[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've had, we've had many conversations where we're just casually talking and we're like, uhm, I got the AirPod Max's last year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, so like I said, uhm, Hamida Jandubi fixated on Elizabeth Bisquette for a year until in 1974 he kidnapped her and brought her to his home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now his home was acting as some kind of makeshift brothel. He had the other, the other two young ladies were still there. They all lived together and he brings her in to the home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fightful years, I mean days and days and weeks of thinking and fixating on her and he didn't take it, he took his time in getting his revenge on her. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, really, yeah, really horrible. And also to do it in front of the two other women that were under the control of his sex trafficking ring was also intentional as well, probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bisquette actually survived the ordeal, but after the torture, Hamida drove her to the outskirts of Marseille, another lovely town, beautiful, beautiful city. And uhm, but he strangled her on the outskirts of Marseille.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, he then returned from the brutal murder and Jen Doobie warned the other two girls not to say anything about what they had seen or else. You know, that whole implications thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But on July 7th, 1974, Elizabeth Biscuette's body was discovered in a shed and the investigation by the police was launched.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However though, Jan Doobie was so arrogant that he moved on from that immediately and not more than a couple of days later he went back out to try to kidnap another young girl with the intention of forcing her into his sex trafficking ring so he's looking to get a third woman


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the young lady managed to flee, probably because she ran. So she got away, she gets away, and she filed a police report against the police and they went and arrested him. But they arrested him again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...for a rep- a complaint basically, which is what Elizabeth Bisquetta filed against him. So he was arrested, but during the time that he was in holding...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so it was like kind of put it all together in that moment, but thank, you know, he could have been let out on whatever the way he was let out when, you know, he threatened Elizabeth Bisquette. So thankfully he wasn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sure. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's what happened. I think they were like, this is our moment to, to get em.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so uhm, yeah, so after two and a half years of sitting in prison on February 24th, 1977,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Amita Jandubi appeared in court on charges of torture, murder, rape, and premeditated violence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His defense, as Elena alluded to, was that the tragic loss of two thirds of his leg drove him...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, to try to fucking, uh, weaponize mental illness like that. To be like, I was going through a time of darkness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you go through a tragic accident and your life is changed forever, if I ruptured my achilles in 1977, I would have a limb for the rest of my life. Thankfully modern science is, you know, you can get a surgery and now I can play basketball again and I can run and everything. But if I was now a person who walked different and couldn't work the same job that I did, that would affect me mentally. That's no excuse to start.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, hurt, they say, you know, and everybody else goes, hurt people, hurt people. Like, no, don't just, let's not, let's not just normalize that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her people go to therapy. That's the 2024 slogan. Her people go to therapy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, so the president of France denied a reprieve for Hamidah. And in the early morning of September 10th, 1977, 12 days before his 28th birthday,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being there with a guy holding a curtain rod or whatever the string is to drop a fucking, a big razor on your neck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They start taking it through, like it's a Winnebago, they're like, this is a... Yeah, we really stream-blind things. This is a titanium string that it falls from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That part is kinda, when you talk about it being the great equalizer, yeaah, when you talk about somebody being this horrible thing, person that did this horrible thing and then them being-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that moment, them being scared. Absolutely. It's like no matter who you are or what you did, when you see that in the basket and the thing, everybody's, it's the same reaction. You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, Marie Antoinette was so, um, flustered and fucked up and scared and it was, they killed Marie Antoinette for a lot of fucked up reasons. It was really fucked up. But she apologized to the guy that did the thing, like, because she stepped on his shoes. She was so flustered, like she didn't know, like, what to do. She apologized to him for stepping on his shoes. That was her last words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did I leave the pot- Did I leave the pot on? I don't- Yeaah. Like, uuuh. Don't- Don't- Don't record that. You're like, don't- I don't want that to be the last thing I said. It's so gross. Yeaah, it's crazy, man. So uhm, Yeaah, September 10th, 1977.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 12 days before his 28th birthday, Amita Jandubi was guillotined at the Bomet prison in Marseille shortly after 440 AM. And like I said, there's really like no better city I can think of that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now there is some debate as to whether a person is still alive even briefly after a beheading and uhm, some physicians have done studies uhm, in the last century that show brain activity in animals like rats and stuff for like up to 30 seconds. So, but they say this could be a reaction to the pain receptors from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the quick slicing like it could just be the pain receptors reacting as far as blinking and stuff that people said they seen heads doing baskets This is has been seen in like rat people being bit by rattlesnakes that have been beheaded or like I have a friend She embalms. She works at a funeral home and she said the dead bodies they sigh Elena can you? Yeah, you said I can't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it is controversial, but anyways, it is possible that Amita Jandubi sat with his head in that basket reflecting on his life for like 30 seconds before the curtains faded, you know? Those curtains closed and whoo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they, you know, tie their hands behind their backs or they might even be like, we got you here man, just sit down on your knees.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the town square. Uhm, but yes, uh, that was the story of Hamida Jandubi and the last time a guillotine was used on a human being in France and in Western Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I told you in the beginning, when you talk about their methods, they used to just have one guy with an axe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was kind of dull. And so it would take a couple of swipes, like two, three, four swipes. And there was even, you know, everything creates a market, right? So there were people who were like, if you loved your family member, you'd slip the, you'd slip the warden or the guy with the axe some money to use a sharper axe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, don't tap my pockets one last time before you slice my head off, especially when it's the guy with the axe. I'd much rather face the guillotine than a guy just named Marcus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whenever we, like, when we watch stuff like, um, 300 and stuff, and they're like, a dagger in the sleeve, and people putting poison in cups, and like, that stuff's just, it's still happening. People are just wearing Tom Ford suits now. Yeaah. It's true. We're all like, it's come such a long way, it's like, I don't know, this happened in 1977.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can I just take a second before we go? Can I give you guys your flowers, uh, really quick? Because you guys had Holly Madison on your podcast a couple of times and, um, I love her story and who she is. And I just, when I think about my youth and what TV was in the early 2000s and how women were exploited so crazy, like everything about the early 2000s was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Imagine what an Anna Nicole Smith podcast would be today. She's probably such an interesting and amazing person, but she was like exploited by the powers of that be at the time of what they thought people wanted to see from reality television and to hear her on your platform and tell a story and just be like a person. I hate to, I don't mean to say it in like a misogynistic way, but like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never say, I'll just lay here for a couple more minutes because you're not going to lay there for a couple more minutes, you're going to fall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Similar vibes though. Yes, similar like sad boy vibes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I haven't watched it in so long. This I know. This I know. This I know. Or that I know. You know what I have been watching? Qua.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wild episode. What is the premise of this show? It's loosely based on Poe's story of the fall of the house of Asher. Right, right, right. I don't know if I ever read that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it has other, it's like, it's got like the mask of the Red Death and stuff, which I love that story. And I think that's what episode 2 is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Loosely based on. Okay. And some of the characters have the same names like in Mask of the Red Death. Okay. Prince Prospero.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Episode two focuses on the child named Prospero.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it's re- it's like now. Current? Okay. Yeaah. But it's- it's updated to that. Basically like when you start it, you find out, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, you're basically watching how certain people die. Oh, fuck. In this family. I just started a book like that. Which is not a spoiler, because that's the story from Poe. Shit. Who wrote it quite a long time ago. But it's very well done. I mean, it's Mike Flanagan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think Mike Flanagan kills it. He did like Midnight Mass and Haunting of Hill House. I still have to watch that. Did you watch that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I've only seen some of Haunting of Hill House, but I loved it when I watched it and I need to finish it. I heard it was like beautifully done. Midnight Mass is literally one of my favorite shows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is, I saw someone describe Fall of the House of Usher as, um, uh, horror succession. And it's pretty accurate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It like is, you weren't even sure how to describe it. I was like, I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, see that seems like a lot of trouble for something that I'm not super excited to watch in the first place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll eventually watch it for sure. Please. It's just a commitment right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well, and you know what, we'll move on to something pretty horrifying. So today we're going to talk about Preston Castle and the murder of Anna Corbin. Okay. