Transcribe your podcast
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As I always say, New Year, New You in 2021 don't just make a commitment to wash your hands every time you poop, go the extra mile and wash your booty to listen.

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There's nothing I love more than my tushy is clean, cleaner than ever. And I'm never going back.

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We love the Hello Toshie modern bidet attachment. We think you are going to love it to go to hell. It's Heshy dotcoms. Let's drink to get 10 percent off plus free shipping. This is a special offer for our listeners. Go to hell. Otaki Dotcom slash drink for 10 percent off Hello Shi Dotcom slash drink. Dana, it's could be so routine, so I don't want another date night where my partner and I become so stuck to our phones that instead of doing something fun and creative, we just kind of ignore each other.

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And that's why we love doing Hunter Killer. Hunter Killer has been a literal game changer during the quarantine. It has given us something to do. Me and Alison feel like where Olivia Benson I love playing detective. I mean, it could not be more fun. It's like an escapism. And we all know I love a good escapism. So imagine one showing up at your door every month. So romantic.

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So right now you can go to Hunter Killer Dotcom slash drink and use cold drink for 20 percent off your first bucks. Again, make sure to use a drink for a 20 percent discount.

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Let me clean the lenses, the little George there's so dirty, can you tell?

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Well, mine are always filthy, so I feel like I can't really judge yours. I really do need to. I mean, these glasses. I like them. And I feel like people know me for these glasses at this point. But we got to we got to change it up a little bit. My fingerprints are like stained into it basically. Are they like bent at all? Mine always end up being, like, slightly crooked.

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Yeah. Oh, I thought. Oh, excuse me. I think my ears are crooked. Mine, mine are off to. I think that's like a very normal thing because mine are off as well.

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I always look just disheveled like like a mess.

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Like it always looked like someone hit you in the face like not you. I just mean like when you're good. You're right. You're right. But I think it's my face fault, not my glasses fault. Because every time I put glasses on I'm like, why are my glasses. Yeah.

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Mine do the same where one eyebrow slower. I think it's eight years also I had off. I don't have a lazy eye but I have a lazy eye lid and so like hello it's we call it the short side because everyone on my dad's side has this problem that happens with my left. I like remember when I wake up and I can't open the side, that's me with this. I literally can't open this eye for like ten minutes and for the rest of the day, I mean, just naturally, if you ever see me smile, this is always more closed.

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And yes, mine too.

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So we've talked about this because we call it the Kaiser. I so clearly it's a it's a commonality between our family. I like that. I as in Kaiser, that's more fun. Oh, Kaiser. I never thought about that. The Kaiser either, you know. Yeah.

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Sometimes when you do those like flip photos, like to cover my I'm like, why is one of my eyes like giant? Because I don't I'm not used to it. And it's like, oh my God, I look like a freak. I feel the same way. I refute any time I have to reverse a picture, I'm like, I'm going to fucking hate this. It's it's the words. I'm like, I'm the ugliest person that ever lived, I think the same way.

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Anyway, welcome to That's Why You Drink just a pair of two ugly people with weird fucking eyes, just. Oh no. You know the truth. We're actually really ugly. Everyone's like, yeah, we know. OK, we way on Instagram a voice for radio.

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That's what they say.

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I always thought that was a compliment until I learned English better and went, Oh, that's not very nice, welcome to you. And that's why we drink.

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We are really attractive. Radio hosts fear to entertain you with some stories of the McJob.

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Oh, Christine, you are doing something different with your voice lately. And I am not a I'm not against it.

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It's probably that I don't sleep much and then I drink too much coffee.

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But, you know, if it's working, it's working. I'll stick with it. Yeah. Keep not sleeping. Well, just see what happens, OK?

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It's not. Could be hard but thank you. How are you Christine.

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Oh I'm good. I'm lovely.

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Am I'm wearing my vintage thing that I bought at a thrift store with Eva in Austin, Texas is a dinosaur T-shirt. Oh, nice. Makes me really happy. I just rediscovered it. How are you. Good. I'm wearing a shirt about blizzards. So yes, we are wearing from 1993. Right from ninety three.

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I survived the blizzard of ninety three.

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Were you alive. Yes. Yes I did too. I don't know. You're always talking about how youthful you are.

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It didn't take much to survive it because I was a baby.

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So because yeah. We took everything to survive it because you couldn't take care of yourself not to depend on everyone else. But that's true. Very impressive. Either way. Why do you drink this week, Christine?

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Well, I drink because I'm so thankful that everybody else understands my face washing struggles.

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I saw that. I'm glad that they feel it.

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Know I knew it would I? I was like, I feel like other people have to have this problem. Everybody like aesthetician, so many people reach out and are like, oh, my God, this is like the worst part of skincare is washing your face.

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And then empathy's sent me like a video of them washing their face to be like here this is how you wash your face. And it was very like you looked very annoyed. And I was like, I didn't tell you to make this video.

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Just woken up as I was in the middle of wiping off my sleep skin. So, yeah, yeah.

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I literally looked at the camera and you went here and like, put it down and wash your face.

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I was like, what am I getting in the what is this? Why are you sending me this so angrily? And also, by the way, it wasn't this is how you wash your face. This is how I wash my face because I don't know.

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I know I'm sure I'll be like this is how one does it properly, but like literally and put Dayal soap all over their face, like hand soap. And I was like, this I know is incorrect.

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And I said, what did I say in the video? I said, I know this isn't right, but it's all I've got right now.

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So just to clarify, because a lot of people were like, I can't believe you guys put hands. I was like, I don't put hands up on my face. Just to clarify, that's MS doing.

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It's all I have facial facial cleanser. I just don't properly use it.

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But and then you grab the hand towel, put that on your face.

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I was like, I feel like all of this is just I had to dry your face. Are you not supposed to blot your face with a nice dry towel, but everyone puts their hands on that.

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Don't you have like a wash? That was that was a clean one from the laundry. I'll give you context. I was like, that looks like you took it off the public apartment bathroom and put it all over your face. Oh my God, I have. But I have also just been hung up like it had just been locked up. So I did OK.

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That made me feel a little better then. But yeah, I've I've a lot of people say they do the sweatband method they actually sell scrunches that like terrycloth scrunches to absorb water.

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But also I will say like thank you for sending me that.

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But I will say I understand the difference here, which is that I feel like you kind of blot water on your face. But like I feel like I need to like like wash.

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I'm more about the I'm more about the I don't know.

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I well, I also thought that my face is really close to the sink the whole time. So maybe that's what's keeping the water from getting everywhere else. Like I really like kind of throw my face pretty close to the faucet and I feel like maybe there's like a pool for you because maybe you're like higher up and like just whacking yourself use more water.

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Maybe I. I don't know. I have no idea.

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Isn't there still a film of soap on your face after you do that, like at least it was it was it was pretty cleaned off. I really like so gross about texture. So if anything felt so or slippery I think it would have, I would have washed it off.

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OK, well anyway thank you for clarifying and thank you everyone for coming to my rescue. I'm glad it's not just me, the monsoon thing. A lot of people have resonated with a lot of people.

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Well, since you mentioned it, I have been I've been getting like Tic TAC algorithm videos.

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Have you? Yeah, there's Tic Tacs. Yeah, there's tick talk about. Well, I mean, I always got those because I was like, clearly this is a problem I've dealt with my whole life. I hadn't gotten it until we had that discussion. And all of a sudden all of these videos on my tech talk were people talking about how they put scrunchies on to wash their face. And when you mentioned it, I had never heard of anyone doing that before.

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Yeah, I'm telling you, it's I opened the floodgates quite literally, not even just metaphorically. So anyway, I'm very thankful now, can I?

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OK, I don't know how the smoothest way to transition into this, but when I wanted to take a brief moment. Or do you want to say what you drink first or get into the heavy stuff?

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No, let's just say this is also why I drink this, OK? And this is primarily. Yeah, this is like the real reason. I think pretty much everyone who listens is drinking. But we did one take a moment to address what's been going on, the shooting in Atlanta. And, you know, a couple of people were wondering, like, why didn't you say anything? And I just want to point out, like, I was traveling, we didn't record last week.

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So there was kind of a gap where we were off the air for the first time in a long time.

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And so I want to point out that was not an intentional like ignoring the situation. We just didn't record our episode. It was like, you know, from two years ago. But we did want to say something. I know it's a little late now, but it's going to be hopefully relevant after this stops, quote unquote, trending. But so, you know, we're podcasters. We have a platform I think I is a true crime podcast or can't just brush something like this aside, even if we do consider ourselves like entertainers.

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And so, you know, obviously we want to we want to talk about it.

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I mean, I typically do try to make a concerted effort to bring in more stories that are diversified because a lot of times stories about crimes against people of color, like showcase the inequality, the way police and media and podcast's handle, you know, crimes against white folks versus people of color. And now this is just becoming more and more to the forefront.

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So I'm going to personally at least commit to continuing to do that and making it, you know, more of part of our weekly broadcast that that's brought up even once this falls off the media watch, whatever you call it, the media once.

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It's not topical. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I know that's easier said than done, but I want you guys to keep me accountable for that. You don't have to keep me accountable. I have to keep myself accountable. But feel free to obviously call me out if that's something that kind of ever trails off or I forget about.

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I do. And I also add some links in the show, notes of places that I found particularly helpful to kind of learn more to get involved. There are quite a few fund set up to help support victims families. There are fund efforts to combat hate crimes, increased protection, security for AAPI communities. And like normally, this is not something I would want to discuss. But there have been people reaching out asking like what specifically have I done to help?

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And I want to, like, assure you, this is very close to my heart. And I take all this very personally and seriously. I've personally donated to the Asian Americans advancing justice fundamentally, Urna, which is doing a great job, a great thing for the local community, as well as the Community Action Fund set up by hate is virus. And like obviously donating is just one little drop in the bucket compared to the whole bigger picture in general, which again, is why I'm hoping to keep the conversation going long into the show.

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And finally, one site that I personally really am excited about that exists and I didn't know existed and that I've bookmarked and I recommend you bookmark is called Stop AAPI Hate Dotcom. And that's where you can like personally a. Any hate incidents you see or come across, there's obviously, as probably most of us know, there's been a spike in anti AAPI hate incidents, xenophobia etc, during covid-19. And so if you are able to you know, if you do witness something, I urge you to report it there.

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If you can monetarily contribute, great. Otherwise, you know, there are other ways you can commit your energy and time and, you know, learn more and we'll put all that info in the show notes.

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Damn, I could have not said that better than we I wasn't breathing. Wow. No, I was amazing. So nervous. I know that. I want to make sure I cover everything. I want to make sure, you know, I'm as upfront and open.

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And we talked before the episode of like, yeah, we should definitely, you know, discuss this before before we get into our stories. And Christine was like, oh, I already have something totally prepared.

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So I was like, shit. Oh, OK, great. That's perfect. Well, I felt part of me, you know, sometimes I try to wing it or not this but, you know, we try to win discussions and then every time without fail afterwards, we're like, oh, shit, we should have said blank or we should have brought up blank. And it's just without fail, we get derailed and forget something. So I want to make sure I covered all the notes.

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It's a huge, important situation. I mean, well done. I just wasn't expecting it to be that perfectly.

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It's like it's like a third of my entire notes today or just on that. OK, well, it's important. So I mean, it is it's it's deeply important, obviously. True crime related and true crime, you know, is one of those kind of controversial things because it's not just because it's you know, it's entertainment. It's like we get paid to do this and talk about kind of fucked up stories. And so there even though it's like, oh, well, it's just entertainment.

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Like, I don't see it that way. I feel like if you are broadcasting to a large number of people and you have a platform, especially telling real life stories about people's lives and people's families and victims, then you have you're basically a journalist in a way. You're telling I mean, that's what I learned in journalism school, is like if you are sharing on a platform real information, that is basically all you need to be labeled a journalist.

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So I think I take it very seriously, making sure, you know, we're very transparent and up front. And I felt really like kind of stuck because for the last week I've gotten a lot of tags and messages being like, why aren't you saying anything?

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And I was like, you know, there's only so much you can post on Instagram without, like, looking like, you know, it's not or something.

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Yeah, exactly. And like, I don't personally, I don't want to just keep posting on Instagram. It does. It doesn't feel like how I'm. Yeah. It doesn't feel like I'm contributing as much. Well it's also it's weird because to post something on Instagram feels performative, but it also lets people know that you're aware of the situation and taking care of it. But then the things you're doing behind the scenes to actually be of help, no one's noticing.

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And for some reason it's and it's you know, I don't want to get out and be like, you have no idea what I'm doing behind, you know, some defensive things.

