A Nightmare Before Halloween, Part One
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Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com. This is Murder, She Told. True crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Seavey.

You can connect with the show at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. Welcome to a special episode of Murder She Told.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite seasons, so when Shane from Foul Play Podcast asked me to be a part of this special collaboration with over 30 other podcasts, I couldn't resist. In these episodes, you'll hear from podcasts all around the world telling stories in their own voice, whether it's paranormal or true crime or just plain spooky. This is a great way to find other podcasts and hear a little bit in their own voice.

Check out the show notes to see the order of the stories being played. And be sure to go check out those podcasts. And without further ado, this is A Nightmare Before Halloween, Part 1. Hello, friend, and welcome to A Nightmare Before Halloween. Take a seat here, next to the campfire. Don't you know the woods are a terribly dangerous place to be alone? I've invited a few friends here to join us tonight. They are almost exclusively crime podcasters who all have a terrifying tale to share.

you're going to hear 31 spooky stories. And before we conclude with a soothing, deadly bedtime story, we'll be visited by someone the Devil himself would likely think twice before crossing.

All podcasts joining tonight you will find listed in the episode show notes in order of appearance along with a link on where to find them. If you're in the mood for true crime or spooky tales or maybe to learn about some other podcasts you could start listening to, well, then you're in the right place. The campfire feels nice and warm now, doesn't it?

I'm Shane Waters, by the way, the host of Foul Play Crime Series. And tonight, stay close. You never know who or what could be lurking in these dark woods. I'll start with the first spooky crime story of the night. The night of Halloween was once called All Hallows' Eve. It was a night where costumes were worn to ward off evil spirits who had crossed over from the dead into the living world to roam.

The customary costume was intended for protection: a layer of clothing to change a person's appearance, blend in with the spirits, and dispel any incoming evil. In today's world, it is other humans rather than spirits that we have come to fear. When a person disappears, literally vanishes without a trace, our world suddenly takes on a menacing and unknown feeling.

Busy lives, bustling traffic, life happening in every direction. And somehow a human being gets swallowed up, like a vortex spinning and capturing its prey. When there are no clues, when there is no evidence to find, the world carries on, and yet this individual is no longer in it. For those left behind, they have unanswered questions, and a desperate need for answers to try and make sense of it.

On February 27, 2003, around 4:00 p.m., the Minneapolis Police Department received a phone call. A body had been found floating in the Mississippi River, just south of the iconic Third Avenue Bridge.

The imposing structure, with its sweeping concrete arches that flow across the full 2,223-foot length of the bridge, connects downtown Minneapolis with the Northeast area. As dispatch sent water recovery teams to the scene, detectives were put on alert. There are many different reasons a body can end up in the water. All are tragic events. Some, however, come straight from dark and sinister places.

The Mississippi River had been frozen in recent weeks, with the harsh winter keeping the temperatures below freezing. A slow thawing had begun to emerge, the ice cautiously melting, and with its gentle reduction came the release of objects that had been held in its icy grip. As water experts respectfully began to recover the body onto dry land, the glances between them could not be mistaken.

they had recovered at least 13 bodies from that stretch of water, and none looked like this. When the air in a person's lungs is replaced by water, the ability to breathe is impaired and restricted, rising until it fills the lungs to capacity. The liquid causes suffocation, air is forced out, and the lungs are immersed completely, leading to respiration grudgingly, yet inevitably coming to an end.

At this point, a body will begin to sink into the darkness of the waters below and out of sight. Over time gases are released, swelling up the body and causing it to rise again to break the surface of the water. With the torso more bloated and buoyant, the usual position a body takes is face down, arms out with a slight droop of the hands toward the seabed below and legs that are angled downward.

The body the team pulled out of the Mississippi River at 6:28 p.m. that evening had not been in that position.

Fully clothed and lying on his back, the male body floated, unanchored in the water. On his feet were slip-on clog-like shoes, still firmly in place. He was wearing a tan-collared Native American costume, with dangling tassels up the arms. The top section still neatly tucked into his pants. His arms were crossed over his chest, with one arm gently resting on top of the other. Inside his left fist, clenched and locked in place, was a clump of human hair.

Later that evening, the medical examiner was able to confirm the identity of this unknown soul, found so tragically in the icy cold waters. His name was Christopher Jenkins. His body had been found in the river exactly four months to the day when he had so mysteriously disappeared on Halloween night in 2002.

Chris was 21 years old and a student at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota's Business School. He was due to graduate with his bachelor's degree in marketing and entrepreneurial management in May 2003. Chris was a happy guy. He had a girlfriend he adored, and he was a captain and goalie of the University lacrosse team. Life was good.

On October 31, 2002, Chris was planning a night out for Halloween. His girlfriend Ashley Rice was a waitress at the Lone Tree Bar and Grill in downtown Minneapolis. He dropped her off for her day shift that day at 10:00 a.m. before heading into the Rosedale shopping mall. He was hunting for a costume to wear out that night. His choice was the Native American costume he was still wearing when he was found in the river exactly four months later.

Inside the Lone Tree Bar after 11:00 PM that night, the group fanned out as they met other friends and enjoyed the atmosphere. Witnesses remember seeing Chris dancing and chatting with people. As the night wore on, it appeared that Chris became more intoxicated. As the time approached midnight, a bouncer made his way over to Chris and was escorted out of the bar. Exactly why has never been fully established with any certainty.

Outside there was a chill in the air, and darkness had closed in. Chris had no phone or wallet on him. His costume didn't have pockets. Ashley was carrying his belongings for him, but she was still inside the bar. At 12:30 AM, Chris was outside the Lone Tree Grill, after being shown the door by the bouncer. From there, Chris vanished into the night.

The Minneapolis Police Department wouldn't accept a missing persons report until 72 hours had passed. Without any indications of foul play, they expected Chris to reappear at any time. Minneapolis police detectives did find a witness who they thought saw Chris on the night he disappeared.

The witness was cycling across the Hennepin Avenue bridge at around 2:00 a.m. on Halloween night. They saw a man walking across the bridge alone. This was the only possible sighting of Chris after he was at the Lone Tree Bar. In a meeting with his parents, police said they believed Chris had taken his own life and jumped into the Mississippi River on the night of Halloween. He had struggled with depression in the past, and detectives thought this was the most likely explanation for his disappearance.

The autopsy of Chris Jenkins further deepened the mystery of what happened to him. He did not have water in his lungs. It was not the river that took his life. Arms crossed, hair grasped in his hand, his body looked like it had been posed.

pushed into the water while still in stages of rigor mortis, locking the position in place before the freezing temperatures took hold. The hair inside his fist was believed to be his own. He had no injuries consistent with falling into the river from a height. His slip-on shoes

still in place, and clothes neatly arranged do not support a sudden submersion in water, and the inevitable struggle to survive that would follow. The levels of decomposition across his body were much less than would have been expected after four months in the water, even considering the shocking cold waters of winter. His case, however, remained marked as accidental drowning or suicide. It would be another three years before the status of Chris's case would change.

In 2006, the work of Chuck Lausch managed to provide enough material for the police chief to reclassify Chris' death as a homicide. Part of that material was a statement from an unnamed individual who was currently in prison. They said they saw someone push Chris off the Hennepin Avenue bridge and into the water below on that Halloween night in 2002. Chris Jenkins had been murdered, and he might not have been the only one.

From 1,200 miles away in New York City, a retired NYPD homicide detective was following the news in Chris's case.

He immediately booked flights to Minneapolis. Kevin Gannon was a 20-year veteran of the New York Police. He wanted to investigate the details of this case for himself. For the past nine years, Gannon had been working with a small team of retired detectives investigating clusters of drowning deaths of young men in cities across the United States. Almost all of them have been determined as accidental drownings.

the team didn't agree. Some of these cases they believed were homicides that were connected to each other. This team wanted the world to know that there was a serial killer at work.

One of the things Gannon had found that connected those deaths was what he had come to know as the killer's calling card. In many of these cases, left on the nearest man-made structure to where a body is found floating in the water were three simple marks. Normally innocent and happy, in this context, they were mocking and foreboding. They were marks that made a distinctive and unmistakable smiley face.

painted on trees, fences, concrete structures, or walls. It was a face that stared down the observer with a permanent, taunting smirk. In a notable amount of these cases, enhancing their ominous impact, the smiley faces were painted with horns. Two other retired detectives, Anthony Duarte and Michael Donovan, were on Gannon's team, along with a university criminal justice professor, Dr. Lee Gilbertson.

As the number of cases they were linking together rose, they came to realize these killings could not be the work of one individual acting alone. What has become known as the Smiley Face Killers, due to the sinister calling card, the team believed there was a serial killing syndicate operating across multiple cities and state lines in the United States.

Working in partnership, this deadly underground group were silent and covert, and they have been operating for years. Scores of young men, all fitting the same profile, were going missing on nights out. Mostly in their early twenties, they were white men, fit and athletic, usually at universities and doing well in their studies. They were young and seemed to have everything going for them. After vanishing in the dead of night,

They were being held by the killers for different amounts of time. It would be days, weeks, or even months before their bodies were dumped into nearby waters and found to be returned to devastated families. In almost all cases, their tragic deaths had been classified as accidental drownings, intoxicated

unsteady on their feet, walking by the riverbank, it happens. People fall in and are unable to save themselves. Only, in many of these cases, these men didn't drown. There was no water in their lungs. There was no bloating with how bodies decompose in water and become buoyant. They had been killed before their bodies entered the water, and often with unexplained amounts of the central nervous system depressant, GHB, in their systems.

However this terrifying trend had started, the team believed it had expanded into a network of individuals working in carefully planned and executed, synchronized with each other. The victims were targeted, assessed to ensure they met the same profile criteria. They were then followed, drugged, and kidnapped, snatched off the street and away from the safety of their friends during a night out, never to be seen alive again. I don't know about you,

but I will never look at smiley faces the same way again. My first friend joining here tonight is Kristen Seavey from Murder, She Told. Kristen's tale is on the murder of Alzada Pauline Young from 1940 in Rockland, Maine. Leaves crunched under his shoes and the sun's last rays pried their way into his squinted eyes as John walked down Crescent Street.

John knocked on his neighbor's door. He had gotten fed up with his stepdaughter's long absences. It had been a week since he'd seen Pauline. She came to the door, and he said, "'It's time to come home, Pauline.'" She was just 16 years old, but had a mind of her own. And John was growing impatient with her. They walked home, their backs to the setting sun. It was Halloween night.

John's other two children that lived with him were on their way out the door to go trick-or-treating, leaving him and Pauline alone. John, in his authoritarian way, said that her days of staying overnight away from the house were over, and that her wings were getting clipped. She was livid. She said that she was leaving and yelled, "'To hell with supper, to hell with you, and to hell with mother.'" John locked all the doors, daring her to try and leave.

Pauline grabbed a knife from the kitchen and came at John. He grabbed the closest weapon, a hammer, and threw it at her, hitting her in the forehead and rendering her instantly unconscious. She crumpled to the floor, face down. John rolled her over, checked her pulse, checked her breathing, and discovered that he'd killed his wife's daughter with a single brutal blow. He panicked.

Who would believe that a husky stoneworker like him could have felt threatened by a 16-year-old girl? Who would believe that he acted in self-defense?

He had to think fast. He picked up her body and moved it downstairs in the cellar as a temporary measure. He cleaned up the kitchen from their struggle. He'd figure out what to do with the body later. His wife and kids went to bed that night, but he couldn't sleep knowing what he'd done and what gruesome task awaited him tomorrow.

When he shut the door to his home after ushering his children off to school, he breathed a sigh of relief. His family hadn't discovered his secret. But what now?

John lived in a duplex right in the heart of Rockland, Maine. He couldn't just carry a body to the ocean. He had neighbors and foot traffic on all sides. So he improvised. He gathered up some sharp tools and went to work, dissecting Pauline's 16-year-old frame into pieces that would fit into burlap bags. Using an axe and a kitchen knife, he cleaved her body into six parts, placing each in its respective container.