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today, so I think everybody knows where that rolls. That's dark-sided. Yeah, we're gonna get into some specific parts of this school, but like there's, I'm sure there's many more things. I'm sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the grounds of, and actually, I first heard Preston Castle even mentioned, it's in California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I didn't expect that. Yeah, on, um, Girls Next Level. Oh. Because Bridget was talking about it, because she's like a ghost hunter, like Bridget's always been into that shit, and she's like, she goes to all kinds of places, and she professionally ghost hunts, all that cool stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The compassionate mission of reform over punishment. That was the idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But while the mission may have represented a more progressive approach to reforming young offenders,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The daily life for the young, what were deemed inmates, was often as brutal as it would have been in an adult prison. Jesus. So it didn't really like jive with the actual mission. And the school actually closed in 2011. 2011? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Preston's dark history has caused the building to definitely be haunted by the spirits of many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, there's also a graveyard, like a cemetery on site.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now, in the latter decades of the 19th century, progressive politicians and activists started advocating for dramatic changes to many social institutions in the United States. Among these changes were going to be things related to welfare and treatment of children, specifically in places like the workforce and the penal system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This ultimately led to children being considered and treated as their own distinct social class, separate from adults, and heavily protected, which is how it should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the time, children were typically treated as though they were simply small adults.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Intense. It's what you are thinking when you think of that kind of stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Inmates would be kept in solitary confinement for absurd lengths of time, like unnatural lengths of time. They were whipped. They were beaten for the slightest infraction and even sometimes not for an infraction, just for the hell of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, by the 19th century, significant population booms led to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A big increase in the population in US prisons because more people, more crime, it just happens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a ton of overcrowding and that was leading to like a rampant spread of disease and death among the prison populations and now they were being looked at more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now among the factors that led to the overcrowding of US prisons was that the criminal justice system tended to treat all criminals the same. Right. Regardless of their age and the crime that they were being sentenced for. Which is wild. This meant that a person charged with vagrancy could be sent to the same prison as someone sentenced for murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or that an adolescent criminal sentenced for a petty crime like theft would be in a prison alongside hardened criminals serving life sentences for violent crimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now recognizing this for the objectively disastrous and ineffective system that it was, progressive advocates started pressuring politicians to put some major reforms to the laws in place that would create


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just, what they wanted was just like a more nuanced justice system. Like we can't just do a blanket coverage for everything. There needs to be a little nuance here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they wanted to put an end to the deplorable environments in US prisons. Well that's good. Now although this was a complicated process that was going to unfold very slowly and is still unfolding today, one of the ways prison reform was achieved was by separating criminal offenders by age and gender.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now luckily, among the more significant achievements of the reform movement was the establishment of a juvenile justice system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or what was then referred to as a children's court, which is like such a sad, a children's court.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really embraced this progressive ideology that was heavily favoring reform and rehabilitation over corporal punishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this was believe, this was basically based on the belief that future criminality could be prevented by providing a rigidly structured environment where negative and harmful behaviors would be corrected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was presented to the public as a more compassionate and productive alternative to prisons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like their adult counterparts, reform schools placed a big emphasis on rehabilitation over punishment, and they just tried to correct behaviors and correct the underlying issues for things by providing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or what they said they were providing was education, vocational training, and taking the child out of an environment that seemed to be kind of nurturing this criminal behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But while reform schools may have been born of a progressive ideology, those same ideals and perspectives were not always shared by the staff and administration in the reform schools. Problem. Because these people had to operate within the daily realities of the justice, the juvenile justice system. But as a result of this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Physical, sexual, psychological abuse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very common. Very common. And this is a reformed school. These are children under the age of 18.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's criminal behavior, that's the thing. And this, this environment would frequently undermine any positive goals that were intended for the residents of these reform schools. And they would just further traumatize what at the time was an already vulnerable and marginalized population of kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, and in these kind of schools, some of these kids that were going in here were just wards of the state. They weren't even, they didn't even commit a crime. They just didn't have anywhere else to go. So now they're being treated like they, which they shouldn't be treated that way anyways, but it's like now these kids didn't even do a crime. They didn't even like do anything bad to get in here, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now in the winter of 1889, California State Senator Edward Preston introduced a state bill 402, which basically proposed the establishment of a juvenile reform school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now initially it was going to be housed on the property of Folsom Prison.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, yeah, you're trying to move away from the prison life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You should probably move it off the prison grounds. Yea, maybe don't set up camp right next to it. Just saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the Preston School of Industry was named for that senator, and it was intended to not only house criminal offenders under the age of 18, but like I said before, anyone who is deemed a ward of the state. And quote, boys whose daily life and home environment are leading towards a useless and criminal career.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the school's general purpose was to quote, make useful citizens of wayward boys by providing training and instruction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was going to prepare them to be productive members of society. This all sounds great. Oh yeah, so flowery. And when the school was announced, the press was told that quote, it is the aim not to have the reformation accomplished by punitive means, but by proving to the boys the value of good conduct and good reputation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they're being like, no, no, no, we don't want to punish. We don't want to be crazy here. We just want to show them what life can be like and what you can get out of being good citizens. And it's like, okay, that sounds great, but totally now construction of the school began in 1890 and was completed in 1894.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was that year that the curriculum plan for operations was developed. And basically the school was going to consist of three departments, academic, military, and industrial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Each boy was going to participate for four and a half hours per day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before moving on to the work portion of their day. So four and a half hours of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the work portion was basically agricultural work on the school's farm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The military portion of their education was going to involve instruction in quote, such branches of military training as are ordinarily used in government service, giving special emphasis to those parts which secure, secure to the cadet and erect and soldierly bearing a neat appearance and respect for superiors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now also the industrial branch of the school focused on vocational training and preparing students to enter the workforce. Which would have been great. Which vocational schools, great. We love a vocational school. You can enter training into a field right off the bat. I think that's a great option for some kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, so that sounds great, but again, this wasn't best laid plans, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, like we said, the work portion of the day, uh, happened on the school's 300 acres of farmland. That's terrifying. The students helped to quote, produce on the farm the larger part of fruit, vegetables, hay, and grain, which was used at the school. So they farmed their own food, essentially.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's the thing, if you are teaching these kids all these different trades and they get to choose and like really find their passion and like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really work at something and see that they can be good at something and see the success that comes out of that and the feeling of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] hurting someone and not doing something, you know, vandalizing, not things that are going to get them in trouble. It's like, you can be good at this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now after meeting with the approval of the state and the prison board that was going to be responsible for the oversight of the school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Preston School of Industry opened in June 1894.