know, butbut the odds of us being the only one
in this massive, massive,massive amount of of matter
out in the universefeels extremely unlikely.
And that'skind of how I've I've always kind of
thought and believed so.
So, no, I wasn't necessarilygoing out into the show being like,
(48:07):
oh, man, I hope we find something orOh man, I hope we can prove the
existence of aliens.
It wasit was just like it was a job, you know?
It was like they were going to pay
me, oh, 250 bucks a dayto go point a camera at something.
Yeah. You know.
Oh, I absolutely.
I know.
And I feel like I'min a very similar boat of
I don't know if I believe in UFOs or not,but I believe the universe is so big
(48:28):
that there's definitely something outthere. There's definitely life out there.
I don't know if it's visited planetor not, but it could be if it's out there.
Visited Central PHENIX.
Yeah, exactly.
That's where that's where it happens.
That's where they come. In for sure. Sure.
You know, they're not really goodwith illegal aliens there.
That's that's true. That's a
(48:48):
funny story was
about, I don't know, maybe sevenor eight years later,
I was sitting on the set of a movieI produced called Nightmare Cinema,
and our financier was literallyjust about to release a movie
about the Phenix Lights.
Oh, cool story,which I thought was kind of cool.
Yeah.
You know, you're making a movie aboutthis is like, let me tell you
(49:11):
a my experience,
but I still cannot for the life of me
explain what I saw.
I've never seen anything in the skylike it
before or after.
Yeah.
(49:31):
And the fact that it moved two directionsto at least two directions is.
Yeah. Because that's very relaxed.
Oh, is it?
Just like this is a fast moving plane, but
I've never seen somethingcircled back that quickly.
Yeah.
Well, very cool.
Very cool. Joe.
No, I appreciate thethe alien UFO sort of genre.
(49:52):
It interjected into these episodes.
Two thingsI want to bring up before you go.
Which one?
Whichjust occurred to me like seconds ago.
Yeah, but I talked to youlike four or five years ago.
I don't know if you remember to get adviceabout starting a podcast.
Do you remember that?
I do.
I think we went to lunch.
(50:12):
Well, we went to lunch,but this was it was this was a phone call
probably months or a year later than that,because I I've always
wanted to do a podcast. And I was curious.
You gave me some great advice, but I justI didn't have time.
I was in the middle of productionon two things.
So in a lot of ways, you'reyou're at fault for whatever becomes of.
Whatever this is, whatever this is.
(50:33):
And I appreciate you saying that.
I'm glad I was able to give youa little bit of a push
and I'm excited that you're doing it.
Yeah, no, I am, too.
I'm honestly, I'm have I'm having a blast.
And the second thing is,
I just want you to be able to, you know,kind of plug anything you're working on.
You have a great podcast,you have a lot of projects,
IT teams in the worksand coming out and out already.
(50:53):
So I just wanted to give you a chance
to tell people where to find some some JoeRusso work.
Yeah, well, let's see what
the aforementioned nightmarecinema is still streaming on Shudder.
So you can check that out there.
It's a horror anthology,which is pretty fun.
You know, I've got a postmortemwith Mick Garris podcast.
(51:14):
I'm a producer on thatand a regular co-host on the
Ask Me Anything episodesso you can catch me there
wherever you download podcasts andand what else?
I just just
had a movie that I produced that came outcalled The Greatest Beer on Ever.
I was a producer on itand that's on Apple TV plus.
(51:35):
Yeah, I've got to watch it.It looks so good.
I haven't seen it yet, but I really wantto watch. It and I appreciate that. Yeah.
And then in the next year,there's a couple of things coming, but but
you know,couple of things in post-production, but
keep an eye outfor the inheritance on Netflix.
That's what I wrotepretty excited about it.
So. Oh, nice.
And then I'll provide some links
in the show notes for everybodyto check stuff like that out.
(51:56):
And Joe, thank you again for doing this.
I really appreciateit. Thanks for having me.
I'm going to finish
the Halloween specialby sharing a personal story.
The most terrifying thingthat's ever happened to me,
the only set up I can kind of giveis that I was 11.
I think I was 11 yearsold, and I was at summer camp in Michigan.
(52:20):
I went to Interlochen Arts Campand it was my third summer there.
And when you go to Interlochen,they have options nowadays
where you can stayless than the whole summer.
But when I started, you had to stayfor eight weeks and which is a long time.
And when you've been there,when it's your third
(52:40):
year,that's a lot of summer camp up there.
And I was in Junior Boysbecause I went as young
as you could go,and that's the youngest division.
And I'm not sure if the older divisions,because I didn't go to them,
did the same thing.
But when you're in junior
boys, you would camp out once a week,whatever cabin you were,
and your cabin would camp out once a weekand you would hike through the woods.
(53:04):
There were like threeor four kind of favorite camping spots.
And this is not tents.
You know, you carry a sleeping bag,you'll light a fire in his sleep
circling the fire.
And not only what, you camp outonce a week with your cabin, but
I was obsessed with camping at the time.
You can't pay meenough money to do it today.
But at the time, when I was a kid,I was obsessed with it.
(53:26):
Every summer I would take camping classes.
They had like a varietyof like camping classes you could take.
We learn how to tie knots and light firesand things like that
and they were really only supposed toallow you to take one of those a summer.
And I think I was ableto take two or three.
They were very nice to meand let me do that.
And during those classesyou're also camping out
(53:49):
a number of times over the summerjust for those classes.
So I was camping out like two timesa week, pretty much.
So the point of explainingall the camping skill set up there
is that
I knewthose woods like the back of my hand.
In fact, I still do.I haven't been there in decades
(54:11):
and I could still guide youthrough the forest.
I knew every pathway.
I knew every secret shortcut.
I knew everything about it.
So now on the evening in question,
my cabin was having one of its camp nights
and we all decidedto camp at a certain spot.
(54:32):
I actually think it was my favoritecamping spot.
I can't remember what it was called.
You would leave the cabinand you would hike down this path.
You would pass some kind of like homesthat were on the side
and then you into the forest.
And it was actually an easy placeto get to generally speaking,
as you stayed on this mainpath through the forest
and you would divert to the leftafter a long period of time,
(54:54):
and then you would divert to another lefta little bit further along the way.
And that would lead you to a rivercrossing, little Betsy River.
It's not a big river.
And you would cross over it from an old
toppled over tree, which it kind ofcreated this natural bridge.
And you had to be carefulcrossing the tree
(55:15):
trunk over the riverbecause it was very slippery.
And if you fell into the river,it wouldn't really hurt you.
It's not a big river,but it's cold, it's wet.
You know, you don't want to fall in.
And they had like a club.
If you ever fell into the
little Betsy River, they would, you know,say you're part of the club or something
and make it fun.
But regardless, you don't want to fall in,especially before camping for the night.
(55:36):
So we cross over.
I think there's about10 to 12 kids in my cabin
and we all cross kind of one at a timebecause that's the safest way to do it.
So we kind of slide our feetone at a time, cross the bridge,
everybody carrying their backpackswith sleeping bags and things,
and not every kid could get acrossthe tree bridge over the river
with their backpack on because it created,you know, it's a balance issue
(56:00):
and it's very slippery.
And some of the kids backpacks and hikingpacks were very heavy.
So they would either leave it on one side,they would cross.
And the kids that were better
at getting a cross would goand be kind and grab their backpack
and come over the logor even the counselor would help to.
And just a couple,you know, maybe a minute and a half
(56:21):
walk from the rivercrossing is our camping spot.
So we get to that spot.
After crossing the river,we lay down our sleeping
bags, we start collectingwood and birch bark is tender.
We're getting our stuff togetherto build a fire and stay for the evening.
And we only had one counselor with usand I cannot remember his name.
(56:45):
And right before it gets dark,because it was the evening
when we hiked out there,but it was still light. It is summertime.
The light, you know, it stayskind of bright, pretty laid out there.
And so I don't remember what time.
I just know it was kind of dusk
and we're underneath these tall pinetrees.
There's bushes around us,and we start to hear
(57:09):
noise in the nearby kind of bushes
and we think it's an animal.
So we kind of quiet down.
We're like, Oh, I hope it's, you know,not a bear or anything.