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Sometimes an Instagram picture post like means more to people just because they at least know that you're aware. They can see. Yes. It's just it is a weird dance that we do. But no. Yeah, it's an important topic. We are contributing and taking it very seriously. And you're right, we are essentially whether or not we totally meant to be journalists and that writer reporting on something. We're reporting on really dark stuff where there are old people's stories and lives in our hands, basically.

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Yeah. Oh yeah. And there's there's people out there, you know, families who have to deal with us talking about this kind of stuff. So hopefully we are seen as being as taking it seriously. If we ever crack jokes, hopefully no one thinks it's at the expense of an actual person, you know. Yes.

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Yes. Like on any day under any circumstances. That's really that's the farthest thing from what we want to do. And, you know, as much as like I said, I don't normally go around saying, oh, this is what I'm doing to. But I just want to I basically just want to assure you, anybody who's wondering that like we do, we are we can't believe we care a lot. And it's something I've been, you know, just with my friends and family who are affected by this, have been just very heartbroken.

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And it's been a tough couple of weeks ago in the world for everybody. But obviously for and also this is a time maybe to I know at the same time we're saying, don't worry, we are aware of what's going on and we do care. And we it feels like not only does it feel right to say something, but it would feel very wrong to not say something. Yes, but this is also a time to, at the same time, thank people for wanting to hold us accountable just because you didn't you don't know what we're up to.

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I mean, for all you know, yes. We're just kind of dancing around with a podcast and not taking anything, signori. So. Yeah. So thank you for reaching out and asking what we're doing or. Yes, I know a lot of times any time I do post something, a lot of times any time. But whenever I do post something on Instagram, even though that's not exactly the way I would. That's not where my action ends, but I do appreciate that people reach out and say thank you for posting this, it is encouraging to know that I'm yes, I'm doing the right thing or I'm making people feel safe and so on the same coin.

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Thank you for letting us know. But also, you got nothing to worry about. We are on it. Yes. And feel free. You know, if there is something we're missing, obviously we are too white people and if obviously we don't have that these kind of experiences. So if there's something where you're like, hey, maybe they should know about this, that or the other, or they should approach this differently, like, please let us know.

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I'm here to learn and we love educate myself.

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We love helpful criticism like honest educational criticism. So we want to be the best we can.

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So yes. And this podcast is definitely taught us a lot over the years, just in general, like I feel like I'm a completely different person. The way I approach hands down these topics. And I really like think about terminology. You think about our place in the world and our privilege.

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Mm hmm. Completely. So I just I'm always really thankful that we have this platform. It comes with a lot of, like, pressure and responsibility. But also I'm like really thankful that we're in this position and and that you that you and I are both like on the same page.

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You know, I feel like it's I don't know. I'm just thankful that I don't know. No, I love you, that's all.

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Oh, what a twist. I love you for that. Like, you and I are, like, totally on a team with this kind of thing.

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And we're well, I think this is not to like I mean, I guess that it feels kind of weird that we're turning it into us. But I this is another opportunity to say, like, I've listened back to our older episodes and I definitely see a change in us. Yes. Hopefully we're also changing perspectives for other people. Yes. Yes. That's a good point, too, on many different platforms as we've as we've maybe learned some people might have learned alongside us as we learned.

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Right. Which is kind of a fun. I mean, I learned, you know, for example, and went to clown college as you learned it with me. So I hope to think there are other bigger issues in the world that we've all learned together, like like our privilege and our place and how we can help other important stuff. It's a wide gamut of the things we have all worked together, like One End is Sassi. In the other end is like major world epidemics.

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But, you know, but anyway, we we hope everybody that has been affected by this, we hope that you're doing OK. And if there's anything else we can do to help our organizations, we don't know about that. You would like us to make aware to other people. Yes, definitely. Let us know.

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Yes. And in the meantime, we're learning and we're educating ourselves and doing what we can. And we'll put all the links in the show notes if anybody else wants to check them out or, you know, see how you can help. Well said, Christine, with your little speech earlier, you did a great job.

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I felt like I was giving like a school presentation because I realized halfway through I wasn't breathing, but I was like, if I breathe now, I'm going to go, yeah, it's going to be so awkward because I.

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I appreciate also this is a complete sharp left turn, 180.

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But just so everybody knows, because this comes out at the end of March and I know last year we requested everybody to remind us around the day that, yes, we should do something because only I like our first year on the podcast. We took it seriously and it was such a great episode and then we completely neglected it for the next.

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Well, last year we did all those secret creepy messages and people still yesterday are like, what are these scary ghosts in the background?

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I will say that one was less fun than having other people record our episode for us. Well, we got to watch Bob's Burgers and eat pizza. So, yeah, I think anything that's not that is less fun.

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But let's just say that in a couple days we did come out with an idea for an April Fools. We are prepared this time for once and we already we already recorded. It is a great, great gig. So if you would like to hop on and actually see us celebrate the beginning of April, you know, go check it out.

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If you want to see the ultimate fools celebrating April 1st, you can watch us also April 1st, we're going to do an Instagram live.

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Oh, yes. For a special Instagram live. We we've I know a lot of people have been wondering where our Instagram lives went because you were doing those at the beginning of the pandemic. And so since we're calling April Fools a holiday, we're going to give you an Instagram live. So go be on Instagram all day and wait for our call.

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Yes, wait for our siren call. We are very excited about the April first episode. It's like totally different and new and exciting, and we just can't wait for you to hear it. So, yeah, check it out.

[00:20:54]

Christine, between my phone and my laptop, the TV, my VCR, I just have the worst headaches lately and it's because I know I'm straining my eyes, I know I'm messing around with blue light, which is it's just too much for me.

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Well, I have a solution for what he's going to say. I have a solution for you. Wait a minute. Let's say it at the count of three. Oh, my God. What if it's the same thing? One, two, three. Felix Gray.

[00:21:18]

Wow. That was really well done simultaneously. No, truly, we do love Felix Gray.

[00:21:24]

And even when Emme gets to watch me on the computer screen like there's a downside, which is all this blue lights.

[00:21:29]

And that's why now at nighttime, I always put on my Felix Grays when I'm like trying to get to bed and I'm like, oh, my God, I can't stare at a screen any longer, but I have to have to work and all that good stuff. I'm sure you all understand. You can get dry, tired eyes have trouble sleeping because like it can impact your melatonin secretion.

[00:21:47]

That is why we love and highly recommend Felix Gray.

[00:21:49]

They also have the more advanced sleep glasses that relieve serious daily eye strain and wear specially designed for late night screen time to improve sleep. That is me, right?

[00:21:58]

Yeah, Blayse loves that. He's obsessed with those. So finally, a pair of glasses designed for the 21st century go to Felix Gray glasses, dotcom slash drink to shop glasses at work as hard as you do.

[00:22:07]

That's great. Why glasses, dotcom drink, free shipping, free exchanges, 30 day money back guarantee feliks. Great glasses. Dotcom slash drink.

[00:22:21]

So unfortunately, I wasn't able to check what level I'm on today, so my guest, 15 gazillion, and I'm pretty sure that's actually pretty spot on. We're talking about best fiends and my constant rise to the top levels.

[00:22:32]

And I think I'm just going to go with my guess of 15 to Jillian with best friends. You can also feel like you were always at the top. You could feel just like Christine with thespians. There's something new today and tomorrow and every day after that, there's literally thousands of levels to play and counting, plus tons of cute characters to collect and get really attached to. Christine, as you know, I love getting attached to my little guys, collecting them so much fun.

[00:23:00]

I compete with myself because no one else wants to compete with me because I'm a little 15 cotillion.

[00:23:05]

But it is always fun. Who could compete? Who could compete at 15 gazillion? Listen, I'm offering somebody want to step up to the plate now. OK, so download breastfeeds free today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That's friends without the ah best.

[00:23:21]

OK, so I have a story. I think you'll like Miss Christine. I better like it.

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I hope you like it.

[00:23:29]

I'm sure I will love it. I like it. I think the person involved didn't like it though. This is the this is an alien abduction case.

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Oh I'm scared already. And I got to say, this was probably some of the easiest research I've ever done because they can only find one article about it.

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It's like it's like a good and bad thing because it's like, oh, it's all right here for me. But also, like, this is it. Yeah, I'm like usually I I'm using at least like 15 links or 15 sites to like really compile it all together. But yeah, this is one luckily one very long article and also super lucky, probably the luckiest I've ever been because in terms of there only being one article, this was written by a reporter taking the actual story from that person.

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So it's pretty much a direct source are like one one removed from a direct source. So, OK, I'm excited.

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So the only link that I could the only link that is out there happened to be on Mysterious Universe. So that is where I got this all from. You could pretty much go to the website and look up the article yourself. And I want to apologize now that because this information only came from one place, it's pretty much a direct read of the article. So I just want to give it credit. I tried to paraphrase it and make it more my own, but you're going to be able to see the exact points of the article if you were to look back on it.

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So anyway, so this is mysterious universe and apparently the person who wrote this was contacted by the abductee herself because she wanted her story told. So this is basically a whole synopsis of her experience as her name was Laura Clark, by the way. So, Laura Clark, if you are listening, I hope I do justice. If not, please don't be mad at me. I tried my best and also correct me if you'd like. So Laura Clark was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, which, by the way, is home to the Ducker's.

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Oh, wow. How special. I was suckered in from Sentenza one. I was like, let me go this.

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You were like a I picked my next topic. Don't even know what I was. Also, Laura Clark, if you know the bugger's please email us as well. Oh, God. So, yes, born in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And she moved around a lot because her dad was in the army, but it was her her mom or dad and her sister Barbara. And this happened or it began in the sixties. So they finally landed on a place in Alaska.

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I think it was Fairbanks, Alaska, or it could have been Anchorage. I kind of got confused in the article. But there's like I think like a six hour difference between the two places. So I'm not sure which one it is, but it was in Alaska in nineteen sixty three. And Laura's first experience was when her mom oh she was five by the way. Laura was five and her mom was tucking her in her sister Barbara into their beds and they shared a room just in case that's important.

[00:26:33]

So Barbara and Laura were being put to bed and this was Laura's first supernatural experience. I just want to say now a lot of this there are direct quotes from her. So I tried to and sort of giving you like big blocks of quotes. I tried to just kind of paraphrase what she said. But again, if you check the article, you will be able to see pretty much all the same, quote, format. So her mom walks away, you know, leaves the room and Laura remembers being the only one awake and hearing someone in the hall and she thought it was her mom.

[00:27:05]

Then she remembers that the door opened or the a light shown shined through the room and she saw, quote, several small, thin, light gray people with large blank, not blank, with large black. Slanted eyes staring into my room, nothing else, I'm not interested, she said. I was surprised and just stared back at them, which like, yeah, what else do you fucking do when you're five?

[00:27:30]

Two. So it's almost like you don't know much of the world yet anyway.

[00:27:34]

It's not like you even have a comprehension of. Yeah, this is an alien. This is wrong.

[00:27:39]

It's like, why are you opening my door when you should be my mom. Where's mom.

[00:27:43]

Oh also this was I don't know if this is this was written then at all to say anything about how skeptics would feel about it. But it is interesting to note that only two years earlier was the Barney and Betty Hill alien abduction story. Oh yeah. Which for those of you who are interested, I cover that episode forty nine.

[00:28:02]

That was like the first, like famous famous case. And in America, I think I remember that they were the first people I think to mention Grey's Grey aliens. So some people could say like, oh well that only happened two years earlier. You're five, maybe that like you're putting it in your own imagination or something. But whatever whatever. I'm going to go off of the fact that Laura is of sound mind. So so she sees these great creatures staring at her.

[00:28:30]

And Laura looked at her sister to see if her sister was seeing this, but her sister was sleeping calm as a cucumber. Then she realized that her sister, Barbara's blankets were getting pulled off of her by themselves. I don't love that and all of a sudden, Barbara, quote, floated into a standing position, that's the sister, the sister, so she went from sleeping in her bed to the couch, the covers getting pulled off by themselves.

[00:28:58]

Nothing is doing it. They're just falling off of her. And then she is floated into a standing position.

[00:29:04]

Can I just tell you something real quick that it's like kind of a side bar, but like happened last night that I just remembered when you said that, Christine, what happened?

[00:29:12]

I was laying in bed and like I was I was like falling. I was trying to fall asleep. I was not asleep. I mean, that's how every fucking one of these stories starts. But it has never happened to me before.

[00:29:21]

So I was like flipped out and I was like, I have to tell them tomorrow.