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of them were under the age of 18 and were serving sentences ranging from 2 to 10 years for robbery, burglary and grand larceny. But several of them had prior arrests or were known to have engaged in violent acts, including murder. Oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before long, the school was populated with boys as young as seven and as old as seventeen. So seven year olds are in there with seventeen year olds. Who may have committed murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, and like I said, some were just unfortunate wards of the state. Right, right. It's so sad. Uh, but to the outside world, the Preston School of Industry was a prime example of progressive policies and reform at work. Like, this looked great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The building itself was a 46,000 square foot monument of Romanesque revival architecture that had 77 rooms, 43 fireplaces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was super ornate, like ornate fixtures outside, inside, 257 windows that were all looking all out on like the Northern California landscape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seems like the perfect place to actually do some good shit. It does. What a waste. Sounds like it. And as far as most were concerned, if these boys had to be confined for something that they had done, where better to serve your time than Preston School, especially when the alternative was San Quentin or Folsom Prison. Little different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now inside the walls though, life at the school was not easy, and it was frequently dangerous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for many of the boys that were entering Preston, head and body lice were a regular occurrence as were open sores and cuts, which would have made the delousing process excruciating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once they were inside, they were expected to follow the rules exactly as they were given to them. And those who didn't, and even some who did, because who the fuck cares, were subject to whippings, beatings, or sometimes worse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, some of the horrors experienced by residents at the school were inflicted by the hands of guards and administrators. That absolutely happened a lot. I'm sure. Others were simply a product of the era, unfortunately. For example,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they just didn't have the professional facilities, so they made this beautiful school and never put in a medical facility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now things only worsened with the onset of the 1918 flu epidemic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During which nearly half of the staff and one third of the boys got the illness. Wow. And those who managed to avoid it somehow, or the need for surgery in the middle of the fucking floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, one from spinal meningitis, one from pneumonia and septicemia, and two from quote, exploded appendix.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whoa. Which I was like, damn. That's insane. And I'm also like, so they were in pain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I can't fathom. And obviously it kills you if you don't get it in time. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, while most residents were resigned to serving their time with as little conflict as possible, they just wanted to get out of there, others were less inclined to do that. Escape attempts were common.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while most ended with the escapee being caught, either still on the grounds or just like immediately outside of them, a few had more unfortunate endings. In January 1913, for example, 15 year old John Miller was shot and killed. 15.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was escaping and he ended up striking a guard in the shoulder with a pickaxe. Holy fuck. Like, damn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Disruptive and disrespectful. So to them it was like, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He is one of those 18 boys that I mentioned buried in the cemetery at Preston.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and a lot of them died of illness or disease, quote unquote, that allegedly, but he is one of them and he was killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, though they were overwhelmingly the targets of abuse, the residents of Preston weren't the only ones who experienced violent assaults at the school. Guards were often subject to physical and verbal assaults at the school, and at least three staff members were murdered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The main building was closed in 1960, so it didn't function like it did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any public attention really. Wow. And there was a lot of controversy involved in this one. Uhm, and this is really the murder that contributed to Preston's really notorious reputation now. And that is the murder of Anna Corbin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now on the afternoon of February 23rd, 1950,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little before 2pm, 17 year old Robert Hall was sent to get the head of housekeeping, Anna Corbin, from her office. So he reached her office and saw that the room was empty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when he looked around, he noticed a pool of blood that was collecting in front of the padlocked door of the utility closet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And unfortunately he discovered 52 year old Anna Corbin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her face was severely beaten.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, little about Anna. Anna was born in Emporia, Kansas in 1898, and she spent her early life in the Midwest, where she was raised by her aunt and uncle who adopted her. In 1918, when she was only 20 years old, she ended up marrying Robert Corbin, and the following year the couple welcomed their first child, Harold, and began making their way west.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They settled in Colorado for a little time where they had a second child, Avis.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when, then they eventually settled in Lone, California, where Anna took the job as head housekeeper at the Preston School of Industry and Robert took a job as a group supervisor at the Preston School of Industry. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Anna settled into life in California super easily because she was a cool, cool lady. She joined the local women's club. She participated in her Methodist church choir. She was active in several other local civic and social groups.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She liked the rules, but she was not harsh, and she was not cruel. Meaning she wasn't beating these kids. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And people liked her. And I think that's why people respected hers because she wasn't harsh and cruel, but she was strict. They respected that she wanted things to be the way they were, but she wasn't going to hurt you. Right. And although this attitude


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She wasn't, she was very well liked, but like obviously some of the troublemakers, she was not popular among them because they didn't want to listen to anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but, and honestly, it had earned her some verbal and written threats from students over the years because they just didn't want to listen. But again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was just because they didn't want to listen to her, not because she was cruel in any way. Right. Uhm, but mostly, those were only a handful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of these boys looked to her for support and they respected her for the meticulous and thorough performance of a very frequently overlooked job as well. Cause remember she's head of housekeeping. She keeps that place clean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, for boys to look to her for support. Like that tells you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to even give you more of Anna, she had even taken courses in psychology and sociology just to gain a better understanding of the boys at the school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anna's murder came as a shock to the staff and many of the residents at Preston, obviously. According to the coroner, J.J. Donary, the cause of death was most likely blunt force trauma to the skull, although he couldn't be certain. Wow. When asked about the rope that was tied tightly around her neck,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It appears Ms. Corbin was knocked to the floor and the injuries to her head indicate she could have been hit by a club or her head banged against the floor. Oh god. There was no evidence of sexual assault and the office hadn't been disturbed at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indicating that robbery was definitely not the motive. Right. It was Anna. To kill her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To investigators, the murder was, I guess what they deemed it as like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They also didn't think that made it any easier to solve. It was like, this is kind of like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Standing out as like, oh I bet it's this kid because of this thing. It could be anybody. Now at the time, there were 657 boys being housed at the school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of them have committed criminal offenses, obviously, and as far as authorities were concerned, any of them could have been the killer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now based on the state of the room, detectives theorized Anna had been attacked and then quote, dragged through the supply room and into the adjoining store room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because there was blood spatter and significant blood trails leading from one room to the next.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, an initial search of the scene didn't turn up a murder weapon. There were no bloody clothes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the absence of any obvious clues to point out who could have done this, investigators began the very long and tedious process of interviewing all 657 residents. Holy shit. And scrutinizing their clothes, their hands, their fingernails for any blood or trace evidence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This particular murder really shook everyone up, and according to a group of Anna's closest friends, during a recent outing with them, she had told them about a disturbing incident with one of the boys that seemed a little significant in the wake of her death. According to Anna, she had been working alone in the administration building, with a boy assigned as her helper.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that boy turned her and said, are you afraid to be with me alone in here? And when she said no, I'm not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The boy proceeded to tell her how easy it would be for him to kill her, and even described how he would do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who had supposedly made this threat, but at the time of the murder, he was actually in solitary confinement because he had tried to escape a week earlier. So he was like, I was in this room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now according to those who knew her, Anna Corbin had no enemies, and she had not been involved with any men since


