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December 27, 2025 47 mins
Join us for a very special Christmas episode of Talking Weird! Your host's - Dr. Dean Bertram's - mom is visiting the north woods, from Australia, for the holidays again. And she is back on the show by popular demand!

So grab a cup of eggnog, or your favorite Christmas beverage, turn down the lights (you can leave your Christmas lights on) and enjoy the show!
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The paranormal, dufos, monsters mysteries. As you're listening to Talking
Weird and Know from a Kevin Deep in the Northwoods,
your host, doctor Dean Bertram.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
How greetings all my fellow weirdos and weird It's very
merry Christmas to all of you, and thank you for
joining us on this Christmas night. That is, if you're
here where we're live Christmas Light at at nine pm Central,
or otherwise you might be listening to the show afterwards,
either on Facebook or YouTube or x or at streams
or on one of the many podcast platforms. Greetings and

(01:06):
happy holidays, Merry Christmas season, screens all the rest of it.
Thank you so much for joining us tonight. I'm here.
I'm joined by my mother, who is who's sitting to
my left tonight. Hi mum, thank you, thanks for joining us,
Thank you for having me. So we've had a little
Christmas celebration day here. I had hardly any sleep, as
parents very rarely do in the lead up to the holidays.

(01:27):
I passed out on my couch. I woke up literally
about thirty minutes ago, and I only even had my
turkey yet. My turkey dinner is still in the oven.
So it wasn't the trip to theene. It was just
the pure exhaustion. And I'm going to say hello to
a few people in the chat. There's a wonderful Ken Rock.
Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Ken, Merry
Christmas to you, he says, Merry Christmas to you as well.

(01:48):
Mum by our good friend, our good friend, Bob Antoni
is here. Merry Christmas, Bob to you and your wonderful life.
Laura flat Rockland aka Matt Auckland. Many of these people
being guests on the show, Well, of course, Merry Christmas
to you as well, Flats. And I'll just now just
start flushing some of them up because there's all kinds
of regular world listeners to the show. I'm so good

(02:10):
that you could spend some of your Christmas Day celebrations
and with us. It's one of the reasons I wanted
to do the show live. It's always tending to do
a pre record for the holidays, so you're not passed
down on your couch and have to race up the stairs,
you know, just when you get out of slumber to
jump on to say Merry Christmas to everybody. But I
wanted to say Mary Christmas to you all. I'm so

(02:31):
grateful for so many of you who are regularly with
us all year round, and it would seem a little
disingenuous to not be with you live on Christmas Eve.
Steve Ward, who's a very good friend of mine. He
now lives in Point Pleasants, West Virginia and works at
the moth Man Museum and is a regular guest on
the show. Thank you so much for joining us here.

(02:55):
And I'm not going to let it come on the
screen because for this Internet age, you don't want weird
people looking at your children. But my little daughter is
here as well. So if you hear the occasional little
voice off to the side, that would be her. Do
you want to did you want me to show something?
She she knows the content of the show. She got
today amongst one of her many presents was just in
your stocking from Santra. I was under the true it

(03:19):
was from Santa though. Yeah, it's a Bigfoot squish mellow apparently,
which was part of a squish mellow game she got.
So she wanted me to share it, or she's also
slipping me the card now. It's apparently Benny Big foots,
so merry Christmas from Benny Bigfoot as well to everybody

(03:39):
out there in the in the talking went well are
you enjoying your Christmas today? Mum?

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Though, that's loving it. It's wonderful for me to be here.
If I wasn't here and I was in Australia, I
would be turning on my own and have a few friends,
but probably not doing anything worth. Today has been an
absolutely light to wake up next to all right with
my little granddaughter who was opening her stockings which Satday

(04:04):
had left overnight, and she was very good. She didn't
rush in a straightaway and say it. She didn't wake
me up to rush into it. She sat there for
a while and I I since she was awake, so
I said, oh, you're a wait She said yes, and
we waited for a while and then she said, have
you noticed there's stockings on the bottom of the bed.
So obviously went We did nothing but open lots and

(04:26):
lots of beautiful small things. And the stockings were quite large,
but not big big sort of the a probably eighteen
inches long, and they were stuffed really self, and she
really enjoyed every minute of it and moved through it
slowly she didn't rush, and she opened everything gently and
went through it, and then once she appreciated what was there,
she moved to the next one. But she didn't want

(04:48):
to wait pub up because she knew been up very
late last night, and so we waited until she finished
her stocking, and then she thought she heard and so
she went and wake him so that we had all
that to the Christmas tree. Beautiful morning, absolutely beautiful morning.
Thank you all for coming in and talking with us tonight,
because it's a very special day to us. Christmas Day

(05:11):
has always been our family day and miney Fani now
is my son and my little granddaughter and it is
my family. So to be here in this wonderful pays
and of course in a white Christmas setting, which is
something I wouldn't have back in Sydney. It's marvelous and
I thank you all. Wish you are very Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Thank you. My girlfriend Samantha Crouse, who was on the
show last week, dropped in to say I said some hearts,
Merry Christmas, baby. I hope you're having a nice evening
with your with your family, and.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
We have here.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Eric Joseph Merrick said, Merry Christmas. Shout out to the vampires.
I hear my little girl running around the panting because
he's been running up and down the steps, obviously to
my to my office loft. Tonight, she has another big
She's always wanted me to show this on. She must
have remembered I'd never shown this on the show. This
is another one of her bigfoot shows. I think it's
just toys rather, this is a scribby scrubby. It's actually