[00:29:24]

And I completely forgot until just now. Blaze's asleep. I was laying in bed.

[00:29:28]

Gio's at the end of the bed like dead asleep. And I was kind of laying there and, you know, when you're falling asleep, you just kind of like play out things in your head or you're just like thinking.

[00:29:37]

So I started picturing some scene.

[00:29:39]

I don't know, I was trying to, like, go through a conversation I'd had and all of a sudden it like morphed and there was this I don't even how to describe it. It was like this creature.

[00:29:47]

And it was sort of like the Cheshire cat, like it was like smiling and it was like coming out of a wall and just kind of laughing at me.

[00:29:54]

And I remember my first instinct was like, oh, and I remember thinking, like, this is not a safe place for my mind to be. It was so weird. I don't know how to describe what I was thinking, but it was sort of like, this isn't a dream. It was sort of like, oh, like something bad's happening. And I was like, I need to snap myself out of it. And then all of a sudden, like.

[00:30:16]

My blankets got, like, fucking pulled off my shoulders. I'm like halfway down my body, so of course I like jerked up and I was like, OK, OK, that was the cat. Like, luckily the cabinets and I looked up in the cats are both sleeping and goes bad, like over on the other side of the room.

[00:30:31]

And I'm just sitting there going, what the fuck. And I like looked at my covers and they were like clearly not on my body.

[00:30:40]

And it was very strange because I remember thinking I have to snap myself out of this.

[00:30:42]

And all of a sudden it felt like somebody just like like, you know, they I mean, just like this, like they say in these stories, like someone yanked my blankets. I've never had that happen. And I was like, oh, dear. And I can still picture that creepy smiling face like, oh my God, I have such an excuse.

[00:31:00]

I forgot about it until you said the covers got yanked off and I went, oh, my fucking God. Like last night I was telling myself, you have to remember. And I was not asleep yet.

[00:31:08]

Like, I was just kind of moseying through my mind and all of a sudden this, like, horrible image appeared and my cover's just got anyway, sorry that was so irrelevant, but like, it scared the absolute bejesus out of me, so.

[00:31:21]

Wow. That's a lot to unpack.

[00:31:23]

It feels like if it to me, if it had a creepy face and you had a gut and so that it was unsafe and it was waiting for you to be kind of like in like more of like a vulnerable, like space, it feels dangerous for you.

[00:31:39]

And then like to feel the it's almost like it was watching you while you were sleeping. And then like when I realized you were more coming to it, like got rattled or something. I hate that. Holy shit. It was it was almost like it didn't feel like sinister so much as it felt like a trick story.

[00:31:56]

Like it was like trying to like a poltergeist.

[00:31:58]

Yeah. Like I felt like I was trying to fuck with me and I remember going, it worked, OK, please leave me alone. And then I took my covers and I like wrapped them very tightly around me and I was like, don't pull on anything. And I think it took my waterfall's oh, I hate it.

[00:32:12]

I felt something next to me a while ago like like at some point yesterday I felt something in the bathroom and I was like, oh, do you just like watch me sit on the toilet?

[00:32:23]

That's such trash.

[00:32:24]

Like probably watch as you try to wash your face because we're all trying to learn from the best.

[00:32:28]

It's like don't use hand soap. What is wrong with stop fucking dial. I'm institution stop fucking dial Hanzo.

[00:32:34]

No watching on the toilet. I was like, come on, come on. I don't know. Classy.

[00:32:38]

I did, I did see a tweet at one point. It must have been a tweet or a meme or something, but it said like if you're ever worried that your parents, your grandparents, that they've passed on to the do they like watch you do stuff in bed because they're like creepy ghosts, like that's not on you. That's on them being fucking weird. So, like, they deal with that. So sometimes when I'm in the bathroom and I think, like, if it goes through to get me right now, like I'd be in trouble and I'd be like, but also they're a weird as shit goes like, what is the matter with you?

[00:33:05]

Like, you couldn't wait till like this wasn't happening. Like what's your problem.

[00:33:09]

What are you. It's a way that's a really good point. Says more about them than you. It does. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know how we got on that tangent but.

[00:33:18]

Well I was just saying because you said the covers got pulled off and I was like, oh that happened to me. I'm so sorry that that happened. That's really terrifying. I would be much more scared than you're coming off.

[00:33:27]

It was so weird because I was like, it must be the cat. But then I was like, I don't think I don't know how a cat could do that. But then also that certainly was not a cat. But I knew it was gross. It was really gross. That's never happened before. I don't know.

[00:33:40]

Every now and then I feel like some something might be like pulling on my covers or like touching the blanket or something. And I just have to convince myself that I was so focused on my phone, like, just felt weird way and hit my arm by my like I caused it because if I get too into the idea that someone is trying to, like, touch me while I'm in bed again, by the way, I just have to be like, no, no, no, no, thank you.

[00:34:05]

This is it's probably why I don't go to bed until I'm completely exhausted out of my wits end so that I don't even have to focus on what's around me.

[00:34:14]

You don't have to, like, think about your surroundings.

[00:34:16]

Yeah, well, anyway. Wow. Anyway, so poor Barbara sidebar. Poor Barbara is now floating in a standing position while apparently unconscious and five year old Laura is just lying there watching this happen. And then the same thing happens to Laura. We're all of a sudden she is also floating in a standing position and she feels, I don't know really how to explain it to her and Barbara, feel themselves floating or without their control being guided or moved in some way.

[00:34:47]

They're floating into the hall, towards the stairs, and they she sees the grey aliens in tow.

[00:34:55]

She once they get to the foot of the stairs, it's very sweet as a five year old, but it's also really sad. As you know, this is a scary situation. But she saw herself floating at the top of the stairs and she was like, I think they want me to go down stairs. But the only way I know how to go downstairs is move my feet. And so she started doing like these weird, like bicycle pedaling motions and the.

[00:35:15]

They're kind of like how I imagine, like if you have, like, put a puppy over some water and like, they start paddling. Cute. But so apparently she remembers moving her legs as if she was trying to help get herself downstairs. And suddenly in her head, she heard a voice.

[00:35:35]

She says this is a quote from her. Suddenly the voice, suddenly the first voice I heard was coming from the next from the one next to me. His mouth does not move. But I heard his thoughts. He said, you don't have to do that. Will do it for you about the pedaling her legs to go downstairs.

[00:35:53]

JACO So they were going to help her downstairs without her needing to do anything. So she stopped moving her the rest of the quotas. So I stopped moving my legs and felt that I was being floated downstairs without ever touching the steps they got downstairs.

[00:36:10]

And Laura remembers seeing one of the aliens take her sister into another room. And at that moment, because I guess they were so far away from her, she saw just how short these aliens were. I guess her mom is about five two. And they were they looked shorter than her mom. So interesting. Fun fact. Greys are probably shorter than five to Laura also remembers asking in her head or thinking, are these people like us? And then one of them in her head said, no, we are non-human living beings.

[00:36:45]

Oh. And then Laura goes on to say, I don't remember anything more about that experience except that from that day on, Barbara was never the same. She became an angry, defensive, stubborn brat, to put it bluntly. So sad justice for Barb. Let's bring that back, because seriously, Barbara needs poor Laura needs to.

[00:37:07]

That's sad.

[00:37:08]

So anyway, so Laura's dad, again, he's in the military. And so the family is used to moving around a lot and eventually they end up next in Iowa, in Davenport, Iowa. And Laura is now seven instead of five. So two years have passed and they live in a house that is next to a ravine and they have a swing set in the backyard from what Laura remembers. And she says one night while she was sleeping, just like the last time, it always seems to be one night while you're sleeping, when you're so vulnerable as a seven year old.

[00:37:39]

This is horrifying.

[00:37:40]

Laura was somehow aware while she was sleeping that she was outside and floating above the roof and the swing set. Hmm. So my first thought is like, oh, this could be like some really cool astral projection. Yes, she was my first thought. Maybe she just didn't know she could astral project yet, but so she was outside and she was floating above the roof and the swing set and she could feel herself uncontrollably being moved toward the sliding glass door of their house.

[00:38:09]

And then she felt someone smack her on the butt really hard. Oh, what? And she said her parents didn't spank her. So it was extra jarring because even her own parents wouldn't do it. But all of a sudden, instead of being asleep while aware that she was outside, she I guess, came to and woke up and she realized that she was now laying on top of her covers in her bed. So she wasn't tucked in anymore.

[00:38:36]

She was on top of her blankets and her nightgown was up.

[00:38:40]

Oh oh. She said that her underwear was still on. So she doesn't know exactly what happened, but she still felt super violated, so.

[00:38:49]

Well, yeah, obviously.

[00:38:52]

And even creepier if it gets worse. She then heard someone in the hallway faking the sound of her mom walking eowa.

[00:39:03]

What does that mean? How do you fake the sound?

[00:39:06]

Quote, I knew my mom's normal footsteps in her leather loafers, but this was not her. When I heard what I heard was as if someone was holding her tiny shoes in their hands and slapping back, slapping them on the floor in a fake walking sound.

[00:39:20]

Oh, my fucking God, that's heinous.

[00:39:23]

I.e., Monty Python with coconuts saved differences. And that's how I have to tell myself. So I don't totally panic as I'm trying to secure.

[00:39:37]

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It's getting pretty wild over here at Casa de Moi, which is Spanish and beautiful, and I just threw some new pillowcases on and guess where they're from.

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That's Brooklyn and Dotcom Promo Code A.W. W.D. So Laura and she knew that it was someone trying to fake her mom because she heard the sound of these footsteps slapping through the floor, going into her parent's room, into the closet, hearing the closet door open, hearing the shoes get thrown in there and drop into the floor and then hearing the door close.

[00:42:48]

Holy crap. And you have to wonder, like since the mom was presumably sleeping, like they could probably keep her asleep. You find that out throughout the story. I mean, just like, great. You know, like if Barbara sleeping, the parents were asleep. I mean, it seems like they're able to put everyone in a trance just to keep the one person they want awake, which is awful.

[00:43:08]

Don't like don't love that. And then as if it couldn't get worse, Laura then out in the hallway again, her to quote, robotic voices talking to each other.

[00:43:20]

And she also reminds us in this interview that this was nineteen sixty five.

[00:43:24]

There were no computers in your home yet where you're used to like worrying mechanical sounds or like a Siri type voice are like you've got mail like none of that existed.

[00:43:34]

No Microsoft, Sam, she or she was very, very disturbed. She was like this. This was a sound I'd never heard in my entire life. And she said it sounded like two computers in hindsight were talking to each other like lots of beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, or it could have been our podcast, apparently.

[00:43:58]

But so she was just so freaked out hearing them talk in the hallway. Nothing else happened after that. But she didn't know any better. So she stayed up all night until morning, all while Barbara slept soundly. By the way, nothing happened to Barbara that time. And after this, Laura's mom started noticing that Laura was acting really skittish.

[00:44:17]

Obviously, she was sure and Laura said nothing about it because she felt this overwhelming anxiety that if she said something, something would happen to her family. Wow.

[00:44:29]

So they probably implanted some fear of. I don't know, maybe that's where my mind went, like that's where my mind went to live, like they are communicating with her telepathically or something, or maybe it's just like an innate fear as a child after the experience. I don't know which.

[00:44:46]

I mean, I guess you do hear about like if something in a more true crime sense happens and you get scared to tell your parents because. Yeah. You're not aware of you're in trouble or not. I mean, I can see that as well, that kind of thing.

[00:44:57]

Let's put it this way. I'm twenty eight and if there was an alien that abducted me, I would be scared to tell anyone now because I'd be afraid that they would come after other people I care about. So I think as a seven year old, she was totally in her right to feel that way. So two more years pass and now she's nine and they live in Wisconsin. It's even creepier to me that it's multiple locations they're really tracking, you can't hide from them.

[00:45:23]

Sorry, let me take a swig of grade. Oh, I ran out of Gatorade yesterday. I miss it.

[00:45:29]

I'm still trying to get through my Costco bulk buy.

[00:45:32]

Oh, that's right. I have a million. I forgot. But in fact, when Gatorade came out, my mom was one of the people who tested the drink.

[00:45:39]

Yeah, you told me that once. Yeah, it's called Gatorade because the University of Florida is and she was at college the year where they were testing it or something. And so she got like some of the first samples. She was like on. It's better now.

[00:45:54]

Yeah. That OK, so two more years have passed and now the families in Wisconsin, it is nineteen sixty seven and Laura is nine. One night while she was sleeping per usual, she was woken up by a very bright light and she heard a quote, almost electronic little girl's voice.