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her husband had died three years earlier, so she hadn't gone on dates, she wasn't dating anyone. Grieving. Superintendent Chandler told reporters, it is inconceivable to even think one of the boys here could possibly have disliked her as much as to commit this crime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So even they're like, this doesn't make any sense, like she did nothing. Yet Chandler nonetheless acknowledged that the killer was almost certainly one of the students, and even suspected that two students might have been responsible for the murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Investigators shared Chandler's belief that the killer was definitely a student.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And after clearing the staff and teachers, they narrowed their focus. Basically, I think they were narrowing it down to a much smaller group of boys at this point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now authorities investigated Anna's murder while news of the death had reached the wider public and quickly became a political talking point for those who opposed the more progressive policies of both the school and the California juvenile justice system. Basically people who don't want


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I told reporters he would quote, press a demand for a grand jury investigation in the case.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as far as he was concerned, Anna's death was as much the result of the lax policies of the California Youth Authority as it was the individual who actually did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doesn't sound like the policies where that locks. It didn't sound like it to me, but they were projecting that idea out. That's the thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at the time, a lot of Anna's family members shared that sentiment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now other politicians however were strongly disagreeing. Uhm, Amador County District Attorney Gard Chisholm told reporters it will not at this time aid in any way in the investigation to think that way. Okay. Now most county supervisors and others in positions of political power sided with the district attorney.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically saying that as an active participant in the investigation, he knew best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But still, Anna's family and those critical, uh, critical of the school itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get it. Like that's- It's tough. Yeah, it's like, cause if you look at the- you can see both sides here. And I understand why her family wanted to hold that school responsible. I probably would have done the exact same thing. That's my exact thought. So it's like, I get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anna's nephew Herbert Morris said in a statement to the press, I do not harbor any animosity, nor am I out to gain revenue for the brutal murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everybody's being treated like a human and stuff, like, you guys are preaching this whole thing, but the conditions there are deplorable. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, while their grief and frustration over Anna's death was obviously very genuine, it's worth noting that the anti-Preston political rhetoric coming from certain politicians, not Anna's family,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like the family was trying to say, we need to look into this, my family member's death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what the school has to do to make sure this doesn't happen again. And politicians were using it as their own little platform to as a whole talk about criminal reform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they weren't really getting any closer to the truth. Guard Chisholm told reporters in a press conference, we haven't got a thing to hang our hats on. Oh no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, the break in the case came about a week later. Okay. When doing a room by room search, investigators discovered a bloody Preston uniform hidden in the bedroom of 19 year old Eugene Monroe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was a student who was among those regularly assigned to work with Ann. Anna, excuse me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Monroe had been sent to the school about six months earlier after a conviction for burglary in Los Angeles. And in addition to the bloody uniform, he took a polygraph and it showed repeated attempts at deception.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who was an honor student and resident of the housing project where Monroe also lived.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was found partially nude in her own bedroom and they think she was attacked while she was just hanging up like shades on her window. Jesus Christ. Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Monroe had delivered furniture to the residents on the day of the murder and according to Vesta's younger brother, youngest brother Carlisle, Eugene had returned to the apartment later that afternoon, but the boy didn't know why. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the case of Vesta's murder, the sheriff's department wasn't able to corroborate the brother's story or find sufficient evidence to connect Monroe definitively to the crime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Lieutenant R.R. Coppage told reporters he always believed Monroe was guilty of the murder and felt the investigators were right on the right track with the Corbin case, he said. He was like, you better keep following that lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was actually quoted as saying about the Vesta murder. He said, I'm certain this boy did the job, but we were just never able to prove it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two days later, District Attorney Gard Chisholm filed former, formal murder charges against him, and he was transferred from Preston to the county jail to await a preliminary, I'm like, hard, falling all over my words, hearing them following week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now on March 10th, 1950, Eugene Monroe appeared before Justice of the Peach El- Pea-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go, it's a nice little double-dipping. But unfortunately he did not appear before a justice of the peach. It was a piece. He appeared before a justice of the piece, LP Gebhard. This was for his preliminary hearing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Among those who testified before the court was 17-year-old Preston student Jack Mercer, who testified that not only had Monroe told him two days before the killing that he intended to attack Anna, but also that he witnessed the murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mercer said on the stand quote, Mrs. Corbin started to reach for the telephone, but he knocked her back into a chair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mercer claimed he wanted to help Anna, but he was scared and instead did nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see this man do this, like obviously, you wish this kid would have said something, and as an adult, I'm like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now in his closing statement, Coley asked that the charges against his client be dropped, claiming that the evidence and hearsay testimony were insufficient to hold Monroe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said quote, in the haste to get a conviction, we should not rush this man to trial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Justice of the Peace, Gerhard Genhart, uhm, overruled the motion and Monroe was bound for trial in the Superior Court. Good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His trial was set to begin April 24th, but just weeks before the start date, Jack Mercer threw a little curveball.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause he recanted his entire statement about what he'd heard and seen. Fuck. Did someone get to him?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Coley, Mercer only told investigators he'd seen Monroe kill Anna because they promised to release him from Preston if he did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, but he decided to tell the truth once he realized they weren't going to live up to that. And also quote, to clear his conscience before an expected visit from his mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, arguing that Mercer's testimony at the preliminary hearing had been the only real evidence that district attorneys had against Monroe, Coley announced his intention to move that the charges against his client be dropped. Oh shit. Despite Mercer recanting his statement, district attorney Chisholm was undeterred. He was like, no, we're going forward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's saying, that's really cute that you have a statement from him. When he sits on the stand, I think he'll tell the same story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in his opening statement at the trial, Chisholm laid out the case for the jury in detailed terms. Eugene Monroe was the only one who had been alone with Anna that morning, and he was the only one who had the opportunity to commit that murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, when they searched Monroe's room, investigators found the Preston uniform covered in blood that was a match for Ayanna's blood type. And they had a statement from another boy that Eugene had tried to get him to burn that uniform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, there was Mercer's statement that he'd seen Monroe kill Anna just days after the young man had told him that he intended to do so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Among the witnesses called by the prosecution were a number of Preston's staff and residents, including a bunch of boys who'd seen Monroe go to Anna's office that morning. And when they saw him later that day, he quote, appeared to be worried about something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Girl. The most important witness, though, was Jack Mercer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like he's on the stand. He knows he's gotta tell the truth. That's sworn testimony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, Nathaniel Coley's defense strategy was pretty simple. The police arrested the wrong person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In his testimony, Eugene described his movements that day on the day of the murder, claiming he'd seen Anna twice that morning, but was never alone with her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Testifying for the defense, state criminologist David Byrd told the jury that they had interviewed at least 20 boys who they believed could have been capable of the crime. And when they examined the clothes of those boys, quote, there was more, more blood on some of those garments than on the garments of Monroe. Do you have them? Yeah, I'm like, can you prove that? Did the blood match the blood type of the victim?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As for the blood of Monroe's clothes, Coley and Monroe said that he had cut his hand that morning, either in the shoe shop or the slaughterhouse. But neither the instructor in the shoe shop or in the slaughterhouse recalled him cutting his hand ever. They were like, no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now after a brief deliberation, the jury reported to the judge that they were unable to reach a verdict and were hopelessly deadlocked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He got away with this. Right. But in that moment. Not knowing what we know now and what you will know soon is, like, I can understand that. But sitting on that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and eight jurors were in favor of a conviction and four were in favor of an acquittal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different jury. Among the hurdles with the previous case was the lack of motive for Anna's murder. That was the problem that they were really facing in that one. And the jury was like, I don't know what the motive is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's true, but that's the thing, it's like, if you don't have a motive and it's a little shaky, that will really count a lot more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like if you have a motive and the rest is shaky, you can kinda...