And we're trying to pay attentionand we hear the rustling in the bushes
grow louder and louder until
(57:30):
something is obviouslyjust on the other side of this,
like thick shrubberythat's that's behind our campsite.
And suddenly we hearwhat sounds like an old man
yell, Are you kids?
I hate kids.
(57:52):
And we all kind of freeze
and we can't see who this man is.
We can just hear his voice.
And I remember distinctly our counselor,who at my age,
like 11 years old or so,I thought he was an adult.
I considered him an old man.
Looking back on itnow, he was probably like 18.
(58:13):
And I remember distinctlyseeing him terrified.
And our counselor
yells back to the bushesand says, You're on private property.
This is part of Interlochen.
You need to get out of here.
And the man responds, I hate kids.
I'm going to kill you all tonight.
(58:33):
I'm a fuck and cut you up,kill you all tonight
this froze us.
Every single kid in my cabinWe were all dead silent,
quiet with fear
Our counselor yelled some things back,
which I do not remember the specificsI tried to get the guy to leave.
(58:56):
Was trying to ask who the guy was thatthat old man
kept yelling back to usthat he was going to kill us.
So our counselor wisely was just like,Everybody grab all your stuff
as fast as you can.
We all, you know, rolled up our sleepingbags.
He's kind of staying guardat the campsite.
The old man.
Every now and then, you'll hear somethingmove in the bushes and then he would
(59:18):
yell something elseabout hating kids or something like that.
We all get our sleeping bagsor backpacks together as fast as we can,
and by this time now, it is dark.
We go as fast as we can back to theto the little Betsy River crossing.
And we had
to cross the bridge one by one,
(59:39):
knowing that that old man was in
basically the forest,
maybe 20 yards from us.
He was not far.
We could still hear himmoving and it's dark.
The log to cross the river is slippery.
Some of the kids didn't feel likethey could carry their big
heavy backpacks, which had sleeping bagsand canteens and other things in them.
(01:00:02):
So they left him on the shore of oneend of the river and crossed without it.
And one kid in my cabinwas brave enough to kind of cross back
and actually carry some of the backpacksfor the kids three or four times.
As we waited on him to get three or fourthe backpacks across, we all get together.
We're on the other side of the river,
still feeling petrifiedbut feeling a little safer,
(01:00:24):
knowing there's a bit of water between usand this crazy man in the woods.
And then our counselor told me,because I had been there
for so many summers and had camped outso many times and knew the woods
like the back of my hands.
It was dark.
He didn't know how to get backto our cabin, so he put me in charge.
(01:00:47):
Being a small 11 year old orso of guiding everybody back
through the forestand back home to safety.
And I was so scared.
It is the most terrifiedI've ever been in my entire life.
But I definitely remember kind of gladly
leading everybodyand we stayed in like a single file line.
(01:01:10):
Our counselor was at the very back andI was at the front using my flashlight,
taking us through the forest,and we never heard the guy again.
We didn't hear him as soon as we crossedthe river, we didn't hear movement.
We didn't hear him yelling.
But we made it all the way back to camp.
This is a story
that I may have I'veshared to a handful of people in my life.
(01:01:32):
I don't think I ever told my parents
because I didn'twant them to worry about me at camp.
Now, looking back on this as an adult,
I have to say I think the only reasonmy parents never found out from the camp,
because surely a threatening manin the woods
near a summer camp full of kids
(01:01:54):
that should have been reported,
and you would think that all the parentswould have heard about it.
So looking back on it as an adult,I actually kind of write it off
as I think one of the other counselorsprobably had a night off drunk
or maybe even not drunkand just wanted to pull a prank
and was making a voice upand yelling at us.
And I think the otheryou know, the other members of the camp,
(01:02:16):
the adults figured out who it wasand probably punished him in some fashion.
And I think that's the only reasonwe never heard about that again,
because that isyou don't not tell parents.
You don't call not call police whenthere's someone threatening little kids.
And again,
I look back on it, the counselor,he was terrified as well.
(01:02:38):
He was scared out of his mind.
And luckily we made it back home.
And no life has its upsand downs in its drama.
But to havewhat sounded like an old scary man
threatening you when you can'tsee who it is, you can only hear it.
And you're in the middle of the woodsand you're a kid.
(01:03:00):
That is
that is something that I will havewill never forget
as long as I live.
And that'll do it for our Halloweenspecial, Terrifying
Tales, part one in part two.
Thank you all so much for listeningand for the support.
I am having the time of my life truly.
And thank you to eachand every one of my guests
(01:03:21):
for coming on and sharing stories.
Don't forget to listen to Tom Holland'sinterview coming out in just a few days
and make sure to go into the show notesand check out links and information on all
the guest I've had onfor the terrifying tales.
I know they'll appreciate it.
Please give us a follow on Instagramat Mystery of Strange.
Send me emails with eitherstories, ideas, comments.
(01:03:44):
We're up for anything here.
A study of strange at gmail dot com
and obviously make sure you're subscribed
rated and reviewedwherever you listen to podcast.
Oh, and I got to make sure I say this.
We are dark the week after Halloween,but we will be back the following week
with one of my favorite kind of true
(01:04:05):
crime mysteriesthat I've come across recently.
I am very much looking forwardto getting back to true
crime and bizarre historical mysteries.
Lastly, happy Halloween.
As exciting and fun as they are,
scary stories can inspire usto look inward, to learn something
about ourselves, especially when they'repersonal experiences, real or not.
Ghosts, monsters, aliens or not.
The experience affects our beliefsand our fears.
(00:21):
Tonight on parttwo of our terrifying tales,
all of our guestsshare personal experiences
and with the exception of two of them,I was around to witness the events.
And the last story in the episode
is my account of a very real strange
(00:41):
and terrifying incidentI experienced years ago.
Still, the scariest moment in my life.
This is a study of strange.
(01:10):
Welcome to the show.
I'm Michael May.
Thank you all for listening tothe Halloween special, Terrifying Tales.
It is part two tonight.
If you haven't listened to part one,I encourage you to do so.
Now, a little bit of businessbefore we get started.
I announced that I'll be readingnew reviews a few weeks ago,
so I'm going to read two tonightto start that off.
(01:31):
And if you want a review read,make sure to subscribe or leave a review
and you can take a screengrab of thatin an email me a study of strange
at gmail.com and I want to thanka handful of podcasters.
You know who you arewho suggested that I do this
to start.
This is from Jim B, who says Awesome.
(01:53):
Looking forward to more.
Thank you, Jim B and then another reviewfrom Thomson who says Love it.
Really looking forward to more episodes.
Reviews are so important for podcastand I really appreciate it.
So the last bit of business tonightbecause I really want to get into
the stories quick.
This eveningwe have a an additional Halloween special,
(02:14):
an in-depth interview with horrorfilmmaker icon Tom Holland,
who's behind Child's Play and Fright Nightand many, many other great movies.
I got to talk to him about his careeras well as his new book,
Fright Night Origins.
That interview will be releaseda few days before Halloween.
I don't know exactly which day.
(02:35):
So if you want to listen to itand I hope that you do
make surethat you're subscribed to the show
so it'll pop up in your feedwhen that episode drops.
And now to the terrifying taleswe're going to start tonight
with Molly Elfman,a filmmaker and an old friend of mine.
And a lot of her current work,
which she will talk aboutin this interview, deals with questioning
(02:56):
what ghosts areand our relationship to them.
So we ended up having a bit of a longerconversation than will be in the episode.
If you're interestedto hear the whole thing.
I have put that out on Patreon
so you can find information for thatfrom our website.
A Study of Strange Gqom.
Now, the only tip I'm going to give tothis story is that it happened years ago
(03:16):
when we first met,when we were working on the production
of a short film called The Price,and we were filming that in an old studio
in downtownLos Angeles, which is supposedly haunted.
Here's the story.
Hey, Molly, thanks for sharing this story.
(03:37):
You're going to actually tell a storythat involves me.
So that's true.
That's right.
It's somethingthat may have been paranormal.
And I was around for and I always sayI want to experience something ghostly.
And this might have been a thing.I don't know. So. Yeah.