(06:05):
a yetty, I think, but still it's still in the
spirit of hairy Hominis speaking of inner spirit with various things.
One thing we never really had an astray when I
was growing up, but maybe it's more popular now. But
it's something my daughter's been aware of it for a
little while. My mother probably really got her first exposure
this year as the legends of Saint Nicholas's darker companion. Primarily,

(06:26):
of course, we all know crampers. My daughter didn't have
anything to worry about crampers this year, apparently because she
was very good and got a lot of presents from Santa.
But when it was Crampus Nrke's Crampus Knights back on.
I think December is at December fifth, December sixth she
was a little worried when it was crampers Mark. Were
you a little worried, sweetheart?

Speaker 3 (06:46):
She kept clinging to me the whole night and day literation,
right behind me wherever I went.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
She wasn't going anyway. I probably shouldn't have told it
was Crampus Knight, but you've got to let the children
know because sometimes if they've been naughty, it's a good reason,
good time of year, not for them just to be rewarded.
But in the older traditions, of course you were probably
just as scared as you were of Crampus as you
were as happy to see to see old Saint Nick.
And of course there was I think Crampus was an

(07:13):
Alpine type, you know, dark alternative to Santa and I
think in Germany as well, they had bell Snickel, who
was another one of sat Nichols Elais's darker companions. So
I think we could both reward and punish children, would
quiz them if they'd been good or bad. There's a
number of entities like that, if you and your family tradition,

(07:34):
because we never had that in my tradition Australia, but
if you and your family tradition we're ever told about
a dark companion to Santa who might punish you if
you'd been you know, if you'd been naughty. And of course,
in some tradition Santra himself also did the punishing back
in the day, which is interesting. But share with me
in the chat, because I'd love to know if people
grew up actually with an awareness of a bell snickle

(07:55):
or a crampus, or of anybody else out there. And
we have here as well from Eric Joseph Merrick saying
they watched the ninety seventy nine film version of Dracula
for the first time to day and enjoyed it. Is
that is that the I'm trying me is that that's
not the hammer? One is the hammer was before? That is?

(08:16):
Who's who's the Who's the vampire in that? If Melissa
Dawn Howes is watching, she know or Eric, you can
tell me, tell me who it was. Oh, he's he
was in It was in North Texas. I heard that today.
Eric said, enjoy our white Christmas. I here I have.
I have some family in Texas and they said they
got a heat wave in Houston, in the Houston area today,

(08:38):
So we were pretty we were pretty cool. Cool up here?
Is it is the last name about actor Langellia or Angelia.
I can't even pronounce it properly, but please tell me
if it is. My daughter is handing me. She's never
allowed up here during the show. She's only very good.
But I told you she could come up because it's Christmas.
This is another type of cryptid creature. What is It's
a dragon? It's a Dragon's quite a few and what

(09:00):
are they called? Scribble scrubbies? They're unwed. There's a name
for the unusual beasts or something. Okay, show me this one.
I'll share with you.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
But one of them.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
She's got here. She said something interesting. She's she's handed
me two different kind of terosaur ones and the one
that glows in the dark. One and glows in the dark.
She's very she's kind of transparent on the green screen.
But this one glows in the dark. And she correctly
identified because it glows in the dark as a rope

(09:35):
and a rope and of course is a cryptied glow Okay,
a rope and apparently is the cryptied tero saw and
as parosaur. Reportings all over the world, including in Texas,
that we were just talking about with my very good
friend Jason MacLean had a Tero saur sighting himself back
when he was a boy Jason and MacLean. Of course,
he's a regular guest on this show, and he also

(09:55):
used to be my co host on the Old Mysterious
Library Show, which was always so on the Untold Radio Network.
But ropens were the ropens were essentially the name for
pterodactyls which were seen in Papua, New Guinea. And Chloe
being a Monster Quest kid raised on Dark Kaichek's Monster
Quest do Kai Check, of course, is the founder of

(10:16):
Monster Quest and also the founder or the creator of
montter Quest and the founder of the Untold Radio Network.
Chloe knew what a ropin was from a very small way.
So when she got to glow in the dark, scribble
Scrubby Tero saw she instead, we'll let glow, so it
must be a ropin like the stories from from New Guinea.
Let me just go back to the chat just a
little bit here. There's no snow here in southeast Michigan.