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talk up the motive a little more. Yeah, it's like no motive and some shaky evidence, it's like, uuuh, I don't feel good about that. So the second time around, Chisholm was determined to get a motive in hope of securing this conviction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In his testimony at the second trial, Jack Mercer, our, our guy Jack over there. Definitely. Claimed Monroe had quote, beat and garroted Anna to death in her office because she had caught Monroe and himself in what he referred to as a degenerate act.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time though, Jack was willing to give a detailed chronological account of the events leading up to the murder. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Upsetting. Because it's just like, it's sad. And it's literally like, this is what life was like for these kids. Now according to Mercer, the day before the murder, he was propositioned for sex by Monroe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Jack declined, but Eugene responded, all right, I'll make it rough on you. Oh, indicating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he didn't want any trouble, so he said he finally agreed and the two engaged in that in the empty Sunday school room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this was also like, not consensual for Jack. No, obviously. Like he was agreeing out of fear. Because he just didn't want any trouble. So he was raped. That's not consensual, exactly. So Eugene raped him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and that's where they were discovered by Anna, according to Jack. Now shocked, Anna left the room and made her way down the hall to get a male staff member, but she was pursued by Monroe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now Chisholm was certain that once they learned of the motive for the murder, the jury would have no trouble finding Monroe guilty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But after days of deliberation, the jury informed Judge McGee they were deadlocked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You wanna go? Are you kidding me? And again, a mistrial was declared. Undeterred though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mercer's testimony was getting more like intense and confused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The jury in the third trial was also unable to arrive at a unanimous decision. And in October 1950, a third mistrial was declared. And is he going to go for a fourth? He said he figured a fourth was just going to have the same outcome. So Chisholm declined to pursue it any further.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The day after the third mistrial was declared, the day after the third mistrial was declared, the California Youth Authority announced they would parole Eugene Monroe. I'm sorry what? Within 60 days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were murdered in the exact same fashion, with the same knot in the same garrotted, uh, I think it was like, uhm, a piece of hemp rope. Okay. Yea, a square knot, you're correct.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was, and that's a big fucking charge. Uhm, so he was free from prison, and he left the state in 1950 for Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the following year he was arrested and convicted for the rape and murder of 22-year-old pregnant woman Dorothy Waldrop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dorothy was a former dance teacher and the wife of Robert Waldrop, a taxi driver. Like Vesta and Anna Corbin, Waldrop was found with a garroted


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, hemp rope knotted around her neck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She had been literally taken out of her home and killed and disposed on a hill near her apartment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now a book, Stories of the Forgotten by Jamie Rubio tells an even more in-depth story of all of Eugene's life and deeds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a very interesting read. That person also has a blog entitled Dreaming Casually Poetry where they talk a lot about this. Okay. And they talk to some of the family members and it's very interesting. I'm shocked right now. But when asked by the press for a comment, Monroe said, it just seems like I am always in trouble, even though I never did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yea, seems like you always are around people to get murdered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now despite, no he was, but uhm, despite what he told the press when investigators found Monroe's fingerprints in Waldrop's apartment, he confessed to the murder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, it makes me crazy. That would have been like the smoking gun. Exactly. He actually confessed to the murder of Dorothy Waldrop and was sentenced to life in prison by a Tulsa jury. But then never confessed to the other two murders? He was paroled in August 1981. For why? Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How? This man who literally was paroled the first time? At 19?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like a 19 year old, paroled after being heavily suspected of a murder. Twice. Two different murders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And immediately upon exiting murders a pregnant woman in the same fashion and you think it's smart to parole him?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so he was convicted of Dorothy's murder, but led out of jail, cause why the fuck not? He murdered a pregnant woman after kidnapping her out of her home, but like, yea, let's just let him back out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, he was paroled in August 1981 and lived for a time in Tulsa, which is where he killed Dorothy Butler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, before returning to Los Angeles and he died there on October 3rd, 2007.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never being convicted of either Vesta or Anna's deaths. And both of those cases are unsolved technically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are strangers, Tim. Vesta and Dorothy, complete, Dorothy complete stranger, Tim.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What the fuck? Like, and he just walked into these houses, like Vesta, supposedly he was delivering furniture or something like that, but still, complete stranger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he took the blind, like uhm, he took the pole cords from one of her, like Venetian blinds and used that to garrot her as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wild. And the fact that that school, the California Youth Authority, was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the residence relocated to other facilities on the grounds, and the school itself was shut down for good completely in June 2011.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Between 1960 and the closing ceremony in 2011, a lot of the main building fell into disrepair and became popular with vandals and looters. But the building itself gained the protection of the National Historic Registrar. Registrar, excuse me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, in recent years, because of its architectural significance, because remember, it's a beautiful building.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, since 1997, the main campus has been leased by the Preston Castle Foundation, which is a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve the buildings and promote the history and the heritage of the site.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The group spent the latter half of the 90s and early 2000s renovating the interior in order to make the building safe. Right. Uhm, and for the last decade or so they have tried to raise funds by, among other things, opening the campus to the public for ghost tours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the organization regularly welcomes tour groups and even allows groups to pay an additional fee in order to spend a night in the supposedly haunted castle. Guests routinely report seeing orbs, spirits, like full body apparitions, wandering the halls, a lot of, a lot of like disembodied voices and things caught.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and many have claimed to see who they believe to be Anna Corbin herself. Oh wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the Preston Foundation board members, Carl Nobelok,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, was initially skeptical. He told reporters, if there are any ghosts here, they've never talked to me. And that changed one evening when Carl and a friend were exploring the castle on their own. And both men said they clearly heard a disembodied voice call Carl by name.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're, they're like supposed to all be in good fun, going with the more lighthearted stories from the past and using historic reenactors, you know, things to scare people, like it's supposed to be this lighthearted thing. Tour guides do tell and share the tragic history of the school and its residents. According to the Sacramento Bee,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Donnie Page, quote, delights in telling about the crude conditions early on in the infirmary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, this is what Donnie told the Sacramento Bee. He said, contrary to what they said at the time, the boys were beaten, severely punished, and whipped and thrown into solitary confinement. So he's saying, like, they were projecting this whole image of progressive reform. Wasn't that? They were just as bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, despite the playful tone and the theatricality of the events held at Preston Castle,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By telling and retelling the stories that are Preston's history, the foundation manages to provide a small consolation to those who, like Anna Corbin, died or suffered within its walls because they keep their memories alive in the present, which is at least a positive for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that is the story of the Preston School of Industry and the murder of Anna Corbin, Dorothy Waldrop, and Vesta Sapenter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 2024 is gonna be great. It's gonna be so much better. Everybody's walking into 2024.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think everyone's walking into it in their villain era, which is like, I like that. I like that. I've seen a lot of people that I love and respect doing this. So I'm like, I'm glad we're all just walking in hand in hand here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just like, you know, I think just like everybody's resolution should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, just don't be an asshole and worry about yourself and stop worrying about everybody else. That should be, that's mine. Like mine is, there you go. Mine is just like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Worry about the ones who matter. I like that. Don't worry about the ones who don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am a great Gatsby fan girl, so like, I do love just like, like sitting, sitting and watching our society.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of her taxi cabs. That's, that's some mom shit. That's some mom shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's just mommin' til the end. She is. She's like, you're gonna get something better than I did. Exactly. And like, don't mess it up for me. That's some true mom shit. Like, don't worry about me, I'm fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, sorry, you're just gonna lose your connections. Like no one was willing to be like, yeah, she's just taking care of her dying mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fuuuck. And it's also, that's why it's like, don't even tell people to go home and rest, cause you just don't know. Yea. That's the thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And her mom believed in her. And like supported her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You are having an affair and because you want to keep having an affair,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Elsie just having to shake her hand. Yea, and she's on to her. I was going to say, I don't know if she knows or not, you can always get a vibe. She knew. That's tough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now here's the thing, I understand she's got a vibe here, and she's like, I'm pretty sure you have met my husband before and there's something here, so I would be like, you're an asshole too, in that sense. Yup. But the whole like, you don't belong here because you were raised