He buried some of them under his porch, which he cleverly accessed through a basement window. He worked in the shallow crawlspace beneath the porch deck, which was concealed by a wooden trellis, dug a trench, and buried two of the bags there. He covered them with dirt and placed two wooden planks on top to conceal the disturbed soil. He had four to go.

There was some cover in the backyard where there were some outbuildings. At first, he considered working within the buildings, but the shed was chock full of coal and the henhouse had a wooden floor. But there were a few feet between the shed and the henhouse where he wouldn't be too exposed to nosy neighbors. He grabbed his shovel and went to work. When he finished, he made three trips inside, bringing one sack per trip and deposited them into the earth.

He covered the soil and then asked a couple of neighbors to move his children's playhouse into the tight spot and conceal the turned soil. The final sack would have to wait for the cover of darkness. His family returned home from their routine daily schedule, and he tried to maintain normalcy, but he felt nervous and wild.

After they went to bed, John picked up the final sack and walked to the salty shore of Rockland Harbor. He picked up a heavy rock and stowed it in the bag next to Pauline's head. He cinched the bag shut, bound it with a rope, and walked it to the end of the pier. With his considerable strength, he hurled the bag into the harbor and collapsed. What had he done?

On Tuesday, November 5th, five days after he had killed Pauline, John went to the police and reported her missing. He had a part to play. The concerned father. Little did John know, neighbors were growing suspicious. His neighbor, Marion Allen, remembered hearing a woman scream four times, and then a heavy fall, after which all was quiet except the radio.

She heard John's wife return home from work and say to John three times, "'I can't, Daddy.'" Thelma was accustomed to calling her husband Daddy. After all, he was 21 years her senior, she being 33 and he being 54. What terrible thing had John asked his wife to do? And Marion heard John pacing all night, walking up and down the stairs.

She could feel the heat radiating off the walls. He had built two heavy fires, one in the kitchen range and another in the parlor stove. She was suspicious of the purpose of those fires.

Stories were circulating around the Phelps' home, and on Thursday, a week after the killing, Marion decided to act. She went to the sheriff of Knox County, Earl Ludwig, and told him everything she knew. The sheriff recalled Marion coming into his office and opening up about her fears that something terrible had befallen Pauline. She became so unglued during her telling that he fetched a doctor to treat her.

The police all went to the Phelps' home that evening and looked into the matter. John was home and answered the door. They recalled that he was very calm and invited them in to search wherever they liked. They went to the cellar and John invited them to use the short-handled shovel that was laying against the foundation wall to dig around. John said simply that she had gathered her clothing and run away on the night of Halloween.

After further routine questioning, the officers left. That might have been the end of the story of Pauline if it hadn't have been for what happened Saturday morning. Rockland patrolman Ronald Sukaforth was doing his rounds on the cobblestone streets and dirt roads when he came across a middle-aged man covered with blood. He was wandering dazedly near the police station. The

The officer took him straight to Knox County General Hospital. The man said that he had taken five poisonous tablets, mercury bichloride, and when those failed to work, he tried to take his own life by cutting his left wrist. He also told the doctor that there was an important note in one of his pockets, a truth he wished to tell. Dr. Wiseman searched his pockets and discovered a slip of paper.

scrawled with a handful of simple words that revealed that the man before him, John Phelps, had killed his stepdaughter. He immediately notified the sheriff of his discovery.

By 4 a.m. that morning, the top brass from local law enforcement gathered at John's bedside and he told them everything. The men summoned additional help and made their way to John's home. It wasn't long before they found the first two sacks, hidden underneath the front porch. The local doctor, borrowing a knife from the newspaper reporter, slit the ropes that bound the sack and revealed the right thigh and groin.

The second sack contained both legs, still clad with stockings. They next turned their attention to his outbuildings. Wedged between the other two buildings was a children's playhouse. They decided to remove it. Several officers lifted up and revealed that the earth had been recently disturbed. A foot and a half under the surface, they discovered a third sack, then a fourth, then a fifth.

Dr. Weissman cut the rope securing the bag and found first the left arm and upper left half of the body, cut down a center line. In the fourth bag was the other thigh, and in the fifth was the right half of the body. The parts were all taken to Burpee Funeral Home, where the doctor assembled the parts like a ghastly jigsaw puzzle. He later told reporters that some of the internal organs were never found.

That afternoon, Dr. Weissman told reporters that he believed John wouldn't live more than a week. He was in critical condition. Police headed to Witham's Wharf and started dragging the bottom of the harbor with grappling hooks, hoping to snag the bag that contained Pauline's head.

There was an urgency to the search. The sooner they recovered the bag, the better the condition would be, and the sooner they could examine her head to determine if John's story of a single hammer blow was truthful.

All week, John struggled for his life, but his strong constitution triumphed, and on Thursday, two weeks after Pauline's death, he was released from the hospital. While John convalesced, police searched the harbor. Hundreds of man-hours and even a diver turned up nothing. Pauline's head had vanished.

As soon as John was released, he was immediately arrested on a murder charge and arraigned the following day in Rockland District Court. He pled not guilty, explaining that he only acted in self-defense. The judge held him without bail through the winter to stand trial. In February, four months after Pauline's death, a grand jury convened and indicted John, and he was arraigned again in Superior Court.

The judge read the charges, and to everyone's surprise, John pled guilty. The legal process was over. The prosecutor motioned for sentencing, and the judge obliged, imposing a life sentence at Maine State Prison in Thomaston.

John had been jailed in Thomaston for 24 years when in 1964, he petitioned Maine's governor and the executive council for a pardon for the second time. They granted him parole. He lived out his final years with his daughter, Rachel. On August 28, 1968, John died at the age of 81 and was buried in East Hartford, Connecticut, near where his daughter lived.

This story became a legend in the Rockland community. People comment even today on blog posts about this murder. They always thought it was a myth and were stunned to learn that it was true.

The house became known as a haunted house. Kids were fearful going near it. There was a speculation of what happened to Pauline's head. Perhaps it wasn't discarded in the bay. One long-time Rockland resident, who was just eight years old when it happened, believed that John had thrown the head in a quarry behind the church. Another woman said that it was a legend in their family that John had passed one of her ancestors with a burlap bag.

and when she asked him what he was doing, he replied that he was going to drown kittens in the quarry. The author of a local history book wrote that it affected the children of the era, himself included. He wrote, "...it was literally years before any of us would even walk past the house, day or night. Sometimes we would race past the house on our bicycles, but that was the extent of our courage."

How many legends might just be based on true stories, you think?

There you are, Ashley. Ashley is the host of Crime Salad. The story she has for us tonight happened on Halloween night in 2004, when one house in Napa Valley was transformed into a real-life horror movie that began with a terrifying, blood-curdling scream.

And you think of Halloween, you think of all the little tiny ghosts, goblins, and princesses with wide-eyed wonderment walking through the neighborhood as their parents watch them go from door to door for a forbidden treat from a stranger. It's ironic because parents spend all year telling their children not to talk to strangers or be swayed by talk of lost puppies, kittens, or free candy.

But on this one special magical night of the year, we throw caution to the window and allow the most innocent among us to take candy from strangers. But they aren't really strangers. They're usually kind-hearted neighbors all participating in the making of innocent children memories. That's exactly how Halloween night in 2004 began for the three young women living in the adorable little house on Dorset Street in downtown Napa Valley, California.

26-year-old Adrian Insagna and 26-year-old Lauren Mianza became fast and close friends when they played in the same volleyball league. It wasn't long before they moved in together into a charming 900-square-foot bungalow in the heart of idyllic Napa Valley. Soon, they had made friends with another 26-year-old who lived next door, Leslie Mazzara.

When Leslie needed a place to live, they invited her to be their third roommate. So that Halloween night, the three of them made dinner together, baked cookies, and they handed out candy to trick-or-treaters and dreamed of someday having families of their own. And by 11 o'clock p.m., they were all in bed, unaware of a watcher, fixated on the women, inside the house on Dorset.

This is exactly how many seasonal Halloween horror-themed movies start, but this was real life and without the soundtrack filled with ominous music. What it did have was a murderous villain standing in the shadows waiting and watching to fulfill his malevolent plan. Adrian and Leslie each slept upstairs in blissful ignorance of the horror to come, while Lauren slept in the downstairs bedroom with her German shepherd mix Chloe.

And then around 1 a.m., Chloe began to growl, just as a security light in the backyard switched on. Lauren dismissed the warning bark and shushed Chloe to be quiet. She assumed it was something as innocent as a neighborhood cat triggering the motion sensor. She couldn't have been more wrong.

In her ignorance, she calmed Chloe down and easily fell back asleep until she was abruptly awakened again to the sound of someone walking past her room and heading upstairs. Again, Lauren assumed one of her roommates had their boyfriend visiting and again shushed Chloe intending to go back to sleep. And that is when she was awakened one last time. But this time was by a blood-curdling, terrified scream followed by desperate pleas for help.

At that moment, Lauren heard someone coming down the stairs heading right towards her. Without thinking, she ran with Chloe to the backyard, hoping he wasn't on her trail. And that is when she realized the intruder must have exited through a front-facing window, which would turn out to be how he entered the home as well. In a moment of stunning bravery, usually reserved for horror film heroines, Lauren climbed the stairs and headed towards the cries for help.

As she entered Adrian's room, she noticed the floor was wet. In a surreal cinematic moment, it dawned on her that the floor was soaked with the blood of her friends. Simultaneously, she took in the scene and saw Leslie lying face down on the floor, covered in stab wounds. Leslie was no longer moving. The sounds she heard were coming from her friend Adrian, so weakly crying for help while crouched behind the bed in a fetal position. Her throat had been cut,

Lauren ran down the stairs to call for help, only to discover that the phone line had been cut. Even though she heard the intruder leave through the front door, she no longer felt safe inside the home. She grabbed her cell phone and headed for her car, calling 911 as she drove away safely. When authorities arrived, they were shocked by the rage and viciousness of the assault.

They theorized that Leslie had been attacked first in her sleep and Adrian was attacked second when she came in to help fight off the intruder. Law enforcement were sure that the attacker personally knew one or more of the women based on the number of stab wounds. This attack seemed personal. Both women were stabbed violently and repeatedly. Their best evidence was a drop of blood from the killer left outside the window when he exited the residence.

There was also a pile of cigarette butts left in the tree line where the attacker watched the house while working up his courage to kill his target. The DNA left on the cigarette butts matched the DNA of the blood droplet.

As a result, police interviewed over 1,000 people and took DNA samples from over 200 suspects. It was almost a year later without a viable suspect, and police decided that they release some of the evidence to the public in hopes that it would generate new leads. They knew that Leslie, an Adrian's attacker, was a smoker of white European descent. He also smoked a newer brand of cigarettes, which had only been on the market for four months. They were Camel Turkish Gold brand.

Authorities interviewed Lauren again and asked if any of the women knew any smokers. That is when Lauren remembered that Adrienne's best friend Lily and her boyfriend Eric had helped the women move into their home in June of 2004. Lily's boyfriend Eric was a smoker. When authorities looked at their files, they realized that Lily and Eric had both cooperated throughout the investigation, and Eric was asked to provide a DNA sample at that time.

While they prepared to contact Eric again, something extraordinary happened. Eric Koppel, who was now married to Lily, walked into the police headquarters and confessed. He knew it was only a matter of time before they found him, and as a result, he decided to take the coward's way out and kill himself. He wrote goodbye letters to his parents, family members, and his wife. They all encouraged Eric to do the right thing and turn himself in, which he did.

In a plea deal, Eric was offered two life sentences without the possibility of parole as long as he waived his right to appeal the sentences. Now, police discovered that Eric and Lily had been engaged and they were supposed to be married the same day as the attack. However, Lily delayed the wedding and Eric felt like this was all because of Adrian's interference in his relationship.

In fact, on the day after the attack, he should have been in Hawaii on his honeymoon. Instead, he was outside the little house on Dorset, working up the courage to act out his rage on innocent women. At sentencing, Arlene and Kathy, the two mothers of Eric's victims, would no longer be silenced. Eric had taken the lives of two vibrant young women in the most terrifying way. Arlene and Kathy wanted answers as to why their daughters had to die.