(10:40):
Hold on, Chloe, you can do you can get in
a second. Just let me, let me just let me
just look at this. Lots of people talking about about
dragul In the chat. One of the interviews they've watched
on this show, they read bram Stokers Jackie. That must
have been with Melissa Dawn Harris. I'm guessing either when
I was on her show, The Order of the velve
Bite or Order of Velvet Bite Radio, which she deals

(11:02):
with vampires and similar materials, or perhaps when she was
a guest on my show talking about vampires. You can
have your toys and it'd be good for a second Swedeen.
You can get back to show me something something else
and so, and my mother watched Crampers the Christmas Movie
with me the other day as well, the Dark Christmas
Movie by Mike Dougherty, the director also of the Wonderful
I Took a Treat Halloween film. What do you think

(11:23):
of the Crampers movie?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Now, I have seen lots of Halloween type movies because
both my sons were always into all of it. That
was probably, and I'll be criticize greatly saying the worst
movie I've ever seen really left me like, I don't
believe it.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
I don't believe it, you don't want to believe about
I don't want to believe it.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
No, it was really over the top brilliant acting and
that in it. But oh no, I won't go out
in a snow storm. Ever, let's love it that way.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Nick Nixon just mentioned Monster Quest and Destination and then
I think, yeah, it was Destination Unknown. I think that
was Doug Hichek's Bigfoot show, maybe before Monster Quest, which
it's the show I'm thinking of, kind of was when
we first started to see people who later became stars
of the crypto zoological well, like I think Matt Moneymaker
was on that show before before Finding Bigfoot. Maybe Bobo

(12:20):
and Cliff were on that show. But it was a
very early pre fining Bigfoot pre If it's the show
I'm thinking of, Nix and tell me it's not pre
fining Bigfoot pre Monster Quest show Destination Unknown. I think
it used to be floating around the line somewhere and
you could still watch it. Totally totally worth worth checking out.
Still nobody in the chat has told me if they

(12:41):
did have any dark companion stories and they were raised
with tales about Crampus or Bellsnickel or anybody else. Of course. Also,
I think it's in Finland Finland or is it in Iceland?
Somewhere like that. I was running up the other stairs again.
They had essentially the Christmas Cat, and the Christmas Cat
was this giant cat, and I think they still believe

(13:03):
it was that prowled the lands on Christmas Eve and
would devour you if you weren't wearing at least one
new piece of clothing. So I guess it was so,
I mean, too bad if you were poor back in
those days in Finland or wherever the devil it was,
the Christmas Cat will get you. And yesterday I picked
I picked my daughter up from her grandparents who lived

(13:25):
in a town nearby her mom's where she spent Christmas Eve,
and I picked her up. I'd well, she spent Christmas
Eve even the night before. And I picked her up
late Christmas Eve and she had a new, beautiful, new
fox shirt on. And I explained to her that she
was lucky she had a new piece of clothing on,
because tonight was the night that the Yule cats are
proud looking for people who didn't have any items of

(13:46):
clothing that were new on and devour them. So yeah,
we were so we were so I guess coddled in
so much of the modern West, where we were never
taught about the dark or I never was, never was
a thing in Australia. These are dark alternatives proud around
Christmas and also of course, and I think many of
the many European countries, they had a belief that you

(14:08):
had to leave food out on Christmas Eve, not for Santa.
Maybe that's part of where the story comes from. Not
cookies and an eggnog drink, or cookies and milk, or
cookies and beer as we used to do in Australia.
My daughter last night left out cookies and eggnog for Santa.
But that you left food out I think often rice
puddings or some type of pudding, maybe not rice, don't know,

(14:29):
some kind of pudding. Further, for the little people, for
the fair folk, because if you didn't leave them a nice,
warm treat on Christmas Eve in the coming year, they
would terrorize you potentially and cause trouble in your homestead
or your farm or wherever you lived. So you left
out a treat just not to appease good old Saint Nick,
but you left out a treat to appease the fair

(14:51):
folk for the whole year. Ken just says, thankfully, he's
not living in Finland because he has not wearing anything,
no new clothing. Yes, my daughter, my daughters, My daughter
wants to show something else. Oh my gosh, these are
wonderful that she's These are her own creation. Make sure
I've got them, your best one. She's also a keen
model maker. She has this wonderful stuff I didn't have

(15:11):
when I was a kid. This it's like play though,
I guess, but it's like modeling clay that aired her eyes.
And she's constantly making cryptidy type things. And these are things.
There were two other ones. Okay, let me show. Yeah,
I know you broke some of them. Let me show
these two. I think she got these from. There was
a tradition in this part of the world of lumberjack

(15:32):
myths of legend and legends of weird creatures of the
north Woods and Shadolewis, who send me a wonderful cramp
as Christmas card speaking about crampers. This year, shado Lewis
wrote a book on a book on the myths of
the or the legendary beasts of the lumberjack culture of
the north Woods. They supposed lumberjacks would tell each other
these stories around campfires at nights and he wrote a

(15:55):
wonderful book, and he gave the copy to Chloe in personally.
We went to see him speak at a local libry
a number of years ago. And she's made, and she
wants me to show you she's made a couple of
the creatures. This is what's the snake one called the
hoop snake. And what does a hoop snake do? It
puts its tail in its mouth and it kind of
rolls around. So that's a hoop snake, as you might
be able to see, very cute little hoops. What's your name?

