Summer Getaway Horror Stories

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Edward October. The sound you hear is the gentle
laughing waves of a picturesque lake in a North American
mountain town popular with tourists. This is the start of
October pod Our, Confidential Vacation Guide by Ernest Hemingway, published

(00:41):
in the May twenty first, nineteen twenty one edition of
the Toronto Star Weekly, Adapted especially for October pod by
John Iger, narrated by Edward October. Any steady reader of
obituaries is familiar with the phrase he had not taken

(01:04):
a vacation in twenty years. It may be that the
dead man had not taken a vacation in ten years,
in thirty years, during all the time he was mayor,
or during his entire lifetime, at all points towards the
same false moral. It seems obvious that if the poor
chap had only accepted the vacation his employers kept forcing

(01:25):
on him, he might be alive today. This is very wrong.
The trouble is that newspapers do not make a practice
of printing as a cause of death this statement he
spent every summer at Lake Milky toss Up or the
deceased was in the habit of spending the month of

(01:46):
August at Super nutsoe Land Theme park and Resort. A
few statements like these would clear up matters. Newspaper readers
would then realize that the reason the first man lived
twenty years was because he had carefully preserved his health
through abstaining from vacations. The reason that the other splendid

(02:07):
fellow had dropped like ripe and grapefruit at the end
of their thirty years mayoral terms or lifetimes was the
fact that they had never visited such places as Lake
Screaming Water or Picturesque bum View. Why just a few
seasons at Giggling Perch Inn or a long weekend at

(02:28):
ye Old Oak and Elvin Fair every July would have
cut them off like flies in the pride of their
young adulthood. If you must take a vacation park into October,
POD's confidential guide on places to avoid it has been
compiled at great labor and is available here for the
first time. It means a longer life happier too, if

(02:52):
one avoids vacationing at any of the following Poachdale Inn, Ontario.
How to reach Poachdale in this is not important. How
to get away from Poachdale in bounce in a hurtling
ford through five miles of mud. Wait at the railway

(03:13):
until the train comes. There is no train on Sunday.
Try not to be hysterical when the train comes in sight.
How about beautiful lake fly Blow. Beautiful Lake fly Blow
nestles like a plague spot in the heart of the
Great north Woods. All around it rise the majestic hills.

(03:36):
Above it towers the majestic sky. On every side of
it is the majestic shore. The shore is lined with
majestic dead fish. They died of loneliness. Take smiling lake
wah wah. You will sleep all afternoon, Then you will
lie awake all night. Then the Jarvis's rooster will crow again,

(03:57):
and it will be another day. You have thirty more
to go. Do you get back to the office? Will
you last it? Or will the vacation kill you still?
Others will avoid the natural splendor of our mountains, lakes
and national parks in favor of other summertime thrills and amusements.

(04:20):
And so they'll pack the wife, kids and half their
belongings into the family wagon and head off to some
technicolor mecca of bright flashing lights. Dark rides, daily parades,
roller coasters, and carnival games. Like any other vacation, a
trip to the amusement park has its own perils and horrors.

(04:48):
Here are a few testimonials we found online. The place
names and certain other details have been changed to avoid
upsetting any litigious cartoon, rodents, or waterfowl. Friend of the
show Autumn Groovy from the podcast Autumn's Oddities is also
on hand to help me narrate a few of them.

(05:13):
I'm a former theme park worker. I was working the
spook Walk, our walk through Haunted House attraction. At about
twenty minutes before closing, this really creepy guy showed up
and asked to go in, and I said yeah. He
had a really glazed look to his eyes, and he
was wearing a red and white striped shirt and overalls
and spoken a really high pitched falsetto well. Twenty minutes later,

(05:36):
he hadn't exited the Haunted House yet and it usually
took about five minutes to walk through it. At the
end of my shift, I had to go in and
walk through the Haunted House by myself, which already is
really scary for me, but made even scarier because I
knew the guy was still in there. I decided to
suck it up and I walked in, trying to be confident,
But only about a quarter of the way through, I

(05:59):
heard him talking to himself up ahead in a really
creepy voice, saying stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Like it's scary.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
No, it's not. I was freaked out and turned around
and ran out and got my manager and asked him
to walk through the haunted house for me. In that time,
the guy must have left, because because when me and
my manager walked through, he was gone, and I have
no idea how he managed to get out of there

(06:29):
without either of us seeing him.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Two the hypercritical one writes, well, at my park, we
had these duck themed paddle boats. The late night shifts
made this particularly scary. Anyways, I was working the ducks
and tied up all the boats and went to clock out,
but I forgot the ride register, so I went back

(06:55):
to get it, and when I got there, two of
the boats had out into the middle of the lake.
I figured it was just that I fucked up the knots,
so I had to get my manager so that he
could use the motor boat to go and get them.
But he just looked at me dead on and said
in a very serious tone, leave them alone. The next day,

(07:20):
those two boats were gone and replaced with a couple
of spares we had. Now these things were big, like
the same link as a Mini Cooper, and wider, much wider.
They were built to hold two adults if necessary, and
they were just gone. They weren't even kept in the
back with the other spares. They were just gone. When

(07:43):
I think back to it, I'm certain that I tied
them properly, because I had thought that if I didn't
and they drifted, that I'd get in trouble. I got
to talking about it to some of my coworkers one afternoon,
you know, while we were backstage waiting for a thunderstorm
to pass, and they said that it was probably the ghost. Apparently,

(08:05):
there's this old story about this kid who drowned in
the lake years ago, and his ghost goes around collecting
shit and piling it up on the bottom of the
lake near the location of his body, which, according to
the story.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
Was never recovered.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
The one girl, or this one girl I worked with,
said that she knew a guy who was working at
the park when a diver went down to the bottom
of the lake to do some kind of repair on
a fountain pump. He said, the diver found what looked
like a giant underwater shrine made up of all the
shit that disappeared in and around the lake. And I

(08:44):
bet that that's where those paddle boats ended up.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Ghost or no ghost, I kind of get it, says
Roku Dame Hookagi. The idea of something that big and mechanical,
especially if you have sub mechanophobia, just vanishing into the
water below is unerving. Oh and sub mechanophobia, by the way,
is the fear of submerged or partially submerged man made objects,

(09:12):
kind of like the bomb shark animatronic that jumps out
at you at Super Nutso Land. That thing has given
me nightmares since this one fourth of July, when I
was like six or seven.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Butterflyer writes, this happened back during my first season working
at a local amusement park in my hometown. During the
mid to late summer, we have a monsoon season where
almost every day, at around four PM, a very intense
thunderstorm rolls through town. Hail, lightning, thunder, tornado, sirens, the works.

(09:46):
The storm moves so fast that it only lasts about
twenty minutes before it moves.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
On. One day, the storm.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Had hit the park, and as per usual, we shut
down all the rides and helped the guests find shelter
from the hail and wait it out. During this time,
lightning had actually struck one of the rides, specifically the
Wave Swinger ride that spins around and with people in swings. Fortunately,

(10:13):
nobody was anywhere near the ride when the lightning struck. However,
the power surge had caused the ride to start up
on its own, and it was moving at a much
faster speed than it was originally designed to. All the
ride ops, including me for the surrounding rides, were taking
shelter with some guests at another ride. As we were

(10:36):
watching this ride suddenly start up and spin out of control,
thee's assigned operator was freaking out. You know, she had
the key in hand and everything, and suddenly we all
started hearing a lot of excited chatter over the radio
as supervisors and managers thought someone was on the ride.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Mind you, hail is falling the whole time.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Unfortunately I had to run out there, dodging hail and
lightning to hit the emergency stop button on the ride.
And shut it down. The ride ended up being shut
down for quite some time after that.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
According to root KRP, this next story happened at an
amusement park that we'll call Megamagic Land. While stalking out
one of the carts from inside an unused, empty location,
I had an unexplainable experience. The location I was in
used to be a pizzeria itzat a pizza near the Scrambler.

