FIEND DROP: Video Store Days

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The sound you hear is a video cassette on the
back end of a three day rental from the local
mom and pop shop, rewinding in the family VCR. This
is the start of October pod. In these days of

(00:39):
bland streaming thumbnails often excreted by AI and engineered to
manipulate eye movement, swipes, her scrolls and button clicks, but
not to be esthetically pleasing, it seems we've lost the
knack of producing really dynamite cover art. The days of
planning your Friday night around a trip to the video

(00:59):
store along or with a friend and carefully combing through
the shelves of colorful and lurid VHS boxes for the
perfect three or five or seven day rentals have been
replaced by hours of sitting alone on the couch, scrolling
through an endless parade of movies you've never heard of,
slash don't care about, and either falling asleep before you've

(01:20):
made a selection, or settling on an old favorite you've
seen one hundred and thirty eight point six six six times.
Like a YouTube thumbnail, a good VHS box image grabs
your attention and sells you what you want to see.
But there was more to a video box than just
the cover art. There were roughly three kinds of boxes. First,

(01:51):
there was your basic, bottom loading cardboard slipcase. Ninety nine
percent of the VHS tapes you'd encounter came in this
style of box. Most of your new releases, big budget
or big studio movies, cheap bargain bind transfers, or nearly
all tapes available for retail purchase came in these slipcase boxes.
The cover art and the names on the box did

(02:12):
all the talking, and that's just about all it did.
Then there were clamshell cases. These were made of plastic
and opened up like a book or a trapper keeper,
with a cavity inside to snugly hold the tape. VHS
tapes for retail purchase rarely came in clamshells until much later,

(02:34):
when boutique labels like Anchor Bay started packaging their releases
in them, or when Disney decided to open up the
video vault. Otherwise you'd only encounter these in rental stores.
Walt Disney Home Video and Warner Brothers both had distinctive
clamshell packaging, and long before the MCU was a thing,

(02:57):
Prism Video packaged Marvel cartoons and eye catching comic art
adorned clamshells, but you could also find some weirdest horror
releases in clamshell cases, and so a clamshell promised either
a one robusto primo blockbusters and or family entertainment, or

(03:18):
maybe something like Legend of the Wolf Woman. And then
there were the big boxes. These were constructed like the
cardboard slipcase boxes, but were wider and deeper, large enough
to contain a vacuu formed plastic seat in which to

(03:39):
nest the cassette. You might find the odd cannon film's
release in a big box, but five will get you
ten that any big boxes on the shelf contained either
a skin flick or some weird usually foreign horror or
exploitation picture. Of course, there are other box formats that
I'm leaving out sideloaders and curiosities, like book boxes and

(04:02):
slide drawer boxes, but these were the big three. You
could always tell a tape had been sitting on a
shelf facing a window too long unlike the new release's shelf,
because the box art would be sunwashed and faded, and
horror pictures, especially if the horror section was in a
dark back corner of the store always seemed to have

(04:23):
extra dusty display boxes. As you can tell, I have
fond memories of these video store days, and I have
the box art for dozens of horror movies burned into
my memory. During the intermission, I'm going to share with
you my picks for some of the most haunting VHS
box art of all time. But first, Hannah from the

(04:46):
podcast Murder Bucket has something extra weird and spooky for
your uneasy listening. I'll see you in a bit at
the concession stance.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
If you're hearing this, you have stumbled across Murder Bucket,
the true crime podcast with me, Hannah Palmer. You sent
me your ghost and paranormal stories, and I am going
to read them all right, So these first few stories
are from the host of Unsolved VA podcast. I used

(05:50):
to photograph headstones for a website. I was in a
family cemetery, pretty good size, about one hundred square feet,
but it was at the end of a road, on
the top of a hill, surrounded by trees. Only one
way in and out. The parking area was clearly visible
from anywhere in the cemetery. After a few minutes, I

(06:12):
started feeling like I was being watched. I've never felt
that in a cemetery before, so this isn't something i'd
just say. It was bad enough that I kept stopping
and looking around nothing. I finally found the graves of
the matriarch and patriarch. I said to myself, okay, I'll
photograph these and then leave. Many years ago, people liked

(06:36):
to plant yuca by headstones. For some reason, both of
their headstones were obscured by yuka in front of them.
I reached down and pushed the yuka aside with one
hand so I could take the picture of her headstone
with the other. Just as I was about to take
the picture, I saw something through the viewfinder, and thank goodness,
looked over the camera. It was the biggest black way

(07:00):
Oh I had ever seen, and it had crawled up
the yuca plant, headed directly for my hand. Southern black
widows grow up to one and a half inches including
their legs. This girl was at least two and a
half inches. The red hourglass was so big it immediately

(07:20):
popped out at you. I screeched like a little girl,
jumped back, told the matriarch I didn't mean any harm,
and I was so sorry to disturb her, and I
immediately left. I would have also screeched like a little
girl and immediately ran away without saying anything to the matriarch.

(07:41):
The next story we have is from Holly Murray from
Spooky Hour podcast. I have a few stories to tell
you all tied to my legendary haunted basement. Okay, it's
only legendary to me and my friends. We've always felt
weird vibes down there since we were kids. Our playroom

(08:02):
was down there, but we never wanted to be down
there alone. I remember this sinking feeling in my stomach
every time I went downstairs. I don't really remember anything
happening until I was around sixteen years old. My parents
converted the basement into an apartment for me, and I
lived down there full time. The first WTF moment happened

(08:24):
when I was brushing my teeth one night. The mirror
in my bathroom faces the door, so if the door
is open, it reflects into the hallway. I saw what
I thought was my little sister run by in the reflection.
I distinctly remember seeing a long brown ponytail swinging as
she walked by. I yelled out, Riley, I saw you

(08:47):
because I thought she was just trying to scare me.
She didn't answer, so I went out into the hallway
and no one was there. I called upstairs something along
the lines of you, asshole, I know it was you,
but nobody answered. I went upstairs and no one was home.

(09:08):
I was by myself. I locked myself in my bedroom
for the night. I saw that brown ponytail like four
more times in the mirror before I finally decided to
shut the bathroom door every time I was in there.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Girl same.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
A few years later, I had some bags packed on
my bedroom floor as I was going away for the weekend.
I put my flat iron in my bag and wrapped
the cord around it, tucking it in there. When I
woke up in the morning, my flat iron was on
my floor, cord stretched out in a perfect straight line.
Most of my ghosty experiences have been harmless, but this

(09:48):
next one really shook me. I was in bed and
I kept feeling a sting in my back. I thought
there was a spider or a mosquito or something biting me.
I finally got up and turned the light on and
found a large sewing needle poking through my mattress as
if it had been shoved up from underneath, pointy side up,

(10:09):
poking me in the back. I didn't even own a
sewing kit at the time. I still experience some things
down there today, items moving, random bumps in the night lights, flickering,
that icky gut feeling, etc. We've done Ouiji boards and
other experiments down there, and we did experience some things.