[00:46:18]

Oh God I it really does get worse every time you open your damn mouth, it's almost like it really does every time they push the limit.

[00:46:26]

Yeah. Every time, every time they show up, they're like, OK, well, that was fine. Like, what's next?

[00:46:30]

How about this.

[00:46:32]

So an almost electronic little girl's voice and the voice said, isn't the light pretty? Do you want to come and play in the light?

[00:46:40]

For God's sake, good night and goodbye. You know what Laura said in her mind, at least she thought I have school tomorrow.

[00:46:49]

Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. Tell me you get straight A's without telling me you get straight A's.

[00:46:54]

I know I have a quiz in the morning. So Laura, Laura got up anyway to at least look out the window and see what the slate was coming from. And she realized the light was coming directly above their garage and that it was a very wide beam of light. And we know what happens with light beams and UFO stories, huh?

[00:47:16]

Her body all of a sudden started to feel like every cell was, quote, vibrating apart from them, like like her body was completely separating from a molecular molecular level.

[00:47:30]

And then she was somehow all of her cells were transferred or moved from inside the room to outside of her house, like through the wall, through the the wood studs. And all of a sudden she was outside and her cells were all put back together.

[00:47:47]

Oh, how weird is.

[00:47:49]

So it's almost like that's how they phase through solid objects. They completely separate themselves and then rebuild on the outside.

[00:47:56]

Fascinating. So now she remembers that she's floating in her driveway and essentially was beamed up. She remembers passing through some sort of hatch and going down a hall. And this is a quote from her describing what she had seen.

[00:48:12]

The entire place was made from some kind of silver medal. The hallway had a flat floor, but the wall to my right curved like an arch so that if you went too far to the right, you would hit your head. The hall curved around towards the left to as if you were walking in a large circle. As I was floating alone down this long hall, I passed by several doorways. No doors were visible, but I could see each room was pie shaped like a slice of pie.

[00:48:38]

Oh, that's fun.

[00:48:39]

They should do that.

[00:48:40]

Cheesecake Factory like making every removable cheesecake slice.

[00:48:44]

I love that narrow on the opposite side from the doorway, but flat like a bite was taken off of the end. So that is what apparently the inside of this craft looked like. Intriguing pie slices.

[00:48:58]

Eventually, Laura actually saw a bigger room down the hall and it looked like it was probably the control room. It had a lot of like gadgets and screens and shit. But before she even got to the end of the hall, she was moved again against her will into a room with a metal exam table, and she was laid on it. See, I would like to go home now. Thanks.

[00:49:21]

That's what she said to you.

[00:49:23]

So at the same time, Laura also noticed that other people were coming into the room and people or grays, gray hairs, the grays, she realized they were the same grays that she had met during her first experience when she was fine.

[00:49:41]

Oh, Teddy. Hi. Good to see you again. How did she know it was them? Oh, God.

[00:49:46]

I think she had some innate. No, I guess. Right. If they talked to her in her head, there's probably some way to know who they are.

[00:49:52]

But also like, what a scary confirmation that, oh, yeah, they have been keeping complete tabs. This this isn't like three isolated events. It's they have been following me like a fantasy to meet you here. This is like a yeah, this is a amezcua.

[00:50:06]

This is a this is a big, big problem, the famous opposite of a big, big problem.

[00:50:16]

She also ended up seeing a different creature other than the greys there, which was a six foot black, completely black praying mantis creature. Oh.

[00:50:27]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And apparently when she saw him, before she even saw him with her eyes, she felt a presence in the room that was, quote, completely evil. So I don't know what to do with that information, like I really don't. So apparently he is just like she sensed that he was the leader and she sensed complete evil before she even saw him and then realized that this thing was in the room with her.

[00:50:54]

And apparently they both repelled each other. Like, I don't think he wanted anything to do with her. She clearly wanted nothing to do with him. What the heck?

[00:51:03]

And in the middle of her panicking that she felt like she was in danger, all of a sudden all the walls were almost made of like smart panels and they turned this really soft blue.

[00:51:14]

And Laura said that it reminded her of like very calming fish tanks, like, you know, once you're inside a very calming fish tank.

[00:51:24]

This is not a spa, Laura.

[00:51:26]

I know you know that. So this is very mansplaining of me. But like, I don't know if I'd be thinking of fish tanks in this moment.

[00:51:32]

I mean, I guess what would you be I mean, as a seven or nine year old, you'd be like, how do I have any other connection to this? True.

[00:51:41]

I wonder, though, I wonder if that's if they were looking in her mind and thinking like, oh, what would be coming for her?

[00:51:48]

And then they put humans like fish tanks, I guess. I don't know. Well, if they if they thought like, oh, you know, maybe this is something that's coming to her and she doesn't even know it. And then they made the walls blue and then they heard her thoughts going.

[00:52:04]

This reminds me of calming fish tanks. They are probably like, OK, well, we nailed that. Like, we wanted her to feel calm and we got confirmation.

[00:52:12]

And then they wrote down fish tanks, fish tank. So for the next election, everybody was like, why am I surrounded by, like, sharks?

[00:52:17]

And if you've been abducted and you have seen fish tank looking lights on a craft that was probably Luras doing that, was it did that for you? So that was a note from corporate.

[00:52:28]

So so then she also saw that there was a gray that seems to be a little girl. She was much shorter than the rescuers, about three and a half feet tall. She had long wispy black hair and slanted completely black eyes. Yeah. So I've gone from thinking about astral projection to like black eyed children.

[00:52:52]

Valid point is really like a model of why we drink story so far. Laura says that she actually was not scared at all of this little gray girl and she felt like this being was telling Laura that she was her sister.

[00:53:09]

Who and what's even weirder is this quote from Laura that says, Somehow I felt this being was, in fact, genetically my sister. I wonder if my parents had also been taken by greys in the past.

[00:53:24]

Oh, and I was like, yeah, I was like, girl, you can't just say that and walk away, which is exactly what she did. We don't know any more than that.

[00:53:32]

The connotations behind that are are disturbing.

[00:53:37]

The the storyline that you may be meeting your sister because your mother or your father have also been abducted and then assaulted, I'm assuming for there to be another being out there that is genetically your sister.

[00:53:52]

But so it made her instantly think, I wonder if, like mom and dad have it, is this is this something I inherited from them, this weird gift of being raised?

[00:54:01]

Certainly a gift, I would say. Yeah, this seems to be really a blessing from the devil.

[00:54:07]

Yeah. Fuckin Satanic praying mantis or whatever it is.

[00:54:12]

And so the next quote about this experience was later I was brought back into my bedroom again by moving right through the window itself. I was floated into my bed, stomach down, and my body was then pulled by this invisible force into a certain position. I was then told that I would have trouble sleeping from now on and I should put myself in this position from then on to help me fall asleep. I've had to do this ever since and I have been plagued by severe insomnia for the rest of my life.

[00:54:39]

OK, so girl, what's the position like you? I thought it was on your stomach. She said, they said they put her on.

[00:54:46]

I was floated on to my bed, stomach down. My body was then pulled by an invisible force into a certain position. Oh, OK.

[00:54:53]

You're right. I don't give it up, man. Some of us are also suffering from. Yeah we somnia.

[00:54:59]

We've all got insomnia. Do the aliens have like a trick. Like we got to know it.

[00:55:02]

But also it kind of blows my mind because I'm thinking now they're saying, oh sorry, you can have insomnia forever. Why don't they just not give her insomnia. Like what what what is the purpose of that.

[00:55:12]

Like how can they maybe they realize I, I wonder if there's like a you know how and wicked when like you saw the complete opposite side of like what the Wicked Witch was going through. Yeah. I wonder if the aliens realize, like, oh, she shouldn't have seen the praying mantis like that's going to fuck her up.

[00:55:29]

Oh, we we we told her to wait in the control room and that motherfucker just needs to insert himself.

[00:55:36]

We re traumatize her. She's definitely going to have a hard time sleeping now. So maybe they didn't even know they were going to do that. I don't know.

[00:55:43]

I mean, listen, my recommendation is simsek. Well, yeah, melatonin and whatever that position is.

[00:55:50]

Laura Clark, you got the secret alien decision. I'm disturbed. And insomnia thing freaks me out that they like, told her, sorry, you're going to have this issue forever by. Yeah. Just so strange that they wouldn't just well that a they would even tell her because it seems like they don't really have her best interests at heart. So why are they even caring and B, if they care so much, why don't they just fix it.

[00:56:12]

I don't know and see if they're able to put everyone else in a deep sleep so they don't have a bullshit. Laura's going through it. Why can't they just give Laura some of that and like, oh, you know, Roessler why?

[00:56:24]

If she's part alien, maybe they know something about like. Her composition, her makeup, that isn't like other humans and she can't I don't know I don't know that probably maybe I don't know.

[00:56:34]

I mean, she if she's genetically related to a gray, then maybe they have more fascination in studying her than someone else. But then wouldn't they also be interested in Barbe, who would also have a half sister in space? Good point, you know, yeah, I wonder I mean, yeah, if they both have the same biological parents, then, yeah, that wouldn't make sense, you know.

[00:56:58]

So that's so Raven, there's a spin off now. I knew you were going there next.

[00:57:02]

Totally prepared for this twist.

[00:57:04]

For those for those of you who don't know in the world of reboots, that's so Raven has a spinoff called Raven's Home or Ravens' House or something, and she has twins and only one of them got her psychic ability.

[00:57:16]

So I'm wondering if maybe that's something like maybe a good point.

[00:57:21]

Maybe Barbara isn't as special to them.

[00:57:25]

Maybe they think Laura is like more powerful or more connected and maybe she just has a more of a connection or like genetically is more predisposed to their, I don't know, mind.

[00:57:35]

She has more space dust in her blood maybe. I don't know. Yeah, but that's the one. I'm a scientist. Yeah. So after this first of all, Laura did say she had severe insomnia for the rest of her life, but she also had some very minor health issues for the rest of her life, including like every now and then her left foot would just like go numb and would whenever she was walking, you would just kind of drag behind her like it wasn't listening to her.

[00:58:01]

And also her eyes would start shaking for no reason. It would stop. But every now and then she would have little bouts of her eyes, she feared.

[00:58:09]

And I guess that that's different than like a seizure. Like, I don't think I think it's her just acting normally, but her eyes are kind of all over the place. And the foot is maybe they tested on it or something.

[00:58:20]

Yeah. I don't know why they were pigs or something.

[00:58:23]

Maybe it was like when her cells were like rebelling, ready to get through the wall, maybe all of a sudden like one nervous like out of whack they like mixed up her toes by back or something.

[00:58:35]

But yeah. So she I don't know what the foot thing is, but it's interesting that like a part of her still can't control its own movements every now and then. Very interesting.

[00:58:44]

You know, so she's also not surprised, has developed intense anxiety. Oh well, no shit.

[00:58:52]

Especially about the praying mantis leader, which like I mean, I'm developing anxiety and I didn't even see it in real life. So I don't blame you.

[00:59:00]

I feel like if you're in a room with what you know to be true as completely evil. Yeah. Just a completely malevolent presence. Like, how do you not got to haunt you? How do you come back from that?

[00:59:11]

And especially as a child who's probably not it necessarily experience something like that, that level of fear or worked through it mentally.

[00:59:19]

And now it's just like really a repressed evil that, you know, is if you weren't comfortable telling your parents and you just had to know that any day now, you could see that thing again. I mean, of course, that would traumatize you. So anyway, Laura finally went to her parents after this and she told them what was going on, but they just said that she was having intense nightmares.

[00:59:41]

OK, well, not good, I guess. I mean, like, what do you do? Like, a part of me is like, oh, my God, I can't believe them.

[00:59:46]

But then also I'm like, you know, if a child is like I'm seeing aliens all time, I don't know what you would do, like, what would you do even if you didn't have them?

[00:59:55]

Yeah, I think that's almost if I were to ever deny my child that experience, it would be out of my own fear of not knowing what like who do I bring this to, you know, like not knowing how to fix it or I mean, it's totally out of anyone's hands.

[01:00:10]

I would think I'm going to be the worst parent because of how supportive I'm going to be, because the psycho who the second some my kid comes up to me and says, like, there's a shadow figure in my closet. I'm going to be like, we're burning the closet. And if there's an alien abduction, I, I don't know when I'm going to I'll believe them, but I'll be like, that sucks. Let's just hope it doesn't happen again because I can't help you, you know, like, I don't know what to do.

[01:00:39]

And also I just think about like like what would a kid even how would that even manifest psychologically if you go to your parent who's supposed to be able to help you through anything. Yeah. And just watch them go like I don't fucking know.