(11:40):
If you're familiar with the park, it's empty and void
of life and only gets used occasionally for maybe something
like training. The tables that were used for the restaurant
were stacked upside down on top of the tables. The
tables were heavy with concrete tabletops that would take two

(12:00):
guys to move, and upon entering the location and beginning
my inventory, I felt uneasy and just chalked it up
to being tired and creeped out because it was late.
To get to the stock room, you have to pass
by the dining area with the tables, and I did
so without incident. After counting our overpriced ice creams, I
turned around to head out the way I came and

(12:22):
locked up. What met me as I turned around the
dark corner freaked me out right there blocking my exit,
where three tables sitting right side up and lined up,
obstructing my path. I called out if anyone was there,
and was met with silence. I simply turned around and

(12:43):
ran to the back entrance and left the building from there. Afterwards,
I explained to a co worker how I was alone
up there and heard absolutely no one, and how the
heavy as hell tables got moved and flipped so swiftly
and silently. I was then later told years ago a
little boy with a heart condition ran all the way

(13:05):
up the hill, racing his friends, and essentially dropped dead
right in front of that restaurant, probably ten feet from
where my incident had occurred. I hate closing at night now.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
One Way Man is supposedly a ghost that sits next
to single riders on Galactic Pony Express, which is an
indoor dark ride roller coaster in super Nutsoe Land, And
this is according to Untimely Lord. He will seem like
a regular single rider that sits next to you, may

(13:43):
even have talked with you in line, but at the
end of the ride, after the photo flash, there will
be no one sitting next to you.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
I've been on that ride with him, before, says Snooz
sixty one, nine thirteen, as a child, maybe twelve years old.
He talked to you. He looked clean cut, red hair,
looked similar to the main guy in Band of Brothers,
and looked like a guy from the sixties. I was
at Nutso Land by myself. This was in two thousand

(14:14):
and two. My sister had a cheerleading competition that I
didn't want to go to, so my dad got me
a three day Nutso ticket. I actually talked to One
Way Man. I told him I was by myself and
it's hard to get around the park when you forgot
your glasses. I don't remember what else we talked about.
I just remember him being very nice. Going through that

(14:37):
part where they take the ride picture, I looked over
and screamed at him, this is fun, right. I looked
next to me and he was gone. We hadn't even
gotten off the ride yet. I didn't think that he
might be a ghost until someone told me the story
of One Way Man.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Star door Dash writes, I've heard of that ghost, but
the way I heard it, he was called the Faceless Mechanic.
When they were first premiering Galactic Pony Express. You know,
back when the ride was still called Space Patrol Star Racers,
there was a maintenance worker working on the tracks.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
A cast member came.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
In and, not knowing there was a maintenance worker on
the tracks, started a test run of the ride. Space
Patrol Star Racers and Galactic Pony Express still has tracks
that have no maintenance tunnels or alcoves on the side
of the tracks. In other words, if you get caught

(15:35):
on those tracks, and there are about a mile of tracks,
you have nowhere to go to avoid the ride vehicle.
By the time the coaster got back to the station,
it had dragged the maintenance worker through the entire ride
face down, killing him. They say that as ghost haunts

(15:56):
the Galactic Pony Express to this day. As the Faceless Mechanic.
Cast members say they see a guy in an old
mechanics uniform walking through the attraction, but when they try
to see his face, it's just a shadow. Frightened guests
have ridden this traction as a single writer and said

(16:16):
during the ride, a faceless nutso Land cast member in
an old uniform appeared beside them, disappearing only when they
got back to the main terminal. The Faceless Mechanic is
the scariest of the nutso park ghost stories, and there
are a bunch of them out there.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Husker one Rob says, I worked security at Good Times
Carolina Adventure Park. The thing that sticks out the most
to me was around thirteen years ago, on the fourth
of July, I went with a group of other security
officers to help out at Wizard's Bay Water Park since
they had more guests than usual show up. Come to
find out, the increased attendance was because of a radio

(17:06):
station radio station that was banned from the park, that
had announced that this rockabilly band, the Bat Dragons and
their crew were going to be at Wizard's Bay that day,
and the station was awarding tickets tickets that they didn't
have by the way, to listeners. Now, if you don't
know about them, the Bat Dragons have a devoted fan

(17:28):
base of these punk ass hooligans. They're kind of like Juggalos,
I guess, and these guys are a clown show, so
they make a lot of enemies, especially among street gangs.
So what ends up happening is that a bunch of
these hooligans show up so they can hang out with
the band, but also a bunch of street gangs who
are beefing with the band Hooligans decide to show up

(17:51):
as well, So the place to hang out is the wavepool.
Every forty five minutes, there's a fifteen minute safety break
where everyone has to leave the water, and when this happens,
most people just get in the lazy river that flows
around the wavefool. Well, during one of these safety breaks,
all of a sudden, I start hearing people simultaneously yelling

(18:12):
and then see all kinds of people running. Next thing
I know, there's a gang fight in the lazy river. Well,
one of the first things we're taught is to never
get in the middle of a group fight, because they
will stop fighting each other and start fighting you. Well,
a Wizard's Bay security officer decides to ignore all that

(18:33):
and jumps in and gets his butt kicked. I think
he actually got yelled at more for getting his radio
wet and for getting beaten up. There were a few
more fights after that, so the park called the police
to send in more officers to help. Turns out, there
was this one creepy dude in bat dragon makeup going
around stabbing people. Don't know how he got a knife

(18:56):
into the park. We ended up having the local SWAT
team out there helping out every safety break after that
had us in high alert for people fighting. People were
floating in the Lazy River during the safety breaks, just
looking at us and bragging about all the trouble that
was going on and the fact that the SWAT team
was there because they were so brutal. I've not been

(19:17):
to any amusement park since I quit because of stuff
like that. I do not plan on going back anytime soon.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Taco Cat zero four two says that Humburger Park is
supposedly haunted by I think three spirits or something.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
I have only seen one of the things.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
A worker who wanted to start his own amusement park
died of cancer and couldn't accomplish his dream sadly, but
he worked at a ride called.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
The Wild Banshee.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
And when I worked there one day the ride legit
started up on its own and just went on through.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
It was super freaky and apparently it that a lot.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
I only saw it once, though, mind you, it's really
not possible to do without someone there to actually turn
it on.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
So yeah, I heard that the ghost of Marlow Laughler,
the founder of the Humburger's restaurant chain, and of Humburger
Park tends to appear a lot of places, like the
Grand Humburger Hotel. I used to bartend up at the hotel,
and a common story was that Marlow would show up

(20:30):
at the Bingo Lounge, which used to be a cigar
lounge but is now a bar, and have a nice smoke.
On some nights, you can still smell the cigars. There's
another ride called the Fugue Fry's Adventure, so apparently there's
a hockey player that haunts that ride, although I never
saw it, but security guards swear that every now and

(20:51):
then on security footage they can see a figure. People
claim that the ride starts on its own as well.
Some have said they heard a man's voice.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
Thorax Kick's ass used to work at a janky old
amusement park in Pigeonforge, Tennessee. We liked to hang out
in the parking lot after work and all talk the
place was haunted, as we all wanted. We watched many
a ride startup with no one around and then suddenly
shut off. We watched the bear Cat coaster turn on