(10:32):
I was able to get a name one night, and
I think it was Susan, but I don't really remember
because we were drinking. I'd love to do a full
investigation down there someday. I think my ghost is friendly.
Let's hope that's a friendly ghost. The next story is
from the host of the Tipsy Exchange podcast. I'm pretty

(10:54):
certain my roommate created a poultergeist in our apartment when
I was in college. After we had been living there
for a little bit, we started noticing weird little things.
For example, we had a change jar in the living room,
and every once in a while there would be just
random coins all over the living room floor. Neither of

(11:15):
us would have done it. Also, our guests would see
things that we hadn't even told them about. There was
always a shadow that you could see walking across my
roommate's bedroom into the closet. She and I spent a
whole night taking turns driving around the area trying to
recreate the shadow from headlights or something, and we couldn't

(11:36):
do it. Plenty of people saw that, and if you
were in the kitchen by yourself looking in the fridge,
you would get a tap on your shoulder. That happened
to multiple people. Then things started getting crazy, like the
volume on stereos would go up by themselves, and my

(11:57):
roommates swore that she got pushed when she was in
the show shower and I was a terrible roommate, so
I think I could be why she made a poultergeist.
Whatever it was, it all stopped after she moved out.
This next story is from the host of Twisted and
Uncorked podcast. I have a story about my time working

(12:20):
at the Old Spaghetti Factory and dealing with the appropriately
named spag ghost. I worked at the Old Spaghetti Factory
for about eight years. I won't say which location, but
I will say that it is in Canada. The furniture
and decor that is brought in anything from mirrors, masks,

(12:41):
stained glass, lamps, tables, chairs, paintings, et cetera. Are all
genuine antiques, and no one really knows where they originate,
as they are sold mostly at auctions and antique stores.
I think the hauntings come from these objects. In my
time there, I met my today husband, made lifelong friends

(13:03):
and endless memories. But I am here to tell you
of the four year period I managed there and the
unreal spooky shit that happened to me. All of the
managers experienced something in one way or another, but mine
were more frequent and more extreme. I think this is
because I am an impath and I am already open

(13:24):
to this sort of stuff. One night I managed, we
had a large birthday party in the back section of
about thirty people. It was a kid's birthday with a
dinosaur theme, and the mom brought in a bundle of
helium balloons along with a buttload of other decorations. At
the end of their dinner and cake, the mom handed

(13:44):
out the balloons to any kid that wanted to take
one home. One was heavily played with, and she told
me it had a leak in it and asked that
I toss it. I let her know that it was
no issue. I would clean it all up after they
left if they didn't want to take the decorations home.
I specifically remember bringing a big armful of decorations, including

(14:07):
this balloon that was leaking helium, and throwing it in
the back garbage can behind the restaurant. I closed that
evening and unfortunately had to be back in the next
day to open. Other than the kitchen crew managers were
the first to arrive to set up the service area
and restaurant. Before opening the next morning, I walked into

(14:27):
the back door and around the corner to find that
same balloon floating in front of the bread drawers in
the kitchen. I thought maybe one of the kitchen guys
were playing a trick on me, but it occurred to
me that the balloon was not holding helium the night before,
and it was almost flat when I threw it out.
How was it there floating? Nope, the kitchen guys had

(14:51):
no idea what I was talking about and said it
was there when they got there in the morning. I
ran that balloon back out to the garbage feeling very unset.
The barroom door was never ending. Game one aspect of
closing the restaurant obviously involved shutting off all the lights
and setting the alarm. The switch and alarm panel were

(15:13):
located in the bar room next to the bar at
the front of the restaurant. Since it is the last
thing to do, I would go in, shut off the lights,
and set the alarm before huffing it out the front
door and locking it before the timer went off. I
would then walk to the back of the restaurant and
get into my car. I would drive out to the

(15:34):
front to start heading home, and I noticed that the
barroom light was on after I had shut it off
and the door was open again. I would then park,
get out of my car, unlock the front doors, disable
the alarm, shut off the light, enable the alarm, shut
the door, and run to the front to lock it

(15:54):
and go out the front door. The next morning, my
general manager told me that I left the barroom door
open and the lights on. I told him what happened,
and his response was, yeah, sounds about right, indicating to
me that these things have happened to him as well. Now,
this last one happened to me when I had first

(16:15):
started at their restaurant as a busser. I was sixteen
years old and saving for a car. So on Friday
and Saturday, nights, I would offer to close, since only
one busser was needed until the very end of the night.
My general manager asked if I would go do a
bathroom check and make sure that there were no lasting
customers before the host locked the front door from the

(16:37):
inside and then left out the back. We also had
to make sure that the toilets were flushed, the garbage
was pushed down, and any tissue or spills on the
ground were cleaned up. I remember going into the men's
room first and doing a little peek under the two stalls.
No one was there. I finished and went into the
girl's room. The girls had eight stalls in two rows

(17:01):
of four. I went up to one row, pushing back
every stall door, which would make a little slam noise
as it hit the back door stops, and cleaned up
the stalls. I was the only one in there, and
suddenly I felt a push out of one stall and
the door slammed behind me and locked. Sorry, didn't mean

(17:22):
to interrupt spag Ghost. At that time, I had no
idea the restaurant was haunted, and this strikes me as weird,
but I continued down the rows. Another stall door slammed. Nope,
I went running out of there and I would never
go into the bathrooms again without a work buddy. It
has been three years since I worked there, and every

(17:44):
time myself and another friend or past manager have to
use the bathroom, we go in a buddy system.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
To this day.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
That was ten years ago. Here's another story. The house
I grew up in was definitely haunted and is still
in my family. It was a large farmhouse on three
acres where my aunt, uncle, cousin, and godson still live.
I grew up in the basement suite with my family,

(18:14):
but spent many hours upstairs when my parents were at work.
My brother and I ate dinner upstairs almost every night,
and our cousins were more like siblings. All four of
us were four years apart, and given all that young
and sometimes angsty energy, our ghost was very active. Funny enough,

(18:34):
now that we are all grown up and my cousins
have kids of their own, the activity has started up
again with all the grandkids in the house after being
dormant for about ten years after we grew up. Interesting
how that works. So let's go back to the late
nineteen nineties. My younger brother is six, I am ten,

(18:56):
and my cousins upstairs are fourteen and eighteen. While my
aunt and uncle rarely saw the strange happenings, they knew
there was an energy in the house, and they neglected
to tell us that the previous couple that lived in
the home had lived there since the house was built
in nineteen sixty nine and when an old age the

(19:16):
man named George passed away in his sleep in the
living room armchair. Shortly after that, the house was sold
to my aunt and uncle and my family moved in downstairs.
Since we didn't have a lot of money growing up,
my family lived there for next to nothing, a very
close knit family. Whenever something strange would happen, my aunt's

(19:39):
response was always oh, that's just George. Usually it was,
but there was a darker energy in the house that
was only felt at the end of the hallway where
the linen closet was. It was the end of the
hall in between my aunt and uncle's bedroom and my
oldest cousin's room. There was also the corner that was
a choice for all time outs since it was secluded

(20:01):
from the living room and kitchen where my cousins and
brother would play. Every time I went down there, nose
in the corner. It was the longest and most terrifying
ten minutes of my life. I used to beg to
be put in any other corner, and the grown ups
would never understand why. I would hear whispers coming from

(20:21):
inside the closet, very penny wise in the sewers and drains, etc.
And it was freezing over there. Not to mention, I
would feel the occasional hand push my face further into
the corner.