How do you want to start?Do you want to just dove into it or.
Yeah, I guess so.
It's also interestingbecause this is how we first met
(03:59):
it 12 years, I think it's 12 years ago.
But it's funny because I mean,
we have gone onto work on a number of projects together.
I don't even know.
But this was our bonding experience,I guess brought us together,
which is I guess it's it'sactually a really daunting thing.
(04:20):
What you ask is like tell a ghost story.
And I'm like, okay, well, which onewhat type of ghost story?
What's involved? Because I, you know,I grew up with ghosts.
I am a firm believer in ghosts.
And and not in a waythat I'm afraid of them and at most times.
But I do believe in experiences justbecause I've had so many at this point.
Can I can I interrupt you for a second?
(04:40):
Because I actually forgot about this,because I've been asking so many people,
hey, do you have a scary storyyou want to tell?
And obviouslyI'm going to go to you with that.
So you were one of the first peopleI asked,
but I actually forgot about yourupbringing and the house you lived in.
Is that something you can share?
Do you want me to cut that question out?
I know you can.
(05:01):
I can talk about that.
I like to have conversations as on fear
and how we learn to be afraidand where fear comes from.
I wasn't afraid of the thingsthat most other people were afraid of
because I was dealing with iton an everyday basis.
I grew up in a house that was notorious
for having a woman murdered in it.
There were things that appearedin the mirror.
(05:23):
There were
footsteps every singlenight, kind of almost cliche ghost things
that I would come to see later in moviesand be like, Well, that's not scary.
That's just every single night
sounds of shattering glass in thesame room that the woman was murdered in
bullet holes appearing in the glassone day right before Christmas.
(05:44):
And it was very funnybecause I'll never forget that experience.
My mom, just
seeing this a ghost storyto preempt the ghost story,
but was me and my momsitting in the TV room watching TV.
And it was a hugeit was like a horseshoe shaped house.
There was a big hallwaythrough the middle of it.
And all of a sudden,all of the animals running in and about
(06:05):
I mean, all the animals we had dogs,big cats, we had guinea pigs and birds
and so it was like Ace Ventura,like coming through the hallway
or running towards us,which is quite a sight unto itself.
And then we walked back.
We followed them from where they camefrom.
In the living roomwere these holes on the glass.
It was this whole living roomthat had these big glass doors
(06:28):
and what was interestingis only the inside panel
had the bullet holes where the outsidepanel hadn't been touched.
So it would have been
a bullet or something of that naturethat would have had that force.
And I think this says a lotabout my upbringing.
My mom just covered it with the curtainsbecause Crystal,
there was a Christmas party coming upand she said, don't tell anybody.
We'll come over for the party.
(06:49):
And that'skind of how we dealt with fear in my house
and that's howwe dealt with scary moments.
And so I think it gives me a little bitof a different perspective.
And I've often wonderedand this goes to when we met and something
that I was thinking about earlierwhen you asked me
is what this connectionI have to the other side is.
(07:10):
It's something that I always feltvery willing to be open
to, willing to exploreand willing to experience.
I seem to have no control overwhen I experience it or who I'm around
when I experience it.
So it it's something that I only nowas I've gotten older, I'm
starting to kind of question what it wasthat I experienced when I was a kid.
(07:32):
Yeah.
And it's funny what we can talkabout this later after the story, but
it's a nice tieand to the work that you now do.
All right? Yeah.
So why don't you tell us about the story
that happened with me aroundand maybe even start with where it was.
Do you remember the name of the studio.
We were at?
Yeah, Lacey Street Studios.
We were shooting the price.
(07:56):
And it was very funnybecause at that time I was still an actor
back in the day when I was acting
and I actually got cast in it,which is crazy to me that anybody cast me.
Thanks for that.
You and Ashley and.
Yeah, that's crazy.
James and Zach were directingand they were that it was such a fun time.
(08:17):
It was also we were all very young.
We were all just starting out
as one of the first shortsthat I think I ever acted in.
And the being me and you,being you at the end of the day,
after both of our jobswere technically finished,
I was hanging around just kind of
wondering what I could do to help.
And you being the producer on setand also an actor in it,
(08:40):
we're also kind of hanging aroundand both of us started to go from set
and be like,
Oh, all of these systems and all of thisequipment needs to get back to the truck.
All right.
Well, let's go ahead and let's grab themand let's do it, which I think really lays
the groundwork for whatour future relationship story would be.
I did, indeed.
But, you know, I just
remember chatting and I wasyou know, it was late at night.
(09:04):
Everybody was trying to get out of thereas quickly as possible.
This is a studiothat's kind of notoriously haunted,
I guess that's had a lot of horrorfilm shot there.
And I just remember being very excitedto be there,
very young, very enthusiastic,going to help out this other producer.
And I, we decided
maybe, I don't know for what reasonthat we were going to go
(09:26):
through another piece of the studioinstead of going back to the trucks.
Everybody else was.We were going to make a shortcut.
And so you grab some of the gearand led the way
and then I grab some gearand I was following you
and we were walking and we went around,you know, it's a film set.
So at first there's a lot of people
and there's kind of bustlingand there's a lot going on.
And then we kind of got to this the backof the studio or to this other area.
(09:49):
And I was still kind
of, you know, dropping thingsas I was walking, you know, very clumsily.
And I just remember seeing youprobably about
40 feet ahead stop very abruptly.
And there was something
about the way that you did it that I itit signified danger.
I didn't know what was going on, but
(10:09):
it was it was scary to me.
And I remember I stopped because I didn'twant to go forward anymore.
And you slowly turned.
But it was weirdbecause you didn't turn to where I was.
You turned
and looked at somebody or somethingthat should have been right behind you.
And I remember taking that in.
And then all of a sudden you looked at meand you said, Did you just say, my name?
(10:31):
And I said, No, I didn't say your name.
And then I walked over to youand you said,
I heard you say my name, but it wasas if you were directly next to me.
And I, I didn't know what to say to that.
And I said, Well, it wasn't me.
And you said, but it was your voice.
(10:52):
And I rememberboth of us about at the same moment
looking over, and there was this door
that was slightly ajar.
And I don't know if it openedwhile we were sitting there.
I can't remember thator if it was just ajar.
And both of us had a sensethat there was something through that door
and there was this moment of,do we open the door?
(11:14):
Do we go through this?
And then instead both of us picked up ourC stands and we just kind of hurried on.
But the interesting thing about thiswas the idea of it being my voice,
and this is actually somethingthat has happened to me
a few times in my lifewhere I have had people turn
and tell me
(11:34):
that I said their nameand it was my voice.
Oh, so this is not actually the only timethat this has happened to me.
And in fact, it recently happened to meon this production that I just got done
with, which is somethingthat of this high intensity in this high
adrenalized place that I'm in,
I have often wondered what this is.
(11:56):
You know, is this
you know, people talk about a dark shadowthat follows you.
Is this a ghost that is imitating me?
Is it mocking me or is there somebody elsewho is similar to me
that is following me around?
But everybody seems towho has had this experience genuinely
feel like it's me, but it's not.
(12:18):
Or is it? You know?
So that's kind of like, I guess it's moreor less a little bit of the story.
But I guess one of the thingsthat I'm always curious about is
what is a ghost?
Where does it ghost come from?
And I also
believe that when we die,there are reasons why we stick around.
(12:39):
There are I don't believethat everybody becomes a ghost.
I don't believe that we just sit around.
I do believe that there is a reasonI often think that that reason
is us on earth.
We can't let go of something.
There is some type of trauma.
There is something that is needed.
There is some type of unfinished business.
So the question is, why am I still here?
(13:03):
What am I doing? What?
What am I holding on to?
And why is it that it's reaching outto certain people at certain times?
There is a piece of me that wondersif it was the place that we were at,
if it had something to do with Laci.
You know, I used to think it wasthe haunted places that I was going to.
But I think the scarier thingthat I realized is it's
(13:25):
not the places, it's me.
And then certain placeswhere I am, it can access me
and or those around me more easily.
You can make sense of this if you'd like.
I don't know that I can.
I mean, Idon't I don't know if I can either, but I.
I love that.