(16:19):
It's named hoop? And this what's this one? This is
an axe handle hound that she named axe And they
kind of look like they've got a head of an
axe or something that long body, so they're kind of
like a dashen or something, but they're more short of
steel and they're more like axe shaped. And you can

(16:39):
see why an axe shaped an axe shaped hound would
be a popular tale among lumberjacks. Would always be wilding acxs.
It's my favorite creature from that kind of mythology or
that type of legend. Of course, it is the hide
behind the creature that's so slim it can hide behind
you what can hide behind a tree, and it will,
it can hide behind itself, as my daughter you said,

(17:00):
so it's so thin and you can never get to
see it until it's too late and it gets you.
And reports of supposedly of lumberjacks and people like that
going missing in the woods in the old days, who
were kind of relegated to the hide behind got them.
It was the tale that the lumberjacks, which and of
course it's always made me think of David Polidi's stories
where people just disappear in the middle of nowhere in

(17:21):
the woods. I wonder if so, I wonder if some
of these stories are based on things which actually were
taking place. The hide Behind certainly sounds like a wonderful
allegory for whatever does take people in missing four one
one type type cases. I can't show that that's too big. Now,
she's got a wonderful coloring book of birds that she got,

(17:41):
a vintage one that she've been asking for from the
nineteen sixties, back when coloring books were big and different.
And I don't know, I think the paper was a
little brown. It certainly faded here, But I don't know.
Do you have any creepy ghost stories or anything you
tell on Christmas related, any darker Christmas tales you can
tell on this Christmas night, Nana.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, no, not completely, but I do remember, you know,
we always believed in standard when we were younger, and.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
We used to.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Because we lived in suburbs. But it was early days
and it wasn't really developed. There wasn't a proper made
road and everything. And we had what we called an
outhouse and outside toilet, right and that was always a
worry to go there, and we used to always worry
when you had to go there, and we used to
have to walk. We had we didn't have steps because

(18:35):
my dad was still Billy in the house. We had
a ramp to get out out of the higher level
down to ground level. And when you got to the bottom,
because there were no street lights or anything, when it
looked up the side of our house, it was just
pure black, pitch black, and we had to walk down
to the outdoor toilet, which was probably another fifty sixty

(18:56):
yards away from the bottom of these stairs. So you'd
get to the bottom of the stairs and you'd hold
your breath. You wouldn't even look up there because you
knew how dark it was. And you'd run down and
when one went into it, yeah facility, the other one
would stand with the back against the door, and then
when the other one come out, you do the same.

(19:18):
And then when you both were ready, you look around,
but everything was black, like it was just black around you,
and there's light in the house, but no lights outdoors
showing you the way, and you'd have to race like
man to get up there. Well, at one stage, about
this time, around this time, about this time, or maybe

(19:39):
a little bit later, there was a whole pack of dogs,
which were actually people's pets that had formed what you
would say, I suppose you call it a man of dogs,
and they were going around, rioting, really going in a

(20:00):
We had group barking madly all around our suburbs, and
the other suburbs were near to us, and we were
terrified because we could hear them in the night howling
when they were coming around, and they killed lots of pets.
We had some neighbors, because we had really big suburban

(20:22):
blocks in those days, lots of neighbors lost their pets,
you know, the dogs. Their pets didn't really eat them
as of food, they just killed them. All their chickens
were killed once. We went down one morning, twenty six
chickens or dead in the yard. They didn't even bother
to eat them. And so every time we went out
at night, we had this feeling that the dogs were

(20:45):
going to come and get it. They never did, which
was wonderful, but we just had this. I suppose a
lot of children even today sometimes have this thing about
the dark, you know, like you don't know what's out there,
you know. And because we were also told there was
a hermit lived down the bush or not all that
far from us, you know, you just had this thing

(21:07):
in your mind that someone was out there. You couldn't
see them, couldn't see anything, but you just couldn't get
back inside quick enough, you know. So that's sort of
my only And I was quite young then, and because
I was the oldest, my sister was two and a
half years younger than me. I was doing this and
taking her and protecting her when I was only about five,
you know, and she was two and a half an

(21:29):
hour was five. But mom and Dad thought, oh, you know,
I was all right. They didn't think that I was scared.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
I was terrible. I think Samantha and my girlfriend was
talking a little bit about her grandparents' property the other
week when we were talking about weird things in central
North Wisconsin around the Warsaw area, and I know they
I think they had an outhouse and some of those stories.
I don't know if she told them or not, but
I know I heard stories involving people seeing weird things

(21:57):
when they had to go to the outhouse late at night.
It would have been scary if you were a little
kid and you had to wander out in the dark
and go partty in the middle of I guess that's
way often in some Northern Hemisphere type climates they had.
I guess that's why they had chamber pots, particularly in
the winter. Of course, you wouldn't want to have to
go out of the bedroom outside to use the bathroom

(22:19):
if it was ten below or something that you can
get here at nights, especially a little kid, a five
year old needs to go party. You're not going to say, okay,
I go down the you know, go down the side
ramp through the ice flipper ice and go party. When
you're you know, you're going to freeze to death and
you fall in the snow. And I wonder if that's
the same reason that there are more traditions of the

(22:40):
Dark Companion of Saint Nicholas and other strange things and
Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps there had been
maybe some of it had traveled to Australia early on,
although in the English tradition, I don't think there is
as much of the Dark Companion as there is in
Germanic traditions, but there certainly isn't the English tradition the