A few months earlier, Eric's mother, Robin, had the audacity to write a letter to Adrian's mother telling her the murders were God's will and both girls were in a better place. Arlene wrote back telling her that she couldn't have been more wrong and Jesus wept at these women's deaths.

Kathy, who was Leslie's mother, shared a 13-page letter with the court highlighting her daughter's many accomplishments in the short 26 years she had on Earth. Then she looked directly at Eric and told him she would never forgive him.

She stated, quote,

May you live a hundred years in misery and an eternity in hell." Adrian's mother was equally as angry. Eric and Lily had invited her to their wedding to read a scripture blessing their marriage, all while knowing Eric had taken her daughter from her. She too faced Eric and said, "I know you. I know that you are a man who brutally and callously took the life of a wonderful woman.

You cannot love Lily and bring a knife into Adrian's home and stab her." She told Eric that Adrian had to be buried wearing a turtleneck to cover where he had viciously and remorsefully slit her daughter's throat. She called him cruel for inviting her to his wedding to bless his union, knowing he had caused Adrian's death. She ended by calling him a murderer and a coward.

Next, Lily was allowed to speak, and we aren't going to share the entirety of her words because someone as grotesque as Eric Koppel shouldn't have anyone say such wonderful and flowery things about him after knowing what he did to two defenseless women. The most egregious of her words were when she told Eric how proud she was of him because he had confessed.

She told him, quote, Eric, there is nothing in this world you can do to make me love you less, end quote. Apparently, murder isn't cause for a little less love. The monster himself spoke and offered hollow words filled with excuses and manipulation to evoke sympathy.

Other than Lilly, he chose the wrong audience. In his self-serving statement, he stated that, quote,

The words evade me to articulate the depths of my sorrow or my terminal I created." He told the court that he suffered from suicidal ideation as a teenager and was always depressed, which he masked with alcohol and other substances. Then he said, "In the months preceding Halloween 2004, several traumatic events happened in my life in rapid succession.

My immediate family dissolved largely as a result of certain disturbing revelations about specific members. And worst of all, my relationship with Lily, the singular ray of light in my otherwise black world, was in peril of collapsing.

The real truth is that this small, petty, vengeful man believed that Adrian was poisoning Lily's mind against him. That she was making her yearn for a single life while highlighting Eric's deficiencies. When Lily called off the wedding, he thought of nothing else but lashing out his displaced anger on her best friend and taking Leslie's life as collateral damage.

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I just learned something about myself. Crime salad is my favorite kind of salad. Hold on a minute.

Charlie, your shoe is on fire. I told her not to sit too close to the fire. Okay, sorry about that. Back to spooky and murdery. Charlie here is a great friend. She hosts Crime Lines, which is a crime podcast that brings in relevant historical and context to cases. This is the story of the Pollock Twins.

On the morning of Sunday, May 7th, 1957, Joanna Pollock, age 11, and her younger sister Jacqueline, age 6, left home to walk to church at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Hexham, England. The church was just half a mile from their home, and they usually walked as a family. But the girl's nine-year-old friend Anthony came by to see if they wanted to go with him. He was serving as an altar boy that day, so he had to be there a little early.

As they walked towards the church, a 51-year-old woman named Marjorie Wynn got into her car. Marjorie was in an altered state as she had taken handfuls of barbiturates that morning, possibly in a suicide attempt. As Marjorie approached where the children were walking, she swerved her vehicle across the road, jumped the curb, striking and killing all three children.

Marjorie was treated for her injuries and promptly arrested. While Marjorie dealt with the British court system, the families of the children struggled to deal with their grief. John Pollock, the girl's father, worried that his daughter's deaths were his fault. Though a devout Catholic, he strongly believed in reincarnation. He had prayed to God to send him proof of his belief.

By trying to test God, John first believed that God had taken his daughters away.

But then John began to wonder if God was actually answering his prayer and would send the girls back in new bodies. He started telling his wife Florence not to worry. Not only would the girls be reincarnated, they would return to their family. John became even more convinced when eight months after the deaths of Joanna and Jacqueline, Florence became pregnant again. He knew that it meant one of the girls was on her way back.

But as Florence's abdomen swelled beyond what it had during her previous pregnancies, John became sure both girls were coming back. Though the doctor said he believed there was only one baby, John was sure it was twins. On October 4th, 1958, Florence gave birth to twin baby girls. They named the girls Jillian and Jennifer.

And John looked for the signs he had asked God for, proof that the girls were really Joanna and Jacqueline, back again. One early sign was that Jennifer had two birthmarks. They coincided with marks Jacqueline had, one scar and one birthmark. Florence, though, remained unconvinced. A couple of birthmarks were not enough for her to toss out her lifelong religious belief system.

John watched as Jillian grew and developed a build and personality like Joanna's, and Jennifer leaned towards Jacqueline. But maybe he was just seeing what he wanted to see.

When the twins were three, Florence pulled out an old box of Joanna and Jacqueline's toys. She worried about the two fighting over whatever was in the box, but that didn't happen. Instead, each girl immediately grabbed four different dolls. Jillian grabbed the doll that belonged to Joanna, and Jennifer grabbed the one that belonged to Jacqueline.

They both said the dolls were gifts from Father Christmas, and these toddlers could not have known that they were, in fact, Christmas gifts for their late sisters. Here is Florence in an interview explaining that moment. When I got these two dolls out, one said, oh, that's Mary and that's Susan.

And it was exactly the same names as my other daughters had named them. And that was the sort of really turning point in my way of thinking. After this, with the girls fully verbal, the evidence that they were their sisters reincarnated started piling up.

In 1963, when the girls were four years old, the family went to visit friends in Hexham. They had moved away when the twins were still infants. As they walked through town, Jillian and Jennifer insisted they wanted to go to the park and play on the swings. They didn't know there was a park nearby, but that's not the remarkable bit. Four-year-olds always ask to go to the playground.

The remarkable part was that in spite of never having been there, they led their family to the park their late sisters used to play at, as though they knew their way around town. On another occasion, Jillian pointed to Jennifer's birthmark on her forehead, the one in the same spot where Jacqueline had a scar. Jillian said, that's from where she fell on the bucket. And a bucket was the exact thing that had left the gash on Jacqueline's head.

Another time, John was wearing a smock that Florence used to wear when she delivered milk before the twins were born. Jennifer asked him why he was wearing it when it belonged to Florence. Jennifer never would have seen Florence wearing that smock before, but her late sister would have. The story of the Pollock twins spread, and paranormal researcher Ian Stevenson traveled to the family home in 1963 when the girls were four.

He first interviewed John and Florence in an attempt to assess the situation. After speaking with them and then the girls, he believed that their account was credible. But as the girls approached the age of five, their past life memories began to fade. By the time Stevenson visited them when they were eight, the memories were gone. By the time he last checked in with them when they were 20, even the memories of the memories had left.

He had to depend almost entirely on John and Florence's reports. At the age of 22, Jillian did experience a flashback of sorts. She remembered playing in a sandpit with her older brothers, but it wasn't a place she recognized. She described the house in the yard, and John said it perfectly matched a property they lived at when Joanna was a toddler, and Jillian had never been to.

Those who believe that the Pollock twins are the reincarnations of their older sisters are generally the people who already believe in the principle even before they heard of the girls. And those who think John and Florence projected their own beliefs onto the twins are generally people who already don't believe in reincarnation.

Our own biases color how we see all cases, whether they are of this world, out of this world, or simply otherworldly.

Are you a believer in reincarnation? I know some folks hope to be reincarnated because they fear death, but I argue there is a fate worse than death. Peter Laws is the host of our curious past and frightful, so take a deep breath and follow Peter now as the two of you wander through the cemetery to explore this thought. What could be worse than death? Opening one's eyes into the damp, cold blackness of

of a buried coffin. Horrible, yes, but cases of premature burial are not only found in the fictional works of gothic writers like Edgar Allan Poe. Shockingly, history is littered with incidents of real cases in which people have been buried alive.

Essie Dunbar was 30 years old when she died. It was the summer of 1915 in Blackville, South Carolina, when she had a seizure. She'd had fits before she was epileptic, but this one was incredibly severe, and it left her lying on the ground seemingly lifeless. A physician was quickly called to examine her and everybody's worst fears were confirmed. Essie was pronounced dead.

Her corpse was placed into a wooden coffin, and a funeral service was quickly arranged for the following morning. Despite the speed at which the funeral was arranged, most of Essie's relatives were able to attend the service to say goodbye. But Essie's sister, who hurried to attend, arrived late. By the time she rushed to the churchyard, the service was almost over. In fact, the coffin had already been lowered into the grave and dirt had been thrown across it.

Yet she wanted to see her sister one final time, and so the minister and the undertakers kindly agreed. They would dig the soil away and lift the coffin for one last farewell. The screws were slowly and carefully removed, and then the lid was prized open and lifted off. And that is when the screams began, because the body of Essie suddenly sat up, turned towards her sister, and smiled at her.

The ministers were horrified and recoiled from the sight, falling backwards from the grave. Others scrambled to get away, trampling a man who broke his rib in the chaos. The solemn funeral service erupted into hysterical panic.

On seeing Essie, grinning at her, the sister shrieked in fright and ran away as did the others. And those who dared to look back would see a sight to chill the bones. Essie, who had died the day before, was crawling out of the coffin and she was running after them into town. The mourners would have to get over their fright because Essie was clearly back and she intended to stay. Indeed,

She would live among them for another 40 years. And though the locals may have whispered rumors at night that their town now had a permanent ghost or zombie, most people knew the truth. And the fact that the explanation was natural made it no less terrifying. Essie had been buried alive on that awful summer morning in 1915. And if it wasn't for her sister, she'd have been left down there forever.

Unlike A.C. Dunbar, not all people managed to escape the grave, like Samuel MacDonald. The year was 1815, when Samuel MacDonald was working alone. It was a remote, wooded area of Maine, New England, and he was used to the challenges of the American wilderness: the difficult terrain, the harsh weather, the deadly wildlife, and of course, the loneliness.

Yet at least he could always rely on his good health to see him through. Until that is one day when he started to feel unwell. He hoped his illness might pass, but it got worse and more worrying by the day. If this was us today we'd have options in this situation. Phones with GPS trackers, medication, 4x4 trucks to get us through any landscape. But Samuel was born in 1771. This was not a time for options.

Alone and unsure of what to do, Samuel just lit a fire and lay in front of it, desperately praying that the rest and warmth might perk him up. It did not. It's not clear who discovered Samuel, but somebody found his corpse still laid out by the long dead fire not far from Umbagog Lake. They managed to get word to Samuel's sons, who then made the long, heartbreaking trek to pay their respects.

After traveling hundreds of miles, they finally arrived at his cabin. Grief-stricken, the sons wanted to honor their father with a proper burial. Yet the weather conditions were too harsh. Dragging a cadaver across the wintry terrain would be impossible. And so instead, they dug a grave in the forest nearby. Then they placed their dad in a temporary wooden coffin. They sank him into a hole, deep enough to avoid any animals burrowing in and getting to their dad.

and then they shoveled the soil on top, packing it down and set a final farewell, with a promise that they would return the following spring. This lonely wilderness grave was hardly ideal, but it would at least give some peace to Samuel, and they would return later to take him back home for a full and proper burial. The winter passed, and so the boys returned in the new year ready to begin the grim task of digging their father back up. They headed into the wood,

and slammed the shovels in, scattering the songbirds as they did. Then finally, metal hit wood. We can't be sure what made the McDonald boys open the coffin that day. Maybe they wanted to give one final nod of respect to their loving parent. Or maybe something seemed off about the lid. Whatever the reason, they decided to prise the wooden lid open to check on their dad. They braced themselves to see a decomposed face

but were baffled to see the back of their father's head instead. Samuel MacDonald was no longer lying on his back as they had placed him. He had somehow turned over onto his stomach. Had animals got to the body after all, or had some ghoulish passerby desecrated the grave? Confused, they reached down and gently lifted their dad up. He took some tugging. When they finally pulled him high enough to see, they saw something that would haunt their nights forever.