I had you come on and tell thisbecause you
(13:47):
talk about thisso much more wisely and intellectually
than I do and emotionally as well.
So I'm already really loving this.
And it is an interesting
there's a lot of interesting thoughtsand questions
that you bring up, but most of thatis exactly the way I remember it.
The only thing I, I would add tothat is I don't remember
(14:08):
looking at a door and exceptit may have been because we were right
where the bathrooms werein this hallway of Lacy Street studios.
Lacy Street is basically an old warehousein downtown Los Angeles, and they use it
for film and TV productionsnow, and it can be its own studio.
They use it for sets.It looks like an old warehouse.
(14:28):
So if you see an old warehouse
in a TV show shot in L.A.,it's likely shot at Lacy Street.
That's true.
And it's like you said,
it's famously haunted the people aroundrun the place, claim that it's haunted.
The movie sawthe first one was shot there.
And there's apparently there's
stories of weird happeningsduring that movie in Lacy Street Studios.
Apparently, a lot of the activityis in that hallway with the bathrooms.
(14:52):
I swear, and I can still feel it.
I can see it, I can visualize everything.
If hearing your voice right behind meand the voice wasn't scary,
it was turning around and noticingthat you were 30 to 40 feet behind me.
That's what freaked me out.
And I remember just trying to playthat off as like, Oh, well, oh,
it just sounded likeyou were right behind me.
It's like trying to be nonchalantabout it.
(15:14):
And we continued on.
But the one thing I kind of want to addto that
is afterwe dropped off the C stands and equipment
and we turned around to go back downthrough that hallway to return to set.
And there was one of our peopleand I can't remember her name right now.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I totally forgot about.
Yeah, how did I forget about this?
(15:36):
So she was coming downthat hallway that we were just in,
and she had, like, stopped.
It was looking around oddly when we sawher, like, something had happened to her.
And so it's just this weird.
This weird energy.
Well, she said the same thing.
Do you not remember? Yeah.
She stopped in the hallway
and we looked back and she goes, Molly,did you just say my name?
(15:59):
And Iremember both of us looking at each other.
How did I forget that? Yeah.
And realizing it wasn't just.
It wasn't just you hearing my name.
It was my voicethat was somehow locked in that.
It was so clearly your voice.
Like, it sounded just like you. And.
And all I heard was Mikey.
(16:20):
And I heard that right behind me.
And, yeah, it was really weird.
And I'm glad you brought this upwhen you were trying
to think of stories and asked about this,or maybe I even brought it up.
I can't remember who,
but just by the nature of asking you tocome on the podcast and share
a scary story made me think about it.
Because I keep saying,because I've been doing all these
like paranormal episodesthis month and I keep saying, like,
(16:40):
I haven't really experienced anythingand I forgot about this, which is weird
to forget about because you also madea segment for an anthology horror film.
We produced Franchise Horror.
That was in the short film I directed.
Inspired, but I played a version of myselfwith a bad haircut.
I had it said, but yes,
it's so it's
interestingthat I have not forgotten about it.
(17:03):
I wonder if I justdon't want to think about it.
I wonder if, like,the skeptic in me is like,
I'm just going to write that off or noteven think about it anymore.
But yeah, that was that is easilythe strangest experience
I've ever had by far.
And it wasit was one that was truly paranormal.
And again, this idea of fear,it wasn't innately
(17:23):
it's not scary to hear somebody voicesay your name.
It's the ideathat they're not connected to it.
I'm going to choose to say that it's you
years, many, many, many moons from nowwhen you've passed on, because time isn't
isn't linear, you've chosen to come backand haunt me in that moment.
That's what I'm going to choose happen.
(17:46):
And I think it does make
sense that I would like peoplelike I'm not going to scare you too much,
but I do justkind of want to mess with your day.
I find these portals and placesthat I come back through.
Yeah. And I'm always just excited.
I was like, Hey, Mikey, I can't.
I remember this.
Yeah, I remember.You remember that moment?
(18:06):
Yeah.
But I do wonder, like, I.
I always wondered what would have happenedif we would have gone back and gone
through that doorway. Yeah.
Yeah, maybe that's an episode of somethingwe need to go to.
Maybe. Yeah, that is.
That's a good question, Molly.
That is a very good question.
Well,thank you so much for sharing this story.
Before we go, though,just because it ties in so perfectly,
(18:30):
you've completed a moviethat's coming out soon, Next Exit,
which actually dealswith the afterlife itself.
And it actually addresses some of thethe topics that you are bringing up.
When is when does that movie come out?
It comes out November 4th.
It'll be in limited select theaters andit'll be on demand at that point as well.
Yeah.
(18:51):
And it's it's about a congressman who.
Yes, it's all about this congressman.
It's all about one overture.
Yeah.
That's a played played by myself. So.
Yes, everybody check it out.But not for that. Not for that.
Check it out for the whole movie.
I'm very I'm in the background. Right.
So that was that was very fun.
It was really funto have you on set that day.
I appreciate it so much.
(19:12):
I'll be sending you a headshot later. So
and then you also just to plugeverything else, you also just wrapped
a movie called Birth Rebirth, which is aIt's Shudder exclusive, isn't it?
Yes, it'll be.
Well, it's Shudder
and it'll have additional distribution,which we can't quite announce yet.
(19:33):
And that should probably be ready in 2023.
That's an allfemale Frankenstein adaptation
about a woman who wants to birtha child with her mind and not her body.
Yeah. Ensues.
And sex with director Laura moss
and so yeah it's been
and yeah,the ghosting is actually right next to it
(19:54):
because that's one that I wroteand directed.
You're you're going to see me working outsome of the literal literally.
It's you know what?
I'm really glad that I came on this show
because sometimes I forget the experiencesthat added into the things that I did.
And boy,oh boy, did this play a very small
but important part on an elementthat is definitely in next exit,
(20:14):
a world in which we know Ghost existsand we can see you track
and record them on the other side.
And you know,if you want to be one of the pioneers,
you can go and join themand become any type of celebrity.
Yeah, indeed.
Well, I'll provide some linksto all those things and where to see stuff
like that in the show notes and yeah.
Thank you so much, Molly.
(20:35):
We talked more than I intended to,but I should.
Assume. I should.
I should have just assumed.
But I really appreciatewhat you brought to this.
So thank you again for sharing that storyand scaring me again.
Thank you.
And that's something I'm really here for,you know, whether I'm in this world or
the next
next step.
We have Zeke Pinero,another old friend of mine.
(20:57):
And here's where things get interesting,at least for me.
Zeke is the co-director of The Price,the film
that was happeningduring Molly Elfman's story.
And Zeke and Molly and I had a companycalled Fun Size Horror, where we produced
and distributed and promoteda lot of short digital horror content.
(21:18):
And I actually interviewed him awhile agofor this episode
because I knew he would have a scary storyand it's completely unintentional
what happened, which is he sharedsome stories that also took place
in Lacy Street studios at the same timeas Molly's Story.
And again, I did not knowhe would tell those stories.
(21:40):
I had no intention of connecting
Mollyand Zeke together in their experiences.
It just happened.And I find it fascinating.
It also makes me questionmy own beliefs about these things.
So without furtherado, here is Zeke Pineiro.
Isaac, good to see you.
(22:00):
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
But I have no ideaof what you're going to share.
What type of storyare you going to talk about?
I mean, it's a couple ofI've got to they're short stories.
So I've got I've got two. Yeah.
And one is an experiencethat I had at the Disneyland Hotel.
(22:22):
Oh, nice.
And the other is a storywith with Go Lacey Street Studios.
I also had my own
little
strange occurrence that I experienced
while I was there, actually a couple,because that place is is undoubtedly
haunted.
(22:43):
So yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll share those,those, those two and then yeah.
Yeah, let's, let's dove into it.
The Lacey Street Studio One's Bill.
The first onewas our first night of shooting.
There you go to Lacey Streetand like you could just you look at it,
you're like, okay, this place is haunted.
It's all old brick.
(23:03):
It's an old textile factory from like,you know,
turn of the century,turn it into the 18th or 19th century.
And yeah, and then it got convertedto a studio and then it became this weird
hodgepodge, just people being like,Oh, let's build a stage on this thing.