Speaker 5 (20:36):
Ill.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
This wasn't so much a closet as it was a tiny,
tiny door, no more than five feet tall, and there
was no latch or click for it to close. It
was just a handle and we would push it closed.
Often we would circle to go to the hall and
find the closet wide open. Nope. My uncle owns his

(20:59):
own business and his work desk was behind the wall
in this tiny room between the kitchen and the living room,
but it was all the wall on the other side
of the kitchen table. The phone would off and ring
when we sat down for dinner. Obviously we let it
go to voicemail, and more times than I can count,
the voicemail would beep and there would be a raspy

(21:20):
scratchy noise, breathing, or only a few words spoken by
a doctor, no sound and creep. I sensed that this
was whatever used to push my head into the corner
and whisper out of the closet again, I say nope.
Now for George. When my great grandma passed away, she

(21:41):
left behind beautiful music boxes for me and my two cousins,
the girls, and an antique toy truck for my brother.
We each had our own music boxes in our respective rooms,
and George definitely liked to make himself known in the house.
My music box, in particular, was the kind that you
would have to wind the back and then open it.

(22:03):
Since I was a dancer, mine had a little ballerina
in it, and at least once a week this would
wind and open in the middle of the night while
I slept. Not cool George, my aunt and uncle are
the type of people that drink milk with dinner. We
later learned that George was lactose intolerant because every now

(22:24):
and again, the milk glasses on the dinner table would
just tip over without being touched, and one time it
actually exploded, to the point that my uncle went around
checking for a gunshot hole in the kitchen windows. Candles
in the living room would light and burn out on
their own. The TV would shut off around ten o'clock

(22:44):
every evening. My aunt would always say, George, it's not
my bedtime. We were the family that stayed up watching
movies at the end of the day, and while the
ten pm shut off was inconvenient, we always knew what
time it was. One really nice memory of George that
I definitely thank him for is when we were little,

(23:06):
we used to slide down the stairs on our butts
when we would go to my suite and bedroom. We
decided to make it a laundry basket surf day, and
the upstairs went straight down then curved into a wall
at the bottom before it turned. I was unsuccessful with
my surf, to say, and I knew I would be
hitting the wall. Thankfully, though my laundry basket just stopped

(23:30):
before the bottom step, like somebody had blocked me. I
would have definitely broken my nose otherwise. My cousin was
at the bottom of the stairs, bewildered as my laundry
basket hovered between two stairs at the bottom. While he
could be a pest at times, ultimately he brings good

(23:50):
energy and protects us little kids that grew up there
through the generations. Oh my goodness, that was so inte
Hence all of those little teeny tiny stories about George.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Give me more. This next story is from my husband.
Either my great or great grandfather reportedly owned a haunted house.
There was an old picket fence with a gate, and
the house had a porch. From time to time at night,
my dad told me that you could hear a horse

(24:29):
right up to the gate. It would open and slam,
and then there would be stomping footsteps up to the porch.
The footsteps would end on the stairs. Even more rarely,
there would be a gunshot at the end of the event.
From what my dad has told me, the only thing
that you could see was the gate open and slam.

(24:52):
Everything else were just sounds. My family isn't sure what
incident happened that left that imprint, but it had I
do have been very important to the rider of the horse.
That one also just gave me goosebumps all over. And
the final two stories are mine. I believe I shared

(25:14):
this first one in our Q and A episode, But
here we are ghost Story Episode I'm just gonna tell
you again. When I was in high school, probably around
two thousand and six or two thousand and seven, I
worked in an assisted living that was like the career

(25:35):
path I really wanted to go into when I was
in high school, working with the elderly in some way,
shape or form. So as my high school job, I
worked at this assisted living in the town I lived in.
And this assisted living was in the shape of a horseshoe.
So you walk in the front door and there is

(25:56):
the dining room right in the middle. You had the
kitchen right behind that, and you have like the nurses
station kind of on either side of the kitchen, and
then down the horseshoe hallways were all the residence rooms.
And at the end of both hallways there were like
emergency exits leaning to the outside. So one evening I

(26:20):
was actually working a night shift. This was probably during
the summertime, so I could do it and not have
to worry about school. So I worked the night shift
and I was on the team with the nurses. So
I walked around and helped give out medication. I like
cleaned up the residents, gave them showers, I gave them food,

(26:45):
kind of helped clean up wherever was needed. So this
particular night, we were walking around the hallways to check
on all the residents at bedtime to give them their medications,
make sure that everybody was in their rooms and nobody
needed anything, and if they did, we could go get them.

(27:08):
So at this particular assisted living, all of the residents
wore these call buttons around their necks or like on
their pants or on their wrists or something. And the
way that these particular ones worked is if you pushed
the call button, the box in the nurses station would

(27:28):
pop up with whose call button it was and where
this call button was located. So it would either tell
you that they were in a specific room, that they
were in a hallway, they were in the dining room,
they were in the family room, or they were outside
on the porch. So this particular night, we were doing

(27:50):
our normal rounds and a residence call button went off,
so we went back to the nurses room and we
looked on a little box to figure out who it was,
and it was this sweet little old lady and I
can't remember her name, but she had lived there for
a long time, and the call button said that it

(28:11):
was coming from her room like she was in her room,
So we immediately went to her room. We knocked on
her door, no answer. We decide to just go ahead
and open the door in case, say something is wrong,
maybe she's passed out, she's unconscious, whatever. So we decide

(28:31):
to go into her room and the lights are turned off.
We walk in, We call her name, no answer, walk
in just a little bit further. We have the light
turned off this entire time, so we walk in just
a little bit further, we call her name again, and
all of a sudden we hear can you help me?

(28:53):
And this little old lady had like a very sweet, mellow,
calming voice like oh, I'm so cute, blah blah blah,
you know that kind of thing. This can you help me?
Was a high pitched voice. It was loud, it was bold,

(29:16):
it was there. So that was definitely not this resident.
So the nurse that I am with turns the light
on and we go further into the room, like to
the person's bed. This woman is sound asleep, so we
kind of like shake her leg a little bit wake

(29:36):
her up, and she wakes up and it's like, HI,
is everything, okay? Can I help you? And we're like,
your call button went off. We came inside to kind
of check on you, want to not make sure everything's okay.
She's like, no, I've I've been asleep the whole time.
So then we ask her where her call button is,

(29:58):
and it is around her wrist, underneath the covers, nowhere
where she could have like accidentally pushed it or anything.
So we ended up leaving her room and going back
to doing our rounds, and we notice that the call
button for that particular resident goes off again, but this

(30:22):
time it says that she is in the other hallway,
which is not where her room is, So of course
we go down that hallway. There's nobody there. We go
back to the residence room, we walk in, we don't
turn the light on. We say hello, see anybody there?