Samuel MacDonald had not been turned by anyone else. He had turned himself. Through a panicked sense of disorientation. He had not died by the fire after all. He had died right there in the hole. Without realizing it, his boys had buried him alive.

and when the sons lifted him out, they saw the despair of their father's final moments. Toward the end, Samuel MacDonald had used his teeth to gnaw his way through the wooden boards in a wild and panicked and useless attempt at escape.

Stories like this helped fuel the widespread dread of premature burial in the 17th and 18th centuries. In response, a number of elaborate fail-safe systems were invented, like coffins having glass windows and breathing tubes through which the victim could suck in much-needed air and scream for help. Even better, some systems had a run of cords from the hand of the corpse to a bell above the ground, or perhaps a pistol and a single bullet.

might have been the most welcome addition of them all. Now thankfully advances in medical science mean accidentally burying people is less likely today but make no mistake it can still happen. Like Mildred Clark in 1994. She was 86 years old when a coroner in New York declared her deceased. She was wheeled into the freezer at the morgue and lay there for an hour and a half before one of the supervisors happened to notice her move.

And yet it's still thought that today, with more thorough procedures, the chances of being buried alive are slim. But they are not zero. Actually, when you think about it, perhaps the chances are much more than that. Because there is one other chilling possibility. There may be more premature burials than we ever imagined. And that the recorded numbers are low simply because we never get to find out.

And how could we? These days, over half of all cadavers are cremated, and that proportion is growing. How many of them flutter their eyes open if only for a moment to find themselves in an oven? That is terrifying enough, but perhaps it's preferable to the alternative. The thought of others right now, somewhere in the world, desperately scraping and gnawing their fingernails against wood in what Edgar Allan Poe called the rigid embrace of the narrow house.

the coffin, from which they cannot escape. Perhaps we should take some comfort in the fact that most people would not survive much longer than an hour in a properly buried airtight coffin. Still though, when you wake up to find yourself in a casket six feet under the ground, way too deep for anybody to hear you scream, sixty minutes can feel like an awfully long time. So, are you now fearful of being buried alive?

Before you go worrying about that, first maybe you should stay away from the Ohio River. Paige is the host of reverie. Reverie means to daydream. But sometimes when we zone out, intrusive thoughts can creep in. We might start to think about our anxieties and worst fears. Is there a green-clawed beast in the Ohio River waiting to snatch you up when you least expect it?

Be careful if you ever go to Indiana and decide to take a dip in the Ohio River. The movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon came out in 1954. But could there actually be a creature just like it living in the Ohio River? This story begins in Evansville, Indiana, August 21, 1955.

Peak summertime, and everyone is ready to be immersed in cool waters. All everyone wanted to do during the summer was go for a dip in the river, swim, and have a good time while cooling off. At this point in time, people's households had no air conditioners, which was a completely miserable experience.

A woman named Naomi Johnson, her three kids, and Naomi's good friend Louise Lamble headed out to West Evansville to hop into the Ohio River to soak in the coolness of the water to relax them in this awful heat. The river is roughly 15 feet deep. A few sources say that the two women witnessed what appeared to be a UFO.

To them, it looked like the underside of a bushel barrel. But they didn't take it too seriously and shrugged it off. There's no way it could have been a UFO, right? They get to the river, and everything is going as planned. Louise and Naomi's kids were hanging out on the shore. Louise was laying out while the kids were playing around.

naomi was around fifteen feet away from the shoreline enjoying her wade in the water when something bizarre and terrifying occurred something curled around naomi's knee all of a sudden naomi was bent backwards and violently slapping the water she was scared to death and explained that it felt like a ginormous hand

She said it also felt furry and had claws. This thing submerged her underwater, but she was able to kick it off and she popped up to the surface, taking a huge breath, then screaming her lungs out. In that moment, whatever this was clutched her leg again. Her friend Louise was in utter shock. She was frozen in terror, staring at her friend.

eventually she did start yelling for help which everyone up and down the shore heard louise snapped out of it and leaped into the water to get her inner tube and move it towards naomi who was able to get a good grasp of it naomi was struggling to ascend on to the floatable device but she got away from this beast and ultimately got a few feet to the shore line

It's possible that the splash of Louise jumping into the water for the inner tube frightened the creature and that's the reason it let go. Medical help finally got to the river. Naomi had her cuts and scratches taken care of on her lower leg. But there was a really weird blue-green stain that none of the medics could get rid of. It left the mark of a great big hand

and for a few days it stayed on her leg. Reportedly, a sample was taken from the print, and according to one source I read, the discolorations were proven to be mud from caves beneath the river, and possibly swirled around and stirred up by boat traffic or any underwater movement. After this happened, the legend of the green-clawed beast was born.

Some people believe, after the way Naomi described what she felt, that this creature bared a striking resemblance to the Thetis Lake Monster, which is known to be in Canada. That creature is super hostile. Others think this could have been the Loveland Frogman, which Christy and Heather of the Sinister Hood podcast did a great and hilarious episode on.

Or, this could have been the works of the Big Muddy Monster, who was first seen on the Big Muddy River. Now, there are a few theories that could be reasonable possibilities. Maybe it was a huge garfish. There had been catfish said to be as huge as a Volkswagen. And catfish can really injure you if you encounter one.

fish fins could also possibly cause the hand-like impressions there were a few movies that came out recently before the attack which could make naomi and others freak out more the creature from the black lagoon where a massive green creature with claw hands strikes a female as she is swimming

also part two revenge of the creature had just come out a few weeks prior to their trip to the river terry colvin an investigator had talked to naomi and her husband after this traumatic episode happened

They told Terry, a man who said he was an Air Force colonel, who really sounded like a character out of the movie Men in Black. He came to their home and said that neither of them could ever speak of that event again after he interviewed them and took very detailed notes. According to AmericanMonsters.com,

first brought to international attention in the early nineteen seventies this grisly aberration of natural selection has been described as being nearly five feet tall and weighing approximately one hundred twenty pounds with an epidermis consisting solely of silver scales

this animal's horrifying visage is made complete by the six razor-sharp spikes connected to one another by a thin webbing which are said to protrude from its amphibious skull with its dark bulbous eyes fish-like mouth and webbed hands feet and ears

The Thetis Lake monster bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconoclastic image of the creature from the Black Lagoon. What lends credibility to these reports, however, is the fact that for centuries North American natives have reported numerous encounters with various creatures which they describe as being carnivorous aquatic humanoids.

Naomi's experience gained the interest of ufologists because on the same date that this happened to her, a horrifying case which is said to be one of the most terrifying ever recorded in ufology, there were encounters with bizarre creatures known as the Hopkinsville Goblin Case.

As far as the green-clawed beast, there has not been a sighting or incident since. However, the story has only grown since the kids who witnessed it went on to tell the story and it's spread like wildfire ever since. Some are still terrified to get into the Ohio River. What do you think? Could there be a strange amphibious humanoid creature living in the Ohio River?

Or is there a more rational explanation, and this was all out of fear, dread, panic, and imagination? Until next time, stay safe, and take care. No swimming in lakes for me. If you're looking for a not-so-evil queen to worship, Joshua should be your podcast host of choice. I'm honestly a bit scared of him, so I'm just going to let Joshua, from rotten to the core, take it from here.

We all know the tradition of lighting jack-o'-lanterns on Halloween to keep away evil spirits. Their tradition comes from 19th century Ireland and it started with turnips carved with demonic faces to keep away the spirit of Stingy Jack, a man who tricked the devil from collecting his soul but was doomed to roam the earth forevermore, unable to attain heaven or hell.

Families started lighting their lanterns on Halloween to save themselves from his and other evil spirits. That's a myth though, right? I mean, nothing like that could possibly happen, could it? Happy Halloween, my darlings! This is Joshua Waters, your not-so-evil queen and the host of Rotten to the Core.

And thank you for joining us all on this special spooky collaboration. Come now, gather round the fire and hear my tale. This story that is pulled straight from hell. October 30th, 2012 seemed like a normal day for Elzbieta Plakowska.

her seven-year-old son Justin, and his five-year-old friend who was spending the night, Olivia Dwakowski, in Naperville, Illinois. Early into the night, as three of them were winding down in the main bedroom of the condo, Elzbieta started to feel a presence. She wasn't sure exactly what it was. That was until it started to speak to her. Soon,

A black shadow was making itself visible to her and even started to convince her that her son and his friend were possessed by the devil himself. Elzbieta claims that the shadow started to tell her to kill them, kill them. You are going to be the last one, she said the shadow told her. You are going to die, but you will be the last one.

Something in the shadow's voice held power over her. She then went to the kitchen to grab a knife. The compelling drawl of the unearthly aspirations of the apparition was just too much for Elspieta, and she proceeded to stab both children over 100 times, before even then killing the family's two dolls.

believing that by killing the children, she was allowing them to enter heaven.

After the murders, Elzbieta was interviewed by several investigators and psychiatrists. Some believe she was browbeaten into a confession by police after she claimed that her life and marriage were her motivation. Dr. Philip Resnick, the main defense expert who worked on the case, stated that her father's death in her home country of Poland just several weeks before was a big contributor to her descent into madness.

Even several friends and neighbors claimed that she was acting unusual and talked about devils in the days that led up to the crime. He also said that it was "unheard of" for someone to fake manic and psychotic symptoms for the number of days Plakowska exhibited them after the murders. The jury didn't believe her "deed of the devil" story, which she and her defense team put together.

and Elzbieta Plakowska was charged with first-degree murder and given life in prison in 2017. We may never know if she was just struggling with a psychotic breakdown or if she was truly haunted by something evil and unknown. Something so dark that it could cause a loving mother to horrifically murder two innocent children and dogs.

on that bloody devil's night not so long ago. Sweet dreams my darlings and don't forget to light your jack-o'-lanterns. You may not know this by the sound of our voices but Joshua and I are actually brothers. I was going to joke about him being the older one but I'm a bit worried for my safety so I'm just going to leave that bit out.

What you also probably didn't know is that my next friend has been sitting here quietly and patiently this entire time. He's just kind like that. Robin Ward is from The Trail Went Cold, which is like Unsolved Mysteries, but in podcast form. This is the tale of the unsolved 1981 murders, Ronald Sissman and Elizabeth Platt.

So at around 7:40 p.m. on Halloween night in 1981, the New York City Police Department was summoned to a third-floor duplex apartment on West 22nd Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan near Greenwich Village. When they arrived, they discovered that two people had been brutally murdered. One of the victims was Ronald Sisman, a 39-year-old freelance photographer from Canada who operated his business from the apartment.

The second victim was Elizabeth Platzman, a 20-year-old art major and honors student at Smith College in Massachusetts who originally hailed from the village of Roslyn in Long Island. The couple had met several weeks earlier before they started dating. Both victims were severely beaten before Ron was shot four times and Elizabeth shot three times, and each of them received one execution-style bullet to the back of their heads. Since no witnesses reported hearing any shots, silencers may have been used.

Police suspected that at least two killers were involved, and since there were no signs of forced entry, they believed that the victims willingly let the perpetrators inside the apartment before they were attacked. The place had also been ransacked, but it was unclear if anything was actually stolen. However, Ron's neighbors told investigators that they believed he sold drugs from his apartment in order to supplement his income, creating a potential motive for the crime.

A small amount of white powder, believed to be cocaine, was found at the scene, and since Elizabeth's friends and family denied that she had any involvement with drugs or illegal activity, she may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is pretty much the only hard information we have about the murders, but like I mentioned earlier, this case does have some odd rabbit holes which may or may not be connected to what happened.

For starters, one year before he was killed, Ron had faced potential legal trouble from an actress named Melanie Holler, who once had a recurring role on the popular sitcom Welcome Back, Cotter. She became acquainted with Ron when he photographed her on a few occasions, but in April of 1980, Ron took Melanie to a dinner party being held at the home of a show business promoter named Roy Radin.