(21:25):
suddenly and climb the hill halfway from our spot. We
could see the ride operations booth was empty, and it
was way after hours, and no one but us in
the park security was there. I also believed there were
transients living in the park that would come out at night.
It was the best job I ever had, but it
was still spooky.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
In twenty seventeen, at Fort ketsel Quaddle Hotel in Super
Nutsa World, my wife and I heard what sounded like
a horse drawn carriage parade seemed to have gone on
for quite some time. Around nine thirty pm, I contacted
the front desk to ask when it would be over
because we were tired and wanted to sleep. They were

(22:10):
confused there was no parade or celebration. Just then my
wife and I realized the clamor had ended. It was
super strange. Still have no idea what it was all about.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
The only ghostly thing that has happened to me at
any of the Nutsoe parks is the little boy that
haunts Little Wonder World. Cast members and guests say they've
seen a little boy riding solo on the ride and
has even been seen on security cameras. The little boy
likes to turn off the lights and even bring the

(22:45):
attraction to a stop. I remember when I was a
cast member once dealing with the attraction when the ride
came to a sudden halt. We couldn't find or figure
out why it had happened, and having to help guests
off the boats and exit the attraction.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
I just kept thinking it was that poor little.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Boy ex ride operator from Monogram's studio park Here. There's
a couple stories depending on the area of the park,
but Camp Critter Creek is haunted by a little girl
named Mollie who died in a fire. She would turn
on and off the rides even though the keys were
moved unlike the doors of one of the rides, and

(23:26):
on one occasion, I was walking away from the kids
coaster and saw a little girl running towards it at
closing time. I yelled for her, telling her it was closed,
but she ran up the stairs and I saw her
enter the main dock as well. You can get in
trouble for that, But as I got closer, I realized

(23:47):
there's no little girl. Anyone can say what they want,
but Molly is present. She mostly likes to hang out
by the ferris wheel and in the waterfall area, in
the rock formations in and around after closing a ride,
I'd say good night to Molly until I'm turning off
the lights and the ride to make sure she doesn't

(24:07):
turn them back on.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
I can't.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Dexter Grant writes this story made the rounds with the
interns in the college program at Nutsoe Country, USA, way
back in the early eighties. I can't tell if it
had any basis in fact or not. The story goes
that one night on the t Rex Mind Train, which
is a cross between a dark ride and a train

(24:34):
that does a slow circuit around all the attractions in
Prehistoric Village, a teenager tried.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
To climb from car to car.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
He slipped and fell and was dragged under the car
behind him. As he was pulled under, he grabbed his
girlfriend's long hair. As you went through the tunnel, girls
with long hair would feel their hair being pulled by
his frantic ghost.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
I felt it myself finally.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Jane Bananas says, I just met a cast member last
night who worked backstage security for seven years, mostly in
the evenings and through the night a Good Times Adventure Park.
She heard this incident over the radio. A custodial member
called over the radio asking for security because he heard
a small boy, maybe around five years old, yelling daddy, Daddy.

(25:28):
They never found a child. Sometime later, not sure if
it was the same day or some time had passed,
the cast member I spoke to said she was in
a parking structure and heard a little boy yelling daddy, Daddy.
She heard someone else call it over the radio, and
then a security team was driving up and down the

(25:50):
parking structure looking for a child, but they never found anything. Oh,
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

(26:14):
are seeking to influence you through the ads placed on
this podcast. Hi, I'm your host Edward October, reminding you
that we have very limited control over 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

(26:38):
the makers of October Pod repudiate any entity advertised which
seeks to promote hatred, anti American, or anti democratic sentiments,
or the spread of misinformation. Now, with that in mind,
October pod will return after this brief ad break.

Speaker 6 (27:00):
Welcome to beautiful Zombie Island.

Speaker 7 (27:06):
In the Zombie Island Massacres.

Speaker 6 (27:08):
You'll witness ancient voodoo ceremonies, and if you're very lucky
and for no extra charge, you might even get to
participate in these picture as rituals sampover world famous Zombie Island.

Speaker 7 (27:22):
Cuisine cattle polisers. You won't believe your senses when you.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Find it's intermission time, folks. I'm your host, mister Edward October.
That was the radio spot for Zombie Island Massacre. I
love how it subverts expectations by presenting the titular island
as a desirable tourist destination. With school out for the summer,
people all over the world will be flocking to tourist

(27:49):
destinations far and wide in search of fun in the sun.
If you're looking for your next place to vacation, you
might want to consult Horror Cinema for some ideas on
which places to avoid. Now, I'm sure you know to
stay away from Jurassic Park, Camp, Crystal Lake, sketchy Eastern
European youth hostels, or the shark infested waters of Amity Island.

(28:14):
But you'd be surprised how many other horror pictures begin
with clueless vacationers or exhausted city folk who are looking
to get away from it all. So for those of
you who have not yet planned your summer getaway, here's
my rundown of some of the worst tourist destinations and
vacation ideas from horror cinema. Transylvania. It should go without

(28:47):
saying that you should want to stay the hell out
of Transylvania. And if you do go, it's best to
stay away from the castle, any castle, and where this crucifix,
for your mother's sake. And yet there are countless spook
pictures where this sort of thing is continually happening, vacationers

(29:09):
stumbling on to Dracula's castle or Doctor Frankenstein's chateau on
their way to some place exotic. The folks at Britain's
Hammer Films were fond of doing this. And Kiss of
the Vampire, for example, a pair of honeymooners experience car
trouble in their late nineteenth early twentieth century Jalapi and

(29:30):
are forced to stay just outside the Vampire's castle until
it can be repaired. The best instance of this, though,
can be found in Hammer's third Dracula picture, though it's
only this second one to feature Christopher Lee's Dracula himself.
It is Dracula Prince of Darkness. Here a group of

(29:50):
English travelers bump into the gregarious vampire hunting monk, Father Sandor.

Speaker 8 (29:56):
And what may I ask you for Charmmy English people
doing in the cove of.

Speaker 9 (29:59):
Thean, some climbing, some sight seeing, travel broadened as the mine.

Speaker 8 (30:04):
Admirable, But I question your choice of locale. You certainly
won't have your mind broadened by this loot. You want
seem to have a very high opinion of your flock,
not mine. Oh, dear me, No, I wouldn't tolerate them.

Speaker 7 (30:17):
I wouldn't tolerate them.

Speaker 8 (30:20):
You will find things very different to Climberg. I hope
that you will visit us there. You could stay at
the monastery. The brothers would make you very welcome. Well,
thank you, father.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
That sounds like a fine idea.

Speaker 10 (30:30):
Our program weren't to laugh for it. Tomorrow we go
to Carlsbad. Oh, I suppose we could change our plans.

Speaker 8 (30:37):
I suggest that you do so. I don't care whether
you visit Kleimberg or not. I'm just saying you shouldn't
go to Carlsbad. I've heard it's very beautiful. So is
that dropa bella dunna dead the natch. We're all quite experienced.
Climber's father. Climbing has got nothing to do with it.
And when I tell you not to go to Carlosbad,
I want you to take note at least stay well

(30:57):
clear of the castle. Castle. But there's no castle marked
on the map.

Speaker 11 (31:02):
I would have noticed.

Speaker 8 (31:03):
Because it is not in the map doesn't mean it
does not exist. Stay away from it.

Speaker 7 (31:09):
Ladies.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Of course, they ignore the warning, end up staying the
night in Castle Dracula, and then, faster than you can say,
Bob's your uncle, another bloodsucking valley who complete with Barbara
Shelley's heaving, Bosom begins. So if your vacation takes you
to Transylvania, steer clear of the castle, whether it's on
the map or not, old dark houses.

Speaker 12 (31:47):
Yeah, I'm sorry, who are you?

Speaker 9 (31:54):
Who are you?