(30:43):
Everything okay, and again we hear that voice, hey, can
you help me? We turn the light back on. The
resident is still in her bed. She wakes up again,
asks if everything is okay. We kind of just say no, oh,
we were just checking on you, and we leave and
kind of hope that it doesn't happen again. And after that,

(31:07):
it never went off again. Her call button never went off,
and I believe She ended up passing away a few
months later. So we ended up telling our supervisor about
this a little while after she died, and the supervisor
said that there was another woman who lived in her

(31:28):
room before her. And when we described like the voice
and like high pitched and super like loud and bold,
she said, yep, that's the person who lived in her
room before. She was very like animated and loud and bold,
and that was definitely her voice. So woof super creepy,

(31:48):
lots of chills. Had a very hard time working the
night shift after that. But you know, you gotta do
what you gotta do to get money during high school.
And the very last I have is actually a dream.
My mom passed away in twenty seventeen, and for about

(32:10):
seven months we didn't know exactly what had happened. We
have been waiting on the autopsy results for that long.
And if you want to hear that story about the
horrible email I sent to the medical medical examiner, you're
more than welcome to ask me and I'll tell you
about it. So, after we finally got the autopsy results

(32:33):
back and we learned that she died of an accidental overdose,
she had depression and mental health issues probably her entire life,
and misused her prescriptions, So this was kind of an
at fault of hers. So the dream that I had

(32:55):
after we learned of the autopsy report was I dream
that I could see like my dad, my husband, my brother,
and my mom, and like we were all in an
airport together, and everybody I could see their faces. They
could talk to me and everything, but every single time
that my mom would turn around, her face would be

(33:17):
just completely blank. So that was the only dream that
I had about that. But then several months later I
had another dream with her in it, and this time
it was me and her were like working in this
same company, and we were like in a stairwell together,

(33:37):
and this time I could see her face and her
response to me was I'm sorry and I'm sick. So
I believe that was her coming to me in a
dream and telling me that she was sorry for the
things that she had done, and that she was finally

(33:57):
admitting that she had a a mental health issue and
depression and anxiety. She was kind of finally owning up
to it, because the entire time she was alive, she
never really admitted that she had a problem with her
prescription medication and that kind of thing. So those are

(34:19):
all of our ghost stories and paranormal stories tonight. This
was a fantastic episode, so thank you for sending in
all your stories and I really hope you enjoyed this.

Speaker 6 (34:34):
Monsters do have their place in the zoo, in your nightmares,
in the deep, in your favorite horror movies, but not
on your phone. During an ad break, Politically motivated interests
are seeking to influence you through the ads placed on
this podcast. Hi, I'm your host Edward October, reminding you

(34:57):
that we have very limited control of for the ads
you hear on October Pod. Please remember that only the
ads and promos I read with my own voice carry
the endorsement of Edward October and October Pod. Furthermore, I
and the makers of October Pod repudiate any entity advertised
which seeks to promote hatred, anti American or anti democratic sentiments,

(35:22):
or the spread of misinformation. Now with that in mind,
October Pod will return after this brief ad break.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
It's intermission time, folks. Today we're talking about VHS box art,
and I'm here to give a rundown of what I
think are some of the most hand horror movie VHS covers.
I say haunting because some of these images are scarier
than others, some are gorrier than others. Some might not

(36:11):
really be scary or esthetically pleasing at all, but all
of them left a lasting impression on me that's lingered
for thirty five years or so. Now I realize that
I'm using an audio only medium to discuss a purely
visual art form. So check down in the show notes
for links to all the images I'm referencing. All right,

(36:35):
let's get to it. The Tempter from Embassy Home Entertainment
just today. This exorcist ripoff is best known by its
original Italian title Lanti Cristo, but in nineteen eighty eight,

(36:58):
when you would have been renting it on VHA, it
was known as the Tempter. She is no longer one
of us.

Speaker 7 (37:07):
Her soul dwells in darkness, and her body belongs to
the Tempter.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Deliver her from evil. The Tempter weighted arm. This picture
was distributed on VHS by Embassy Home Entertainment that covers
all black with a black and white fish eyelands photograph
of a woman in bed wearing a sheer nightgown with

(37:34):
the drapes in her bedroom fluttering open as if moved
by some unseen force. It's a simple image that's kinetic, haunting,
and suggestively erotic. It makes you feel like you're watching
a supernaturally vent unfold through a peephole, and it promises
a lot of things that the film itself does not deliver,

(37:54):
even though the tagline is deliver her from evil asign
from us, shocking and takeeteless black mass sequence in which
a character the poll ands of a goat. This picture
is far less interesting than it's than its evocative box art.

(38:14):
Horror Express from Good Times on Video and The House
that Drifted Blood from Prison Video.

Speaker 8 (38:22):
Take a ride on the Horror Express, positively the most
blood chilling thriller ever conceived. Turtling across the frozen Siberian Tundra,
the Horror Express rampages towards its destination of doom, starring
Kelly Tobalas and those masters of horror, Peter Cushing and
Christopher Lady and Horror.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Express misleading the customer with your VHS box was a
very common occurrence. Such was the case with Horror Express
and The House that Dripped Blood. Both are fairly cozy
horror pictures, both starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing comfort
movies for monster kids, yet the box art for both

(39:05):
suggests we're in for something a little more extreme. Horror
Express was released on home video a bunch of times
by a bunch of different distributors, both in the US
and abroad, featuring a bunch of different box art. The
one I'm referring to is the Good Times home video release.

(39:31):
Good Times, with its familiar rainbow logo, specialized in distributing
pictures with dubious copyright protections onto vhs for retail purchase.
They were ubiquitous on rental shelves and in kmart bargain
bins alike. The cover art on their card stock sleeves
were pretty lazy and uninspiring, usually just a random still

(39:55):
from the movie, often a black and white still that
was churishly colorized. Their Horror Express box art was no different.
It featured a still image of Telly Savalis, who gets
top billing on the VHS cover, even though his character
doesn't appear until the film's final act, bleeding from his

(40:16):
nose and eyeballs. Cheap and lazy as it was, this
bloody image managed to put me off watching Horror express
a picture which wasn't all that gory, and which bore
a great deal of similarity to my beloved Hammer films
during the height of my adolescent hammer craze. The Prism

(40:55):
video release of The House That Dripped Blood also sported
grotesque cover art for a relatively tame and cozy horror picture.
The director's preferred title for this anthology was Death and
the Maiden. This title was deemed too high brow, and
though not a drop of blood is spilled throughout the picture,

(41:15):
was released under the more lurid title of The House
That Drip Blood.

Speaker 8 (41:20):
Terror waits for you in every room in the House
That Drip Blood. Vampires, vixens and victims. You'll find them
all in the House that Drip Blood. Only the mind
of the man who gave you Psycho could give you
The House That Drip Blood. In color from the Cinerama
Releasing Corporation rated GP.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
In spite of the picture's bloodlessness, the theatrical poster and
VHS box art feature a presumably nude woman seen from
the shoulders up holding a silver platter with Peter Cushing's
severed head on it. Additionally, the woman with the platter
has no mouth, her face is a grinning skull below

(42:02):
the nose. It's weird zombie from Wizard Video and Demon's
New World video. Now we're getting into the big boxes.
Luccio Fulci's Zombie released in Italy as Zombie Too to

(42:24):
fool people into thinking it was a sequel to Georgia
Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was of course released
in Italy and elsewhere in Europe as Zombie. Came to
US video stores in a Wizard Video big box, and
that motherfucker sported a big head and shoulders. Close up
of one of the picture's most iconic zombies, a big,
decaying bastard with maggots dripping from his empty eye sockets,

(42:47):
easily one of the pukiest VHS boxes you were likely
to encounter in your local Mom and pop.

Speaker 9 (42:55):
It is midnight on a tropical island. A beautiful young
girls long hair streams against the coral reef. Her beautiful
body is caressed by the tide. Suddenly, a decayed heir
rises up as blood drenchs, jaws moved to bite her.

(43:16):
The living kid walk again. ZA, you are what they eat.
No one under seventeen will be admitted ZA.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
As a kid haunting the video Racks. I was always
drawn to this tape, but never brave enough to actually
rent it. It's because of this box art that I avoided.
This the granddaddy of ful cheese gut munchers, until college,
when someone gave me a copy of the Anchor Bay
release under its Italian name Zombie two, and I was

(43:48):
at last introduced to the pictures fake zombie real shark thrills.
Equally scary, but not quite as puki was the box
art for the New World video release of Lomberto Baba's Demons.
This bog standard bottom load slipcase with totally eighties hot

(44:11):
pink lettering sports an image of one of the picture's
titular demons, and boy is it a doozy all teeth
and horns and quite oozy looking, after having just emerged
from the body of Fulgy regular Paula Cozzo.