Well, Melanie soon made headlines when she publicly accused Raiden of drugging, beating, and raping her at the party, and also claimed that Raiden and some of the other partygoers had filmed the whole thing. For his part, Raiden said that Melanie had willingly taken part in some sadomasochistic games, maintaining that everything that happened to her was consensual.

Even though Radin was initially charged with numerous offenses, he ultimately only pled guilty to the charge of illegal possession of a handgun, for which he received a sentence of three years probation and a $1,000 fine. In May of 1983, Radin was murdered in a contract hit while he was financing the Francis Ford Coppola directed film, The Cotton Club, but that's probably a story for another podcast.

Anyway, three days after the incident at Raiden's party, Melanie alleged that she went to visit Ron at his apartment, and he drugged her. However, Ron claimed that Melanie was acting hysterical, and he only gave her a legally prescribed tranquilizer to calm her down. In the end, Melanie decided not to press charges against Ron, and the authorities ultimately believed that this whole saga had no connection to the murders of Ron and Elizabeth.

However, the investigation went in a completely different direction when an inmate at the Attica Correctional Facility came forward and implicated one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, the son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz.

Now, I'm sure most of you already know this story, but from the summer of 1976 until 1977, New York City was terrorized by a series of crimes known as the Son of Sam murders, as a total of six people were shot to death and seven others were seriously wounded.

The perpetrator was eventually identified as David Berkowitz, who received six life sentences for his crimes, but the case has always been surrounded by conspiracy theories about how Berkowitz was supposedly a member of a satanic cult which orchestrated the Son of Sam murders, and he did not commit all the shootings alone.

If you're a fan of Unsolved Mysteries, you've probably watched their creepy two-part segment which explored this theory, and of course, Netflix released an entire documentary series about it titled The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness. According to this inmate at Attica, a few weeks before Ron and Elizabeth were killed, Berkowitz had told him that the satanic cult he was associated with was planning a ritualistic murder, which would take place in or near Greenwich Village on Halloween.

Berkowitz allegedly described it as a quote-unquote inside house cleaning thing, and said that a male and female would get their heads shot off before evidence was removed from the scene. Of course, this fit the description of the Sisman-Platzman murder, and when questioned about it, Berkowitz claimed that Ron possessed an actual snuff film from one of the Son of Sam shootings.

Since Ron was supposedly facing his own legal problems over potential drug charges, he was planning to turn the snuff film over to the authorities in exchange for immunity from prosecution. However, after Ron and Elizabeth were murdered, the film was taken by the perpetrators, and Berkowitz apparently provided an accurate description of Ron's apartment, suggesting that he may have had inside knowledge of what happened.

If that wasn't enough, Berkowitz would provide a tie-in to this other side story involving Roy Radin. As you recall, Radin was murdered in a contract hit in 1983, and four separate people went to prison for their roles in the crime. One of them was a guy named William Mentzer, who shot Radin several times in the head, and then put a stick of dynamite in his mouth in order to blow off his face and make identification more difficult.

Berkowitz claimed that Menser was a former associate of Charles Manson and a member of his satanic cult, who referred to him as Manson II. In fact, Berkowitz said that Menser was responsible for the 1974 murder of 19-year-old Stanford University student Arliss Perry, who was also supposedly the victim of this cult.

But of course, the problem with that claim is that in 2018, DNA profiling linked Arliss's murder to a suspect named Stephen Blake Crawford, the security guard who discovered her body, and he fatally shot himself when police showed up to arrest him.

So yeah, when I first heard about this whole Berkowitz satanic cult theory and unsolved mysteries during the late 1980s, I bought it hook, line, and sinker. But as the years have gone on, I've grown a lot more skeptical and now believe the theory was nothing more than a symptom of the satanic panic which pervaded American culture during that time period.

In fact, the detail about these two victims being killed because they possessed a snuff film pretty much makes this crime the perfect stereotype of a 1980s moral panic. In the end, no evidence was ever found to corroborate Berkowitz's story that Ron and Elizabeth were murdered by a satanic cult, and I'm skeptical that Berkowitz had any inside knowledge about the crime or that this so-called snuff film ever existed.

It's possible the authorities are correct, and the crime was drug-related, but I can see why we have these wild sensationalistic theories. I mean, this is an unsolved double murder which took place on Halloween, and supposedly had connections to Son of Sam, a snuff film, the Cotton Club murders, and Welcome Back Cotter.

You can't get any stranger than that, but I'm sure most of these angles are nothing more than red herrings. However, until we know the full truth, the murders of Ronald Sisman and Elizabeth Platzman will continue to remain one of the most bizarre unsolved Halloween mysteries of all time. You know the rest. I guess you could say the trail went cold. The trail went cold indeed, Robin.

Next, I'd like you to imagine how a mother could end the lives of her two children, all in the name of love. Esther is the host of Once Upon a Crime. Each week, she creates gripping storytelling episodes with details you simply won't hear anywhere else. Esther, I'll let you take it from here. Susan Smith was a 23-year-old mother living in Union, South Carolina in 1994.

She had two boys, Michael was three years old and her youngest, Alexander, just 14 months. On October 25th, 1994, a desperate call came in to 911. Susan reported that she had been carjacked by a stranger. Her two boys had been strapped in their car seats in the backseat of her vehicle when the man approached her at a stoplight. At gunpoint, he demanded she get out of the car. Then the man drove off with her two little boys still in the backseat.

A statewide manhunt ensued to search for the kidnapper and find the missing children. Susan and her husband David, who were going through a divorce, appeared on television to plead for the safe return of their babies. Susan wept throughout her statement, begging the carjacker to let her boys come home. But investigators had harbored doubts about Smith's story from the beginning, and within days were able to secure a confession from the young mother.

On that cold October evening, Smith had strapped her sleepy children into their car seats, driven her car to the shore of John D. Long Lake, and parked it in the middle of the boat ramp. Placing the car in neutral, she released the handbrake and exited the vehicle. Smith watched as the car slowly rolled into the lake with her two children trapped inside. After the car was fully submerged in the water, she walked to a nearby house where she banged on the door and claimed she'd just been carjacked.

Smith's motivation for murdering her own babies? She'd been having an affair with a co-worker who had just broken off the relationship. She had fallen in love with him and become possessive and clingy. One of the reasons he'd stated for breaking up with Smith was that he was not ready to take on the responsibility of her two children. Angry and distraught at being jilted and desperate to keep her lover, Susan Smith did the unthinkable.

She became one of the most hated women in America and was looked upon as no less than a monster. Mothers who kill are viewed as the most evil type of murderer. A woman who can so callously take the lives of the babies she has carried in her own womb, given birth to, and whom should love and protect them more fiercely than anyone else on earth, what could be more cruel?

In fact, a legend that is as old as time, and one I learned at the knee of my Mexican grandmother as a little girl, has been passed down for generations as a true horror story. The monster at the center of that story? A woman who drowns her two little boys. The legend goes something like this: Once a long, long time ago, there was a beautiful young girl named Maria who lived in a small village. She was beautiful but haughty.

All the local boys, humble farmers and ranch hands wanted to woo the lovely Maria, but she would turn her nose up at them. She was going to marry the most handsome man in the world, and she would be rich as well.

One day that handsome man rode into town. He was the son of a wealthy rancher. Maria set her sights on him. She prepared herself to catch his attention by wearing her finest outfit, a beautiful white dress that she knew played up her long black hair, her flashing deep brown eyes, and her lips painted a bright red. She also wore high-heeled shoes that made a sharp clicking sound as she walked down the lane.

She arrived at the town square and caught the attention of the handsome vaquero. The young man sought her out and he quickly fell in love and asked for her hand. The humble peasant girl was now the wife of a rich rancher. At first, all was wonderful for Maria. She lived in a beautiful home and in short order had two children, both sons. But not long after her sons were born, her husband began to spend less time at home.

He said he needed to attend to ranch business, but she suspected he was off seeing other women and that he was now bored with her. When he was home, he spent little time with Maria, only paying attention to his two boys. Maria became jealous, not only of the other women she suspected he was seeing, but of her own two sons as well. Maria was used to having the admiration of all the men in the village, and now her own husband ignored her.

One day Maria was walking along the river with her boys, and her husband, who'd been gone for days, drove by in a carriage. He stopped the carriage and got out to hug and kiss his sons in greeting. He also spoiled them with gifts of candy. For Maria there was nothing, not even a greeting. She seethed as she stood at the side of the road, ignored. But she was even more angry when she looked inside the carriage and saw that a younger woman, nicely dressed and obviously wealthy, was inside.

She now had proof that her husband was two-timing her and she was furious. Her husband and the woman drove off in the carriage and Maria could not control her anger. She looked into the eyes of her two beautiful boys and all she could see was the image of their cheating father. Enraged and before she knew what she was doing, she picked up her sons one at a time and threw them into the river below. Watching them sink into the dark waters, she screamed and ran down to them, but it was too late. The river had carried them away.

Maria, as if in a daze, went home and put on her beautiful white dress and high heels. She returned to the riverbank and walked up and down along the shore, crying and calling out for her children. After a time, people from nearby began to hear a woman's pitiful cries and followed the sound to the river. They saw the woman in a white dress, now splattered with river mud and torn by the jagged rocks.

Her face was frozen into a mask of grief. Her hair was wild and tangled by the wind. Some of the men climbed down towards the river to try and help her, but before they could reach her, she let out one last cry, "Where are you, my children?" and then plunged herself into the water. The strong current carried her away, never to be seen again. From now on, the beautiful Maria, who had killed her own children and then taken her own life, would be known as La Llorona, which means "the crying woman."

Now, children who have learned the story of La Llorona can sometimes hear late at night, after the clock strikes midnight, the sound of high heels clicking outside their windows as they're just drifting off to sleep. Sometimes they can hear her weeping. Other times, La Llorona cries out in a terrifying voice, calling to her dead children.

But children are warned: if they are naughty or have recently acted like a travieso, a disobedient child, La Llorona may become angry. Then without warning she will snatch them up and carry them off into the spirit world. Or God forbid the child struggles to free themselves from her icy grasp. Then she may pitch them into the dark cold river where they will be carried off to the netherworld.

So children learn to beware of La Llorona. We're told never to stay up past our bedtimes or play outside after dark. Because if we do, we may hear the cries of La Llorona coming to carry us off. Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you brake? Don't miss out on summer brake deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. O-O-O'Reilly Auto Parts.

I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.

Yes, I know I'm sending to your bank account. Western Union. Send it their way. Send money in-store directly to their bank account in India.

Coming up to the fire next are my two favorite Mikes, Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford from Criminology. Tonight they will share the story of the 1966 murder of college student Sherry Jo Bates.

October 30th, the night before Halloween, has long been referred to as Devil's Night. On that night, every year across the country, there are instances of vandalism or pranks. Usually, it's a result of teenagers misbehaving, and in most cases, trees filled with toilet paper may be the extent of the mischief. Sometimes, however, the crimes committed on October 30th go far beyond harmless fun.

Such was the case for 18 year old Sherry Jo Bates, whose brutal murder shocked her hometown of Riverside, California. And it remains unsolved to this day. The city of Riverside is an hour West of Los Angeles in 1966.

Many of Riverside's residents were transplants who came to work at Riverside-area military bases. Such was the case for the Bates family, who moved from Omaha, Nebraska in 1957. Joseph Bates, the patriarch of the family, found work as a machinist at the Corona Naval Ordnance Lab.

His wife, Irene, was a homemaker and rounding out the Bates family with son Michael and daughter Sherry Jo. During the 1960s, Irene Bates began to struggle with her mental health and had to be committed to a mental hospital. As a result, Joseph and Irene's marriage suffered and they eventually divorced in 1965.