[01:00:51]

But I don't I also wonder, like, maybe the most beneficial thing to do is, like, believe them, but also like comfort them, like not be like I'm terrified I'm going to burn the house down, but like, oh, I went tell them I was terrified and I would burn the closet down.

[01:01:05]

I would just accidentally burn the closet down after they told me.

[01:01:09]

And I'd be like, oh no. Well at least now they're just trying to make s'mores in the back of the closet. I guess I would I be like, oh, no, I have a new job. I have to go. We have to leave this entire house. I would never let them know I was terrified.

[01:01:20]

Yeah, I feel like that's the big thing is like a like the believing is a big part of it, I think, because, you know, you hear about all those kids who in true crime or paranormal stuff whose parents don't believe them and how damaging that is. But then also like, yeah, you don't want your parents to be equally as out of control and terrified because they're supposed to be protecting you. And even if you are, you probably have to pretend to be the strong one.

[01:01:41]

Yeah. Whoever then the new Warrens are or the alien version, the alien abduction warrants, I would have to have their number on speed dial.

[01:01:50]

So, yeah, thank God we have like the Internet and all of our listeners who could probably be like, here's what to do because I have to do well anyway.

[01:02:00]

So she told that, she told her parents, they said that she was having nightmares. And that being said, Laura always thought that her mom actually knew more than she was letting on.

[01:02:11]

So I was going to say, too, like if if she really had that weird instinctual feeling that her parents had been abducted before.

[01:02:17]

Yeah. So, yeah. Saying that she was sorry. But that brings up a whole other slew of factors of like, OK, it's one thing if you don't know what to do, it's one thing if you don't believe your kid, but it's another thing to know what they're going through and just not fucking say anything like that to totally judge Laura's mom. I don't know what I would do in that situation, but that's a whole other ball of wax I even thought of.

[01:02:41]

So you are traumatized, too, as if you went through that.

[01:02:44]

Yeah, you know what I mean.

[01:02:45]

Like, so anyway, so Laura always thought her mom might have known something more. But anyway, five years later, go by and it's 1972 and Laura is fourteen and her parents are now divorced and she's living with her dad in a suburb of Chicago. And one night she was about to go to bed, which is the first time that she wasn't already asleep. So Laura was about to go to bed and she noticed that the light in her room was off when she went in, but she had left it on.

[01:03:18]

So why was the light turned off all of a sudden?

[01:03:20]

Turn right around, go back to the kitchen, eat a pop tart. Yeah, exactly. Have to have three have locks. I don't care. And this is a quote from her. As I stepped into my room and closed the door, I suddenly became very weak and tired.

[01:03:35]

It hit me like a ton of bricks and I stumbled over to my bed and fell into it. What was going on?

[01:03:41]

You know, what's interesting is it's like whenever they've decided to visit her before, she was already sleeping in her room and there was a deep sleep.

[01:03:51]

It's almost like they're not trancing, putting her in a trance, but putting that perimeter, that space in a trance, because the second she in point, the second she walked in, she was exhausted, but beforehand she wasn't.

[01:04:05]

Wow, that is so weird. Yeah. So I don't know if she is actually being put in some sort of spell or if it's just the space she's in. But then there was that time when her sister was asleep but she was awake. Oh, that's a good point. She's also weird. Maybe this is like a new gray, like an intern and he doesn't totally know he fucked up. He doesn't know how things get started usually. Well, like, the boss ran out and was like, I don't know, you get this you get this thing kicked off and he's.

[01:04:31]

She's like, I don't know, OK, so while on her bed, so in the middle of her, like passing out because she's so exhausted while on her bed, she saw that her closet door was closed, but the light inside was on.

[01:04:44]

Yeah. That somehow really awful. I don't even know why, but that's just awful something.

[01:04:49]

And then the closet door opened and a gray came out and Laura passed out. And the next thing she remembers is her floating over her house, moving towards her front door almost as if they were returning her. Oh, she was going. Oh, OK. Yikes.

[01:05:07]

She says, I notice my clothes were all stuck to me like I was vacuum sealed.

[01:05:11]

And I felt very cold and clammy when I was when I was brought to the bedroom, they set me down on the floor and I could feel the invisible force leave me and my clothes fell away from my body again, like the vacuum suction had left.

[01:05:24]

Oh, lucky me, goose cam. What a freaky idea. It's so wild because I feel like we all know these tropes of what an alien abduction entails. And whenever I hear a detail, I've never thought of it for some reason more credible to me because it could be like a total random thing that someone made up. But it's just there's an eeriness to it that someone has thought, oh, you're totally right, because it's not just another, like, cliche.

[01:05:51]

It's almost like something you would never have thought of. That is also just so creepy. That adds to the story. Vacuum sealed. How weird. Yeah. And then all of a sudden when she felt them like leave, her clothes fell off of her. She also heard the sound of like a hummingbird drone and trees moving as if there was a huge gust of wind or a chopper nearby. So that cleaner or I think it was probably like the she heard the hum of like the UFOs engine as it was flying away or.

[01:06:22]

Yeah, yeah.

[01:06:24]

And then she saw this light beam leave. So and she basically she saw like the helicopter sounds went away, the trees stopped rustling as if there was a big win that went by. And she just like went to sleep. She was passed out. She was so exhausted from whatever happened. So that was the next experience. And then we get to nineteen eighty one when she's twenty three. Oh boy.

[01:06:47]

And Laura is now living in rural New York with her husband.

[01:06:52]

OK, Laura, she's doing shit. They're like, no, keep coming with us. And she's like, I got my own life to live man.

[01:06:59]

Well you know what's interesting too is that she in the beginning of her life, they were coming every couple of years and it slowly started getting further and further apart. So I don't know if that was kind of like, you know, how if something's, like, wrong medically with you when you go to the doctor more often and then as things get better like you, you don't have to go as often as know fully exactly what you're talking about.

[01:07:21]

Yes, good. Because I don't. And I was just telling you your own life. Yeah, well, there are times where you're like, always going to doctor. Yeah. As you're saying. And then like over time you hopefully those don't have to go off then.

[01:07:35]

Yeah. So I'm wondering if because she was like new on the UFO docket of people to visit, they were checking on her more often and then as time went on, they only needed to check in on her.

[01:07:45]

Well, you know what I wonder, too, which is kind of just total bullshit is like at that time she was a kid and growing really rapidly.

[01:07:52]

And I wonder, like, it was more of like tracking her growth and development if she was related to these aliens somehow versus like seeing her.

[01:08:03]

I'm convinced now on my first, it's like when you get older and, you know, you don't develop or change all that much once you're past teenage years.

[01:08:11]

Wow. That is horrific. Wow. It's so like when you go to the pediatrician to get like when your little baby or whatever and then it like stuff. But like we keep relating this to the doctor as if like a giant evil praying mantis overlord is the same as a pediatrician. But wouldn't that be terrible, though, if it's every two years and then by the time you hit like sixteen, you're like, oh God, any day now and that doesn't happen and then it doesn't happen.

[01:08:35]

And then twenty three.

[01:08:35]

And you're like, yeah, no, there's like a mental torture to it, which she, she did mention, not in so many words, but she was like at this point like what seven. Four. Why can't I do fucking math.

[01:08:49]

I don't need nine years at this point. Nine Wow. Past. And so she was like I had never gone that long in my life not hearing from them. So I just thought things were getting better.

[01:08:58]

You would hope it was the end. Yeah. She was like, I've never gone this long without an alien abduction. Yeah. Same girl.

[01:09:05]

I get it. And so she was in rural New York. She's twenty three. She has a husband, Lance, and they have a two year old son named Morgan. And one night her and Lance were watching TV. Laura noticed that Lance got up very quickly from the couch without a word and just started like walking really quickly to the bedroom and said that. He started, quote, walking in a stiff, disjointed way, oh, almost like his own body wasn't in his control anymore.

[01:09:40]

Oh, no.

[01:09:42]

Can you imagine, like, they really in terms of originality, they've gone above and beyond every time they go see her. And now this is the first time that she's seeing, like someone else be affected by them while she is awake, while he's awake, you know, they're getting more comfortable with her being coherent and seeing everything horrible, horrible.

[01:10:01]

And so she is just like she thinks nine years, they're not coming after me anymore. And now her husband gets up and starts walking really weirdly and is acting out of sorts. And all of a sudden he stumbles into bed. He was they were just watching TV like normal. And all of a sudden he stumbles into bed and just passes out and goes into the super deep sleep almost like he's in a trance. Oh, God. Oh, God.

[01:10:25]

She freaks out and goes to check on her son. Morgan finds and finds out that he's also all of a sudden in an unshakable sleep.

[01:10:32]

And she says that it's almost as if he was, quote, frozen in time.

[01:10:36]

Well, you don't want that with a two year old either. Like, that's terrifying.

[01:10:39]

But all of a sudden, the only two people in your house cannot be woken.

[01:10:44]

I mean, nightmare, real nightmare. And so I'm sure she even if she's doing better after nine years, I can't imagine you just stop always wondering what's going to happen next with these grays. And so I think she freaked out and was like, fuck, like, I'm pretty sure something's about to happen out again.

[01:11:02]

And she went to go to go check on her son. And then she heard the tree is blowing really intensely. She saw a bright light over their house and she heard a humming sound outside and then she heard the humming sound inside.

[01:11:18]

And this is a quote from her, I checked the front door and it was locked, so I turned around and was stopped in my tracks when I saw a very short being standing in my kitchen. Oh, my God. I stared at it trying to figure out what it was. I had apparently walked right past it. This was something new I had never seen before. It was shorter than my son. And I thought it was odd. I had it had a very round basketball sized head with tiny black eyes, and I could see no other features except that it was wearing a long sleeved white robe that covered everything else.

[01:11:51]

I could see no hands or feet. And I thought, oh my God, he's shorter than my son. And the thing replied telepathically, Ha, yes.

[01:12:00]

But we are very, very old now. What the hell? Oh, wait. So he was shorter than a two year old. He was short of a two year old wearing a robe wearing like a towel. Like what do you mean a robe. It feels very yota like. Just like. Tiny, tiny. Tiny old.

[01:12:24]

Old, very old. Very, very old. But it's so strange.

[01:12:30]

I mean, it's like the opposite of when you talk about three kids in a trench coat, it's like the like the honey.

[01:12:38]

I shrunk the kids version like they but yeah.

[01:12:42]

So she saw one just standing in the kitchen after I would like step on it like I thought I wouldn't even see it, you know, even if it's like a foot off the ground, it's like a walking newborn, you know, which is actually now that you say it's way creepy.

[01:12:56]

Yeah. Then she heard so she sees this thing, I would imagine at least slightly petrified of the experience. And then she heard the front door open and five more grays floated in.

[01:13:10]

Goodbye. Are they also really tiny or do we know? I don't know what they look like in comparison to the very, very old one. But the five grays that did float and apparently all looked identical, but they apparently had very different personalities.

[01:13:23]

So I'm thinking like the Seven Dwarfs, bashful, hungry. Oh, that's not there's not always hungry, too.

[01:13:33]

And everyone's like, that's not one. And I'm like, I guess I'm projecting. So I think we're both on the same page. They're bashful.

[01:13:40]

Grumpy. I would be grumpy, also sleepy. That one's me.

[01:13:44]

I think we're all of them encompassed plus hungry. We're all of them. Except like Sneezy. I don't know. So speak for yourself.

[01:13:52]

I have sinusitis. So anyway, the all of them looked identical, but our different personalities, they floated in. And this is super weird. But Laura said that I guess she never noticed before. But if they were all floating or they also have to float to move everywhere. I guess she probably thought this whole time, like, oh, I they have to make me float so that they can move me so that I'm lightweight and so I don't have to move myself.

[01:14:20]

But I think maybe this was the first time she realized that the way that they get around everywhere is they float interesting.

[01:14:27]

And she keeps feeling like she's one of them.

[01:14:30]

Like she. Yeah. That way, too. You know, she well, she also said this is like the weird part is that for them, apparently it looked really weird to see them floating because the way that they would like propel themselves anywhere, since they're not touching the ground, is they would kind of look like an upright doggy paddle that they she said they were they were, quote, pushing through jello is what it looked like.

[01:14:52]

Like just that. Well, you know, I wonder if that's because they're not used to this atmosphere, like maybe in atmosphere it's a different gravity pole or something.

[01:15:01]

Yeah, I don't know. It's actually a really good point. Thank you. I'm talking directly out of my ass, but I'm glad that it was a good point.