Speaker 7 (44:28):
The demons are coming, and they're coming for you. Be careful,
shaken the difference between life and do my death. Demons.
They will make cemeteries there to fee lays in the cities.

Speaker 5 (44:44):
Working Your.

Speaker 7 (44:47):
Demons starts Friday at a theater near you.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
This demon design sits alongside nineteen fifty seven's Night of
the Demon for being perhaps the best realized, practically depiction
of a demon ever committed to film. That demon's mug
made for some eye catching box art, and unlike Zombie,
this one didn't scare me away. The back of the
box is pretty cool too, featuring my favorite image from

(45:14):
the film, A horde of demon possessed humans ascending the
stairs and all their eyes are glowing. Now you heard
me mention slide drawer boxes and book boxes, Well, it
just so happens that hey, hang on a minute, what
all already, folks? I just got word that the snack

(45:39):
bars about to close up, the last chance to grab
some hot buttered popcorn, a sparkling soda, or maybe even
a chilly dilly. And here I was ready to talk
for another hour about VHS boxes.

Speaker 7 (45:53):
Now, have you.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Refilled on snacks? Nice and comfy? Good, because I too.
Of October pod featuring our friend Brenda from the podcast
Horrifying History starts now.

Speaker 10 (46:44):
My name is Brenda, and welcome to Horrifying History, where
you will hear about the unexplained, paranormal and supernatural happenings
that have stained the pages of history for some staying
in a hotel is a necessity for For others, it
is getting away from home to see and experience new
things while having a safe place to lay their head

(47:07):
at night. But there are very few hotels that fall
into the category that the Cecil Hotel is in. This hotel,
in downtown Los Angeles was built to be a destination
for business, travelers and tourists is best known as a
hotbed of death. As a heads up, here, my dear listeners,
today we'll be talking about the deaths of people of

(47:28):
all ages along with suicide. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome
to episode one oh four The Cecil Hotel. There are

(47:50):
some hotels that are well known due to their opulence.
There are others that are well known as haunted destinations,
but for some others, they are in a class of
their own. One of these is the Cecil Hotel, which
is located in downtown Los Angeles, California. This hotel has
been the backdrop of TV shows, Lake American horror story movies,

(48:13):
and multiple different docuseries From the day this hotel's doors
opened for service, Multiple social and cultural issues impacted this
establishment and helped create the reputation that it holds today.
Its checkered history is full of misery and death. The
Cecil Hotel took three years to build and open for

(48:35):
business in nineteen twenty four. It was the pet project
of three men, William Banks Donner, Charles Dix and Robert Schwaps.
Their plan was to create an opulent location for business,
travelers and tourists to stay at. The design drew upon
French and Renaissance styles that were combined together to give
a more modern feel and have a very unique and

(48:57):
expensive look. Now to give you guys an idea in
today's funds, this hotel cost almost seventeen million dollars to build.
After its grand opening, the Seesaw Hotel flourished as a
fashionable place to stay, but then the Great Depression hit.
The surrounding area started to decline and eventually it was

(49:18):
nicknamed skid Row after the area became populated with transient people.
Through the years, the fourteen floor, seven hundred room hotel
was refurbished as new owners would take over. As part
of this, a portion of the hotel was rebranded in
twenty eleven as Stay on Maine. It had a separate

(49:38):
reception area but shared facilities with the other portion. In
twenty fourteen, the Cecil was sold to New York hotelier
Richard Bourne for thirty million dollars. After this sale, a
separate New York based firm called Simon Baron Development acquired
a ninety nine year lease on the property. In twenty

(49:59):
six the president of Simon Baron Development made a statement
saying that they were committed to preserving the architectural and
historical significant areas of the Cecil Hotel, but they were
planning to redevelop it and fix the now run down property.
The hotel closed in twenty seventeen for renovations, but work
was suspended indefinitely during the COVID pandemic. In December of

(50:24):
twenty twenty one, the Cecil reopened as an affordable living
complex and will be providing affordable living to about six
hundred low income families, but many do not want to
live there due to its reputation for violence, suicide, and murder.
The first documented death at the Cecil occurred on the

(50:44):
evening of January twenty second, nineteen twenty seven. Fifty two
year old Percy Cook and his wife were having issues
and after failing to reconcile with his wife and young child.
He checked into the Cecil Hotel that evening, Percy picked
up a gun and shot himself in the head. After
being rushed to a nearby hospital, Percy passed away that

(51:06):
same evening. But that was not the only suicide at
the Cecil in the nineteen thirties alone. It was home
to at least six more. On November nineteenth, nineteen thirty one, W. K.
Norton ended his life in his room by taking poison capsules.
One week earlier, he had checked in under a different name,

(51:27):
James Willie's from Chicago.

Speaker 11 (51:30):
Now.

Speaker 10 (51:30):
To make his death even stranger, mister Norton was not
from Chicago. He was from Manhattan Beach Now. The next
death occurred in September of nineteen thirty four. Twenty five
year old Benjamin Dowitch died from a self inflicted gunshot
wound to his head. He did not leave a note
to tell us why. Then, on July twenty sixth, nineteen

(51:52):
thirty seven, fifty three year old former Army sergeant Lewis
Borden picked up a razor and cut his own throat. Now,
Lewis did leave several notes in which he said the
reason he decided to end his own life was due
to his poor health. In March of nineteen thirty eight
came the next death. Police were unable to determine for

(52:13):
sure if it was accidental or if it was suicide.
Twenty five year old Grace Mago fell from one of
the windows on the ninth floor. Her fall was broken
in part by telephone wires which wrapped themselves around her
body as she fell. She passed away later at a
local hospital, but due to there was no note or
any indication of a struggle. Police are unsure what actually

(52:36):
happened to Grace that day. But that was not the
case for Roy Thompson. The following year, he also fell
from the building, but in his case the cause was
clearly suicide. Several months later, another person died. His name
was Erwin Neblitt and he was thirty nine years old.
Irwin was a naval officer and he was found dead

(52:57):
in his room after ingesting poison. Was it purposeful, accidental,
or was it forced? We'll never know. It is because
of these deaths that the hotel gained its nickname of
the Suicide. In the next decades, the Cecil was the
site of even more death In January of nineteen forty,
Dorothy Seeker checked into the hotel under the pseudonym of

(53:19):
Evelyn Brent. Before she did, the forty five year old
woman sent her relatives a letter indicating that she was
going to end her life. While in her room, she
ingested poison, and she passed away in the hospital on
January twelfth. The next death occurred in September of nineteen
forty four, nineteen year old Dorothy Purcell checked into the

(53:41):
Cecil with her thirty eight year old boyfriend, Ben Levine. Now,
according to Dorothy, she had no idea that she was
even pregnant when she went into labor in their hotel room.
Her boyfriend was asleep, so she went into the bathroom,
closed the door, and gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
Thinking that her baby was deceased, Dorothy threw the child

(54:03):
out of the room's window and he landed on the
roof of the building next door. Now, after the baby
was discovered, Dorothy was charged with his murder. At her trial,
three different psychiatrists testified that Dorothy was mentally traumatized at
the time of the incident, and in January of nineteen
forty five, she was found innocent by the reason of insanity.