Michael graduated from Ramona High School and joined the Navy. Sherry Jo and her father Joseph found themselves alone in their suddenly quiet home located at 4195 Via San Jose in Riverside. Sherry Jo was a popular and outgoing student with lots of friends at Ramona High School. She was a cheerleader who dated one of the school's star football players. The young couple even made plans to marry. Following graduation in 1966,

Sherry Jo immediately enrolled at Riverside City College, less than four miles away from her home. With her fiancé away at college in Northern California, Sherry Jo applied herself to her studies, and she took a part-time job at a local bank. She had hopes of becoming a flight attendant. On Sunday, October 30th, while Joseph Bates was out, Sherry Jo left her home, headed for the Riverside City College Library to check out some books and study.

She scrawled her dad a quick note that read, Dad went to the RCC library and left it for him in case he arrived home and wondered where she was. Along the way, one of her friends passed her on the road. Sherry Jo was hard to miss in her lime green VW Bug. It was about 6.10 p.m. when the friend saw Sherry Jo. A few minutes later, at about 6.00,

15 p.m. She pulled into the RCC library parking lot. According to one witness who later came forward, she was followed closely by a late model bronze Oldsmobile. Sherry Jo parked and went into the library.

Although some people that knew her would later say that they didn't recall seeing her in the library, at least one witness that knew her confirmed she was in the library and he detailed how she was writing in a blue spiral notebook. Exactly what happened after Sherry Jo walked into the library remains unclear to this day. Police believe that Sherry Jo left the library at 9 p.m. when it closed.

Back at home, Sherry's dad arrived home and found Sherry's note. He went to bed expecting Sherry Jo would be home later that evening, but she never made it home. At 6.30 the next morning on Halloween, an RCC groundskeeper traveling along Terrasina Drive next to the library found Sherry's lifeless body face down in a gravel alleyway and raced to call for help. Police arrived and found a grisly crime scene. Sherry Jo had been brutally stabbed and slashed with a knife. One slash wound to her throat was so severe,

that she was almost decapitated. Some possibly important clues were found at the scene. A man's paint-splattered Timex wristwatch, size 7, was discovered.

Police believe that Sherry Jo had yanked it from her killer's wrist during the attack. They also found a single blood clotted hair in her hand, possibly from the killer. The investigation into Sherry Jo's murder was extensive and police started with an examination of her car. Police found the books she had checked out on the front seat, indicating that she had made it back to her car.

after leaving the library. When they opened the hood, they discovered that someone had tampered with the ignition and coil wire, making it impossible for the VW Bug to start. When Sherry Jo went to start her car up, it wouldn't start. It's believed that at that moment, the person who tampered with the VW approached her, offering her assistance.

She apparently accepted the offer of help, not wanting to be stranded after dark at the library. Rather than hold back this detail about the disabling of Sherry Jo's car, police chose to share it with the press.

Police arranged to do a recreation of the night of the murder and painstakingly rounded up every single person known to have been in the library the night Cherry Joe was killed. They had them wear the same clothes, park the same car as they drove in the same spots they had been parked in, and sit in the same seats in the library. Police accounted for everyone who was at the library the night of the murder, with the exception of two people. Missing from the recreation were a heavyset young man with a beard who was about 5'11 and a young woman.

It's not clear if the young woman missing from the recreation was Sherry Jo, but police hoped to ID the bearded man. They never did. Also missing from the reenactment was a Studebaker with oxidized paint that was seen parked on Riverside Avenue. It too, as well as its driver, were never identified.

Police talked with one witness who lived close to the library. The witness told them that sometime around 10.30 p.m. on the night of the murder, they heard a terrible scream in the alleyway where Sherry Jo's body was found. A few moments later, they heard what sounded like an old car

Start up and drive off. Another witness came forward with an interesting account. They said that shortly before the library closed, they had walked down the same alleyway in the darkness between two abandoned homes. They saw a man smoking a cigarette. The embers were clear, but unfortunately, the light from the cigarette didn't illuminate the man's face clearly enough for them to give a description. Cigarette butts were found at that exact spot and collected into evidence.

Despite all of the Riverside Police Department's best efforts, the investigation into Sherry Jo's murder seemed to grind to a halt. They were at a loss trying to ID anyone that would want the pretty and popular 18-year-old dead. Then, a month after Sherry Jo was murdered, two nearly identical typed letters were anonymously mailed to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and to the Riverside Police Department.

In the letter, which has been dubbed the confession letter, the sender claimed responsibility for Sherry Jo's murder and provided chilling details. The letter read as follows: "She was young and beautiful, but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last. I lay awake nights thinking about my next victim. Maybe she will be the beautiful blonde that babysits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening at about seven. Or maybe she'll be the shapely blue-eyed brunette that said no when I asked for a date in high school.

but maybe it will not be either but i shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see so don't make it easy for me keep your sisters daughters and wives off the streets and alleys miss bates was stupid she went to the slaughter like a lamb she did not put up a struggle but i did

it was a ball i first pulled the middle wire from the distributor then i waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes the battery must have been about dead by then i then offered to help she was then very willing to talk with me i told her that my car was down the street and that i would give her a lift home when we were away from the library walking

i said it was about time she asked me about time for what i said it was about time for her to die i grabbed her around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife at her throat she went very willingly her breast felt very warm and firm under my hands but only one thing was on my mind making her pay for the brush-offs that she had given me during the years prior she died hard

She squirmed and shook as I choked her, and her lips twitched. She let out a scream once, and I kicked her head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her, and it broke. I then finished the job by cutting her throat. I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that is up to you. It will be on your conscience, not mine. Yes, I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware. I am stalking your girls now.

The confession letter was disturbing to say the least. Police felt confident that the author had known only details that the killer would have known, but actually much of those details included were reported in local newspapers in the days following Sherry Jo's murder.

As troubling and tantalizing as the letter was to police, it wasn't the only letter in Sherry Joe's case. On April 30th, 1967, six months after the murder, the Riverside police, the Riverside Press Enterprise, and even Sherry Joe's father, Joseph Bates, all received hand-scrawled letters. The letters simply read, Bates had to die, there will be more. Not long after Sherry Joe was killed, a janitor at Riverside City College found a morbid poem.

etched in pen on the underside of a desk in the RCC library. The poem was so disturbing to him that he thought it may be related to Sherry Jo's murder and he reported it to police. The poem read as follows. Sick of living, unwilling to die, cut clean, if read.

clean, blood spurting, dripping, spilling, all over her new dress. Oh well, it was red anyway, life draining into an uncertain death. She won't die this time, someone will find her. Just wait till next time. R.

While the desktop poem was strange, there was nothing connecting it solidly to the murder of Sherry Jo Bates. She certainly wasn't wearing a red dress when she died, but it was just one more strange clue tied to Sherry Jo Bates, making the investigation even tougher for investigators. That desktop poem and other clues from Sherry Jo's murder, including the letters, would eventually be tied to California's infamous serial killer, the Zodiac. While no

While no physical evidence seems to connect Sherry Jo Bates to the Zodiac, the two cases have been hopelessly entangled together for over 50 years. DNA from the cigarette butts found near the crime scene and the clotted hair found in Sherry Jo's hand do not match a favorite suspect of Riverside PD who has been on their radar since early on in the investigation.

Both Sherry Joe's case and the Zodiac case remain unsolved. It's impossible for us to get into every detail of Sherry Joe's murder in this short segment, let alone delve into the Zodiac portion of the mystery. But if you want a complete deep dive into Sherry Joe's case, as well as the Zodiac case, be sure to go back and listen to our complete first season of Criminology, where we explore both cases in great detail. Thanks, Mike and Mike.

Do you know what serial killer scares you the most? Is it the Zodiac? Well, I asked our next storyteller, one of the hosts of Generation Y and the peripheral podcast, Justin Evans, that very question. A question I get a lot is what serial killer scares you the most. Now, they're all horrible. They all leave a trail of shattered lives and victims in their wake. But when it comes to which one actually scares me...

I had to think about that. I mean, take the cunning and conniving Ted Bundy, who could coax many young women into his car, or the horrendous Jeffrey Dahmer, who preyed on vulnerable young gay men. Ted Bundy had a type, which was a younger female in their teens to early 20s, and dark shoulder-length hair. Jeffrey Dahmer mainly targeted men of color, and as scary as both of them are,

I, as a middle-aged straight white guy, would not be targeted by either of them. And that really applies to most serial killers. Women, at-risk youth, minorities, the LGBT community are far more affected by crimes of violence, especially at the hands of a serial killer, than I ever would be. So what's my answer?

Which serial killer could I even fall prey to? I'm not the target demographic for most of these predators. In reality, there are only a few, and even those wouldn't target me directly. But get rid of me, as it were, if I were in their way of their actual intended target. Which brings me to Richard Ramirez.

When I was a child, I remember seeing a man's face on the TV and I asked my mom, "Who is that? What's going on?" And she said, "They caught a very scary man." Now, as I got older and learned more about serial killers, Richard always stood out to me because of that moment as a child where I actually saw his face on my own TV.

Once I started reading about him and how he chose his victims, it became very clear to me that he wasn't like the others. Some serial killers will stalk their victims for days, watching and choosing carefully the most vulnerable. Others will stage a scene where their intended victims will be misled into their car or home. And then there are those who target sex workers or at-risk individuals.

Richard, on the other hand, would go out at night, walk down the street, follow you into your house as you got home from work or return from the store. He targeted women, but if there was a man in the house, he would shoot them and kill them first because Richard perceived them as the bigger threat and something that was in the way of his end goal. And his goal was typically raping and murdering the woman.

And I can only imagine opening up my garage door and pulling into my garage. And as the garage door is closing, somebody's slipping underneath and into my home. Sometimes Richard would break into a house or an apartment, not even knowing who was inside, but with the intention of killing anyone he came across.

He would search for unlocked doors or windows to gain silent access to the home. Once inside, he would get low to the ground in a prone position and wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Richard hunted at night, which is how he got the moniker "The Night Stalker." Among his many victims, those who survived were left maimed or tormented. Their ages ranged from 9 to 83 years old.

He would strangle, shoot, stab, and bludgeon his victims. His M.O. would change based on whatever opportunity was presented to him, which made him elusive to capture, but his brutality always stayed the same. Richard Ramirez was walking chaos. Even knowing that his reign of terror ended in 1985, and that he would end up dying behind bars in 2013,

He's one of the few that got me, struck that spine-chilling nerve that I just couldn't shake. After reading several books and watching interviews, one night I just couldn't rest. I could not get to sleep. Every bump, creak, or sound would startle me, and I would imagine someone or something trying to come into my home. Now every house has its own personality, its sounds.

But this night, I had to go out and sit on my sofa with gun in hand while memorizing every noise. I had to hear it, rationalize it, and deem it as non-threatening. This ranged from the compressor in my refrigerator going off to a random squirrel dropping a nut on my roof. Everything had to be categorized and labeled before I felt safe enough to go lay back down in my warm, safe bed.

Because fear is never rational. Fear makes us act and behave in ways way outside of our norm. We'll turn our backs on family. We'll form angry mobs to hunt down others and even commit genocide. Out of fear and ignorance, luckily, my fear only drove me to sitting in the dark by myself, listening to the noises in my own home, like a scared child who finally was brave enough to come out from under the blankets.

That was the most irrational I've ever behaved out of fear. We all have behaved irrationally, I think out of fear. Which is why sometimes it's nice to take a little light-hearted look at true crime. This is Treven and Amanda from Live Laugh Larceny, the show that takes a deep dive into shallow crime. We've all heard legends and spooky lore in a group setting.

There are stories that everyone at least somewhat knows and is willing to loosely retell, hoping to get some kind of frightened response. Maybe it's a sleepover between a bunch of preteen girls or a boy scout troop gathered around a campfire. No matter the setting, fear is a powerful emotion when shared. There's always that one person who shares the "lover's lane" story

about the teens who drive to Lovers Lane to make out and hear about an escaped convict in the area. The boy tries to calm the girl down, but she insists on being taken home. Once the girl gets out of the car, she finds a bloody hook stuck to the side of the car door.

gasps and sounds of unease surround the storyteller as they sit back and admire that they are the Stephen King of their generation. "I am so spooky." The thing about these creepy stories is that they have been retold and passed down from generations, like a game of telephone, but with deadlier consequences. The story was probably about two young lovers who later figured out that the boy's dad left his tackle box in the backseat with his fishing hooks exposed.