Speaker 4 (31:56):
This is for seven six BARBERI right.

Speaker 13 (31:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
You don't know.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
No, I don't live here.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm renting this place.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's the middle of the night.

Speaker 8 (32:07):
I don't have it top of my head, the address.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
No, I'm running this place.

Speaker 14 (32:11):
What are you sure you have the right place?

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (32:14):
I booked it like a month ago.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
That's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
What are we supposed to do?

Speaker 7 (32:20):
I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Why don't you come inside?

Speaker 2 (32:25):
And we'll call these idiots?

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Old dark houses and haunted houses. There are plenty of
pictures about the too cheap to be true vacation rental
it turns out to be haunted by ghosts or, as
is the case in Barbarian, by monstrous people. There must
be dozens of horror pictures about writers, musicians, artists, and

(32:49):
mental patients who spend a season at a creepy old
house to get away from it all and are shocked,
shocked to find spooky ass shit going down and said,
spooky ass house. What gets me more are the films,
And there are enough examples of this that it's a
trope where people vacation in an old house and spend

(33:12):
the whole summer fixing it up and maintaining the grounds.
Who the fuck does this? How is that a vacation?
In Burnt Offerings, an author played by Oliver Reed is
the type of person who does this very thing Tuesday Night.

Speaker 15 (33:30):
It was going to be the summer of their lives,
and the house are their dreams.

Speaker 7 (33:34):
It was almost too diffilly to be true.

Speaker 8 (33:37):
Lock your doors where he continues with burnt offerings Angle
frid Eastern on TVs Tuesday Night.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
He does odd jobs around the house, trims the bushes
and skims scum off the pool. Is this how he
likes to vacation. Is this just a plot device that
enables him to uncover clues about the haunting? Or is
this yet another illustration of the extreme lengths that writers
will go to avoid writing. Either way, if your airbnb

(34:09):
seems too good to be true or comes with some
weird strings attached, like feeding the old lady living upstairs,
you might want to vacation elsewhere. Hiking Did you hear that?

Speaker 12 (34:30):
I heard that?

Speaker 7 (34:31):
What was it? It could be a lot of things. Yeah,
a coyote.

Speaker 5 (34:38):
There aren't any coyotes in England.

Speaker 7 (34:40):
It's a full moon.

Speaker 11 (34:42):
We wear the.

Speaker 5 (34:43):
Moon and stick to the road. Oops, we're lost. Oh shit, David,
what is that?

Speaker 9 (35:00):
I don't know?

Speaker 5 (35:01):
Come on, come on where anywhere? I think we should
just keep.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Moving I know what you're thinking. What's the worst that
can happen? Quite a bit? Actually, suppose you want to
spend the summer backpacking across the moors of England with
your best pal. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Until a werewolf

(35:28):
comes along and rips your bff to ribbons. That's what
happens in an American werewolf in London. What about a
girl's weekend hiking in the mountains of Tennessee. Maybe you'll
find a new cave system to explore.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
According to the guide with this cave system has three
ways in and out.

Speaker 11 (35:45):
This is just one of them. Isn't that right?

Speaker 8 (35:48):
You know?

Speaker 11 (35:49):
Do you know that's right?

Speaker 14 (35:50):
Isn't it?

Speaker 11 (35:51):
We checked the book, I didn't bring it.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
What no point?

Speaker 12 (35:57):
For Christ's sake, Judo, I knew it.

Speaker 14 (36:01):
I knew it wasn't right.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
You thought a flight plan to mountain rescue if we
don't report, and they'll come looking for us.

Speaker 11 (36:07):
Now that's how it's supposed to work, except.

Speaker 10 (36:09):
I put in a flight plan for Borm Caverns.

Speaker 12 (36:12):
And this isn't Boram caverns, is it, Juno, We're in
the own Holly was right. Born Caverns was a tourist trap.

Speaker 14 (36:19):
I don't try and pin this fucking shot on me.

Speaker 12 (36:21):
This is not gaving.

Speaker 14 (36:22):
This is an ego trip.

Speaker 12 (36:24):
Come on, Rebecca, I didn't know this was gonna happen.
Where are we? It hasn't got a name. It's a
new system. I wanted us all to discover it.

Speaker 11 (36:35):
Now, how the hell are we supposed to get out?

Speaker 12 (36:37):
There may not be your way out. Look, there's no
going back now. We have to find a way out
of this chamber and keep pushing forward.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Just gonna sound that.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Watch the descent and see how a getaway adventure with
the girls might work out. But that's how the girl's
trip went. Let's examine the Ritual to see how the
bros Are faring on their hiking trip. The Ritual is
one of my favorite horror novels written in the last

(37:11):
few years. It begins with one of my favorite horror
novel opening paragraphs, and on the second day, things did
not get better. The rain fell hard and cold, the
white sun never broke through the low gray cloud, and
they were lost. But it was the dead thing they
found hanging from a tree that changed the trip beyond recognition.

Speaker 8 (37:38):
Why is it written open?

Speaker 7 (37:39):
It's been gutted.

Speaker 8 (37:43):
Why hang it like that?

Speaker 4 (37:45):
I mean, would someone do that?

Speaker 2 (37:47):
But I didn't put itself asked for sure?

Speaker 12 (37:49):
God be hunters out here a night possibly, or it's
the bit they don't show you in the Nature documentary.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
What could do that?

Speaker 7 (37:57):
Though the bears do that?

Speaker 2 (37:59):
I don't know, Dominic I not a bar expert.

Speaker 5 (38:06):
Still bleeding, so so it means that whatever did that,
we should go as the first kill.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, I wish you got.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah. That pretty much sums up what you can expect
hiking in a horror film. The novel was adapted by
Netflix in twenty seventeen, and while it deviates from the
book in ways I don't like, it still succeeds at
being a cracking folk horror film featuring one of the
most offbeat creature designs of the last twenty five years,

(38:43):
and serves as yet another stern warning to stay the
fuck at home Australia. I think I'd take my chances
with the vampires and wear wolves in Transylvania and on
the English moors before I'd ever considered vacationing in Australia.

(39:05):
I mean, even in non horror pictures, Australia is terrifying
and if the action films are to be believed. There
are new wave punk rock motorcycle gangs roving the countryside
at all times with their mohawks, spiky leather gimp clothes
and heavy metal music. But when you're not in danger

(39:26):
from the real Australian wildlife where the post apocalyptic road warriors,
you're likely to be lured to your doom by Australia's
haunted landscape.

Speaker 10 (39:42):
Well, young ladies, we are indeed fortunate in the weather
for our picnic to hang in rock. Once again, let
me remind you the rock itself is extremely dangerous. You
are therefore forbidden any tomboy foolishness in a matter of exploration,
even on the lower slopes. I also wish to remind
you the Vicinity is renowned for its venomous snakes, the

(40:02):
poisonous acts of various species. It is, however, a geological mob.
Try to behave yourselves in a manner to bring credit
to the college. Stop to twelve never stopped before, must
be something magnetic.

Speaker 11 (40:23):
Everything.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
And at exactly the right time.

Speaker 11 (40:31):
You must learn to love someone else apart from me.
I won't be here much longer.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Victorian schoolgirls on a field trip disappear without a trace
in the haunting and enigmatic film Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Was this disappearance the result of murder, foul play, psycho
sexual hysteria, ghosts, or some unknowable Eldrich horror? Can you decide? Indeed,

(41:09):
if you find yourself in a horror picture and you're
going to Australia, you'd better not be a teenage girl
on a school trip. If you don't believe me, watch
Lake Mungo to find out. It's the story of a
family's haunting that begins when a teenage girl goes on
a field trip to you guessed it, Lake Mungo and

(41:30):
returns changed.