(23:00):
tradition of telling ghost stories, which I think you and
I talked about last Christmas, and that's an English tradition,
and that's of course the most famous example of a
ghost story at Christmas is that Charles Dickens at Christmas Carol.
But it comes down to us even in Christmas. You
know pop Christmas songs like they'll be spooky ghost stories.
You know. The line in that song is a reference

(23:21):
to the fact that people used to tell ghost stories
at Christmas. But for whatever reason, certainly in Australia, there
was no when I was a kid, there were no
hints of a crampus or anything else. And you can
see why maybe those things would be forgotten when the
knights outside aren't so cold and threatening and ominous. While
in the Northern Hemisphere, the idea of ghost stories and

(23:43):
dark companions and mule cats seems to be almost begged
for by the weather and the danger of the season
and the realization that you know, death and darkness are
so close at hand all the time, or when you're
living in the Southern Hemisphere and it's the exact opposite.
The nights are much and the days are much longer,
and it's so warm, it doesn't seem likely that you're

(24:03):
going to to, you know, freeze to death if you're
fall going to the bathroom at night, and you're not
probably going to staff to death in the middle of
you know, the summer, and Australia the way you could
have in the olden days staff to death in the
middle of the winter and you lived rurally and you
hadn't got all your meat and all your crops and
everything else and all your fire would and everything else
prepared for a season of harshness. So maybe that's why

(24:25):
the dark goes so well with Christmas stories within within
the Northern within the Northern tradition, Eric Joseph Meurtek asks,
do you have much experienced ghost hunting of those who
wanted to go with an infrared camera and a group
by myself have never really ghost hunted. They might very
well be piped in the chat. They probably usually are,

(24:48):
so if anybody wants to chime in for Eric in
the chat now, I've never really gone ghosting. I mean,
when I was a kid, I used to be interested
in Ouiji boards and things like that, but as an
adult it's fascinated. I am with much of this. I
very rarely partake in looking for the things in real life,
although we did go ask some of my girlfriend and
I with some of our children. We did legend tripping type,

(25:09):
you know trips where you go looking for local places
that were meant to be haunted. But it wasn't like
at night with you know EVP, you know meters and
you know infrared cameras and the like. So no, but
people in the chat, please get back to Eric if
you have experiences ghost hunting. And Risto six eight sixty
seven says, fifty yards into the outhouse in the dark

(25:32):
as a child. Nope, you're right, it would be scary
even if you were in Australia, but it'd be particularly scary.
I've noticed something since I've lived here, and I've had
to do chores outside a night of one kind or another.
It might be snow removal, or it might be there's
a problem with my chickens. It might be one hundred
different things. But everything is always as anybody knows. In
any Hemmers, things seem to be at least twice as

(25:53):
hard when you're doing in the dark, perhaps if you
don't have a torch, ten times as hard. But if
you add the cold weather to that, everything's not just
twice as heard, it is twice as hard again. So
to have to go outside in the snow, as I've
had to do a lot recently this season. Could you're not
quite so allowed through my little daughter, isn't there you wawning? Can?
It can get to be It's very tough. So again

(26:14):
the weirdness of this time of year. And here is
Melissa John Harris Order of Velvet Bite, which I talked
about how she's been on the show before talking about
I think vampires as well as she's talked about serial
killers and other weird, wonderful things on the show. And
you should really check out Order of Velvet Bite, her radio,
her podcast channel, and you can get that. I know

(26:35):
it's on I know it's on YouTube, I think on
Rumble as well. Melissa, say you want to drop in
the chattel all the places it's available, or certainly read
it out because it's a top show. Melissa's a podcast
vetter and she's been doing this for years and her
shows are always so great. And I hope that both
of you and Micha are having a wonderful, a wonderful
Christmas period. So I think you're about to say something.

(26:58):
Mar I jumped.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Something of a lot of things. I mean, I can't
even remember whether I have told this one here, but
there was another time, and it was it was in
the summer, which so it's some time around the Christmas
e time. And my husband and I used to He
used to jog. I couldn't jog because I had reasons
not to job, but I used to walk and we

(27:23):
used to all he'd go one way and i'd go
the other way. We'd do about which is quite good
eight kilometers nine kilometers, and he jogs, and so of
course he'd jog one way and I'd bought the other way,
so we'd meet up two thirds closer to it, had
up two thirds closer to me than I would to him,
but we always sort of passed in a similar area

(27:47):
or somewhere in that vicinity. And one of the nights,
it was on dusk, really just getting towards dark. Street
lights were starting to come on, and we both walked exactly.
He run the same route and I walked the same route,
but in reverse we'd go Rebirth. We'd always go Rebirth
and where we usually tended to pass one another. I

(28:11):
went down the Sith Street and it was particularly creepy
street for some reason. It had one of the houses
had big stone sents really high, about eight feet tall
all the way round and which went halfway down this
section of a road that I had to go down,
and there was as it go halfway down, and it's
really done, not many street lights. I've heard an owl