This story later got retold more and more, over time turning into something much more dreadful. But really, what's scarier than dating the son of a fisherman? "Not a fisherman!" So gather around your podcast listening device because I'm about to tell you a whole new story that I expect will be repeated in large gatherings for millennia. On the eve of spooky season, four young girls gathered for a late night game of scary stories.

Margaret pretty much plagiarized the plot of Hocus Pocus while Carly told the true story of how her mom took her to Starbucks and they were out of non-fat vanilla oat milk. Obviously she knew her crowd because the twist was almost too much for everyone to bear. "Come on, Susie," Margaret said. "Why don't you tell us a scary story?"

Susie cowered in the corner. She was never one for spooky stories. As a child, she was always very sensitive to such tales. "No thank you," Susie said. "I'd rather skip my turn." Just as the crowd began to berate their friend for not playing along, that's when Josephine jumped in and interrupted them. "If Susie won't tell a story, then I'll jump ahead and see just how much I can scare her." Josephine was the more edgy one of the group.

She was allowed to wear her shoes in the house, and her parents didn't put parental controls on their HBO Max subscription. There's no telling what kinds of things Josephine has seen with her young eyes. "Previously on The Sopranos." This party was also at Josephine's house, so she had no issue with turning up the scary factor, as she was already safely at home. "I'm going to tell you the story of Miss Moo Moo, the demon cow of Middletown, Ohio."

Josephine said. Kicked out of Hell itself for being too evil, Miss Moo Moo comes out every October to graze on the souls of young girls. The smiles of glee quickly turned to looks of unease. Josephine had a very descriptive way of speaking, and they couldn't believe that she said the word "Hell." "The bad girl." Josephine went into more detail about how the Hellish Heifer would stalk the children and eat them before turning them all into cow pies.

"La la la la la la la la la!" Susie shouted while plugging her ears. "Stop it! You're scaring her!" Margaret exclaimed. "What? I'm just foreshadowing. It's a commonly used plot device in horror movies," Josephine said in her defense. Looking at the clock, Margaret realized that it was time for her to get home. Susie, Carly, and Margaret gathered up their things as they headed for the door. "Have a safe walk, Susie. Don't let Miss Moo Moo get you," Josephine shouted just before closing her door.

At the end of Josephine's driveway, Margaret went left as Susie and Carly headed right. The two had made this walk many nights before, but there was something strange about this particular evening. Maybe it was the scary stories that they'd just swapped, or how they were irresponsibly drinking iced coffees at 10:00 PM. As they continued to walk, they couldn't help but feel like they were being watched. From the opposite side of the street, they heard a rustling of leaves. "What was that?" Susie whispered over to Carly. In that moment, the fear had crept into Carly too.

The sounds of the night crickets and street lamps slowly began to silence, as the only thing the two could hear were their hearts beating. Carly grabbed Susie's hand as they both stood frozen in the middle of the street. Neither one could conjure the strength to check their surroundings. Just as they were about to make a run for it, they heard another noise from behind them. It sounded like that of a giant beast huffing just before an attack. Susie slowly turned her head to see a large figure with two big horns.

"It's Miss Moo Moo!" Susie yelled, as both girls screamed and ran for it. But as the girls were gaining speed, they couldn't help but notice that the demon bull was chasing after them. No matter what direction they would take, the loud stomps of the creature would follow close behind, while still making its demonic snorts. Fatigued and dehydrated from the iced coffees, the girls knew they were only a block away from a busy intersection, where they could get help. It took everything they had to keep running,

as they could feel the hot breath of the beast blowing on their backs. As the headlights of the cars came into focus, the girls ran onto the crosswalk and flagged down the cars at the red light. "Help us! You've got to help us!" The two screamed, before continuing to run across the street. As the girls reached the next sidewalk, they began to hear car horns honking and people screaming.

"I'm a thirsty cow!" the beast cried out. "Can anyone pour me a caramoo-loo?" The honking continued. As the cow person refused to get out of the street, Sue and Carly were finally coming back to reality. They were no longer viewing the world in the same scared way they had been. Taking a closer look, that's when they realized that this was no beast. Standing in front of the angry drivers was a drunk woman, just wearing a cow costume.

The two girls watched as police lights quickly filled the intersection. As the police officer stepped out of their car, a strange man came running from one of the nearby houses. "Thank God you're here!" said the man. "That is the same cow that I spotted peeing on my front porch earlier." In September of 2008, Middletown, Ohio woman Michelle Allen was arrested for getting in the way of traffic and chasing children while wearing a cow suit. There were also accusations from a neighbor stating that she had urinated on his porch.

At the time of her arrest, she was smelling strongly of alcohol while also threatening the arresting officers. She was charged with one count of disorderly conduct. According to police, this was the 50th time Allen had been arrested. On the following Tuesday, Michelle Allen showed up to court wearing the very same cow suit and challenged other people in court to, quote,

Investigators believe that this may have been a promotional stunt for a local haunted trail, as an employee of the trail did come to repossess the cowsuit. Whether this was a stunt or not, the charge did land Allen in jail for 30 days, and I don't think we can blame a promotional stunt for the other 49 arrests. So let the story of Miss Moo Moo be the start of a new spooky legend to tell kids around the campfire.

Because it's Halloween season, and Miss Moo Moo may just be wandering the streets of Middletown, Ohio right now, grazing on the souls of those who stay up too late.

Moomoo strikes. Yes. If anybody is a listener of our show, Miss Moomoo did come up a couple weeks ago in a different way, but we were just so tickled by the name that I had to make a callback to it. Oh, I am obsessed. What a story. Oh, my God. I really want to dress as a cow for Halloween now and just tell someone, suck my udders. I've got a sheep costume you can wear, but I don't have a cow one.

So if anybody's never listened to us before, we do movie versions basically of stories. So sometimes we will kind of exaggerate things a little bit more to add the drama. But at the end, I always try to do some sort of a recap that explains the truth. Yeah. Nobody called her Miss Moo Moo. I don't know anything about these girls, but I do know that a drunk woman dressed as a cow did chase women pee on a porch and make a fool of herself in traffic. Yep. Yep. We always tell true stories, but we always say, eh.

the details may vary here and there. We like to have a little bit of fun with our stories. So if you ever need a lighthearted break, we would love for you to jump over to Live Laugh Larceny anytime. I'm going to look for a cow costume now on Amazon. I'm sure to come into you sometime, right?

Okay, for my next friend, she's going to ask you to close your eyes. Just go with it. I'll keep an eye out for anything shady. Her name is Sammy, from the hidden staircase. Okay, here she comes. Close your eyes and imagine a room. Its walls are covered in antique wallpaper, now torn and faded. If you look closely, you can see the outline of a secret door. A door that will open if you are willing to enter.

There is a staircase there, that descends into the darkness. And at its base, a room filled with terrible wonders. It is a library of mystery, a catalogue of terrors. The pages of its books are stained with ink, capturing moments of time stained with blood. Its shelves are weighted with stories that have yet to be told, with the answers to questions that have yet to be asked.

Those stories are waiting for you at the bottom of the hidden staircase. I'm Sammie, the host of the Hidden Staircase podcast. True crime, paranormal, and mysterious cases from the archives. Every story you hear dates before the 1950s. But for this Halloween special, I'm going to tell you about a game. A game that can only be played at midnight. This game should not be taken lightly.

If anything, this game should not be played at all. But, if you're going to play the Midnight Game, you might as well know the rules. The Midnight Game is an old pagan ritual, used mainly as punishment for those who have broken the laws of the pagan religion in question. While it was mainly used as a scare tactic to not disobey the gods, there is still a very existent chance of death to those who play the Midnight Game.

there's an even higher chance of permanent mental scarring, it is highly recommended that you do not play the midnight game. However, for those few thrill-seekers searching for a rush, or for those delving into obscure occult rituals, these are simple instructions on how to play. Do so at your own risk. Prerequisites It must be exactly 12 a.m. when you begin performing the ritual.

Otherwise, it will not work. You will need a candle, a piece of paper, a writing implement, matches or a lighter, salt, a wooden door, and at least one drop of your own blood. If you are playing with multiple people, they will need their own of the aforementioned materials and they will have to perform the steps below accordingly. Step 1.

Write your full name, first, middle, and last, on the piece of paper. Put at least one drop of blood on the paper. Allow it to soak into the paper. Step 2: Turn off all the lights in the place you are doing this. Go to your wooden door and place the paper with your name on it in front of the door. Now, take out the candle and light it. Place it on top of the paper.

step three knock on the door twenty-two times the hour must be twelve a m upon the final knock then open the door blow out the candle and close the door you have just allowed the midnight man to enter your house step four immediately relight your candle

This is where the game begins. You must now lurk around your now completely dark house with the lit candle in your hand. Your goal is to avoid the Midnight Man at all costs until 3.33 a.m. Should your candle ever go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you. You must relight your candle in the next 10 seconds.

If you are not successful in doing this, you must then immediately surround yourself with a circle of salt. If you are unsuccessful in both of your actions, the midnight man will create a hallucination of your greatest fear and rip out your organs one by one. You will feel it, but you will be unable to react. If you are successful in creating a circle of salt, you must remain in there until 3:33 AM.

If you are successful in relighting your candle, you may proceed with the game. You must continue to 3:33 AM without being attacked by the Midnight Man or being trapped inside the Circle of Salt to win the Midnight Game. The Midnight Man will leave your house at 3:33 AM and you'll be safe to proceed with your morning. Addition: Indications that you are near the Midnight Man will include sudden drops in temperature,

seeing a pure black, humanoid figure through the darkness, and hearing very soft whispering coming from an indiscernible source. If you experience any of these, it is advised that you leave the area to avoid the Midnight Man. Do not turn any of the lights on during the Midnight Game. Do not use a flashlight during the Midnight Game. Do not attempt to use another person's blood on your name.

Okay, you can open your eyes now.

A trigger warning before we get into the story. We do discuss mental health crises and suicidal thoughts.

This will probably be a very long story, but I'll never forget it as long as I live. I also didn't believe in anything paranormal or outside the realm of science until this happened. I still just don't know what to make of it, to be honest, and I would love to hear what people think might have been going on.

So, my freshman year of college, I moved into a dorm in a very old historic building in Florida. It was 2020 and COVID was still really bad so each student had their own room. I quickly made friends with the girl who lived directly next door, Sophie, and a girl on the third floor, Evie. On the first or second night, we got to talking about ghosts and spiritual stuff, as we all realized we were very into the occult and whatnot.

The third floor girl, Evie, suggested that we make and play a Ouija board.

I had tried one before at sleepovers and it had never worked, but I was interested and it was a super old building that was supposedly haunted so we gave it a shot. We made the board out of cardboard and that was the first of many nights using this thing. It worked every single time without fail, no matter what combination of people had their hands on the planchette. We eventually got a store-bought board and no change occurred.

We used this board probably every day. It became like an obsession. It's all we talked about. I'm still not sure if it was because the thought of speaking to something otherworldly was exciting, or if something else was going on. I could tell so many little stories, but I'll try to sum up the important stuff.

We knew it was legit the first night we played. We were quickly introduced to the entity on the other side. It went by "Shov" most of the time, but occasionally by "Solo" or "SO". I don't think we spoke to anyone but them the entire time. We tested it by asking for the name of another friend we recently made's stepmom.

It guessed correctly immediately without her having her hands on the board. We had just met her. There is no way we could have known this. On the second or third night, we asked Shove to give us a sign that they were really there. We heard a noise at the closed door to my room and looked over to see a shadow outside of it, as if someone was standing right outside the door. We opened it and of course, no one was there. We closed it and the shadow was gone.

Little things happened over the course of the semester. Things would be moved that I couldn't explain. The sink in the bathroom down the hall would turn off and on by itself when nobody was around. Stuff like that. After a few weeks of this, things really started to get weird. One night, I was playing the board with Evie's boyfriend and Sophie. Evie was laying with her head in her boyfriend's lap, not touching the board.