Speaker 13 (41:34):
Something bad is going to happen to me. I feel
like something bad has happened. It hasn't reached me yet,
but it's on its way and it's getting closer, and
I don't feel ready. I feel like I can't do anything.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
I won't spoil the rest of this hontological Fau documentary,
but it's a picture that's eerie, poignant, and tragic in
equal measure, and one which tackles big questions about death, family,
and identity. The rural United States, Transylvania Australia, the English Moors,

(42:35):
and haunted houses out in the middle of nowhere are
all among the worst vacations in the history of horror cinema.
But do you know what films as diverse as The Descent,
Burnt Offerings, and Barbarian all have in common. They're all
set in the USA. Motherfucker. That's right, from California to

(43:03):
the New York Island. This land was made for moves
and screens, and for my money, there's no better place
to have the worst horror movie vacation of your life
than in the rural United States.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Would you fill it up? Please?

Speaker 15 (43:21):
I got no gas. You're at a gas My tank's empty.
Transport won't be here until late this afternoon, maybe not
even until tomorrow morning.

Speaker 4 (43:34):
Hey, you know where the Old Franklin Place is?

Speaker 15 (43:38):
The Old Franklin Place. Yeah, it's an old two story
rock house and sitting up on a hill.

Speaker 4 (43:43):
I think you have to turn on that.

Speaker 7 (43:44):
Road back there, but I'm not really sure.

Speaker 15 (43:46):
Yeah, now, maybe I seen something like that up that
way when I look you, you boys don't want to
go mess around old house. Those things is dangerous. You're
able to get hurt.

Speaker 12 (43:59):
We'll be careful.

Speaker 15 (44:00):
You don't want to go fooling around other folks property,
or some folks don't like it. They don't mind is
showing you.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
In the Texas Chainsaw Massacre note the spelling chainsaws two words.
A bunch of meddling kids in a van on a
road trip through the less traveled back roads of the
Lone Star State find themselves terrorized and mutilated by cannibalistic
freaks who represent a cracked mirror image of the All

(44:28):
American family and the American Dream. Take The Hills Have Eyes,
in which an all American, white Anglo Saxon Protestant family
loads up in the old wood paneled station wagon to
take a road trip through the desert and get themselves assaulted, murdered,
and or brutalized by cannibalistic freaks who represent another cracked

(44:50):
mirror image of the All American family, betrayed and abandoned
by the American Dream.

Speaker 9 (44:56):
They wanted to see something different, but something different saw
them first.

Speaker 7 (45:01):
The Hills have Eyes. Mister, don't take your family back
in that area.

Speaker 5 (45:07):
The silver has been gone for forty years now.

Speaker 7 (45:11):
I do nothing back in there but animal a lot.

Speaker 12 (45:16):
You'll creep tognet to get off the road.

Speaker 7 (45:19):
What began as a vacation ended as a nightmare.

Speaker 9 (45:23):
He now she thought she knew what the world was
all about, but nothing prepared her for this.

Speaker 7 (45:31):
The Hills have Eyes. Oh yeah, away.

Speaker 9 (45:39):
A mother fighting for her child loses it in the
worst possible way. I hid it with a tire, and
I spent it wide open, And weren't a bad.

Speaker 7 (45:50):
Mistake to come bent for you later.

Speaker 9 (45:54):
The story of an American family who lost everything except
the will to survive.

Speaker 7 (46:00):
The Hills have Eyes, the.

Speaker 9 (46:02):
Story of one family's refusal to die.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I'm gonna get those animals.

Speaker 7 (46:07):
They fought back.

Speaker 9 (46:08):
Anything was a weapon, a family dog to the family car.

Speaker 7 (46:17):
The Hills have Eyes. The lucky ones died first.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Why you can't even take a relaxing canoe trip with
the bros as they do in Deliverance without having to
commit murder defending yourself against violent, inbred hill people.

Speaker 8 (46:36):
You take this man down out of the mountains and
turn him over the sheriff.

Speaker 15 (46:38):
There's gonna be a trial.

Speaker 8 (46:39):
All right, trial by jury.

Speaker 7 (46:43):
So what we kill?

Speaker 14 (46:45):
The man?

Speaker 8 (46:45):
Drew shot him in the back. The mountain man Cracker
gives us something to consider.

Speaker 7 (46:52):
All right, consider we're listening.

Speaker 8 (46:54):
Shit, all these people are related. But goddamned if I
want to come back up here and stand trial, this
man's aunt and his uncle, maybe his mom and his
daddy is sitting in a jury box.

Speaker 7 (47:04):
What do you think, Bobby.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
I don't know what you got in mind, but if
you try to.

Speaker 12 (47:08):
Conceive his body, you're setting yourself up for a murder charge.

Speaker 7 (47:11):
Now that much lie.

Speaker 8 (47:12):
I do know.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
You killed somebody.

Speaker 15 (47:18):
There he is, I see.

Speaker 8 (47:20):
Him, Drew.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
That's right, I kill somebody.

Speaker 7 (47:23):
Damn.

Speaker 8 (47:23):
We can get out of this thing without any questions asked.

Speaker 9 (47:27):
We get connected up with that body and the law.

Speaker 8 (47:31):
This ain't gonna be hanging or rust the rest of
our lives.

Speaker 16 (47:34):
We gotta get rid of that guy.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
It's just how are you gonna do that? Lewis?

Speaker 14 (47:40):
Where anywhere.

Speaker 7 (47:43):
Now?

Speaker 1 (47:44):
You may find these depictions of Americans living in remote, undeveloped,
often impoverished areas of the country to be reactionary, and
you'd be right. Many rural folk are honest, hard working
people who'd never resort to cannibalism, for example. But behind
every cannibalistic mutant hillbilly, I bet you there's a government

(48:07):
policy that failed them. The Texas Chainsaws Sawyer family, for example,
are a grotesque symptom of the fallout from the Vietnam
War and the corporatization of the beef industry. And speaking
as someone who was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains,
if you ain't never been to the holler, you won't

(48:27):
understand the holler. So you'd best get the fuck on
out of the holler. Now let me learn you about
something else. Whoa golly, I didn't realize the snack bars
closing up already? You know what that means. Act two
of October pod starts now. Summer is also the time

(48:54):
when millions dress up as wildly fanciful characters and flock
out to some sun base field in the middle of
nowhere to join in the frivolity and bacchanalia of the
Renaissance fair. Here's a cautionary tale of one such fair goer.

(49:23):
Gather round friends, whether tall or we hear the tale
of a man who would be the greatest sorcerer to
cast a spell, and of the dark fate which on
his head fell out of the wood. He did appear
from a suburb not nigh from here. His dress was royal,

(49:44):
and heavy was his purse. Little did he know that
he'd already been cursed from another world. He came, but
in our village he seemed unsane. His pantomime of dark magic.
To us, it seemed was the work of some damnable fiend.

(50:06):
His arms flailed holding a totem. He called a phone.
His eyes were wide and his mouth foamed. We feared
he'd cast us into an abyss of blackness. So we
seized him and unmasked him, to his great sadness, brought
him to the deputy, who heard the sorcerer lie and plea.

(50:31):
I parked my car, said the man in Lot seven. A.
Then I must have traveled to the past from present day.
His leg began to glow, twas his phone totem again.
Then we heard a ghostly voice call out from within

(50:51):
Ron where you at, bro This beer winch has weed,
and you gotta see these picks on her instagram feed.
Our law and matters of sorcery are clear, and besides,
we'll tolerate no outlanders here. The magistrate condemned him to
immediate death, fire with cleanse and draw out his last breath.