(28:32):
in the tree, which spooks you a little bit in
the dark. And I'm walking. I did my usual walk,
didn't very just kept going. And as I kept going,
I thought, where's my husband and where is he? I
haven't passed him, like we couldn't. We couldn't have gone
past one another without seeing one another. There's no way
that would never happened. Anyway, all the way home and

(28:55):
finally he turned up and he said to me, where
were you? I didn't see. Neither of us could work
out with them, and we always put it down to
what they called it a time shift time. I really
believe that, because there is no way ever we had this.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
It happened.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
We just couldn't get our minds around it. So after that,
I wasn't so sure about going on my own in
the dark. You know, because when I was a young girl,
I was followed home from the railway station quite a
considerable distance, and I was about eighteen seventeen, and I
had I remember, I've been to night school after work,

(29:33):
and I had high hills and stockings on, and we
didn't have really good made roads. So when I got
to a point where I realized this guy had come
out of the train and was following me, and we'd
gone across the railway bridge, and I thought, I've got
to run, but I can't run in the high hills,
so I took my high heels, I still had stockings on,
didn't take them off. I ran so fast, but on

(29:54):
the way home, I was dropping into a friends to
do babysitting for them, the only way could earn money,
and I ran so fast. I don't even get hold
in the stockings. I can't believe it. I look back
at this and it's one of those freak things. And
so when I got there, but I did ring my
dad because I was still about not quite half a
mile from home. But I wasn't going to go by
myself from there, and my sister was babysitting, and then

(30:17):
my dad used to come to relieve me, you know,
bring my sisters, take her home. And I told Dad
and he said, Noel, you can stay, but you're not
coming home on your own. Get the people to ring
me when they get home. And to this day, I
just don't know where they got the guy got to,
because obviously he must have turned around, gone back or something.
But I wasn't turning around to wait and see. But

(30:40):
it was just one of those zery things, you know.
People just I never thought of it there. Now, girls
getting out at night, you would be worried. You could
be getting followed quite easily. But it just never happened
in our suburb. I mean, we were in a sleepy
top suburb, it wasn't it. It was a kind of
suburb where people passed through, you know, strange people following
you or you know, this never happened, and I just

(31:02):
I suppose that put me off telling at home by
my myself coming home at night after going to school,
you know.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
So it goes to show those things can really happen anyway,
the things.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, so I suppose. Yeah, we've all got our one
thing in our life where it's been strange and weird
and you know, and you never want to do it
again because you don't want to happen again.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yea.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
The timeslot of story though, when you and your your
second husband were walking in the opposite direction that should
have crossed each other. I know the exact route you
were talking about, and you should have been able to
see each other. But the our thing's interesting as well.
You said you saw an our that night when you
were because ours are a big part of paranormal and
strange phenomena and someone which is often reported in aen
inbduction law. Of course, anybody familiar with twin peaks and

(31:48):
knows the line and the owls and not what they've seen,
but it's from things like this. Mike Cleland wrote my
bookings called The Messages about the involvement with ours in
paranormal phenomena there are constant often whether it herald something
or whether it's something else appearing as an owl, or
whether it's somehow just connected with the weird and the unusual.

(32:09):
I think the fact that you saw an owl that
same night that you had what you referred to was
possibly a time slipped certainly where you and your ex
husband passed each other. Yeah, it seems very strange, very
strange story, super weird man. No, it was good that
you you haven't had you haven't had any and I

(32:31):
think we've talked before about it. It might be worth
because we probably are having a slightly different audiences. It's
a different Christmas again. The house, I guess, my childhood
home where I grew up, we got what some people
would say paradolia, but there were things that looked like
faces in the tiles in the bathroom, in the floor.
And then one time we had somebody who was I

(32:51):
guess because my dad was in the Navy and he
did also other business. He was both in the and
I guess what the part what do you call the
part time navy naval reserves, and he was away off
and doing that, but he was also often away on
business in his in his in his day job, and
so we or that my dad was very handy. We
often had a handy man who had to do things
when he was traveling overseas with either the Navy or

(33:11):
with his work. But we had a handy man tell
us a story which kind of recontextualized those faces in
the tiles. So do you want to tell do you
want to tell that story?

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Well, in our house we had what today would be
referred to as a power room because it was just
a toilet with a beautiful vanity. It was really a
lovely room, just not you know, you didn't think anything
would be wrong with it. And the first time I
thought I was dreaming when I went in there one time.

(33:42):
One of the tiles we had tiles which were very Greek,
sort of unusual shape, little tiles that married in with
one another, and they were brownie bronze color, and they
did have a bit of glint in them there, just
a little bit of glint in them. And one of
the times that I never spotted it was before and
I thought, that's something wrong with that tile, and I
couldn't think what it was. And I told Dean about it,

(34:07):
and Dean went in time he went and he looked.
He said, you know what's wrong with that, mum. It's
got a face in it. I went back and lo
and behold it was a face in the toll as
if it had been printed in there.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
You know, you couldn't.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
It's really funny. Every time he looked at it and
he wondered what was wrong. You couldn't figure it out.
And then when you figured out it was a face,
it was scary. Anyway, this chap, we had this handy man.
He was actually a carpenter, very nice guy, the older guy,
and he came into We were furbishing the front door
area which was next to them, because we wanted to