And it's stages. On top of stages.
And then, yeah, and there's, there'sthis like kind of creepy warehouse
(23:25):
that is connected to this even creepierlooking like furnace chimney
that that's like rightfront and center in the studio.
And behind that
is like, you know, some bathrooms
and we were shooting the price
and we had a lot of make shoots there.
(23:46):
And it was our first night shoot.
And I went to go use the bathroomand I was sitting in one of the.
Stalls.
And I heard conversation.
Like I was like,
you know, crew's going around, there'sthis weird, like, we've broken for lunch.
I would use the bathroom.
And then I said,I heard some people come in
(24:06):
and talk, start talking.
And I was like, it was weird
because I couldn't quite understandwhat was being said.
And, you know, and obviously,like Director on the first thing I'm like,
is this the crew?Are they going to be talking shit on me?
Like what?
What info am I going to get?
And I couldn't quite understood.
But it was clearly like whispered voices
(24:26):
in this room, in this bathroom.
And you know, I then, you know,
the finish up, I open, I hear nobody exit,I open up the door
and no what is thereno one is there nobody exits?
Nobody.
It's like the voices just kind of gotcut off and stopped, so.
(24:47):
And then. And then later.
What was the guy's name? Rusty.
He was a caretaker.They're talking to him about coming.
Yeah, the caretaker had all the stories.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the stories.
And he was like,that bathroom in particular.
That is a regular occurrence that happens.
And talking to him later on.
And then the second
one was our last night there.
(25:09):
And that was
that was it.
We were his last night there.We were running late.
We're running short on time
the way the lighting scheme ofit was just taking too much time.
And I went to goI was trying to find, you know, our DP
so I could talk to him and be like,all right,
we got to, you know, kind of nickthis and get moving.
(25:31):
And yeah, so the shot was,you know, it's an outdoor shot.
So we, you know, is kind of in this,you know, a little enclave,
you know, between buildings.
And so they were setting upall the lights on the roofs
and and I, you know,so then I, I was like, you know,
trying to he was he was up on the roof.
(25:52):
I was down on the ground.
And so I. Saw.
The grips unloading
equipment from the trucks andand bringing it upstairs.
So I went to go follow a gripthat I followed a grip.
And I started following this figure
up these stairs, at these windy stairs,and then through these
different corridors.
And I kept, you know,it's like just a little bit ahead.
(26:13):
So every time I turn the corner, you know,you'd see the tail end of the person
turning the corner.
And I followed that shape
into a completely empty roomand there was nothing there I like.
Yeah, there was. There was no other.
There was no other wayI could have lost the person.
It was just like a straight staircase,like, I kind of, like, wound up around it,
(26:35):
like, just.
Yeah, yeah.
So I found there was a shape,
you know, like,I followed the shape into a
totally empty room where it was like,you know, windows and stuff.
And I could see the crewon the other side of the building, but.
But there was no way for me to get to themfrom where I was.
Yeah.
And so that was very eerie.
(26:58):
I have forgotten about the stories untiljust now and the one in the bathroom.
I don't even knowif you ever shared that with me.
I may have just forgotten about it,but it is so interesting
because that is outside of that dooris where Molly and I had
our experience,where I heard her voice behind me.
(27:19):
So that
is that is so interesting to hear that.
And I now I do also remember the storyof you following the figure upstairs.
I remember
I think you told me that night,
like at the end of the nightor the next day,
because I remember that happeningright away.
Yeah, that is.
Wow, wow.
Lacy Street Studios, ladies and gentlemen.
(27:39):
Yeah, cool.
Well, yeah,let's move on to the Disneyland, then.
Yes. Hear that one?
Good Disneyland.
I think it's like the most, you know,I think probably the most visceral.
Experience I've had.
With something that could be consideredsupernatural.
(28:04):
You know, I'm sure I'm sure
Procter skeptics can come upwith the reasoning for it and everything.
But, you know,
for those unfamiliar with the DisneylandHotel, you know, you've got
a couple of hotels that are newer.
But there were originallythese three buildings.
And at the time, I was staying there,
(28:24):
this was the main there was a main hotel
which is called the marina,which is where you check in.
And there's another onethat's facing the park.
And at the time, like,it wasn't long after,
after the downtownDisney and stuff had been built.
So it was overlooking downtown Disneyand that was called the Sierra.
And then there was another onecalled The Big Bonita.
(28:46):
But yeah, we were staying in the Sierra.
So that's it's been there since I thinkthe late fifties, maybe early sixties.
Late fifties sounds more right.
And yeah, we were staying there,staying in the side that faces the parks
and at the time, you know, downtown Disneyand it was know we were sleeping
(29:08):
and I woke up feeling
feet walking over me like child
like child sized feetstepping over me like
several of them.
And like a kid
walking over the bed,not realizing I was there.
(29:29):
And I woke up
and was still,you know, feeling that sensation.
And I look up
at the window and facing of the window,
I see a clear outline
of a woman with a beehive haircut.
She's some kind of a bouffant,you know, haircut.
(29:51):
And she's looking out the window.
And I was just staring at her.
And then she turnedlike I could see it turn and look at me.
And it was, it wasit was weird because suddenly
this, this, this, this,
this urge came over me that like,I wasn't thinking this at all.
(30:12):
I wasn't feeling any sort of.
But it was I
and I've heard of people that have hadother of their ghostly experiences before,
where they they encounter somethingand they see something as if it's
almost like it's like being transferredinto your brain.
It's kind of what it felt likebecause it was like it wasn't there.
And then suddenly I like we make I guesswhat could be considered eye contact
(30:34):
and I just sayyou got to be fucking kidding me.
And, and, and then it it dissipated
and like,
everything went away,sensations went away, everything.
And yeah, that's,that's the entirety of the,
of the experience.
(30:56):
But yeah, it felt, it felt very much like,like I've had the experience
where you wake upand like you kind of have that like you're
stuck in a bed and you're,and you feel the bed tremble and stuff.
There's kind of thoselike nightmare experiences.
And there was a documentaryon Night Terrors that was
that was really well done. And I'm like,okay, yeah.
(31:17):
That's,that's probably what that was like.
That wasn't like that was that was
probably a weird, you know,
waking dream,you know, experience that happened.
But this felt like
there was a presence in the roomand it wasn't like a malevolent presence.
(31:37):
It wasn't anything.
But it definitely felt likeI had experienced something that was.
Supernaturaland so just ask a question on that
because you bring up,you know, the nightmare thing.
But like sleep paralysis
typically happens.
People can't move, right?
So yeah, could you move your body equally?
Because it sounds like you did because youeven like looked over at her and stuff.
(31:58):
So yes, yeah.
Yeah. I was able to,I was able to move and
whereas like in the, the experience thatI kind of referred to, I could not move.
Yeah, but,
but this, I could,I could absolutely move.
And so there wasn't anythingthat like yeah, like I felt like
(32:18):
I was laying there for a whileand you know, I had
at the time I had, I had a £20 cat,you know, back home.
And so, you know, sometimes when you sleepin a strange room in a in a hotel room,
you're asleep and you kind of wake upand you think that, like,
you know, you'rehome and then you readjust.
(32:38):
You know, at first I thought it was that
I thought it was I thought it was my catLogan walking over me.
And then I, you know, as I was coming to,
I realized, wait, I'm in a hotel,Logan is not here.
And then I kind of, you know, that'swhat I stirred and I sat up and yeah,
then the foot defeat, the sensationof feet walking over me went away.
But that's when I saw the woman. Yeah.
(33:00):
Well, thank you so much for sharingthe stories and happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween.
Thanks for having me.
Up next is a story from my brother Brian.
Now, this story is actuallyjust an excerpt from a longer episode
that I recorded for our Patreon channel,
but I wanted to include itin the Halloween specials
(33:21):
because it's an unexplained eventthat happened to
a handful of skeptics my brother, myselfand his girlfriend at the time.
And I need to take this up a little bit,since you're just hearing an excerpt.
But I interviewed my brotherabout these three unexplained events
that happened in the housewe grew up in when he was an adult.
And what happened was, is our parentshad moved out of the house.
(33:43):
My brother moved infor a short period of time
in a house where nothing hadnormal had ever happened.