[01:15:09]

She thought that one of them was actually walking down the hall at one point, but then it like snuck up around her and got right in her face. Goodbye. And she said that he apparently smelled really bad.

[01:15:19]

She says, quote, I noticed a strong, nasty smell. It was a combination of urine and sweet spices and vomit. And it made me want to throw up you.

[01:15:28]

Makes me want to throw up. Yeah, that well, that was a really awful description.

[01:15:33]

It's very, very specific and detailed. Thank you, Laura. It's one I can follow easily and I hate it. So this really bad smelling one that was all up in our grill, this gray tried to actually like fuck with our head and I guess telepathically make her feel like garbage and make her scared of them and to make her feel worthless. I think it was like cower in fear from them or something like that.

[01:16:00]

Oh, and she insulted that really short one. It's probably like you're short of shit and you smell like vomit.

[01:16:06]

They're overcompensating. Also, you look like you're sweating through jello. Get us together. Yeah. Hello.

[01:16:13]

Yeah, I guess they have they have a lot of reasons to not feel welcome in the world. And and so he was trying to intimidate her and Laura says that she did want to cry but she wasn't going to give. And so she looked him dead in the eyes. Yes.

[01:16:28]

Laura, also, that must be a scary looking someone did in the eyes like those especially black slanty eyes, especially like the eyes of someone that is not a human being and who wants you to be terrified of them.

[01:16:41]

I can't imagine.

[01:16:42]

But she owned it. She stared him dead in the eyes. And apparently she this is when she noticed for the first time that there, quote, all black eyes were actually normal eyes and the irises were black and the pupils were darker than black.

[01:16:59]

Oh, yeah. Oh. She also said that their skin upclose looks like rough cowhide. Oooo yeah.

[01:17:08]

So that is when this gray being all of a sudden quote, flooded my mind with memories of every time that they had visited her in the past. And they told Laura that her memories were connected to them. She was terrified. And so she started in her mind praying for help and she was thinking, please, God, help me Jesus. And the Gray said telepathically, Yes, we know God to I it. What which made her feel like, OK, so no one's coming to her, no one's helping me, OK, this is so wildly terrifying.

[01:17:56]

I don't know that that got me good.

[01:17:58]

My goose cam is out of this world right now. I'm, like, shivering, honestly.

[01:18:04]

So now she realizes that she's floating and they take her outside and she sees the beam of light again and then nothing.

[01:18:12]

And she woke up later.

[01:18:14]

So it's almost like it's almost like she like called their bluff on being intimidated. And they're like, OK, you just don't get to remember this one then. Goodbye. Wow. Yeah.

[01:18:23]

They're like, we're done. SNAP. Well, also, I mean, that must be extra terrifying to now that you have a kid, there's like that protection, fear of like hope.

[01:18:30]

They don't touch him like get out of my fucking house.

[01:18:33]

Like don't touch my family.

[01:18:34]

Oh, terrible, terrible. We nod to oh that one got me bad and true to form.

[01:18:43]

I did these notes like ten hours ago, which means it was like 3:00 a.m. or something. So I was in my own house and there was this wild wind storm last night, Kristie. And like I was nervous. I thought that like a like a chair on our balcony was going to break through the door or something. It was really bad.

[01:19:01]

And so all I heard, I was in, like, pitch silence. And I just kept hearing this nasty wind and things getting ruffled around my house. And at three am I just read, you know, God, too.

[01:19:14]

And I'm glad you're reading about, like, the the trees were blowing with the UFO dissent.

[01:19:23]

It was prime ambient sounds for what I was reading. So so now she's floating. She sees the beam of light and she just wakes up and doesn't remember anything. So this is a quote from her about the next day when I woke up, I found a red spot with a scab just below my belly button. But this is the first time we're seeing anything invasive potentially happening to her. When I pulled at it the scab, it popped off and seemed to be attached to a long, thin sheath of tissue that I know that had been burrowed down in my know.

[01:19:58]

I hate this. I don't like it. It must have been about five inches long. Oh, my God. It seemed that something had been perhaps and planted within me. Oh, my God, I'm gonna puke.

[01:20:09]

It was as if something like a giant Fatin needle had been shoved into my belly and it left a long hole.

[01:20:16]

OK, ok, ok. OK, ok. It didn't even bleed or anything. I wrapped the sheath in a tissue and saved it as proof. Then I went to wipe myself after peeing and I could not believe what I saw on the toilet. There was a large circle of thick oily substance, but it was divided and half like half circle of bright yellow and half circle of bright, amber, orange, thick, oily liquid. It was as if the two could not mix and they were touching but not mixing together.

[01:20:48]

So this came from her weird tissue.

[01:20:51]

So no. So these are two separate events. So she found this red spot on her next to her belly button, pulled on it and found this like me again.

[01:21:00]

Yeah, yeah. OK, so that tissue that she found, that sheath that she found, she put in a tissue, then she went to go pee and when she wiped. Oh it's her white. Oh when she wiped.

[01:21:13]

I think if I'm reading about her pee and something else that was very oily were separating on the toilet paper in front of. Oh, no, oh, no. So she was panicked and she didn't know what to do, and she planned on saving the toilet paper as more proof, but then she was like, who do I give this toilet paper ray to? And so she didn't know. It's just she just threw it away. Like, well, truly, it's like, what would you possibly do?

[01:21:41]

What could you also like what happened to your belly? And also was that one of two operations or implantations where now the second one is this weird thing. Well, or was the first one at implantation and part of the effects of whatever's inside you now is that you are peeing out some residual.

[01:22:00]

Well, I mean, I have a theory and it's not a good one.

[01:22:03]

I mean, right here below your bellybutton is like where your womb would be or where you would do like an amniocentesis like needle. Oh, like that's how they get to your, like, womb slash placenta.

[01:22:17]

And I my thought is like if there's discharge of some kind, like I don't know what it is, but if it's like a foreign type of discharge or very well be related to however they're accessing your uterus.

[01:22:31]

I didn't even think about that. Oh, I want to jump out a window. Wow.

[01:22:38]

That is. And again, this is just me speculating, but that was where my mind but I am horrified.

[01:22:44]

It's a speculation I hadn't even thought of, like when it's just reminding me of what she was talking about, how her she thought like her parents had been taken and had procreated somehow, you know. Yeah.

[01:22:57]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Christine. Oh, my God. OK, OK. Scared.

[01:23:04]

OK, well, what year was that? That was 81. OK, I'm trying to do math here. Whatever. OK, next. Three years later. Three years later.

[01:23:14]

Nineteen eighty four. It's still not fucking over.

[01:23:17]

Oh no 1984. She's around I'm guessing around nineteen eighty four. She was around twenty six years old and Laura is now divorced and remarried and also has a daughter named Rachel. I do not know how old Rachel is, but if she is around three now, I'm fucking panicked.

[01:23:34]

Now, I'm fucking panicked that Rachel is part alien. Well, it was weird because she always, like, wear a little robe and wandered around and called herself very old.

[01:23:45]

Nobody knew why she behaved that way. Racial.

[01:23:48]

If you listen to this podcast for some reason, because you would have been born in the early 80s, would have shown presumably, unless there's a different gestation period, nine months after said, oh, my God, abducted.

[01:24:02]

I'm not saying you're an alien. I'm just saying, can you confirm for me or not? That is what I want to know. Are you OK? You're right.

[01:24:09]

I just want to know because I'm now I'm kind of freaked out that I like maybe get a blood test. I'm just checking. I'm just I would be nervous or maybe don't because, like, the government might intervene and I don't want to know what would happen.

[01:24:19]

I actually never, ever find out. OK. Yikes.

[01:24:25]

I'm so sorry. Rachel does not listen to this. We are helping. I hope you take this and just it's just very it's odd timing. So I just I'm curious, that's all. OK, so now has a daughter, Rachel and Morgan is now five years old. Morgan is five. Guess how old Laura was when things started happening? Oh, shit. Five. Oh, you're right. Oh, no.

[01:24:48]

And if her wondering if things are generational or inherited and Laura always thought, oh, my mom maybe saw something and she just never told me.

[01:24:58]

And now I see things that now my kid is five. What could go wrong. What could happen one night. Oh fuck. Laura is watching TV and in her head she hears a voice. Wake up, go to your son. He needs, you know.

[01:25:14]

Probably a parent's worst nightmare. I wouldn't know, but that sounds horrifying to me, although I will say if I were to ever I hope I never have that experience. But if I were to have that experience, I would assume that if I'm hearing that voice, it's almost like someone saying, like, this is your your last like you still have a chance that everything is going to be OK, because I'm warning you before it's too fucking late. Yeah.

[01:25:35]

So I guess it's almost in the worst, most terrifying way. It's comforting that someone was looking out like this. Anyway, she goes to check on Morgan. Morgan is laying in bed and he looks like he's been pulled up from his bed and that his head and his shoulders are above his pillow.

[01:25:53]

So it's almost pulled almost out of his covers, OK? And his blankets are weirdly neatly folded over the rest of his body and his bedding is not. But he and his clothes are covered in blood. What's a weirder part to me is that his bedding is untouched with blood, almost as if he was bloodied and then placed in there. Were they tried? They tried to put him in there, but they couldn't. And so that's why he's like weirdly positioned over his pillow.

[01:26:26]

What the hell?

[01:26:27]

So to me, it sounds like it was a severe nose bleed. Blood was like coming out of his nose. So I'm assuming it's a nose bleed. But the, again, blood wasn't anywhere on the bedding. So Laura runs to the neighbor and tells them to call nine one one. But her neighbor is also acting really weird. Oh, here's a quote, she followed me upstairs and acted very strange as I ran to the bathroom to get cold, wet washcloths and towels, she brought a dining chair in from the kitchen and parked herself at the head of his bed and didn't do or say a thing.

[01:27:03]

It was almost like she was in a trance. She eventually left after I asked her again to call for help, and she never did.

[01:27:10]

Oh, my God. Know, it's like, oh, so. So I don't know if if this is like an alien abduction thing. I don't know if someone was almost possessing the neighbor to keep tabs on the kid. Like why would they interact with the neighbor at all to make sure.

[01:27:29]

One thing I was wondering earlier, too, is like when you said, oh, she saw a beam of light and all this business and her husband and her son were like in a trance, my first thought was like, I wonder if they put that trance in like a wide circle so that people don't see the beam of light on her house, don't hear the trees.

[01:27:44]

Like, I wonder how broadly this, like, trance goes that maybe it's the whole area or if the beam itself is what's putting people on edge or that hits your location.

[01:27:55]

Right. Because like, if she walked into the house, maybe it was like then she got taken over. Oh, well.

[01:28:00]

So we end up finding out why, because. So Morgan ends up Morgan also, by the way, as this is happening and he's bleeding profusely just to make a mother's worst nightmare even worse. He was not waking up during any of this, so she didn't even know, like, if this was like it for him.

[01:28:17]

Oh, my God. So it's almost like he was still in this trance of, like, not knowing what was going on. He was like this unbreakable sleep. But come morning he wakes up and he is totally fucking fine, even asks to go to school and blood covered in blood.

[01:28:33]

Well, I'm sure she wiped them off, but yeah, just nightmare feel.

[01:28:36]

So when he came home from school, Laura asked him, hey, do you remember anything about last night? And he said that he, quote, woke up and saw a skeleton man standing in his room. So he hid. He hid under his bed. But then he was taken out of his house along with the neighbor's son, who was the same age. Oh, shit. So it's not just Morgan, it's the neighborhood boy is also being beamed up at the same time, and they're both five.

[01:29:03]

So that makes me think unless the neighbors also have some sort of history with aliens, maybe it's like a compare and contrast situation. Christine, here's a random five year old next door to the sample. Here's a control sample next to our longitudinal study of generational abduction, something I don't know so well.

[01:29:25]

So that would explain why the neighbor woman was also in a trance because her own that was her kid.

[01:29:32]

Oh, fuck.

[01:29:33]

So even her own house was put under a trance so both kids could be abducted and nobody noticed. And that makes me think like, how connected is Laura? Because that mom was able to, like, be in a complete trance and taken over by them. But they allowed Laura to stay awake and conscious during all of this. And they even told her, like, go help your son. Like, they they gave they gave her a head start.

[01:29:56]

Well, maybe they fucked up.

[01:29:57]

Maybe they were like testing him and they accidentally, like, poked too hard or something.

[01:30:02]

And they were like, oh, that wasn't the plan. Hadn't even thought of that. I wonder if I wonder if they planned on shutting off like her access to them once they had like a new generation to follow up with. So without getting totally into it with one division, there's a there's a new superhero where basically she was affected by Wanda's magic so many times that her genes started mutating.