(34:42):
put our front door out further and have a sheltered
cover for the front door where you walked into the
shelter first and then into the house. Anyway, he was
doing this and the day he was in there, he
said he was. He said, I'm not a psychic or anything,
but he said, I just have to tell you that,
you know, I've had a lot of experience and being
in the houses where I know things are weird. And

(35:02):
he said, you've ever noticed strange things happening here? And
I thought we hadn't really at that stage. I hadn't
thought of anything strange. I mean, you always heard noises
through the night, but you just thought there were animals
in the bush. You never thought about it. And he said,
because he said, I can tell you now someone has
been murdered or killed and buried under this house, right

(35:23):
under where we were seeing this face in the tile.
And I thought, I didn't know what to say, and
I told Ian a story later.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
I don't think I think I was there when he
was telling the story, and it probably wasn't the greatest
story here when you were kid, it was something. I
don't know how old I was eight or something. I
was younger than ten. Anyway, it was Yeah, it bothered
me for many years in that house. That title bothered
me even more. That's right, that's really I had weird
things in that house growing up, Like footsteps it shouldn't
have been there, all kinds of other things.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Well allan my second husband, he one night he was
coming out of that room and just as he did,
he open the door and he was just taught a
black figure and flashed past him. He couldn't see the
figure flash past him, and he was worried because it
went up into the through the door, literally in the
bedroom where Bean was And he said, did you see that?

(36:17):
And I said no, because I was not far from
where he was, and I was just coming out of
our kitchen about to walk up that hall, and he'd
just come out and was walking out of this room.
So that thing had passed me too. But I'd never
so weird things in I'm sure it's because of them,
whatever happened in the house.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Before we were there, you know, it's super super strange stories.
I remember that one time when I was, I guess
in my early played mid teens. It was when I
was a leader in high school. I remember something slamming
into the side of my bedroom wall, but it sounded
like it was on the outside of the house. It

(36:57):
was a brick house. It wasn't like something just hit
the side. It would like shook the room from because
we were the house was kind of on I guess
bush really what we would say forest or woods in America,
but you say bush in Australia. Even though it really
was forest, it was very dense. It was more like
rainforest there. And I remember that there was it was
clear to I mean, I was old enough there not

(37:19):
to be like a little kid too to to I
suppose superstitious, But it seemed to me that whatever hit
the house that night wasn't a normal thing hitting the house.
It wasn't like here, you hear a branch fall on
the roof of the house or something, and you know, okay,
I know what that was. There was something big colliding
with the house. And it seemed to me, even at
that stage in my life, and I wasn't I think,

(37:41):
I don't think I was overly superstitious or anything of
that age, but it seemed supernatural. So that I mean,
there's lots of stories I could tell about that house,
but there seemed to be something strange there at times,
whether it was from the woods itself, whether it was
something buried under the house, like our carp and a
handy man suggested, or whether there was something just weird
in the area. They're definitely there, definitely was something there

(38:03):
that wasn't that I don't think was physical in the
I don't think it was explainable in a kind of
a physical interpretation. I would say that something supernatural, something paranormal,
or inter dimensional. You choose your tournament with something that
wasn't of this world at that property.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Well, I don't know whether storms come into it or not,
but you know, we see a lot of storms in Sydney,
but I sometimes I was there as trees were blown over.
But one night we had this storm which was a
very short storm, and we had we heard this bang
through the night, which woke me and I walked out
into the our kitchen living room and i've painting had

(38:45):
fallen off the walls. I assumed that's what made the
ban because it was a very loud bin. But and
this was a big painting, and I thought, wouldn't I
just did, I will make the noise. I just just
you know, put it out in my mind went back
to being a new thing about it. Next morning, very
early more, when there's a knock on the door and
the chap from next door and they had a very
big yard which went down past our house and there

(39:07):
was no nothing there. And one of these the brothers
who lived there with their dad, he worked for what
they called the Sydney County Council, which was the electricity
people in those days, and he knocked on a door
and he said, you know that your big tree just
outside It was near outside being's bedroom actually, which was

(39:31):
probably four feet from the bedroom at the most.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's dead.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
And I said what, I said, nothing wrong with it yesterday?
And he said, well, no, there probably wasn't, but he said,
it was struck by lightning last night. It's black, it's
black cooked.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
That's a weird that's a weird.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Very It was a natural phenomenon, but it was scary
because it was close to the house. And then after
that we had threes that were close to the house
and begged the council sometimes, so let's take down, and
they never would. This one was a perfect exump of it,
luckily because and him being in the county council and
him being right there on the spot, he didn't hesitate it.
When he got his truck and his chainsaws and down

(40:11):
he took the tree before anyone could argue about it.
But it was dead, just there wasn't a dry leave on.
It was just killed by this horror, and it must
have been it would have to be a very strong
lightning stripe to do that. And yet the only noise
I heard, and it hadn't woken the boy's dad and

(40:32):
the boys hadn't woken, was this picture falling down in
the kitchen.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, right, Well, maybe the right thing struck so powerful
that shook that. Yeah, that picture of the world probably. Yeah.
Nixon seven or six seven eight six says he had
the same thing, Doctor Dean. He means the knock I
had on the bang on the thing, and he said
he was, I have brick eight feet up. Funnily enough,
that room I was in was that the house was