(51:19):
He shouted and swore, I'll never cosplay anymore. The Renaissance
fares always unruly. I should have stayed home and just
watched Spingoli as the flames licked up, he lamented his
dark ways. I should have stayed in bed and slept
in all day. Sorcerers may possess totems and mystical twigs,

(51:46):
but they roast up just as sweet as ripe suckling pigs.
That was the Ballad of Ron Sorcerer from Beyond, written

(52:07):
by Amber Jordan, who, as it so happens, is here
with us today.

Speaker 9 (52:12):
Hia Ed.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I think it's safe to assume that you have quite
a bit of experience working and attending Renaissance fairs.

Speaker 12 (52:21):
So one thing that I've noticed about the ren life
is that it's like this huge family vibe. I barely
knew anyone, and yet I knew a lot more people
than I was expecting to know. It's like not the
real world, because people are nice to each other. But seriously,
it was at times like traveling into the past, because

(52:43):
some people really get into that spirit and that life
of the ren fherrology. I don't know if that's a word,
but I like it. But you know, there's a lot
of laughter at the ren Fair and a lot of fighting,
a lot of good spirited fighting, hopefully not a whole
lot of not good spirited fighting. It's so much fun.

(53:03):
Everybody walks around all sasheting and have swords on their
hips and really cool eye pieces and really cool jewelry
and just like really live in that life. And you know,
probably not going home and making jam, but some of
them are. Some of them really were living that old
timey life, and that, to me is the coolest thing
about it. Is like the idea of trying to take

(53:26):
it back several steps and live life in an old way.
That's the kind of life that Renfair brings, and I
think that's good for the world.

Speaker 7 (53:33):
I really do well.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Like all the summertime amusements we've spotlighted in this episode,
ren Fairs are not without their horror stories. We've gathered
a few of them from the darkest corners of the Internet.
Some we've had to modify or mash up to protect
anonymity and other sensitive information. But who better to narrate

(53:56):
them than the classiest which we know.

Speaker 12 (53:59):
Oh oh, I'd love to let's dive right in. A
deleted user posted this, A guy I knew, fell onto

(54:19):
the blacksmith's fire and basically melted his arm because an
owl the falconer couldn't control swooped at his hair and
tried to rip it off. Then maybe Heart of Gold replied,
A very similar incident happened at an Arizona Reunfair guy

(54:40):
fainted from the outdoor temperature plus lack of good air,
said he woke up just in time to see his
hand grow skinny and fingers curl away. He's stable now,
but he's already lost his entire forearm and might lose
more if they can't stay ahead of the damage to

(55:04):
his humorous rural renfair farmhouse. Madness from a true haunting
incident by high on the mountaintop. Every time I think
about this encounter, it still breaks my brain and gives
me chills. I'm convinced I'm not misremembering childhood events, and

(55:29):
after all these years, it's still unexplainable. When I was
seven or eight years old, my best friend April and
I spent all of our free time playing together on
her family's farm in the middle of nowhere. There was
a barn with an upstairs loft where we'd spend hours
and hours playing make believe and creating stories about our

(55:53):
fantasy kingdom that would be played out for weeks on end.
This loft was mostly just story for boxes and spare
furniture and other old junk. There was a small wooden
chair in the corner of the loft. One day, April
and I are playing in the barn. We were both
sitting in the front part of the loft with our

(56:14):
legs dangling over the edge of the wooden loft, which
was about ten feet off the ground. Our backs were
turned to that old chair. At some point we noticed
some movement over our shoulders. We turned and saw a
little girl about our age, with large, thick square glasses

(56:37):
and dressed in a very neat little dress like an
old timy little house on the prairie dress. But aside
from the thick glasses and the antique style of dress,
she looked exactly like me. She was just sitting in
the chair looking at us. I was totally creeped out

(56:58):
and asked April, who is that girl in the chair.
April immediately panics and jumps up so quickly that she
almost falls out of the loft.

Speaker 4 (57:10):
Well.

Speaker 12 (57:10):
This caused me to panic as well, and we both
bolted out of the loft and hauled ass out of
the barn. We were so young that we couldn't even
comprehend what had just happened. We just accepted it and
moved on. Didn't ever tell any adults about it. As
I recall, however, we never went back in that barn.

(57:34):
We had to convince ourselves that it was just a
trick of the mind in order to sleep at night.
Fast forward to my freshman year of college. April's family
had sold their farm around the time we'd graduated high school,
and now the new owners leased the land to the
local renfair, and we thought it'd be a kick to

(57:55):
get dressed up and check it out. April went as
a fairy and I went as my D and D character,
who is a dragonborn sorceress. This particular fare was primarily
made up of tents with some wood plank stages here
and there, but they kept the old barn standing and
used it as the location for a little petting zoo area.

(58:18):
Not surprisingly, me and April stayed clear of that place.
It was like an unspoken agreement between the two of
us that we were still afraid we might see a
creepy little house on the prairie girl who looked like me.
We had a fun time. This is an annual runfare,
and it's done very well for its size. But the
whole time I was there, I felt like I was

(58:39):
being watched or followed, but I managed to shake it off.
But we did go to get some cone bread which
was in a tent diagonally across from the petting zoo thing.
As I was picking up our cone breads and a
couple of beers, I happened to glance in the direction
of the barn. I saw a dark figure standing there,
with goats and sheep walking off all around her as

(59:01):
if they didn't see her. She was wearing a costume
that was exactly like mine, not just similar, but an
exact copy. And I'd made this costume by hand, with
some very specific details related to my character added to it,

(59:21):
and with the exception of a pair of thick square glasses.
She looked just like me. I dropped our food and
made a sort of frightened noise. April heard me, and
when she looked at me, I pointed. April stood up
and said, I see her. April had had a beer
and some mead, so I think she was buzzed and

(59:42):
full of liquid courage. She started marching over to the woman,
who I guess was the little girl in the barn,
except she'd aged as many years as me, and April
marched in her direction as if to say, what the fall?
A large group of people passed between April and the

(01:00:02):
bedding zoo barn, and after those people had passed, my
doppelganger was gone. April and I both still vividly remember
the image of the girl in the chair, and then
to have an almost identical experience years later at the Renfair.
It boggles the mind. I know we both saw the

(01:00:23):
same thing, and I know it was real. I have
no explanation. I guess it was a ghost or spirits,
but why did it have my face? Was it a mimic?
What kind of spirit was she? And why did we
encounter her twice? Almost two decades apart. Reddit user Cellophane

(01:00:52):
Boats writes, I was working in character one year and
a male patron really took a liking to me. The
first thing he said to me was a cheesy pickup line,
and he just kept on flirting with me. He asked
me for my real name, not my character name, and
kept asking to kiss my hand. Since fair is a
naturally very flirty place, I naively went along with it,

(01:01:16):
assuming I'd never see him again. Well I did. Next weekend,
he approached me from behind and sat next to me
in a completely different outfit and greeted me by my
character name. He was wearing a mask and I had
no idea who he was. A friend and fellow performer
next to me was also creeped out and asked if

(01:01:37):
I knew him. My guard went up at this point
and I tried to shoot down his advances, but he
was relentlessly attempting.

Speaker 11 (01:01:46):
To woo me.

Speaker 12 (01:01:49):
We were seated watching a show, and when it was over,
my cast joined me in trying to shew him away.
His departing words to me were, I'm never going to
stop pursuing you until you say yes.

Speaker 10 (01:02:03):
Chilling.