[01:30:27]

And she became a she became like she wasn't vulnerable to Wanda's magic anymore, like it wasn't affecting her the same way it was affecting everyone else because she had been hit by Wanda's powers so many times. And so I'm wondering if, like Laura had had so much access with the aliens over time that she was almost like impervious to their putting the the mom's under a trance while working on their kids.

[01:30:53]

Oh, my gosh. You know, or maybe they just they like her after all this time. They're like, she's not that bad. Let's, like, get involved.

[01:31:01]

Or maybe they just see her as one of them and they're like, oh, she's too far gone.

[01:31:06]

If they genetically think that she is part alien, then technically her son would have like an aunt who's an alien up there just hanging out, you know.

[01:31:15]

Yes, true. That little gray girl. So she when she realized that her son had been talking to somebody and was floating around outside of their house, Laura looked at the sky and thought really loudly, It's bad enough that you have taken me against my will all my life, but stay away from my kids. And after that, I don't think anything happened to Morgan. I know she went to like she took him to a doctor the next day and they couldn't find anything that was wrong with that horse.

[01:31:43]

And I don't know what happened to Morgan after that, but Laura had. Two more kids after Morgan and Rachel, she had Ashley and Ricky, and she says that she's always felt like they were watching her and she's even had UFO sightings that were at times when she saw the UFO sighting. If I'm reading it right or if I'm understanding her, it feels like she has enough paranoia now where if she has what she considers a UFO sightings, she wonders if she actually just had been abducted and doesn't fucking remember it like true.

[01:32:16]

Like her complete memory would have just wiped out the memory.

[01:32:19]

Yeah.

[01:32:20]

So anyway, she says that she's seen things, but nothing really drastic has happened to her again. And it seems like since at least the 80s she was telling them like, stay away from my kids. And they listened. But what I mean, it just couldn't be more perfect timing. It's like the aliens really want to fuck with us because after nineteen eighty four or whatever, she didn't have any really notable experiences until March twenty twenty.

[01:32:51]

Oh shut up.

[01:32:53]

The beginning of the lockdown.

[01:32:55]

Come on. Laura was 62 and she heard strange humming as she was falling asleep now.

[01:33:05]

And I think at that point after like once you're sixty two maybe you're just hardened from some of the shit that you went through as a kid and she just fuckin ignored it. She was like, I don't even want to fucking know at some point, what are you going to do?

[01:33:17]

I mean, you can't stop it. There is a quote from her. This is a longer one, but it's kind of ties everything together. But she heard humming is where we end with that. She fell asleep listening to some strange humming over her house. And when asked about it, she said, I was very tired. So I didn't think anything of it and never got up to look outside.

[01:33:38]

But last night, my daughter Rachel sent me a message to call her right away. Keep in mind, Rachel might be the one that has some alien DNA if if our theory might be correct. Yeah. So it's interesting that maybe Morgan's not being touched, but Rachel is or some of the kids are more effective than the others. I don't know about Ashley and Ricky, but Rachel is having experiences which would also make it more credible that maybe Laura's mom did know more than she let on.

[01:34:07]

Yeah. So now that's three generations that we know of and four generations because Rachel sent me a message to call her right away. She said my granddaughter Claire was the last one eating at the table last night and she noticed a humming sound and saw a black ball hovering outside her window. And they live two houses away from Laura.

[01:34:29]

Oh, no. So whatever. Humming Laura heard Claire was also saying, oh, no. My son in law said that he'd seen it the night before. They said it was humming or they said it was all black and round about four to six feet across and it had no visible lights. They saw it hovering over a stump of a giant pine tree they had just cut down. And it also went over their neighbor's yard behind that house and came back to their yard.

[01:34:55]

I'm guessing it may have been outside my house two nights ago when I heard the humming, which was the same night that they saw it. We lived two doors away from each other. And also my son in law just told me that the night he saw it, he was napping on the couch and woke up with their dog staring out the window and growling, a low growl. And usually she barks loudly at everything. So he turned to see what she was looking at and outside the window saw the black ball above the tree stump.

[01:35:21]

It hovered very slowly towards him, and as soon as it got a few feet away from his window, it triggered the outside floodlights to come on. So he got a good look at it. But when their dog came in the room, the thing took off fast. So now two generations under Laura are experiencing things.

[01:35:38]

And the person who wrote this article did vouch for Laura saying that she seemed very collected and articulate and very convinced of her past and that Laura also was telling the story purely to tell the her story and get it out there, not for any monetary reasons, just because she wanted people to hear about it. I'm going to end on. The creepiest thing to me is that very, very, very late in the game, decades later, after everything happened and I guess Laura was more open about her experiences, her sister Barbara came out and said I was awake when I was floating down the stairs with you, shut the front door.

[01:36:18]

And we don't know anything else, Barbara. We need we need more info. Bab's, come on.

[01:36:23]

We can step it up. This is your time to tell us what the hell is going on. All we know is decades later, she admitted that she was awake during the incident.

[01:36:33]

All those years, that moment where Barbara is like, I have to tell you something from their sixties, they're drinking lemonade on the porch, the howdy toddies, howdy toddies, sorry, hot toddies, hot toddies.

[01:36:45]

I yeah, they're drinking on the porch. Rocking back and forth, the movie ends, yeah, I have to tell you something. Oh, so scary. Really scary.

[01:36:56]

I guess that means Barbara can confirm that happened, but I don't know if there's another video we got just another witness.

[01:37:03]

So you've got a potential mom, you've got the sister, you've got Laura, you've got this genetic sister in space. You've got Morgan who's had an experience. You've got Rachel and Rachel's granddaughter and Rachel's husband. So that's eight people that have been affected by these aliens, not including those neighbors to be a fly on the wall at that family reunion.

[01:37:25]

Wow.

[01:37:26]

I would pay big bucks to see this go down. Wow.

[01:37:30]

Anyway, that was a long one, but that was the abductions of Laura Clark and Laura Rachel Claire, because you're probably within our podcast listenership audience demographics.

[01:37:44]

If you happen to be able to confirm any of this, please let me know. Wow.

[01:37:49]

That is honestly one of the scarier ones you've told. I as everyone knows, I'm terrified of aliens.

[01:37:54]

Terrified. Yes, I fully believe shit happens and I want to it's like I want to I'm fascinated, so I want to learn more. But I also have that weird theory that, like, the more you think and talk about it, the more likely it is to be your for you to be a part of it. So I don't know where I stand, but I know I know we've mentioned it a million times.

[01:38:14]

But like that, the only thing scarier about it is that potentially to think about it as is going to get you dangerous. I know.

[01:38:23]

Oh, yikes. OK, well, thank you for terrifying me. I'm going to go to bed tonight and like fuckin safety pin my covers on to myself.

[01:38:33]

I was going to say duct tape yourself into bed. I swear that was the weirdest feeling. And I remember thinking like something's off and then all of a sudden my cover's got yanked.

[01:38:43]

Oh, God, I don't envy you. It's never I've never had something like physically like that aggressive happen. No, I don't like it.

[01:38:52]

I don't I don't envy you. I'm sorry that happened, though. I don't know how to help also, which is one of the reasons I feel so bad, because I'm like, if I could staple you into your mattress, I know you'd staple down and we have the same story.

[01:39:05]

Staple me in and then I'll tickle you while you're while you're locked in a that's maybe worse than an alien abduction. I'm going to be honest with you.

[01:39:15]

OK, well, I have a story for you that is probably even more horrifying, so I apologize.

[01:39:22]

But here we are back in True Crime World. I have a story for you today. Takes place in Cleveland, massive trigger warnings for sexual assault, rape that times bad times.

[01:39:36]

So just a big heads up that I know eye to eye that happens.

[01:39:40]

A lot of stories I cover, but this is just a little more detailed than usual.

[01:39:46]

So on October 29th, 2009, police arrived at Anthony Sowell's home so well, so well, it spelled like s so but it's pronounced so well. Got it.

[01:39:57]

Anthony Sowell's home on Imperial Street in Cleveland, Ohio, with a warrant to arrest him for the rape of Letendre Billups since October of 2009. When they arrived at the house, Anthony wasn't there, but police had enough reason to say they had found two bodies on the floor of his living room shit in the basement.

[01:40:15]

They saw a mound of dirt on top of the concrete flooring. And when they look closer, they found four more bodies, both buried in this shallow grave in the basement in another crawlspaces throughout the house.

[01:40:28]

Then they took the backyard or they took to the backyard where they found three more bodies, plus the remains of a fourth Jesus Christ.

[01:40:35]

Yeah, they also found a human skull in a bucket inside the house, which they lovingly showed without any warning on the vice documentary. Very nice of them. Just fucking here it is. Yes. A warning which now brought the body count in his home to 11.

[01:40:52]

Yes, I stopped by to arrest him for a rape and find 11 bodies in his house. Wow. Yeah.

[01:40:58]

Not a moment too soon. I don't know. I don't know how that idea works, but that sounds right. It feels like it's many moments too late, though. It's certainly. Certainly too late. Yes. I can't deny that.

[01:41:11]

So this is the story of the gruesome Cleveland Strangler we know.

[01:41:17]

Well, the Cleveland Strangler. I feel like I know that name gets a very famous serial killer. OK, well, there you have it.

[01:41:24]

And you're going to know all about him in the next half hour. Yeah. So Anthony Sowell was born on August 19th, 1959, in East Cleveland, Ohio. He was one of seven children born to single mom Claudia Garrison. And in this Vyse Doc, Vyse doc in this vice documentary, which is on YouTube, they really delve into the background of the area.

[01:41:46]

I mean, I'm familiar with the same kind of dynamic in Cleveland in the first half of the 20th century, a lot of black families moved to this part of Cleveland, East Cleveland, from the south. But then in the 60s, white families, you know, migrated to the suburbs and over time, the East Cleveland area salt, which had once been like beautiful and thriving, saw the influx of drugs, especially when crack cocaine kind of took the streets.

[01:42:10]

And this basically worked to desegregate the area further, keep it under the thumb of poverty.

[01:42:17]

Just you know, this is one of those stories that just shows the drastic, you know, difference in in how cases are handled in that kind of thing.

[01:42:26]

Right. Right, right.

[01:42:28]

So after Sowell's sister passed away from a chronic illness, he was raised alongside her seven children as well. So basically, as a child, he was raised alongside his seven nieces and nephews.

[01:42:40]

He was primarily raised by his mother, Claudia, and his maternal grandmother, Irene. And from a young age, Sohail was witness to abuse. So his nieces, Ramona and her twin Leona, said that a family friend would force them to strip butt naked and electrical extension cords were used to bind and whip them.

[01:42:58]

Holy shit. Yeah. And Anthony was actually not beaten like he wasn't part of that, but he was witness to it, which is also traumatic, obviously, that you would witness your nieces, you know, suffering through this.

[01:43:12]

So although neighbor Katab would say he was the kind of child you wanted to deal with, he was always very respectable. His family kind of had a different story.

[01:43:21]

They remembered him being conniving from a young age. He would like drink his grandma's Pepsi like he was really little, just which I was like, OK, well, OK, I did that.

[01:43:31]

But it's not like her malt liquor, like Vaudrey, like, you know, some maybe he was just like a prankster or like goofy, I guess.

[01:43:38]

I don't know.

[01:43:39]

Yeah, I guess maybe he just kind of got on people's nerves are like push buttons. Yeah. He would drink his grandmother's Pepsi, he would start fights and then he would blame Leona, his niece, and then she would get punished. So I mean that much that's more on the level that I was thinking of. Like, got it. Not being a great kid, he would, you know, get his nieces in trouble and just let them be punished for things that he did.

[01:44:03]

So this side of him didn't really translate at school. So a staff member of his school, Kirk Junior High, would later remember Anthony was shy and skinny. He was a little quiet and never want to start a conversation. If you said hi, he would say hi. If you asked a question, he would answer it. He was friendly, sort of in that he would smile whenever I looked in his direction. He wasn't known to be a ladies man.

[01:44:26]

This is. From the school's recollection, he'd often become the target of constant teasing about his lack of sexual experience.

[01:44:34]

It was basically bullied for being like, not cool, not, you know, a ladies man. Yeah, it's just so weird to me.

[01:44:41]

But OK, so this was the narrative at school that he was kind of a nerd, kind of shy, not cool or anything.

[01:44:49]

But at home there was a different story. So according to Leona, so I would regularly take her upstairs to a bedroom in the house when they were preteens and would rape her. She said it was happening almost every day and she tried to report the rapes to authorities, but no one believed her. Oh, my God.