Suddenly my brother experiencesthree different things, and you're
only going to hear one of those tonight.
And what's also interesting about it isit was never my brother alone.
There were always witnessesto these events
and the one you're going to hear tonightdeals with some moving furniture.
(34:07):
So let's let's get on to the next things.
The next thing. The couch.
Yeah, the next thing, the big thing.
This is one of the few experiencesin my life where I'm like,
Ooh, maybe, maybe I did experiencesomething paranormal.
You know, I don't.
I don't 100% know.
But what I'm extra curious about withthis story is hearing
(34:27):
you tell itand then how I may remember it.
And I'm going to I'mjust I'm just fascinated with that.
I may be exactly the same.
I may be a really good storyteller.
So there's parts of this that you mightjust shut up and say, you know, the end.
That's a better way to remember it.
But here, let me let me tee it upa little bit.
You're not the movie producer,so it doesn't matter.
(34:47):
I was in town visiting family,
and I would always stay with youin my old bedroom in this house.
And the one thing that you can go backand start at an earlier place than this,
but I just want to say it as a brother,because it's such a brotherly thing.
We were going to go out to dinnerand you wanted to wait
because you had to move furniture aroundbefore we left.
And I was upset about that.
(35:09):
I said I wanted to just go to dinnerand we can come back and move this around.
But you were like, No, we got to moveall this. Before we go to dinner.
You got to afterparty.I don't want to work before we come back.
So anyway, here you go aheadand tell the story and I'll I'll shut up.
Yet another scenario you're in.
You're in town for a week or two.
(35:31):
I had my girlfriend at the time.
I can't remember who else.
There wasdefinitely somebody else with us, too.
I think the
the scenario was I had just been given
our parents
furniturethat they were no longer going to use or.
No, it was it was in this house.It was somewhere else.
(35:53):
I had moved out other furnitureand I was moving into the room
a lot of heavier, more robust furniture.
So to set it up, right.
So when you come into the backdoor of our home, which is the door,
we mostly leave and come in from,we never go through the front
traditional Florida home.
(36:15):
We have a sun room.
The Sun room is on the back of the house.
It's open windowslooking out over the lake.
Attached to the sun room is like alittle bar area that's a total see through
and a walk space to walk from the sun roominto the kitchen, out of the house.
Right.
So this is where 95% of your life is spentis your Florida room, you know?
(36:38):
So we called it a sun room.
It's a Florida room.I mean, that's that's really what it is.
I had slid out and moved other furnitureout of the way.
And what I wanted you to do is help meput up these two big Ralph Lauren couches.
There was big white shag wool rug
that I put down and a cast iron table
with a solid chunk of glass on it,
as well as two tables that were castiron with solid glass chunks.
(37:02):
And so you had helped me center the rug,
put the couches on it,put the table on it, took the chair in it.
All this shit was heavy.
And once you put it down, thereain't no sliding it or moving it around.
And especially if it was foryou and me to bitch about it.
We're beastly men.
This was not.
(37:24):
This was not.
Yeah. No, I mean, you're cut.
I mean, I just think a Brad Pittfight club.
I see you just put another £50, but,you know, like this,
this stuff ain't going anywhere.
Once we set it downand that's exactly what we did.
We set up the room, we looked at it,we said, Great job.
You sweating our asses offand you yelling at me.
(37:47):
And we go out to dinner.
And so all of us leave the house,
and Iswear there was somebody else with us.
But you know, that personhas been replaced by this ghost
that is taking over the story.
So at least three of us
walk out of the houseadmiring our accomplishments.
(38:08):
And when we return from dinner,
flip on the lights.
I was not the first person in the house.I think you were.
And I think it was youthat turned the lights on and said,
Brian, did you move the furniture?
And that's when I go, Fuck you,let me walk in
and I peer over, walk into the backdoor, peering over the bar.
(38:32):
All the furniture had been pushed upand moved over, slid
across the room, buckling up the carpet,you know, just
something that not easily
done, definitelythe air conditioner breeze did not do it.
But, you know, we all sat there like,what?
Don't suck.
So what I know.
(38:53):
Know this is great, you know?
So the only thing different in my story,not all the furniture was moved.
The couch, the big couchthat was on the wall
that faces the TV was jutted outfrom the wall on an angle.
So it wasn't. Washing the carpetand the cast.
Iron. Yeah.
That, that, yeah.
I don't know the leather chair.
I don't think the leather chair was moved,but definitely the big couch
(39:15):
pushed out towards the loveseat to the opposite corner.
The big couch was like the back.
If you're looking at it, the back leftside was in the in the correct place
and the right sidehad been kind of jutted out from the wall.
And I don't rememberany other furniture being moved.
But it caused that fat ass carpet
(39:36):
to have buckle up and move the castiron table with a glass.
I don't remember the table being moved.That's yeah.
It all, it all shifted over.
I see that there's. A photographon a BlackBerry so.
Yeah.
No, I don't remember anything elsebeing moved.
Just the couch.
But regardless of the fact,whoever remembers that correctly or not,
stuff was moved, whether it's the couch,the couch and the table or whatever,
(39:59):
the couch was moved.
And I kept thinking, oh, maybe the thethe carpet thing,
the rug caught up under a legand it like tilted over.
And I was like, well,
even if that was true,it wouldn't have moved as much as it did.
Second of all, that carpet
didn't go all the way to the backleg of the cart of the the the couch.
Right.
It was a it was like a halfwayit was like an area rug.
(40:20):
So didn't go all the way to the back ofthe wall where the couches back legs were.
Thoughwe do both remember the couch being moved.
Your girlfriend who was with us,I remember her being like, well, no,
maybe you did you not push itall the way back before he left?
And it's like, no, we werewe put that hard effort.
We put that all all where it wassupposed to go before we left for dinner.
We're all sitting here,we're logical people going.
(40:43):
And something really happened herethat we can't explain.
And that's the foundationof the whole lights and furniture.
If you want to hear about all three of theexperiences that Brian had in that home,
besides the furniture,
we would love to see you over on Patreonand listen to that whole episode.
Now, next up, we're changing topics,getting away from ghost and paranormal.
(41:05):
And we're talking about potential aliens
from the very talented Joe Russo.
Well, hi, Joe.
Thank you so muchfor coming on the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah.
And I'm very excited because you mentionedthat this is an alien story
you're going to share, correct?
That's that's right. That's right. Though.
(41:26):
There's there's not any like probingor anything like that.
But but I did havewhat I think some might refer to as,
you know, a close encounter,you know, with the third time.
Okay. All right.Can I ask you. A question for you?
I don't I don't know.Whatever you want to call it.
Yeah, well. We'll find out.
Can I ask you a question before you start,which is this you're from New Mexico,
(41:50):
is that correct?
No, I know.
Did you go maybe Arizona? I'm well.
So I grew up in Connecticut.
Oh, and then I went to school.
That's what it is. That's what it is.
And so this actuallyhappened while I was living in Arizona.
That's that's what I was going to ask
is apparently there's a lot of there'sa lot of UFO activity in the Southwest.
(42:13):
So that's why I asked that question,right?
Yeah, that's cool.
So I don't know if you're familiar witha phenomenon called the Phenix Lights.
I am, actually, yes. Okay.
So the Phenix Lights actually happened.
Years, years, yearsbefore I lived in Arizona.
But, you know,when I was finishing up at school
(42:36):
and before I moved to Los Angeles,I was working production
on a variety of different moviesand TV shows and commercials
and what have you and a lot ofthe TV was reality TV.
I found myself working with
a pretty consistentrotating crew of people out of L.A.
kept referring for jobs as as youknow, it goes with production. And
(43:01):
and so I
got offered the chanceto be a camera operator
on a kind of myth busterslike sci fi channel show.
I don't think I ever saw the end product,
but the, the, the gist of the episode waswe were going to try to prove
or disprove what people might have seenwhen they did the Phenix Lights.
(43:24):
So, you know, we went out thereand we were doing weather
balloon experiments and,you know, dropping things out of a plane
and seeing what they would look liketo the naked eye and different, you know,
we're trying to like replicateall of like what what could
people have actually seen with the Phenixlights and to give some maybe context.