(54:27):
Then came even more death. In November of nineteen forty seven,
Robert Smith died after he jumped from a window on
the seventh floor the hotel. In October of nineteen fifty four,
a woman checked into the Cecil under the name of
Margaret Brown. Her real name was Helen Gurney, and she
jumped out of the window of her room, which was

(54:47):
also on the seventh floor. She died after she landed
on the Cecil's marquee. Then, in February of nineteen sixty two,
Julia Moore checked into the Cecil. She died after jumping
from her window of her room, which was on the
eighth floor. She did not leave behind a suicide note,
but left a bus ticket and her bank book that

(55:08):
showed that she had a lot of money left in
her bank account. The next deaths occurred a short time later.
On October twelfth, nineteen sixty two, Pauline Aughton, aged twenty seven,
had checked into a room on the ninth floor. She
jumped from the window of her room after fighting with
her estranged husband George now George. After the fight left

(55:29):
the hotel. This is when Pauline decided to end her
own life and jumped. She landed on an individual who
just happened to be walking by, and on her husband, George,
who was leaving the hotel. She killed them both instantly. Now,
originally police thought that Pauline and George commit suicide together.
They changed their minds when they determined two things. Firstly,

(55:52):
George had his hands in his pockets at the time
of his death. Secondly, George was still wearing his shoes
after his death. Now, if charge had jumped, police determined
that his shoes would have fallen off during the fall
or on impact. They also recognized that no one would
intentionally jump out of a window with their hands in
their pockets. Then came the first documented murder at the Cecil.

(56:16):
On June fourth, nineteen sixty four, a hotel worker discovered
the body of a sixty five year old retired telephone
operator in her room. The woman was nicknamed Pigeon Goldie
and was well known in the area due to she
fed the pigeons in a nearby park. She was found
after she was beaten, sexually assaulted, and stabbed. Her room

(56:37):
was ransacked several hours later. A man named Jacques Ellinger
was arrested after he was seen walking through the park
where pigeon Goldie would feed her birds. He was covered
in blood. After being charged with the murder, Jacques was
cleared of the crime. It still remains unsolved to this day.

Speaker 11 (56:57):
Now.

Speaker 10 (56:57):
Concerning the next three deaths, the victims are still not identified.
On December twentieth, nineteen seventy five, a woman who registered
at the Cecil as Alison Lowell checked into Room three
twenty seven. She jumped from a twelfth floor window to
land on the Cecil's second floor roof. We still do
not know her real name today. Then, in September of

(57:20):
nineteen ninety two, a body of a man was found
behind the Cecil. The man was of African American descent,
approximately twenty to thirty years of age, and he was
found in the alley right behind the hotel. Police believed
that he either fallen or jumped or was pushed from
the fifteenth floor. He still remains unidentified today. The last

(57:43):
one occurred in June of twenty fifteen. The body of
a man about twenty eight years of age was found
outside the hotel. The County Corner publicly stated that the
cause of death was not determined, but many believe that
he also ended his life from jumping from this hotel.
But the most famous death at the Cecil Hotel became

(58:04):
the subject of a Netflix Dock You series. It also
has been incorporated as part of various horror movies, music videos, books,
and has been the subject of shows like the Discovery
Plus series Ghost Adventures. The person who died was twenty
one year old Alisa Lamb. Elisa Lamb was born on

(58:34):
April thirtieth, nineteen ninety one, in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada.
Her parents immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong before she
was born, and it was said that she had an
uneventful childhood. Elisa was a student at the University of
British Columbia, but was not registered at the time of
her death. Several years earlier, Alisa was diagnosed with bipolar

(58:57):
disorder and depression. Was taking multiple medications for her conditions,
but had a history of not taking them consistently. Due
to this, Alisa suffered from hallucinations on several occasions that
made her so fearful that she hid under her bed.
It became so bad for her that she was hospitalized
at least once for these episodes. By the mid twenty tens,

(59:22):
Alisa was an active blogger. She would post pictures concerning
fashion and would speak about her life and her struggle
with mental illness. In January of twenty twelve, Alisa announced
on her blog that she suffered from a relapse, and
this resulted in her dropping several of her university courses.
This left her with strong feelings of having no direction

(59:44):
in her life. She felt lost and was worried that,
due to her withdrawing from her classes, that her transcript
would look bad to those making decisions concerning her educational future.
She was terrified that this could result in her not
being able to continue with her education and attend graduate school. Then,
in twenty thirteen, Alisa decided to take a trip to

(01:00:06):
California alone. On January twenty eighth, twenty thirteen, she checked
into the Cecil Hotel. After being in Los Angeles for
a couple of days, She would contact her parents on
a daily basis and told her parents that she was
given a shared room on the fifth floor. Soon, Alisa's
roommates started to complain about what the hotel's lawyer said

(01:00:29):
was odd behavior. After spending two days in a shared room,
Alisa was moved into a room of her own. So
what was the odd behavior? While according to the manager
of the cecil at the time of the incident, Alisa
would lock the door to the room and demand that
her roommates give her a password to enter. She also
left notes for them that said things like go home

(01:00:51):
and go away. It was further discovered that during this
time frame, Alisa attended a live taping of the late
night show Conan, but she was removed from the premises
by security due to she was exhibiting disruptive behavior. Then,
on the day that Alisa was due to check out
and go to Santa Cruz, Alisa did not call her parents.

(01:01:14):
They immediately called the police and then jumped on a
plane to search for their daughter. What they found out
was that on January thirty first, twenty thirteen, which was
the day that Alisa was supposed to call her parents,
Alisa was alone at the hotel. According to the staff
member who saw her, Alisa was outgoing, lively, and friendly.

(01:01:34):
She told the staff member that she was getting gifts
for her family and was wondering if a book she
bought was going to be too heavy for her to
carry as she continued her travels and then no one
saw her again. Police asked the hotel if they had
any video camera feed that may help with the investigation.
They did, and the police released this footage to the

(01:01:56):
public on February thirteenth, which was one week after Alisa
went missing. There was about two and a half minutes
of footage and you will find links to this footage
in our show notes. Now I'm going to give you
a bit of a heads up here, my dear listeners.
The footage is a bit disturbing In it, Alisa enters
the hotel elevator. She stares at the keypad and then

(01:02:19):
peeks outside the elevator doors. Then she ducks back in
and tries to hide in the area where the keypad is.
She then slowly exits the elevator and makes some odd
movements before entering the elevator again. She presses multiple buttons
and then stands outside the elevators once more making strange gestures.
She then wanders away and the doors of the elevator's

(01:02:41):
close without her being inside. When the police released this video,
the video went viral. People started to speculate on why
Alisa was acting this way, and one of the main
theories was that perhaps Alisa was being chased by someone
and that she was trying to escape them. Others thought
that perhaps she took some street drugs that caused her

(01:03:01):
to act this way. When her mental health issues reached
to public, some people started to speculate that Elisa was
perhaps suffering from a psychotic episode, but none of this
mattered to her terrified parents, who only wanted for their
daughter to be found safe and sound, but sadly that
was never going to happen. While the hotel was being

(01:03:23):
searched for signs of what could have happened to Alisa,
guests started to complain to the hotel staff about the
water in their rooms. Some had low water pressure, while
others complained that the water was discolored and had a
strange taste. On the morning of February nineteenth, twenty thirteen,
a hotel maintenance worker went to inspect the one thousand