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In poverty. Is stupid. Is so dumb because also, I know that Anne is trying to climb the ladder here. Of course. Like clearly, that was the way back then. It was just like, people do it now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You, you honestly should feel a little self-conscious if you sleep with someone's husband. Definitely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, pretty sure you had something going with my husband and now you're just gonna marry my son. Like, I understand that. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it sounds like, regardless of how this all started.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That Ann and Billy did love each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it also must be strange, like I haven't been in the military, nor have I ever been in the military.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's so regulated and routine and, you know, like strict that I feel like going back to a life where it's just loosey goosey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gross. Like I can understand he's going through PTSD and all that. I can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know what that's like, I can't even fathom it, so I will never speak on that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, but, and I can even understand that like becoming a new father during that is probably a whole different thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was even being a dick to Anne and like kinda making fun of her and like being this little boy. Right. You know, it's like grow up. Right. Like that's, he's sounding very Peter Pan here. And it's like the sorry men only thing, I'm like sorry, no. I can give you a lot here, but that's men only grow up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also, by the way, with the hunting thing, I was talking about those big game hunters who go to that lake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a big fuck you, but it was also like, the boys are used to this woman. That's the thing. And they're going through like a shit ton of trauma right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's what I think it is. I think it's adorable. I don't see Elsie sitting there, like just straight up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just being like, you're going to move to Europe and your boys are going to Switzerland and we're not going to challenge the little amount that my son left you in his life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that's what that new show is about. Exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By throwing themselves from a building, like that's really horrifying. Oh, I feel, that's really sad. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not all that glitters is gold. It's like that shows you, you look at, it's the same thing as looking at like social media or something. We've seen it happen again and again. Everything looks hunky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You live your life for, you know, material things and everybody else's opinions and everybody else's, you know, judgment of you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, oh man, that's just like really sad all the way around. The most tragic story. Everyone was sad in this story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love that. I love a miniseries. I do too. Especially one as scandaloso as this one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I lost it. You know what's fun about these listener tales today? They're from the 90s!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and it's 2024 and we're in a place of move on from all that shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think we should start with one that I'm a little excited about because it looks horrifying. It's called the reason I hate camping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm scared because I also don't like camping. Same. So I'm very excited to hear this one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also love any kind of like summer camp horror. Like throw me in a summer camp. Yea, it's giving Friday the 13th. Yea, I'm always for it. Uh, so this one says, hello beautiful spooky besties. I'm sending this listener tale for the second time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If so, we're our own worst critics, you know? If so, I will be listening to the episode on my way to the store to get my new pants, because I will have for sure shitted. We'll get in the car, baby! Get some nice pants. Pentelonis. Morbid is by far my favorite podcast, and you said favorite in like the British way, the OU, and I love that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've listened to every damn episode, aside from catching up on listener tales, I explain that in my double space 14 font, for your reading pleasure. I'd tell you girls to cut out any parts you think suck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, hello weirdo, fellow weirdos, excuse me. Please excuse the inevitable spelling and grammar mistakes as I'm writing this on a tiny little cell phone screen. Oof, ouch. My name is Erin and my sister's name is Cassandra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are both part of this spooky tale and you're welcome to use our real names should this be creepy enough to use for listener tales. This is a little long, but worth it, I promise. It's actually not even long. It's pretty damn short. At least I think it is. I haven't finished writing it yet, so fuck it. We'll see how long it is at the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm telling you, the, the girlies who get it, get it. And it's like, whenever somebody is like, I, the amount of times we have read in a listener tale, I used to avoid these like the plague and now they are my favorite. Give them a chance. That's the thing. You guys are the scariest and the funniest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so it says I have a certificate in criminal psychology. Hell yea you do. And I'm fascinated by what makes these terrible twat waffles tick. I liked that whole sentence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What makes them do what they do? I'm also an advocate for the legalization and monitoring of sex workings in Canada in order to protect and help these women stuck in hard times and hard places in life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're lovely. You are. I spent half my life in BC, and with the Highway of Tears so close, I feel like we could do more to protect all these women in our country, especially those who society and the police see as less important. Agreed. You are badass, and I wholeheartedly agree. A little about me and my sister. She goes by cat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We grew up in Ontario, Canada and we're full-blown latchkey kids. Whatever our parents. My mom worked three jobs and dad was an abusive alcohol, alcoholic, I'm sorry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a different time in the 90s, you two babes know, so we were very often left unsupervised. In my mom's defense, I, the baby of the family, had three older siblings and my oldest sibling is eight years older than me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was her understanding we all took care of each other because we led her to believe this, but me and the cat often were left to do whatever the fuck we wanted most of the time. So anyways, here my little story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know it isn't as crazy as a lot of the other stories you tell, so maybe this one can be a bit of a palate cleanser between some truly awful tales. Nope, we're starting off with it. Okay, so here we go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though it still feels like the 90s was just a few short years ago, it really does. Things were different in the 90s. Me and my family lived in a house in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada that was at the end of a double cul-de-sac. It looked like boobs from an aerial view.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Behind the houses was a large green belt. I'm not sure if it's called the same thing in the states.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 99% of my time outside of school was spent here, day in and day out, building forts from sticks and mud with my sister and a few other neighborhood kids. Ah, the 90s. So much fun. A lot of the older kids in the area used this place to smoke and drink and destroy every gosh darned stick fort we build.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of these forts took weeks to build. I wish I had photos. They sound awesome. We would go inside to eat, sleep, and that's about it. Damn, damn do I miss the 90s. Same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The summer before I turned 8 and Kat turned 12, our birthdays are in September. Virgo baby is so innocent and dumb. We decided it would be a fucking splendid idea to grab my parents tiny two man tent and pitch it in the fields right up against the woods at the back of the greenbelt. Why?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good fucking question. Kids be dumb, yo. Our house was within eye shot, so our mom let us do it, because again, 90s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Me and my sister along with two of our friends who were close to our age crammed ourselves into this tent made for two with snacks and flashlights and that's about it. So prepared. We did bring a small diary lock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We told ghost stories, ate junk and had no plans on sleeping that night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I call it glamping. This was before everyone age 6 and up had a fucking cell phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We heard some movement outside our tent. We were freaked. We tried to stay quiet and pretend we were asleep. Bright idea, little dumbasses. I didn't say that, you did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well then we started to hear ripping sounds. Think nails on a chalkboard, because that's what it sounded like in our terrorized state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my god. Then, he's, you're telling me this isn't as fucked up as some of our other tales? Really? It certainly is. Then, he started vigorously shaking the tent, pulling the poles out of the ground and allowing the tent to drape over our tiny little bodies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I say we were freaked, I can't even explain how scary this was. The man, I'm guessing man because of the voice, started whispering. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here kitty kitty kitty. Nooo. And poking us with the huge knife. Not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough for us to feel it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What the fuck? We stayed silent aside from our tiny whimpers that we just couldn't hold in. This went on for a good 10 to 15 minutes. Then it stopped. It just stopped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Luckily our front door was unlocked, 90s, and me and my friend- my sister ran to bed. The same bed because fuck no we were not sleeping alone after that. No. We never told anybody about this. What?