(43:44):
Yeah the Phenix Lightswas this one of a mass UFO sighting events
where lots and lots and lots of peoplein Phenix all saw something in the sky
and so,
you know, we're we're we're doing thisand we basically have like
one big overnight shoot where we're goingto be out in the middle of the desert,
(44:06):
kind of near where people reportedly sawthe Phenix lights.
And so, you know,we're filming all sorts of different
things were filming the hosts were filmingdifferent experiments
and suddenly someone says,
what's that up in the sky?
Right.
(44:28):
And we all kind of turn and look.
And up there is a big, bright white light
and it zips to the left
fasterthan I've ever seen anything zip before.
And then it zips to the right fasterthan anything I've ever seen it before.
(44:48):
And and it starts doing thislike back and forth across the sky.
And all the producers are like, pointthe cameras
at the sky, stop staring at em, shoot it.
Right.
So we all saw me and all the other cameraoperators is reality TV.
So you have, you know,
a crew of four or five different peoplefilming everything, right?
(45:11):
We all whip our,you know, late digital cameras
up up into the air and and,you know, point them out with the sky.
And we're filming and we're filming.
And I can see this with my naked eye,can see this thing
zipping around the skylike nothing I've ever seen before.
No plane, no helicopter, no nothing.
(45:33):
And, you know, I'm shooting it
and and then it zips offand it disappears.
It's gone.
And we're all like like, wow.
We we just really see a UFO.
And everyone's like, Well,thank God we have the cameras.
Thank God we got it on tape
(45:54):
the next day.
There is nothing on the tapes.
Emirates couldn't pick up whateverwe were seeing with our naked eye.
So was there nothing on the tapeslike it were blacked out.
There was there was footage.
Yeah, there was nothere was no the the the light whatever
we were seeing,the cameras weren't strong enough.
(46:17):
To pick it up. Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, man. So all of that, that whole,
you know, experience
where we all literally sawsomething up in the sky
isn't in the episode,from what I understand,
because we had nothing to prove or showor, you know, so literally that happened.
We shot it, we all saw it.
(46:40):
And God, I, I went home and I was like,shoulder the ball, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll never forget.
Not, not only was it
just cold out in the desert,but like the feeling that, like, you know,
we might have seen something other,you know,
was, was, was,
was pretty,pretty exciting and scary and yeah.
(47:02):
And then yeah.
And the fact that,that none of the footage was, was usable
to prove us right or wrong was, was,I think probably the easiest part.
Yeah, it has to be.
And so what were your thoughts or beliefson UFOs before you experienced that?
Were you somebody that was just like,Oh, that would be cool?
(47:23):
Or were you hardcoreskeptic or hardcore believer?
I would say like in the middle, right.
I've I've I believethe universe is so big.
That's the odds of us
being the only intelligent life form.
And I think you could arguefor actually an intelligent life form.
(47:43):
But but, you know, butbut the odds of us being the only one
in this massive, massive,massive amount of of matter
out in the universefeels extremely unlikely.
And that'skind of how I've I've always kind of
thought and believed so.
So, no, I wasn't necessarilygoing out into the show being like,
(48:07):
oh, man, I hope we find something orOh man, I hope we can prove the
existence of aliens.
It wasit was just like it was a job, you know?
It was like they were going to pay
me, oh, 250 bucks a dayto go point a camera at something.
Yeah. You know.
Oh, I absolutely.
I know.
And I feel like I'min a very similar boat of
I don't know if I believe in UFOs or not,but I believe the universe is so big
(48:28):
that there's definitely something outthere. There's definitely life out there.
I don't know if it's visited planetor not, but it could be if it's out there.
Visited Central PHENIX.
Yeah, exactly.
That's where that's where it happens.
That's where they come. In for sure. Sure.
You know, they're not really goodwith illegal aliens there.
That's that's true. That's a
(48:48):
funny story was
about, I don't know, maybe sevenor eight years later,
I was sitting on the set of a movieI produced called Nightmare Cinema,
and our financier was literallyjust about to release a movie
about the Phenix Lights.
Oh, cool story,which I thought was kind of cool.
Yeah.
You know, you're making a movie aboutthis is like, let me tell you
(49:11):
a my experience,
but I still cannot for the life of me
explain what I saw.
I've never seen anything in the skylike it
before or after.
Yeah.
(49:31):
And the fact that it moved two directionsto at least two directions is.
Yeah. Because that's very relaxed.
Oh, is it?
Just like this is a fast moving plane, but
I've never seen somethingcircled back that quickly.
Yeah.
Well, very cool.
Very cool. Joe.
No, I appreciate thethe alien UFO sort of genre.
(49:52):
It interjected into these episodes.
Two thingsI want to bring up before you go.
Which one?
Whichjust occurred to me like seconds ago.
Yeah, but I talked to youlike four or five years ago.
I don't know if you remember to get adviceabout starting a podcast.
Do you remember that?
I do.
I think we went to lunch.
(50:12):
Well, we went to lunch,but this was it was this was a phone call
probably months or a year later than that,because I I've always
wanted to do a podcast. And I was curious.
You gave me some great advice, but I justI didn't have time.
I was in the middle of productionon two things.
So in a lot of ways, you'reyou're at fault for whatever becomes of.
Whatever this is, whatever this is.
(50:33):
And I appreciate you saying that.
I'm glad I was able to give youa little bit of a push
and I'm excited that you're doing it.
Yeah, no, I am, too.
I'm honestly, I'm have I'm having a blast.
And the second thing is,
I just want you to be able to, you know,kind of plug anything you're working on.
You have a great podcast,you have a lot of projects,
IT teams in the worksand coming out and out already.
(50:53):
So I just wanted to give you a chance
to tell people where to find some some JoeRusso work.
Yeah, well, let's see what
the aforementioned nightmarecinema is still streaming on Shudder.
So you can check that out there.
It's a horror anthology,which is pretty fun.
You know, I've got a postmortemwith Mick Garris podcast.
(51:14):
I'm a producer on thatand a regular co-host on the
Ask Me Anything episodesso you can catch me there
wherever you download podcasts andand what else?
I just just
had a movie that I produced that came outcalled The Greatest Beer on Ever.
I was a producer on itand that's on Apple TV plus.
(51:35):
Yeah, I've got to watch it.It looks so good.
I haven't seen it yet, but I really wantto watch. It and I appreciate that. Yeah.
And then in the next year,there's a couple of things coming, but but
you know,couple of things in post-production, but
keep an eye outfor the inheritance on Netflix.
That's what I wrotepretty excited about it.
So. Oh, nice.
And then I'll provide some links
in the show notes for everybodyto check stuff like that out.
(51:56):
And Joe, thank you again for doing this.
I really appreciateit. Thanks for having me.
I'm going to finish
the Halloween specialby sharing a personal story.
The most terrifying thingthat's ever happened to me,
the only set up I can kind of giveis that I was 11.
I think I was 11 yearsold, and I was at summer camp in Michigan.
(52:20):
I went to Interlochen Arts Campand it was my third summer there.
And when you go to Interlochen,they have options nowadays
where you can stayless than the whole summer.
But when I started, you had to stayfor eight weeks and which is a long time.
And when you've been there,when it's your third
(52:40):
year,that's a lot of summer camp up there.
And I was in Junior Boysbecause I went as young
as you could go,and that's the youngest division.
And I'm not sure if the older divisions,because I didn't go to them,
did the same thing.
But when you're in junior
boys, you would camp out once a week,whatever cabin you were,
and your cabin would camp out once a weekand you would hike through the woods.
(53:04):
There were like threeor four kind of favorite camping spots.
And this is not tents.
You know, you carry a sleeping bag,you'll light a fire in his sleep
circling the fire.
And not only what, you camp outonce a week with your cabin, but
I was obsessed with camping at the time.
You can't pay meenough money to do it today.
But at the time, when I was a kid,I was obsessed with it.
(53:26):
Every summer I would take camping classes.
They had like a varietyof like camping classes you could take.
We learn how to tie knots and light firesand things like that
and they were really only supposed toallow you to take one of those a summer.
And I think I was ableto take two or three.
They were very nice to meand let me do that.