(01:03:43):
gallon or three thousand, seven hundred and eighty five liter
tanks on the hotel's roof. They were trying to find
the source of the problem. In one of the four tanks,
the maintenance worker opened up a hatch to find the
body of Elisa. She was lying face up and was naked.
The clothes that she was seen wearing in the video

(01:04:04):
were floating in the water and was covered with a
sand like particulate. She was also found with her room
key and her watch. Her autopsy would tell us that
she had no evidence of physical or sexual trauma. There
was no evidence of suicide. Toxicology testing did show traces
consistent with Elisa not taking enough or not taking her

(01:04:25):
medication at all. There were also no recreational or legal
drugs in her system, and she had a very small
amount of alcohol detected that she ingested. On February twenty first,
twenty thirteen, the Los Angeles Corner's Office determined that Alisa
died from accidental drowning and that her bipolar disorder was

(01:04:46):
a factor in her death. But there were still a
lot of questions, like how did Alisa get on the
roof and how could she get into that tank. Investigators
discovered that even though the doors to the roof were
locked and that staff were the only ones that had access,
the roof was still easily accessible via the fire escape.
But how did she get into the tank well? The

(01:05:09):
lid to the tank that Alisa was found in was
open when she was found, but who opened it to
begin with? Did Elisa climb inside to hide and protect
herself like she did when she would hide under her bed.
One of the biggest issues with the investigation into Elisa's
death was that the autopsy report was based on incomplete information.
It does not tell if the body was searched for

(01:05:31):
particulates or what results were from the rape kit that
was completed. The coroner's office to this day believes that
Elisa's death was accidental, but due to the history of
this hotel, many people are not quite sure. But all
these deaths are not the only things that helped create
the paranormal reputation of this hotel. In her last episode,

(01:05:53):
we told you the tale of Elizabeth Short, who is
now known worldwide as the Black Dahlia. To give you
all a brief reminder, twenty two year old Elizabeth went
missing after she was last seen at the Biltmore Hotel
in downtown Los Angeles. Six days later, her mutilated body
was found. Her murder is unsolved to this day and

(01:06:15):
is now part of pulp culture. She became a cautionary
tale for the dangers that Los Angeles could bring to
young and trusting women. After Alisa disappeared, rumors started to
link the two women together when people started to say
that Elizabeth was seen at the Cecil Hotel on the
night of her disappearance. As much as it may be

(01:06:36):
true that Elizabeth could have visited the Cecil Hotel, there
is no evidence to support this. So where did this
rumor come from? It was derived from a police report
that was submitted by Los Angeles Police officer Merrill McBride.
In this report, officer McBride stated that she encountered a
young woman who left a bar in downtown Los Angeles

(01:06:58):
and she claimed that somebody threatened to kill her. When
officer McBride saw pictures of Elizabeth, she did not identify
Elizabeth as the person she saw. She also did not
reference the Cecil Hotel as the location of where she
saw this woman in distress. Even so, rumors still float
around today that both Elizabeth and Eliza were both last

(01:07:21):
seen alive at the Cecil Hotel. And then there is
the fact that not just one, but two serial killers
called the Cecil Hotel home for a short time. The
first of these was Richard Ramirez, who was also otherwise
known as the knight Stalker. Richard was born in El Paso, Texas,

(01:07:42):
and had a very rough childhood. He would later claim
that his father physically abused him so severely as a
young child that it caused him to have multiple head
injuries at a very young age. This reportedly resulted in
him suffering from epileptic seizures. To escape the violence of
his home, Richard spent a major portion of his time

(01:08:03):
with his older cousin, Miguel, and that was not a
good thing. Miguel was a Vietnam veteran, and when he
was there, he raped, tortured, and dismembered several Vietnamese women.
He took photos of his evil deeds and he showed
them to young Richard with pride. When Richard was about
thirteen years old, he watched as Miguel shot his wife

(01:08:26):
to death. Shortly afterwards, Richard changed from a small, scared
boy to a sullen and cruel young man. He started
to develop an interest in Satanism and began to take
hardcore drugs. He soon became addicted. Now even worse, he
was still under the influence of Miguel, who was found
not guilty of murdering his wife due to the reason

(01:08:48):
of insanity. Soon, Richard developed the same kind of desire
for sexual and physical violence that Miguel had. This is
what he brought with him when he moved to Los
Angeles during the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties.
He was already known to police. His crimes at the
time were limited to theft and drug possession, but he

(01:09:10):
quickly escalated. His first documented murder took place in nineteen
eighty four, after DNA evidence linked him to a murder
of a nine year old girl. He then killed a
seventy nine year old woman that June. He sexually assaulted her,
stabbed her, and then slashed her throat. By March seventeenth,

(01:09:30):
nineteen eighty five, Richard started his murder spree. That day,
he assaulted a woman in her home and murdered her roommate.
That same night, he shot and killed another victim. A
little over a week later, he killed a sixty four
year old man and his forty four year old wife.
It was here that he developed his signature killing style,

(01:09:52):
shoot and kill the husband and then assault and stab
the wife to death. For months, Richard continued to murder
more and more. It's not like he even had a type.
He would kill whoever was unlucky enough to cross his path.
It didn't matter what your gender or your age was.
If you came into his sight, you were done for.

(01:10:13):
One of the most disturbing things about Richard's attacks was
the satanic element that he added. Richard would often carve
pentagrams into his victim's bodies, and in other times he
would force them to swear allegiance to Satan. But ultimately
it was Richard's own arrogance that would be his undoing.
After he was spotted near a person's home, he left

(01:10:34):
a footprint behind. He also left his car and license
plate in plain sight. When police tracked down the vehicle,
they were able to match fingerprints in the vehicle to
prints at his crime scenes. Soon police found monk shots
from Richard's previous arrests, and one of his surviving victim's
description matched these photos. Police released Richard's picture and name

(01:10:58):
to the press, and this is when Richard became aware
that he was a wanted man. He tried to run,
but he was tracked down by a vigilante mob who
beat the pulp out of him until the police arrived
and arrested him. Richard died in prison from complications from
lymphoma in twenty thirteen. After committing some of the most

(01:11:18):
brutal crimes that ever happened in California's history. Richard would
come back to where he was staying, the Cecil Hotel,
in the middle of the night. He would be seen
in the back alley behind the hotel covered in blood.
He would take off his bloodied clothing and shoes and
toss them into the hotel's dumpster. He would then walk
up to his room on the fourteenth floor in either

(01:11:40):
blood stained underwear or completely naked. Now you're likely all
thinking right now, he would do this and no one
would call the police. Well, you're correct. At this time,
the Cecil was well known for being the place where
criminals and serial killers could kick back and relax before
they did their next dark act. And that is exactly

(01:12:02):
what another serial killer did. This man's name was Jack Unterwegger.
Jack was born in Austria to a Vietnamese waitress and
barmaid and an American soldier who met his mother in Italy.
Jack's mother was well known to the law herself after
she was arrested. In nineteen fifty three, young Jack went

(01:12:22):
to live with his grandfather, who regularly used the young
boy to steal farm animals. Now hearing this, you all
shouldn't be surprised to hear that Jack was in and
out of prison for most of his youth for theft,
sex trafficking, and sexual assault. In nineteen seventy four, Jack
took it up a notch when he murdered an eighteen