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On lockdown due to a man with a gun outside the school screaming and yelling telling a teacher in the school to come the fuck out and meet their fate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or the time my oldest sister did my makeup and hair and made me wear her clothing because she wanted to go to the fire hall, a teen hangout spot where there was dancing and live music, but you had to be 13 and I was only 8.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You and your husband by the way because you guys can't see this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also have to say, I was also 8 in 1993.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my god! Aww, he was drunk and crying and it was sad. Aww, so he's, I mean, you can tell this guy was going through it. I mean, he endangered a lot of people that night, that's not okay. No. But it's like, if he was still going through it, in this kind of vibe that long after, it's like that guy was struggling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or actually, maybe not, because didn't Dani say a couple of years? Hold on. And this was January.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything there was ideal. It was so good. So good. Also Nocturne. That's another place. Oh, and Nocturne. Yeah, Nocturne is awesome. And there's probably some that we're forgetting, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, alright, so Danny, you rule, your family rules. That was hilarious and also, uh, horrifying and also sad, but also, uh, uplifting at times. So, thank you for all that. It was all of the above. Uhm, sooo, let's talk about a local Boston listener tale. Let's do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't squeeze- is this Don't Squeeze My Charmin? Like-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think so. Toilet paper? Don't squeeze my Charmin! A haunting. Uh, let's see, it says, uh, hold on, I'm going to open the Puttifa. Do it. Hi, Ash and Elena! My name is Amy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've changed everyone else's name in the story, though, just for privacy's sake. Thank you both for being such great storytellers, and for giving people like me, who reluctantly call themselves believers in the paranormal, a platform to share our tales. You're welcome. Thank you for sharing them with us. I've pasted my story below and attached it as a puttafa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's the next city over from Cambridge and 20 plus years ago when this story takes place it was still up and coming as they say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rents were fairly cheap, and the streets were filled with a mix of local townies, think whitey bulgia meets Italian mafia, and twenty-something transplants looking for a decent place to live that was walkable to the tee with bars and restaurants nearby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My two roommate- I was going to do this whole thing with like the full on Boston accent, but I'm not gonna assault your ears. Why? My two- I- cause I thought about it when I said- when I was like, bars and restaurants. I think you should do it. My two roommates, let's call them Caroline and Jamie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I lived on the first floor of a fairly typical, flaw, the first flaw of a fairly, of a fairly typical three family house. Or as we massholes call it, a triple decker. Triple fucking decker. Triple decker cat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With just a table, a free standing oven and fridge, and a microwave on a cart against the firewall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was connected to a vintage yellow and green tiled butler's pantry, I'm loving this, containing the sink and all the kitchen cabinets. There was a back door to the driveway in the corner of the kitchen that we used as our primary entrance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So my roommates and I communicated to each other with notes left on a large, I think the size of an average flat screen TV whiteboard that one of us had salvaged from the neighbors trash. We had propped this monstrosity on top of the microwave and left each other basics, sometimes passive aggressive notes about bills due or who needed to get their old food out of the fridge, et cetera. Uh, roommates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keep in mind that my roommates and I were fairly- friendly acquaintances more than friends, oof. That sounds like a fucking nightmare. My only roommates were like actual friends. Yeah. Uhm, and that I was the only link between the two of them, ooh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got along and hung out together sometimes, but weren't long-standing BFFs or anything. Maybe that awkward formality that comes from sharing a living space with relative strangers is the reason it took each of us so long to admit that our apartment was a spooky nightmare. We'll never know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we often walked to Davis Square to grab beers together or bagels on weekend mornings. Life was good. Caroline and I had just come from a horrible living situation with another person the year before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I initially chalked up the odd feeling I'd get here and there in the apartment as leftover trauma from my previous living situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything was as I had left it except that the whiteboard was no longer propped up on the microwave. It was laying face up about eight feet across the room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could not for the life of me understand how a heavy particle board back to whiteboard could land face up across the room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I told myself that writing the thank you note had made the board unstable and caused it to fall. You know, something, somehow that note was different from the other notes we wrote to each other all the time. It was heavy with importance. Yea, you know? Uhm, I wanted, it was heavy with gratefulness. Yea, with gratitude. With appreciation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went about my day and tried to convince myself that I was just being dramatic. Needless to say, I never mentioned it to my roommates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But a week or so later, Caroline and I were sitting in the living room watching TV while Jamie was eating her dinner at the kitchen table, we suddenly heard Jamie say, oh, followed by a few rapidly escalating


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ohs and ahs and holy shite. And then a loud crash. Like what the fuck happened? Caroline and I ran down the hall to the kitchen only to find the whiteboard once again lying face up on the floor in the same location as before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only this time, Jamie had watched it slowly rock itself one corner at a time off the top of the microwave and then literally fly across the room. That's absolutely terrifying. It was then that we all came clean to each other about the weird experiences we'd been having in the house. The feeling of someone standing over our shoulder in the bathroom. The odd feeling in the front hall in the front closet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Caroline came to us a few days later to tell us that someone had just called her name in the hallway. Goodbye. Some weeks after that, when Jamie's boyfriend Curtis was spending the night, her printer turned on at 2am and started printing, only there was no paper in the printer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They got into a fight over whether or not they should put paper in to see what the messages, what messages would come through. Curtis won and no paper was ever added. I would be team Curtis. Oh fuck that. I would have been like put paper in that shit. We know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Weeks passed. Caroline got a job offer in Vermont and moved out. Curtis moved in. Weird things kept happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the medicine cabinet door began repeatedly opening and closing on its own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Curtis, Jamie, and I all agreed that we weren't anywhere close to being ready to confront this spirit. So we just went about our lives with the minor inconvenience of feeling like we were sharing our home with a fourth unseen roommate. I feel that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One day, I was getting ready to meet friends at the local second-run movie theater to see, ironically, The Sixth Sense. Remember when there were second-run theaters? When you could see a cheap movie like six months after its initial release? Oh, that shit's awesome. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think this particular movie was popular enough that it took more like 10 months to get the cheap theater, but I digress. So there I was, getting ready to go. I had changed my clothes, brushed my teeth uneventfully, and sat down on the toilet to go to the bathroom. I was just finishing up my business and was about to reach for the toilet paper when it happened. So it is Charmin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I can, I can get my own toilet paper. Definitely. And also like, that's bad for my plumbing, so like, let's calm down. Yea, exactly. And also, toilet paper is expensive, so can we not? Can't. There's a lot here. Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean seriously, couldn't I have some privacy on the toilet at least? I've since had three kids and realized the answer to that rhetorical question is actually no. But I was young and naive then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was the last straw. Nobody was going to squeeze my Charmin. I mustered all the courage I could and channeled my one summer of acting camp to confidently declare, this is my house. Leave my toilet paper alone. The first attempt at taking-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or maybe the ghost actually listened to me and started respecting boundaries a bit more. Maybe. He went to therapy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all moved out the following summer, and the house has since been renovated and turned into condos. I've done some stocking on Zillow. It's currently on the market for nearly one million if anyone's looking for a new place to live. Damn. In Somerville.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Either way, after the odd driving routes this summer brought me face to face with the house again and again, I feel like maybe the ghost is still trying to send me a message. So if anyone buys a first floor condo in Summerville in the next few months that you end up discovering is haunted,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make sure you keep paper in your printer or whiteboard in your kitchen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And maybe you can finally get to the bottom of this mystery. Thanks for listening and as always, keep it weird. I loved that one. I really loved that. That was so much fun. Amy, you guys are fucking funny. You are. And you know what? I stand by it. Jamie's college roommate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can I just picture a cow being lifted up in a beam?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know? It's okay. The sad thing was that I like really tried. It's not always, they're not always going to be hits. No. You know? Mu's got to be kind of deep. It does. It needs to be from within. Yeaah. You know what? My dog Sydney is half cow, I'm pretty sure, and she can do a sick cow impression.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hard. You don't have like multiple stomachs. Don't cows have multiple stomachs? No, that's definitely not where it's supposed to come from. I think they have like a deep...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was like very like, uuuh. But guys, this was a great...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Episode of Listener Tales, if I do say so myself. And I can, because this is all about you guys, so. You created a great episode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't go camping, don't pretend you're Jesus breaking into people's houses, don't take somebody's toilet paper and unravel it, and don't be strange lights that don't tell anybody what you're doing. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So fun. It was so fun, I had the two best band of owners in the entire world. Oh my god, that was one of them. I just got so many of the pictures back and there were so many cute pictures of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said, why don't we do a little cursity curse town?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this year, the worst part was last year was I had all the stuff ready to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, I was, cause I always have it like all laid out, I have some things cooked the night before, like at least prepared the night before, and I woke up in the morning and started dying and got full