And during those classesyou're also camping out
(53:49):
a number of times over the summerjust for those classes.
So I was camping out like two timesa week, pretty much.
So the point of explainingall the camping skill set up there
is that
I knewthose woods like the back of my hand.
In fact, I still do.I haven't been there in decades
(54:11):
and I could still guide youthrough the forest.
I knew every pathway.
I knew every secret shortcut.
I knew everything about it.
So now on the evening in question,
my cabin was having one of its camp nights
and we all decidedto camp at a certain spot.
(54:32):
I actually think it was my favoritecamping spot.
I can't remember what it was called.
You would leave the cabinand you would hike down this path.
You would pass some kind of like homesthat were on the side
and then you into the forest.
And it was actually an easy placeto get to generally speaking,
as you stayed on this mainpath through the forest
and you would divert to the leftafter a long period of time,
(54:54):
and then you would divert to another lefta little bit further along the way.
And that would lead you to a rivercrossing, little Betsy River.
It's not a big river.
And you would cross over it from an old
toppled over tree, which it kind ofcreated this natural bridge.
And you had to be carefulcrossing the tree
(55:15):
trunk over the riverbecause it was very slippery.
And if you fell into the river,it wouldn't really hurt you.
It's not a big river,but it's cold, it's wet.
You know, you don't want to fall in.
And they had like a club.
If you ever fell into the
little Betsy River, they would, you know,say you're part of the club or something
and make it fun.
But regardless, you don't want to fall in,especially before camping for the night.
(55:36):
So we cross over.
I think there's about10 to 12 kids in my cabin
and we all cross kind of one at a timebecause that's the safest way to do it.
So we kind of slide our feetone at a time, cross the bridge,
everybody carrying their backpackswith sleeping bags and things,
and not every kid could get acrossthe tree bridge over the river
with their backpack on because it created,you know, it's a balance issue
(56:00):
and it's very slippery.
And some of the kids backpacks and hikingpacks were very heavy.
So they would either leave it on one side,they would cross.
And the kids that were better
at getting a cross would goand be kind and grab their backpack
and come over the logor even the counselor would help to.
And just a couple,you know, maybe a minute and a half
(56:21):
walk from the rivercrossing is our camping spot.
So we get to that spot.
After crossing the river,we lay down our sleeping
bags, we start collectingwood and birch bark is tender.
We're getting our stuff togetherto build a fire and stay for the evening.
And we only had one counselor with usand I cannot remember his name.
(56:45):
And right before it gets dark,because it was the evening
when we hiked out there,but it was still light. It is summertime.
The light, you know, it stayskind of bright, pretty laid out there.
And so I don't remember what time.
I just know it was kind of dusk
and we're underneath these tall pinetrees.
There's bushes around us,and we start to hear
(57:09):
noise in the nearby kind of bushes
and we think it's an animal.
So we kind of quiet down.
We're like, Oh, I hope it's, you know,not a bear or anything.
And we're trying to pay attentionand we hear the rustling in the bushes
grow louder and louder until
(57:30):
something is obviouslyjust on the other side of this,
like thick shrubberythat's that's behind our campsite.
And suddenly we hearwhat sounds like an old man
yell, Are you kids?
I hate kids.
(57:52):
And we all kind of freeze
and we can't see who this man is.
We can just hear his voice.
And I remember distinctly our counselor,who at my age,
like 11 years old or so,I thought he was an adult.
I considered him an old man.
Looking back on itnow, he was probably like 18.
(58:13):
And I remember distinctlyseeing him terrified.
And our counselor
yells back to the bushesand says, You're on private property.
This is part of Interlochen.
You need to get out of here.
And the man responds, I hate kids.
I'm going to kill you all tonight.
(58:33):
I'm a fuck and cut you up,kill you all tonight
this froze us.
Every single kid in my cabinWe were all dead silent,
quiet with fear
Our counselor yelled some things back,
which I do not remember the specificsI tried to get the guy to leave.
(58:56):
Was trying to ask who the guy was thatthat old man
kept yelling back to usthat he was going to kill us.
So our counselor wisely was just like,Everybody grab all your stuff
as fast as you can.
We all, you know, rolled up our sleepingbags.
He's kind of staying guardat the campsite.
The old man.
Every now and then, you'll hear somethingmove in the bushes and then he would
(59:18):
yell something elseabout hating kids or something like that.
We all get our sleeping bagsor backpacks together as fast as we can,
and by this time now, it is dark.
We go as fast as we can back to theto the little Betsy River crossing.
And we had
to cross the bridge one by one,
(59:39):
knowing that that old man was in
basically the forest,
maybe 20 yards from us.
He was not far.
We could still hear himmoving and it's dark.
The log to cross the river is slippery.
Some of the kids didn't feel likethey could carry their big
heavy backpacks, which had sleeping bagsand canteens and other things in them.
(01:00:02):
So they left him on the shore of oneend of the river and crossed without it.
And one kid in my cabinwas brave enough to kind of cross back
and actually carry some of the backpacksfor the kids three or four times.
As we waited on him to get three or fourthe backpacks across, we all get together.
We're on the other side of the river,
still feeling petrifiedbut feeling a little safer,
(01:00:24):
knowing there's a bit of water between usand this crazy man in the woods.
And then our counselor told me,because I had been there
for so many summers and had camped outso many times and knew the woods
like the back of my hands.
It was dark.
He didn't know how to get backto our cabin, so he put me in charge.
(01:00:47):
Being a small 11 year old orso of guiding everybody back
through the forestand back home to safety.
And I was so scared.
It is the most terrifiedI've ever been in my entire life.
But I definitely remember kind of gladly
leading everybodyand we stayed in like a single file line.
(01:01:10):
Our counselor was at the very back andI was at the front using my flashlight,
taking us through the forest,and we never heard the guy again.
We didn't hear him as soon as we crossedthe river, we didn't hear movement.
We didn't hear him yelling.
But we made it all the way back to camp.
This is a story
that I may have I'veshared to a handful of people in my life.
(01:01:32):
I don't think I ever told my parents
because I didn'twant them to worry about me at camp.
Now, looking back on this as an adult,
I have to say I think the only reasonmy parents never found out from the camp,
because surely a threatening manin the woods
near a summer camp full of kids
(01:01:54):
that should have been reported,
and you would think that all the parentswould have heard about it.
So looking back on it as an adult,I actually kind of write it off
as I think one of the other counselorsprobably had a night off drunk
or maybe even not drunkand just wanted to pull a prank
and was making a voice upand yelling at us.
And I think the otheryou know, the other members of the camp,
(01:02:16):
the adults figured out who it wasand probably punished him in some fashion.
And I think that's the only reasonwe never heard about that again,
because that isyou don't not tell parents.
You don't call not call police whenthere's someone threatening little kids.
And again,
I look back on it, the counselor,he was terrified as well.
(01:02:38):
He was scared out of his mind.
And luckily we made it back home.
And no life has its upsand downs in its drama.
But to havewhat sounded like an old scary man
threatening you when you can'tsee who it is, you can only hear it.
And you're in the middle of the woodsand you're a kid.
(01:03:00):
That is
that is something that I will havewill never forget
as long as I live.
And that'll do it for our Halloweenspecial, Terrifying
Tales, part one in part two.
Thank you all so much for listeningand for the support.
I am having the time of my life truly.
And thank you to eachand every one of my guests
(01:03:21):
for coming on and sharing stories.
Don't forget to listen to Tom Holland'sinterview coming out in just a few days
and make sure to go into the show notesand check out links and information on all
the guest I've had onfor the terrifying tales.
I know they'll appreciate it.
Please give us a follow on Instagramat Mystery of Strange.
Send me emails with eitherstories, ideas, comments.
(01:03:44):
We're up for anything here.
A study of strange at gmail dot com
and obviously make sure you're subscribed
rated and reviewedwherever you listen to podcast.
Oh, and I got to make sure I say this.
We are dark the week after Halloween,but we will be back the following week
with one of my favorite kind of true
(01:04:05):
crime mysteriesthat I've come across recently.
I am very much looking forwardto getting back to true
crime and bizarre historical mysteries.
Lastly, happy Halloween.
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