(40:58):
only one story house, but on one side of the
house the windows were very high up off the ground,
you know, in the back bedroom which became my bedroom later,
that's where it happened. And it was probably brick up
at least seven to eight feet so same kind of situation.
That's what was so weird. It was kind of brick
below my bedroom window and then whatever it was slam

(41:19):
it right in there. Were you telling the story about
the neighbor coming over in the morning. Reminded me of
an interesting story and I've never told it on the
show before, but a girl I dated in Sydney for
many years lived to a suburb to the north of US,
but still in the northern districts of Sydney, and her
father told me this story. Who's now past God arrest

(41:39):
his soul. He was a lovely man from England originally,
and funnily enough, their neighbors were also from England originally.
And he said, he told me this story a number
of times because obviously he was somebody who was interested
in the paranormal, on UFOs and the weird. And he
said they had a breathing noise that seemed to be
coming from the walls or in the cupboards in their
kit and he couldn't locate this thing and haunted them.

(42:03):
I mean I use haunting them in the broader sense,
but essentially this was a haunting and it would they
hear it breathing, and just says, for I don't know,
weeks at a time, they hear it intermittently, and he
said he looked everywhere for it, and he was looking
in the he was looking in the cupboards, cupboards, he
was trying to look in in his roof if it

(42:25):
was something up there. He could not locate where the
sound of this thing came from. And then he said, eventually,
because it was quite regular, it just stopped like it
had gone. And then he was out one day and
his neighbor, who was a friend of her, he was
out checking around his roof, like looking in the garters
and trying to, you know, looking under the tiles of
the roof, and he said, hey, mate, you know what

(42:45):
are you looking for? And he said's the darndest thing.
There's something. It's like it's in the in the walls
of my house, like breathing. And he did there and
he described it as breathing the exact same way. So
they always figured it whatever it was, and he did
not think it was an animal ultimately, but whatever it
was had been. It was breathing deeply like a human,

(43:05):
deep breath in and out. Had moved from from my
ex girlfriend's parents' house to the neighbor's house, and supposedly
it left there eventually as well. I wonder if you
talk to the next neighbor over if they'd been haunted
by breathing in the cupboards and the worlds of their house.
So the strange, strange stories from the northern districts of

(43:30):
Sydney we have a common here from Eric Joseph Murteck
as well. We moved into a house as a teenager
when my sister found a wig board in the closet.
A lot of bizarre things happened while we lived there.
People lost their minds. I always sens a presence there.
I think there are places that whatever is doing the haunting.
I have no idea, but I think there are places
where there is more. There are more, you know, paranormal

(43:52):
or stranger or unexplainable forces. And he continues and says,
I always felt like there was someone there. I felt
that the most I was alone, like a negative entity
was there. I'm sure something was there, an entity and energy,
and Lord knows what. But there are places that are
There are places which are which either attract these things
or places where these things. Maybe the place itself generates

(44:16):
these things. You know, who one else who on earth knows.
I don't know if we're going to go for the
full Outno, because we could, and we easily could. But
it's a funny, little non paranormal Christmas story, or that
was weird, not really weird in any normal sense. I
bought a turkey, as I always do, and put in
my fridge about four or five days ago. Was frozen
from the work called little market near me, And when

(44:38):
I went to take it out this morning from the
fridge to cook it, it was still rock frozen solid
by the time I defrosted this turkey and got the
neck and everything else out of it. We're using water
again and again and again. We put this turkey in
what probably three hours after I plan to put this in,
because I should have already defrosted. So my turkey I
still have not eaten. My family's turkey is still in

(44:58):
the oven and it's probably fine now. I checked just
before the show. It still wasn't done, but it's probably
almost done now. So unless anybody in that chad has
a specific question for me, or unless or for my mother,
or unless my mother has any parting words, I think
we're going to call it talking weird about ten minutes
earlier tonight than we usually do, so my turkey doesn't burn.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
I decided to wish you all a very merry Christmas,
thank you for supporting my son or you I watching
myself back in Australia and missus show. So I hope
you all have a wonderful Christmas rest of the Christmas
and wish you all happy and healthy New Year coming up.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
I certainly thank you, Nan, I certainly I certainly echo
my mother's sentiments there. I do appreciate each and every
one of you for listening in, whether this is your
first night or particularly those who are regular regular viewers,
regular listeners, regular audience members. I'm glad I got to

(45:55):
come and say Merry Christmas to many of you in person,
and I hope you all in show the rest of
your holiday period. And if you've still got something to
eat tonight, enjoy it. Maybe you can you have a
drink or some snacks and watch a Christmas movie, maybe
a dark Christmas movie like Crampers say WA's a Happy
One or Rare Exports is another call a darker Christmas movie,

(46:17):
or The Fat Man we watched the other night with
Mill Gibson fun and that was fun. It's more of
an action Christmas movie that was fun. Regardless, whatever you're
getting up to tonight, please enjoy the rest of your
holidays and Merry Christmas. God bless you all. Thank you
for joining, and as I always say, please keep it weird.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Bye.
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