Speaker 12 (01:02:05):
I saw him one other time after this, and thankfully
it was a brief interaction. Later that week, he found
my social media and followed me. One of my cosplay
friends reached out because she'd posted a photo with me
and he'd responded to it, and she asked me if
I knew him. I told her a bit of the
story and she warned me he has sexual assault allegations

(01:02:26):
against him in the cosplay community. I immediately told my director,
who had me write an email to management. I was
told security would be on the lookout for him. I
was on edge the entirety of next weekend. From what
I heard, he managed to get all the way to
the end of the site before security caught him with

(01:02:48):
his mask off. They literally carried him out, kicking and
screaming from Fair, and if I remember correctly, he's been
banned from the site. I've since learned and from other
friends he was shunned from the cosplay community and one
instance of his sexual assault or harassment allegations was against

(01:03:10):
a minor. Jezebel Acid says, all of the drama that

(01:03:31):
you can imagine happening in high school or middle school
among Renfair workers, except it's with a bunch of adults
ranging from eighteen to sixty plus years old, with easier
access to drugs and alcohol, tons of cliques, people cheating
on their significant others, people having sex on grounds and

(01:03:53):
trying not to get caught at hours. The King's Throne
was considered the best accomplishment. One of the highlights was
when one of the porto potties got infested with crab blouse.
The nearby gate guard warned the workers he liked not
to use that one. The other workers were left to

(01:04:13):
fund for themselves. This one comes from drunk Pronto Pup.
I was at the Renfair when a man bypassed a
fence to climb a rock wall near the King's Gate
area of the festival, before falling about fifty feet off
the other side. Dude landed ten feet from my daughter

(01:04:36):
and I. Two men ran to him, one from my left,
one from my right. They reached for his shoulders to
sit him up, and I put the fear of God
into them with my yelling.

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):
Do not touch him.

Speaker 12 (01:04:49):
He was breathing slowly, gradually slower. He obviously had a pulse,
but he was fading. I maintained his sea spine and
screamed in his ear in an effort to keep him
conscious until the rig showed up. The fall was absolutely
an accident, seemed he tried to take a shortcut through
the woods, obviously unaware the woods ended very abruptly. There

(01:05:13):
are no lights to help a person navigate at night.
I smelled no alcohol on him, but that doesn't mean
he was sober. He was in rough shape, with one
hell of a raspberry on his head, and one of
his legs was definitely broken above the knee. I don't
remember which one. If you ever find someone after a fall,

(01:05:35):
do not move them unless you know how to do
so without compromising their condition further Going Higher adapted from
a true encounter posted by Netflix and Bean. I was
seventeen and a friend invited me to go with her

(01:05:56):
family to a campground where they were having a very small,
very local renfair. It was around the fourth of July,
so they had fireworks, a drum corps, and all the
usual renfair stuff, but they tried to make it a
lot more patriotic, lots of red, white, and blue color

(01:06:16):
schemes on the wench dresses, etc. I even saw a
guy dressed as a Captain America themed night. It was
actually really cool, but we were young and dumb and
decided to sneak off and get into trouble. The fair
state opened late, well after dark. For fireworks, we went
to a part of the campground that wasn't technically a

(01:06:39):
part of the renfair, but we found this private shower
area I guess for people who booked a campsite to
use and decided it'd be a good place to smoke
a bowl. I remember we turned on the shower, thinking
the steam would help cover up the smell of weed
or whatever. We could hear all the crowds and the
popping of the fireworks off in the distance, but where

(01:06:59):
we were there was nobody around. We didn't want to
go back too quickly because we were afraid my friend's
parents would sniff us out, so we decided to hang
out on the swing set, a playground adjacent to the
shower shed or whatever it's called. Our backs were to
the trees and it was dark as fuck back in there,

(01:07:20):
so we sat on two swings, all dressed up like fairies,
with two empty swings next to us. We were chatting,
listening to the fireworks that we couldn't really see. When
we both snapped our heads to the side at the
same moment, one of the empty swings was swinging. The
air was dead ass still with no breeze. I know

(01:07:40):
what you're thinking. We probably caused it to swing with
our own movement. No, it wasn't a gentle swinging motion.
It was gathering speed as if there was a little
kid in it, wanting to go higher higher before jumping off. Well,
we flew off that swing set and back down the
hill to the fairgrounds. Several years later, me and this

(01:08:05):
same friend worked a season at the same Renfair, which
had gotten much bigger since in the years I was
in high school. One day, we were at the tavern.
It was a rainy day, so not many people showed up,
and we were shooting the shit with a vendor who'd
worked the fair for a long time. We told her
the story about what we'd stayed on the swing in
all the years, since we'd just convinced ourselves we were

(01:08:27):
stoned out of our brains and might have hallucinated it
or something. But our friend said the campground was very
haunted by ghosts from Civil War times. In particular, there's
a little girl ghost named Edith who likes to haunt
all the playgrounds and children's play areas on the property. Apparently,

(01:08:51):
anyone who works the kidty attractions at the Renfair are
instructed to say good morning and good night to Edith
whenever they're setting up or breaking down for the day,
Otherwise Edith will make sure bad things happened to them.
Red Hit user Dorothy Dott writes, I used to go
to my local fair twice a season, once with friends

(01:09:12):
and once solo, so I could just do whatever I
wanted all day. On one of my solo trips, I
met a guy girl couple about my age. Within an hour,
they told me they were polly, very kinky, and invited
me back to their place after the fair. The girl
was nice, but the guy started describing their sex life,

(01:09:35):
how he would include me in it, and how he
imagined I might react to certain acts. I said I
had to hit the privy and would meet them at
the jousting show, and then ran to the pub to
hang out with my bartender friend. Just dodged them for

(01:09:56):
the rest of the day. It was a little stressful.
I stayed until after clothes so my bartender friend could
walk me to my car. Not horrible, but definitely my
worst fare because I felt so on edge the rest
of the day. Rascal King reports that a girl working
the costume shop was in a Victorian era dress during

(01:10:20):
the English Monarch weekend. She managed to shart herself and
due to the massive undertaking of re costuming, she decided
to try and play it off. It did not work.
Ninety degree weather combined with sweat and shitty undies is
a horrible mix. There were little kids sprinting out of

(01:10:41):
the costume shop wretching, and people generally avoided the area
all day. She never came back wandering. Dorothy writes, my
friend and boyfriend got roofed at like eleven a m.
It was my boyfriend's first visit to fair and I

(01:11:01):
was working, so my friend took him to get his
first drink from the fun bar with the shackles and
a little tour. She sipped on her drink, he finished his.
She started not feeling great but thought she was just dehydrated.
She passed off her drink and my boyfriend finished it.
Both ended up with the EMS services before one pm.

(01:11:26):
She's really petite and was really sick. He probably got less,
but still threw up for a few hours and was dehydrated.
Ruined the fair day for sure. They never figured out
who did it. A seasonal Renaissance festival worker and seven
year beer Wench reports, I work in the maincastle and

(01:11:46):
am always in costume and speaking like a drunken Hermione granger.
Thank god I know how to say that name.

Speaker 14 (01:11:53):
Huh.

Speaker 12 (01:11:54):
It's a lot of fun. I make excellent money, but
sometimes have to put up with a lot of bullshit.
A guy followed me to the porta John once and
tried to grope me. He got hauled out by a
giant in a kilt. I've had people puke down my front,
spilled beer on me, blow fucking horns in my face.

(01:12:15):
We have a spot in the back wooded lot that
everyone smokes and drinks at. Someone dragged an actual wooden
bar out there, and there's often cheap liquor hidden around.
Lots of sex happens, and that clearing. The travelers who
can't afford the campsite down the road before their first
paycheck often camp here. You'll find plenty of people sleeping
in hammocks. There's a half dozen in the trees. There

(01:12:39):
were two girls that ate a bunch of mushrooms and
got lost in the woods for over a day. The
cops wouldn't look for them until a full twenty four
hours went by, even though their purses and cars were
still on the grounds. They were terrified in the woods
at night, but they found their way back via a
giant bonfire and people tapping car horns every few minutes.