Suddenly, she started panicking and hyperventilating. We thought she must be having a random panic attack or something, but she claimed she was unable to control where her eyes were looking. We went to take her out of the building because she was so freaked out, and in the lobby she swore she saw someone out of the corner of her eye. Saw that no one was actually there and bolted out the front doors. Terrified. Shov really seemed to turn on Evie for whatever reason.

On another night, not long after that one, the three of us original girls were playing the board and Evie told us her back was really hurting. She asked us to look and see if she had a really bad sunburn on her lower back. Strange, but that's what she said it felt like. There were a ton of fresh scratches on her lower back when we looked. This was scary because she was not leaning on anything and had both hands on the board. I can attach a picture of the scratches if anyone is interested.

Around the time of these events, Evie started to act really strange. For the first months I knew her, she was always very calm and down to earth, but she began acting extremely short-tempered and possessive or jealous. Now this is where I'm not sure what to think. Was it a mental health crisis or were our nightly activities causing side effects?

I'm not sure I'll ever know, but I remember Evie screaming at me and stomping up the stairs to her room and being so shocked. It was so out of character. During a fight with her boyfriend, she ripped her hair out and slammed her head on the floor. And then after a week or so, she was involuntarily institutionalized after telling her therapist that she was going to take her life.

This was obviously very upsetting for Sophie and me. And then Sophie had begun having suicidal thoughts. I'm not sure if this started before or after Evie left. And then one morning I woke up and checked my phone, and Sophie had gone to the hospital earlier that morning because she woke up and couldn't breathe. And it ended up being some tonsil issue I believe, but the timing was really weird.

Both Sophie and Evie ended up dropping out of college for mental health reasons. I spent the rest of the semester and the one after in that room and never had any serious issues. I had a roommate the second semester of that year and she didn't have any issues either. I played the board every once in a while to show curious friends the ghosts that lived in my room. Shuv was always there but did nothing more than respond on the board. I'm still very much in touch with Sophie and Evie.

Evie completely returned to her old self not long after dropping out. Whether this was due to the removal of stressful college work or being away from that building for good, I'll never know. Was she possessed? Who was Shove? Was Shove even real or did we just make him up because we desperately wanted to believe something else was out there? I'll probably never get any answers, but I guess at least I have a good story to tell at parties.

Now Altruistic Study 166 brings us our final story about a possessive entity. I was dating a guy not long ago. We did chat about our weird ghost experiences and he said a lot of weird stuff happens around him. It didn't really bother me as most things aren't sinister. At his house, you would hear walking down the corridors, knocking, strange smells that seemed to just appear and stick around.

His son used to turn to us and ask us who else was in the house or ask "who's that?" It was fairly innocent stuff until about a month ago. I woke up in the night and went for a cigarette. I went to the toilet and then got back into bed. I heard a creak by the door and wondered if it was his child. It wasn't.

This huge, slim shadow stood by the door, and I mean huge. I've seen stuff before and didn't get a scared feeling, but this literally filled me with dread and horror. I was trying to shake the guy I was dating awake, but he wasn't waking up. And I heard a weird laughter and just the words, Then the shadow disappeared.

I didn't sleep and left when the sun came up. We talked about it later in the day and the guy is fully aware of it. It's moved with him everywhere he goes and his son has seen it too and sleepwalks since he first saw it. The son once slept walked over to me and just leaned in my face whispering.

Since I saw it that night, the guy's mental health has deteriorated so poorly. He just lays in bed, doesn't eat, lashes out, and I had to walk away. Does anyone else have a similar experience or something like that? Something definitely has a hold on this poor guy and may even be moving on to his son. I hope that's not the case and I hope that they both get help and are safe and okay.

I hope you don't feel bad that you had to get yourself out of that situation instead of remaining with him. If he's aware of what is going on, then he may have invited this entity into his life, and you're not responsible for that. Are you getting a bit spooked now? Well, not every terrifying monster is alive. You'll find out what I mean from Justin Drown, who is the host of Obscura, a true crime podcast and disaster. Get ready.

and hold on tight. Growing up in Ohio, I remember being terrified of tornadoes. When there was a warning on the television, I remember being sure that this would be the end.

a tornado would come and wipe out the house i'd be sucked into the air never to be seen again nice thoughts for a kid to have i know to be fair to little kid me there was something about the way local news stations sensationalized a storm each tornado warning made to seem like it could be the end times a serious faced man on the television telling me in a stern voice to heed his warning if you were in a mandatory evacuation area

You need to get to high ground now. This is the time. There won't be another request because it will be too late.

That time probably is now if you're in the Fort Myers area Lee County Collier County that looks like that will be the landfall area Kelly This is a major hurricane top winds are now above 125 miles per hour sustained. That's right We'll have another update with our hurricane expert coming up shortly But first of all, let's give you the very latest that we have from the National Hurricane Center and our hurricane

Hurricane Hunter flight information showing that our pressure has now dropped to 954 millibars or 28.17 inches of mercury. The flight level by the way at 9140 feet and the eye information is that it's about 8 miles wide and the maximum flight winds have been about 162 miles per hour. And because of that the new advisory should come in very shortly signifying this is a category 4 hurricane

on the Safford Simpson scale. And Kelly, look at the outer bands now coming in. Unfortunately, you cannot really do much from here on out, folks. Anybody from Charlotte Harbor southward just batting down the hatches. And of course, with the outer rain bands, we are dealing with tornadoes, some severe weather further inland. Central Polk

County remains under a tornado warning. We also have tornado warnings in effect for Okeechobee County, Osceola County, that's in east central Florida. That tornado warning going until 2:25 eastern time and these storms have generally been moving towards the north between 30 and 40 miles per hour. Now the interstates are open. Interstate 75 is open. Interstate 10 is open as well. And Kelly, folks really have to get out at this very last minute. Do so immediately.

My parents scooping me up and bringing us into the basement. These acts, these moments, they held a gravity, a weight. They were things I'd seen in movies that I could never see in real life. Yes, Fred Krueger haunted my dreams, but tornadoes inhabited the real world. And one day, I saw something I'd never forget, something that would be seared into my brain.

It was the usual happenings in such a case in our small Ohio home. The bad weather, the news report with the stern man giving us the tornado warning. We prepared for the basement. My memories are loose. But as my parents were scurrying about, I went to the kitchen window. And there, out in the cornfields that stretched into the horizon, was a dark spike tunneling into the sky with a misty cloud of debris.

My child eyes finally saw a tornado in person. Sure, it was far away, but as we wait in the basement, as morbid as it sounds, I was sure this would be it. Say goodbye to Power Rangers on TV. Say goodbye to my schoolmates. Say goodbye to the house. And be prepared to be sucked into the sky. Of course, that didn't happen, but the image of the tornado ripping up the cornfield never left me.

My nightmares of Mr. Kruger and his knife fingers were replaced. Now, you would think such an experience would leave an impression on me, and impress on me a better sense of judgment among my peers. When it came to natural disasters, you would be wrong. When I moved to Florida at 12, I became acquainted with hurricanes as all Floridians do. They became a staple every year, and with the first hurricane, I did treat it with a sense of wonder and awe.

They were mysterious to me, but when I turned 13, that healthy, fear-driven awe turned to curiosity, and I would honestly, at the time, watch the news with hopes for getting the big one. I'm not lying to say that hurricanes excited me at that age. You see, there's something about your teenage years that have you believing that you're invincible. You feel so healthy, so in your prime, you couldn't possibly die, right?

You are truly the main character of your own movie. Luckily, most of us grow out of this phase. Most of us.

I was 15 when Hurricane Charley devastated Florida in 2004. Welcome back. I'm Bill Keneally and I'm Kelly Cass. We continue to monitor the progress of Hurricane Charley, which is yet to make landfall along the western seaboard of Florida, but it's already causing problems further inland. Major water concerns the next few hours. We have a landfall south of Tampa. What are the implications? Let's go right to Dr. Steve Lyons. Steve, well,

Well Bill, the buzz saw is heading right toward the greater Port Charlotte area here in Fort Myers area.

Currently category four hurricane. Now that could produce very extreme damage wind wise, but also flood wise. The Captiva Island area is right here. Of course, Naples is over here and you're going to be missed just to the north at Naples, although it's still blustery and the weather is going downhill. Winds gusting to 55 to 60 mph right now. But what's going to happen here when this gets on shore in about two hours? We're very concerned about the flood potential from surge, but also the wind when we get up to category four.

In this range, we're looking at extensive to extreme damage. So if you're not in a well-reinforced constructed home or a poorly built home, you need to get out of it and go next door to your neighbor's house that's built better for the next five hours as the system makes landfall and moves inland. We can see a lot of roofs blown off at the poorly constructed homes, signs down in the landfall area. We can see all kinds of trees down, power outages will be widespread in the area of landfall.

Now the other big problem is water level rise. We're going to see a significant surge here and locally it could be as high as 18 feet. In a category 4 hurricane in this area we can see water rises as high as 18. It's going to come up in a hurry. It's moving at 20 miles per hour to the northeast. That accentuates the height of the surge, but it also makes things

go from nothing to a very big water rise very quickly. So don't be outside near the ocean right now. You should be well away from the coast on high ground because the water is going to rise very quickly over the next one to three hours in the greater Fort Myers area, particularly near the Port Charlotte area. It was one of four named hurricanes that season. Not many people were prepared for what came. The hurricane upgraded from a category two to a category four.

Charlie killed 20 people, 15 of them directly. And like the morons we were, my friend Mike and I went jogging during the most intense part of the storm. The wind and the rain were unreal. That's what I remember most. Oh, the trees shaking and blowing to the point of making a sort of music. Did I mention we were barefoot? No, I'm not kidding you.

We were jogging through a category 4 hurricane, barefoot, and I could feel the grip beneath my feet.

Yes, we were those idiots you see in the background of a news report. When I was here and we woke up, it was a category two storm emerging off the coast of Cuba. But the way everything was set up, it looked like, hey, it was coming to the Tampa Bay area. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it takes just a tiny little shift to the right. And because of the way our coast is set up, that means a landfall much further south.

That was bad enough, but it also was strengthening too, and it was strengthening rapidly. So this thing becomes a Category 4 storm. Now, as the forward speed is being picked up, you're going to bring hurricane-force winds into where you just saw Ken.

in a place that they don't typically get hurricane force winds. So while Tampa was spared, yeah, it was at the expense of Charlotte Harbor and Polk County and Orlando. And you know what? Everybody evacuated inland just to be in the middle of this storm. So we learned a lot. There were a lot of lessons learned from this particular storm. And then it eventually went up and made another landfall in South and in North Carolina as well. But you're talking about

making landfall with 145 to 150 mile per hour winds and 15 billion dollars in damage and little did we know right that this was just one of four storms that were going to hit the state three of them crossing right where ken is right now and you know i'll say this too um you know go ahead ken

I was going to say, you know, it's really kind of hard to wrap your arms around how big of a deal this is unless you're in the middle of it. And I can tell you a little story. We were out here covering the storms day after day, and they were cleaning up and cleaning up, but still not making a whole lot of headway. And somebody from Tampa, a photographer, came in and saw it.

a couple of trees that were down in Lakeland and said, oh, now I get it. And I thought, brother, you don't get it at all. I mean, that's nothing in comparison to the scope of this whole thing. You know, and on television, it's all very contained and you kind of get a sense of it, but you live through it. Man, it's a totally different situation. Luckily, we made it back fine. At the time, we treated it as bragging rights. Now, looking back, I feel like such a fool.

to the point that I rarely bring it up, but I figured the circumstances of this specific podcast are special. It looks like my next friend is running a little late. They do this sometimes. You have friends like this too, right? While we wait, let's stop here. Part 2 will be available tomorrow, or you may see it available already. Either way, I'll keep the campfire warm whenever you're ready to return.

Don't forget, all the podcasts you've heard from are listed in the show notes in order of appearance. Okay, I'll let you go now. See you again soon.