(01:12:42):
year old woman by strangling her with her own bra.
He was sentenced to life in prison, and when there
it appeared that he was turning his life around. He
started to write short stories, plays, poems, and an autobiography
that was later used for a documentary on his life.
In nineteen teen eighty five, a campaign to pardon Jack started,

(01:13:03):
but the Austrian president refused to have him released until
Jack served the minimum of fifteen years for his crime.
Jack was released in May of nineteen ninety and soon
his autobiography was taught in schools. The children's stories that
he wrote were now being performed on radio. He started
to work for a local public broadcaster where he was

(01:13:26):
a crime reporter. Now ironically, it was later discovered that
he was reporting on the very same murders that he
committed himself. Investigators later discovered, to their horror that Jack
killed a young woman in Czechoslovakia and seven more women
in Austria in the first year after his release. They
were all strangled with their own bras. Then the following year,

(01:13:49):
he was hired by an Austrian magazine to write about
crime in Los Angeles. While there, Jack stayed at the
Cecil Hotel. He worked alongside local police and went on
ride alongs. But what they didn't know was Jack murdered
three sex workers during this time. The women were beaten,
sexually assaulted with foreign objects, and then strangled with their

(01:14:12):
own bras. Before Jack went to Los Angeles, he was
considered a suspect in the European murders. Police were keeping
under surveillance until he went to the United States, but
they didn't see anything to connect him to all the killings. Eventually,
with time, police did have enough evidence to make that connection.
They went to his home to arrest him, but Jack

(01:14:33):
and his girlfriend at the time fled before they arrived.
Police chased him through Switzerland, France, and the United States
until United States marshals arrested him in Miami, Florida, while
he protested his innocence. Jack was sent back to Austria
and charged with a total of eleven murders, which included
one in Prague and the three from Los Angeles. At trial,

(01:14:57):
the jury found him guilty of nine of the deaths,
and he was sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. That same night, which was June twenty ninth,
nineteen ninety four, Jack committed suicide by hanging himself with
a home made rope that he made using shoelaces and
accord from the waistband of a pair of pants. Ironically,

(01:15:19):
he used the same knots making his rope that he
used when he strangled his victims. Now, with all this
darkness and death, should anyone be surprised that the Cecil
Hotel is known as one of the most haunted places
in Los Angeles. People regularly report unexplainable activity, and one
of these is an individual named Pete Manezingo. Pete is

(01:15:42):
a content creator who moved into an apartment across the
street from the Cecil Hotel. In an interview by the
Insider on March ninth, twenty twenty two. Pete said that
he did not know much about the old hotel when
he moved into his new apartment, but he started to
notice a lot of strange things were happening, so he
started to do what a lot of people do. He

(01:16:04):
began recording YouTube videos and TikTok videos of what he saw.
At the time he started filming, the Cecil Hotel was
closed for business, even so, curtains would move and lights
would turn on and off seemingly by themselves. Balcony doors
would open and shut on their own. In addition to this,
Pete says in the article that he personally saw many

(01:16:26):
apparitions and shadows in the hotel's windows. Once, at two
a m. He saw a man smoking a cigar on
a balcony who was watching him. Pete ran from one
side of his apartment to the other to see if
this man was tracking him, and he was. At first,
Pete thought this had to be his imagination or maybe

(01:16:47):
a homeless person got into the hotel, but then he
started to think that maybe it was a spirit when
he saw something again. This time it was the silhouette
of a person hanging on a top floor. After years
of having strange occurrences, Pete started to try to gain
access to the old building. He finally succeeded when a

(01:17:08):
guard allowed him to go inside and get some footage.
The first thing that Pete noticed when he entered the
hotel was that he felt like he was being watched.
He also felt very strange on the upper levels of
the hotel, like there was just a very bad energy
in the location. Now that the old hotel is being
used for residential use, one can only imagine what the

(01:17:31):
people of the present can stir up from the past.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
Stick around after the credits for a brief word from
some of our fellow indie podcasters, creators, and friends. There
may even be some bloopers, outtakes, and bonus content as well.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Thanks for sticking around to the end. Be sure to
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Speaker 10 (01:17:59):
Join us on Facebook at Horrifying History, on Instagram at
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(01:18:21):
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Thank you all for listening, and done till next time you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Have been listening to Octoberpod. Octoberpod is produced, edited and
directed by Edward October. The series co producers are m
J McAdams and Amber Jordan. Logo and banner graphics by
Jessica Good Edward octobercareacter design by Nick Calavera. Select still
photography courtesy of unsplashed dot com. Select music cues by

(01:19:08):
doctor dream Chip and various other stock music and sound
effects courtesy of freesound dot org. Music from Bigfoot Apocalypse
and Thorax theme from Octoberpod composed by Nico Vittasi. All
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(01:19:31):
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or story submissions, email Octoberpod at gmail dot com. If

(01:19:53):
you enjoyed this program, we'd be very pleased if you
told your friends about us, and while you're added us
a five star or equivalent review. Wherever you were listening,
the man who spoke to you was mister Edward October.

Speaker 12 (01:20:14):
A Mini ka a LATINX horror movie podcast with Johnny
and Eileen.

Speaker 4 (01:20:26):
I Guess the Espel Podcast. We explore the often overlooked
world of LATINX horror films. Gata Sima. We watch and
discuss horror films from different countries in Latin America or
with a LATINX director or starring a LATINX lead.

Speaker 12 (01:20:41):
She is the Latin Eki's We're Watching.

Speaker 4 (01:20:43):
It Now's episodios every Monday.

Speaker 12 (01:20:46):
Listen to on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.

Speaker 11 (01:20:52):
Hello Twisted Humans. Do you find yourself wanting to know
more about the latest murder, conspiracy cult or then this
is the podcast for you. In nineteen fifty two, there
was a record high of UFOs reported fifteen hundred sightings.
There has been evidence of human sacrifice, double worship, and

(01:21:15):
it is haunted by more spirits than can be counted.
A family of two adults and two kids reportedly saw
a giant flying thing with glowing red eyes.

Speaker 10 (01:21:26):
And meanwhile, the family is nanny that helped Veronica to
care for her and Lucien's children was found bludgeoned to
death in the basement of.

Speaker 11 (01:21:33):
Their family home. I'm Alicia, and I'm Sierra and this
is twisted and uncorked, and Maddie.

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And I'm Amber and we're which is talking Taro and
we're bringing you all things in gold every Tuesday and Thursday,
twice a week for your magical pleasures.

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Join us as we dive into alien's cryptids dai super
in its natural.

Speaker 5 (01:22:01):
Because that's the kind of witches we are. So join
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spell and see why.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
Will be your favorites.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
It's intermission time, folks, I'm fucking birds. Shut the fuck up.
This is the SMR. A portion of the show podcast

(01:22:36):
host drinking diet pepsi from a plastic cup and crunching
on the ice cubes. This has been October. Pot a
SMR theater, oh heat pump and water running at the
same time. Drinking podcast hosts drinks pepsi from plastic cup

(01:23:08):
while playing passes overhead in the distance. What a s
MR Theater clip for the Good Times? Ident music, good touch.

Speaker 3 (01:23:33):
Oh shit, trying again, yeah case, try again.

Speaker 5 (01:24:45):
Like cheese from do You sends e yea thank you

(01:25:26):
says this play thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:25:56):
But never good that.

Speaker 5 (01:26:48):
Believe them, not you do. Like sad, it's a good

(01:27:41):
that belie

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