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, we're not gonna have that this year. No. Because this year we said, behold my field of fucks, for it is barren. And you will not ruin it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yea, it was rough. It was rough. Actually, my youngest this year literally asked me last night, she said, uhm, can you promise not to get the tummy bug this Thanksgiving? And I was like, let's not talk about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the thing, I don't know anything about this case, so I didn't know if Sharon was, I don't know what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Emotionally immature and like not, you know, cause I mean, she's 16. Exactly. You're 22. Like what are you gonna have a comment on if you're not emotional?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're right. Like this was a much more common thing. That was just kinda like not side-eyed. No, it really wasn't. That's the thing. And it's so strange to look at now. It really is. Cause it's, again, I always think we're in the year 2000 here, so I'm like, you know, like 50 years ago, it was, that's a long time, but I'm like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the thing. And it's like, and I know I'm like, I was like getting on James here for like cherry picking what he was going to follow in his religious and moral beliefs here. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I stand by, that's very cherry picked, because like, you were having sex with an underage girl, so like, there's your first, uh, moral cherry picking. First whammy. And two, you are, uh, fucking before marriage, that's your second moral cherry picking. Double whammy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, cause now, again, like he's got this strange set of ideals, so it's like now he's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's being pulled in several different directions and he's probably feeling like, okay, now I really gotta finish this because I'm going to be the provider. A father, yeaah. Like, of this child that doesn't exist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one ever said to this two year old who they claim walked into a room and was like, daddy, how does this thing work? Daddy. And then pulled the trigger, took the safety off and pulled the trigger. No one was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we should ask this prodigy if she actually did that. Like, just ask her. Kids will tell you shit. Oh yeaah. Kids will tell you everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like any, I'm sure any preschool or kindergarten teacher knows, they know everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why wouldn't you ask that child, like, did you fire this gun in your dad, in your parents' room? Like, there's a way to ask where you're not like, scaring her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's shoddy police work. It's also, you couple that with the fact that Sharon called and said he had a heart attack and it's like why the fuck wouldn't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this was a different time and that was much more the thing back then. Like much more than it is now. Now it's usually more to do with like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, isn't that wild that you talk to the wife of the man that you've been having an affair with that day? You dropped her off and then, oh my god, you just stumbled upon her dead body later?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wild. And it's also so weird that we chose cases this week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That had to do with insurance payouts right in the nick of time before financial ruin. That is weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alaina. And this is Morbid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But almost without. Almost without. So close to being without. So close. She sent her test this morning and it had the faintest line and I said, well, we're related anyway and we gotta get back to work and I'm ready to come in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, I felt so bad for you. Uhm, I was in the pool at my all-inclusive resort when you texted me. And I was like, I sent you a little picture like, oh that sucks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beautiful. Oh my god, so much fun. Take me back. Take me back. It was fun, but that was like the longest vacation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, that was like one of the longest vacations I've ever gone on and the first we've gone on in a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and it was amazing and like a lot of fun, but by the end of it, I think like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or even like on furniture in front of your kids, like to create such a violent home like that, like what are you doing? Grow up. Just grow up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tell me if I'm wrong, in the Great Gatsby, doesn't she call her daughter Pammy at one point?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I feel like she does call her Pammy, or maybe it's in another book that I read?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't remember. I'm gonna look it up. I think back then it might have been like, uh, like all you little cutie, like you little pearly. Oh really?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh wait, hold on. Google just filled in the rest for me. No, I dunno.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I always wonder why people think that's a good idea. Cause you're always gonna get caught.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, to know, cause you hear that. People are like, oh, like on my wedding day. Like, I knew it. Like, right before I walked down the aisle, I was like, am I doing the right thing? And it's like, why did you go through all that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I don't. This man? This man who has had chronic health problems. And he just lost his wife. And lost his wife? Your best friend? Yeah. That is beyond.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think she did, I think she killed record after she killed John, cause that was the one where they convinced her to stay, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I don't either. I think I'm at a place where I feel like the death penalty for me is so great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there are victims where like there's victims that were killed, but there's, I would say her children are victims as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seemed like she wasn't capable of love with what she did to people that she claimed to love.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She did seem like she could love with the way she treated her kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, she treated them badly in certain areas of life where like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go to talk therapy or, I don't know, get a smoothie. Get a smoothie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, it's funny because we were just talking about this before we started recording, but this is really exciting because I just came across Rachel on TikTok.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like one of your videos just popped up on my For You page. I immediately was drawn to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Watch the whole thing and was like, oh, immediate follow. And then I just started, like, every time you would come up, I was like, ooh, like, yes, like, awesome. And then we just, like, I think somehow we came together and it was like, oh, she should come on the show. And I was like, hell yeah. Like, it was such an organic coming together. It felt so cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because that's what it is, it's like when people are saying their personal experiences with something like this, it's like, that's the most valuable thing you can have, is people telling other people, being like, this is real, this worked, I did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something about 30. I just hit it and I was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why am I doing, like, why am I making myself for other people? Like, like I need to, I need to be comfortable with everything I am. It was like, I hit 30 and I was like, whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. Now, obviously it's spooky season.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're, we're all excited about that. You know, Samhain, we, we did a whole history on that. I think it was like a couple of years ago. And during the autumn months, that's when the veil is the thinnest. And I've actually learned specifically from you on TikTok that right now it is currently the thinnest, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is wild. And I think you said it's from here until like sometime in November.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, for people who don't even know what the veil is, can you kinda tell us a little more about that, what the veil is, why it might be the thinnest right now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've had like some stuff going on in our family and with my parents, they're good now, but like we had some stuff going on the last few weeks and we were in their house, which is the house I grew up in and it's like very old house. It was always stuff going on in there when we grew up, like nothing ever seemed threatening or bad. It was always just like innocuous things, but we've been in there kind of cleaning and help organize and stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I specifically, and this has never happened to me, I've never heard voices in that house, I've never heard anything like that. And it's funny because I have. Yea, and I never have, but I was like, I believe you, you have, I just never experienced it myself. And I was in one room cleaning and Ash was in another room across the way on the upstairs floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at one point I heard a woman's voice go, hello! And it was like clear as day, and I was like, what was that? So I was like, Ash, did someone just come in the door, like our sister or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, I just heard somebody just yelled hello when they came in the door. And she was like, I did not hear anything. No one came. It was just the two of us. And I was like, that was so clear. Like what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like shook by it and I kind of pushed it aside. I was like, okay, that was weird. And then the other day we went into the house again to talk to my parents.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were in the room, me, Ash, both my parents, and they all saw me look to the left, cause I was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damn, just like popping off at 2am. Good for them.