(01:13:03):
At about four am the night after they disappeared, pretty
scary shit. At our first ren fest, ever, our three
year old son needed to pee, so I took him
to a port potty because I needed to pee too. Ipee.
Then go to stand him up to pee as well,
and he starts peeing. However, he isn't just peeing, He's

(01:13:24):
also shooting straight diarrhea onto my brand new ren Fair
dress I just bought earlier that day. Luckily, I was
wearing three skirts layered on top of each other and
it only got on the top two layers. Still, that's
fucking nasty. I'd throw it all out, guys, I would.

(01:13:48):
This one was adapted from a true story submitted by
Scary TJ. Went to the local ren fair in the
summer of twenty nineteen and I was dressed up as
a ring wraith from the Lord of the Rings movie.
Looked scary as shit and liked to walk up and
down the fer trying to scare all the little kids. Yes,
I know I'm an evil fock, but hey, it's fun

(01:14:10):
and I'm an asshole. Well I'm glad he pointed that
out so that I didn't have to Anyways, Karma got
me back so don't worry. I went up to the
kids' straw pit, looking to see who I could make
piss their pants. It was getting dark and most of
the people had cleared out to see the last joust,
so not many people up there. The straw pit was

(01:14:32):
on the top of a hill, and from there I
could see a tree in the woods, just behind a
row of closed vender booths. There was a dark figure
hanging from the tree. Now I just thought there was
some kind of spooky, cool ren fair performance or something,
so I ran down the hill, almost tripped on my
costume to get a closer look. It was a woman

(01:14:52):
hanging from the tree. She was wearing a white dress
and had long black hair. It was sunset, so the
jousting field would have been lit up bright orange by
the setting sun, but back here it was almost pitch
black with all the tree coverage. And remember all the
booths had closed up in this area and everybody else
was at the joust, so I thought it was like

(01:15:15):
strange there was just one performer doing this hanging routine,
but still when I got closer, the woman in the
tree snapped her head up to look at me. She
pointed her finger at me and.

Speaker 14 (01:15:26):
Said, than.

Speaker 12 (01:15:30):
Just like the little fucking girl in the grudge, I
think he means the ring. I started clapping and told
her good job, very convincing, and turned to walk away.
I walked back up the hill and turned around. She
was gone. And if she was a performer like one
of the acrobats or something, there was no way she

(01:15:51):
could have gotten down from that tree without me seeing,
especially the way she must have been harnessed up to
that tree. But even then it didn't occur to me
that this might be a spiritual phenomenon. Then thirteen days later,
right at sundown, my grandfather was driving home from Walmart,

(01:16:11):
got hit by a landscaping truck and died on the scene.

Speaker 14 (01:16:18):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Stick around after the credits for a brief word from
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(01:17:23):
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(01:18:29):
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Speaker 17 (01:18:41):
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The past might just come looking for you. Listen if you.

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magazines and podcasts. Enter a world of the macabre, the strange,
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Available wherever online books are sold. Test test test. This
is the Renfair stuff. You know, it's a cloudy day

(01:21:41):
out and so maybe that's smart to record during the
clouds and the rain, no lawn equipment and probably less air.

Speaker 12 (01:21:53):
Traffic to make things from scratch, make my own I
haven't done it yet, but it would be super cool
to make my own clothing. A lot of people at
the Renfair did make their own clothing. I even know
a lady that is married to a friend of mine.
I performed their wedding because I am a reverend and
an ordained minister. And anyway, she makes clothing the way

(01:22:16):
that the Vikings did because she reached researched how to
do it, and like.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
You know, say, no lawn equipment and then the fucking
birds start sharping Jesus Christ like.

Speaker 12 (01:22:28):
And the thing is like, I didn't grow up knowing
about ren pherology or wren life so to speak. I
definitely my parents were not into it. Rather, my dad
was not into it. My mother said she would have
loved to go to one, but she wasn't going to
go alone. And he was definitely not into that. So
you know this, you know, as an adult, is my

(01:22:49):
first delving into them, and I almost feel like they
came up out of nowhere. I don't remember seeing things
about runfairs growing up, right, So it's like, are these
Are they like alien pods that have been put down
on earth to encourage everyone to try and like take
several steps back, Like, don't just take several seats, y'all,
take several steps back and look at what it used

(01:23:11):
to be like and.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
Oh look and asked to go in hold on, let
me color code my shit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
Because highlight it, Daddy won't read it.

Speaker 12 (01:23:34):
The biggest thing for me personally was feeling like I
was in two separate time periods at the same time.
Because I am not a run lifer. I have enjoyed
time at run fairs. I've been to a couple. I
worked this one this year doing tea leaf readings, and

(01:23:56):
it was wonderful and it was wonderful to meet everyone.
It was lovely to meet the people that were in
character as well as the people that were just being themselves.
And the more I tried to be ren faiir Ish,
I just sound Cockney British like that was That was
how it would go every time I'd start out trying
to sound old English, ye, and then it was just

(01:24:18):
co Cockney British accent all the way. And I mean,
I guess that's okay. It made people laugh.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
And you know, do you hear long equipment outside? I
share this foot clip from the Descent, FX screams thunder chainsaw.

Speaker 12 (01:24:44):
Damage to his humorous. That's not very humorous, now, is it. Sorry?

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Oh, you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna do this.
We're gonna do this. Go on there.

Speaker 12 (01:25:04):
We steered clear of the barn, like I said, but
we did go to get some corn bread.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
Nope, says Roku. Daimu says Roku Dai may Hokaji, says
Roku says Roku Dai may Hokaji. Now says Roku d
may Hokagi.

Speaker 12 (01:25:28):
Ass out of that barn, My bad.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Sub Mechanophobia, by the way, is the fear of submerged
or partially submerged man made obviate.

Speaker 12 (01:25:41):
Let me try that again, since fair is a naturally
very fro let me try it a third time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
But that's how the girls twip. But that's how the
girls twip went JFC.

Speaker 12 (01:25:54):
It made my blood turn cold. Now I know how
to better dissing age from uncomfortable situations. Fair is a lovely,
amazing place, but it can attract creeps like this. Be
careful out there, y'all. Sorry, I don't know what JFC

(01:26:15):
stands for, Otherwise I would have read out that acronym.
If you know, I can look it up and try
and send it to you later.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Australia, we should probably put in an Australian effect here.

Speaker 12 (01:26:28):
I remember we turned on the shower thinking the steam
would help cover up the smell of weed or whatever.
Let me try that again. Sorry. We decided to be
a good place to smoke a bowl. I remember we
turned on the shower thinking the steam would help us
cover up the smell of weed. God damn, I cannot
get through with that without chuckling one more time. And

(01:26:48):
decided to be a good place to smoke a bowl.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
Why you can even take a relaxing canoe chip with
your douchey bros.

Speaker 12 (01:27:00):
Closure. I was expecting the third like I thought this
lady was going to be dead, and like with thirteen days,
like I saw thirteen days, I was thinking thirteen reasons.
Why you know what I'm saying? Like it's sad? His
grandfather died, but I'm glad it wasn't a lady that
hanged herself at the renfair, because fuck that would be
a horribly rememberable, horribly memorable Renfair.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
Many rural folk are honest, hardworking people who never resort
to vandalism vandalism they do vandalism anyway.

Speaker 12 (01:27:30):
I hope these all work out for.

Speaker 11 (01:27:31):
You to

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Tottstststttt constant th

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