[01:45:09]

OK, and here we begin on this lovely journey of infuriating, lack of reaction, lack of response to, you know, reports of these crimes.

[01:45:20]

So this is the beginning of it all. She would try to report the rapes to authorities.

[01:45:25]

No one believed her. On January 24th, 1978, Sowell was 19 and he reported for Marine boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.

[01:45:35]

So there were two reasons that we kind of speculate as to why he left and went to join the Marines, A, he didn't have enough credits to graduate from high school.

[01:45:44]

And B, he had apparently gotten a fellow high school student pregnant and wanted nothing to do with it.

[01:45:49]

So he passed out. Geez.

[01:45:51]

OK, so after boot camp, so our reporter for basic training and among the courses or like the training he went through, he took courses such as basic chokes and basic weapons of opportunity. Perfect. Unfortunately, yes, you can probably guess this becomes relevant later. So Sowell spent another month there learning electrical wiring and he was then assigned to the Marine Corps as an electrician. Huh. So in 1980, at age 22, Sohel was sent to Okinawa, Japan.

[01:46:30]

And upon returning, he actually married a fellow Marine, Kim evet Lawson. And this was in 1981. And he stayed in the Marines for about four more years before he left.

[01:46:43]

And although the Marines said he went AWOL at one point for two months, so that was obviously not cool, not something you're supposed to do.

[01:46:52]

And although they said he had gone AWOL for two months, at one point Sergeant Sowell departed with a mountain of praise, including a rifle, sharpshooter reward, good conduct medal, a certificate of commendation and two letters of appreciation. Wow.

[01:47:06]

So at this one, I'm fascinated because I'm like there are like six different versions that we're getting of this guy from different yes. Points.

[01:47:15]

See, I was going to say, it seems like we're not getting a I mean, we're getting a full story, but I don't know what it doesn't like fit.

[01:47:21]

Yeah. What's the right story or what's. Yeah. Yeah. What's the story that I should trust the most like. Yeah.

[01:47:28]

It feels conflicting like all of it doesn't add up somehow right now. That's how I felt as well.

[01:47:35]

So he left the Marines with all this praise and strangely that same year came pretty much right after he left the Marines divorced him. So Kim later reflected that during their time in the Marines. So I was drinking excessively and Kim said she had married him to help him. Her daughter later explained that her mother didn't want him to get a dishonorable discharge. She was trying to get him through the Marine Corps and that's why she divorced him the day he got out.

[01:48:00]

Oh, OK. So interesting. I don't I mean, everyone has, I guess, reasons for what they do. But, yeah, clearly there was a lot going on behind the scenes during their marriage.

[01:48:12]

I mean, to the second he like takes off the uniform for the last time. You're like here, your divorce papers. I'm fucking over. It's not working anymore.

[01:48:19]

Yeah, I'm over it. I tried. And you know that the cliche of you can't change somebody, you can't fix somebody. It's just like extra, you know, obvious here, I guess. Yeah.

[01:48:33]

So in 1985, he had returned home to Cleveland, but the city was pretty much changed. It was changed pretty radically from what it had been seven years before when he had last lived there. So in 1985, when he was back, a quarter of the population of East Cleveland now lived below poverty level and 90 percent of the population were black, which plays again into the treatment of this case and the handling by police. And so it was also a time, like I said, when crack cocaine had taken kind of hold of the area.

[01:49:05]

Crack was sort of a new thing on the scene, new smokeable, potent form of cocaine. And with its introduction, crime rates rose drastically. There was now also a new subset of folks with addictions, which were sex workers who worked in exchange for crack cocaine.

[01:49:20]

And that was something that hadn't it was like a new phenomenon that that subset kind of hadn't existed before.

[01:49:25]

Right. So this is like a whole new angle to addiction, to crime, to, you know, having to live on the streets, all that, all that stuff.

[01:49:33]

So kind of adds a picture or more detail to the picture.

[01:49:38]

Totally. So into this new kind of changed. East Cleveland arrived, 25 year old Sowell, who had just served a seven year military regimen, divorce after four years from a wife who had worried about his boozing and a man who, according to documents, court documents, was accused of ducking his responsibilities as the father of a now seven year old from the high school pregnancy he had.

[01:50:03]

Oh, cocreator. Got it.

[01:50:05]

OK, so that basically that child ended up being born and he was accused of abandoning his responsibilities in taking care of the child so, so well, went back to his heavy drinking. He would start drinking first thing in the morning and he became increasingly aggressive when he drank. And that surfaced in 1988 when police arrested Sowell on a charge of domestic violence against a woman whose name we actually don't know. He served eight days in jail. And as this was happening, meanwhile, in the background, terror was taking over East Cleveland.

[01:50:41]

So in May of 1988, the body of 36 year old Rosiland Garner was found in her home on Haydon Avenue and she had been strangled. Carmela Karen Prader, age 27, was found in an abandoned home on First Avenue on February 27th, 1989. So the year after and the cause of her death is unknown. And then only a month later, on March 28, the body of another woman named Mary Thomas, 27, was found near an abandoned building also on First Avenue, and she had been strangled with a red ribbon.

[01:51:08]

So, Jesus, these all took. In less than a year, these three right in the same neighborhood, same area, and I want to be clear here, that has never been definitively these murders have never been definitively linked to Sowell, but the M.O. kind of signifies that they could have been.

[01:51:29]

It's implied. It's suggestive. Yeah, it's definitely some people. Yeah. I assume it was him, but there's definitely no outright proof.

[01:51:37]

However, even if it wasn't him, it kind of gives you another insight into, like the tension and the terror that was happening in the neighborhood, even if, sure. These specific crimes weren't done by him.

[01:51:49]

This was still happening in the neighborhood where he was living and operating.

[01:51:54]

So just a bad time.

[01:51:56]

Just about time. Not good enough times. Tough times.

[01:51:59]

So while all of these murders were going on and even though we don't necessarily know whether they had been committed by Sowell, he was definitely guilty of another crime by this point in that he had raped a 21 year old woman who was three months pregnant. She told her story to authorities four months after Mary Thomas's body was discovered. So basically, he was directly linked to this crime and this was happening right in the midst of these other crimes. So just to give you an idea of, like, why some people believe that he was involved in the other three as well.

[01:52:31]

OK, so she told her story and this is what she told police on July 22nd, 1989, Sowell met her at a motel and told her that her boyfriend was waiting for her at Sowell's house about 500 yards away.

[01:52:42]

So she went with him, entered the house, and he threw her on his bed, choked her and raped her repeatedly, probably goes without saying. But her boyfriend was not at Sowell's house. It was obviously his ruse, his lie to get her into his home.

[01:52:57]

And when she tried to leave, Sowell bound her hands with a necktie, cinched a belt around her feet and stuffed a rag in her mouth.

[01:53:04]

And thankfully, when Sowell, who had been drinking, fell asleep, she was able to wriggle free and escape out of a window. She's thank God.

[01:53:11]

So, yeah, I know. And it's like horrible because you see in the documentaries, you see people retelling, like, the trauma of what happened.

[01:53:20]

And then there are so many people who didn't make it. It's just it's really sick. That's awful.

[01:53:27]

So a grand jury indicted so well for this case, but he didn't show up for his court date. So on December eight, the court issued an arrest warrant, but he was nowhere to be found. Then seven months later and only four miles away, another woman came forward saying Sowell raped her, too. So at 1:00 a.m. on June 24th, 1990, the 31 year old woman told police she went to a house in Cleveland in East Cleveland. She sat behind.

[01:53:50]

She sat beside Sowell on a love seat and they started drinking, hanging out so well, then got up, came up behind her and started choking her, spewing a stream of obscene descriptions of sex acts, how and where he would violate her, and announcing that she was his bitch and she had better learn to like it.

[01:54:10]

My God, it gets worse here, obviously. Of course it always does.

[01:54:16]

He dragged her upstairs by the neck. He raped her orally, vaginally and anally. And even after the woman told him she was five months pregnant and begged him to stop, he instead forced her to say, Yes, sir, I like it.

[01:54:30]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's so terrible. Oh, my God.

[01:54:35]

Yeah, it's an extra. Violating gruesome retelling. Today, wow, fuck that guy. Oh, my God. Yeah, and it's one of those things where, you know, I don't like to repeat it or say it, but this was her testimony and the story that she want wants to tell on the documentaries in court. And so it's sort of like, you know, this is a story she wants told.

[01:55:03]

And yeah, no, I feel like that's a small thing I can do is at least tell it how she wants it to be told.

[01:55:11]

I get so wow. It's really horrific and it's tough to say and think about.

[01:55:17]

So I apologize if I'm ruining everyone's day because I'm sure I am. So I'm so if you if she were to ever hear this. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Yeah.

[01:55:27]

It's it's really rough to watch them retell the stories in court and on in the interviews. It's very sobering and and dark.

[01:55:39]

So, so.

[01:55:40]

Well, you know, after all this, he went to sleep and the woman was able to leave. And when she returned with police at eight a.m., he was still sleeping. The police arrested him, but charges were never filed because they couldn't find the woman to testify.

[01:55:55]

And this seems to become a pattern of letting so well go because women were either too traumatized or terrified to testify or they were too scared to speak to police or even though the evidence was right there in front of them, the the witness was too scared to say anything.

[01:56:14]

And so he was let go over and over again, which is just so infuriating. So the police finally, even though they weren't able to get or they didn't get him on this charge, they had finally found him because he had gone missing when they originally when the grand jury indicted him for that rape. So they finally had him for that. And so all was in jail awaiting trial on those charges. And he did eventually plead guilty to attempted rape, which may not even bare minimum.

[01:56:46]

And on September 12th, 1990, a judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison and he actually remained in prison for 15 years. And then in 2005, he was released. He was supposed to be clean and sober, a psychological evaluation deemed him unlikely to rape again.

[01:57:04]

Yeah, I think we can see where this is going. But he had to register as a sex offender and report to the Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office once a year, but not shockingly at all.

[01:57:17]

He did not leave prison a changed man. He pretty much immediately began targeting sex workers.

[01:57:22]

So according to four women suffering from drug addictions who had encounters with Sowell, he would offer women malt liquor, companionship and shelter from the dangers of the streets on Cleveland's east side. So he basically took vulnerable people and offered them help and care. You know, they took advantage of that, basically.

[01:57:42]

Sorry, I'm just like so fucking no. I mean, I can't expect you to say anything, you know, it's like I'm just waiting for the next horrible thing to come out of your mouth.

[01:57:53]

It'll keep happening. It'll keep coming. Jesus. OK, sorry. Oh, no, it's your job. How do you know? I'm glad you know what's coming here. Yeah. Yeah. Just worse and worse and worse until the end.

[01:58:03]

Great. So let's see.

[01:58:07]

He would offer them companionship, shelter and then if he ever felt so, he was very kind to them until if he ever felt betrayed by anyone he was trying to help, he would begin terrorizing, attacking or raping them. Oh my God. Two women told police he would turn on them as quickly as he had befriended them. So like one wrong move and he would find an excuse to violate you or hurt you in some way.

[01:58:30]

Jesus. Yeah.

[01:58:32]

So out of prison, Sowell rented out space in the home of his stepmother, his late father's widow, who is a step mom. He started dating women who lived or hung out in the neighborhood, one of whom was Tania Doss, who lived across the street from him. And at this time, Tonya Doss said he did not use crack cocaine.

[01:58:51]

But she and Tony, she called Anthony Tone drink beer, played chess, barbecued. He told DOS he had been in prison, but that he had served a crime committed by someone else. So she was under the impression that, like he had been falsely accused and he actually wasn't a criminal, which obviously is the farthest thing from the truth.

[01:59:10]

He does. Tonya Thomas would later say he seemed like a regular human being. So it really does seem like he's able to kind of dupe people right throughout all of this, which is like an extra skating seems very he's kind of got that weird killer, charming charm.

[01:59:25]

Yeah. Yeah.

[01:59:26]

Like he's able to swindle you. Yeah.

[01:59:30]

Yeah. Like, make you feel comfortable with him. It is just always adds such an element of creepiness.

[01:59:35]

It's just the ability to so easily manipulate another person is really disturbing. And it makes it extra disgusting when it's like people who are suffering from drug addictions or poverty or people who need help, people who are already going through like this is the last thing they fucking need.

[01:59:53]

Yes. They're like so vulnerable.

[01:59:55]

And you take advantage of that. It's just extra gross.

[01:59:59]

So anyway, she was saying, I thought he was just a normal guy. I never knew all this had been going on.

[02:00:06]

And it was around this time that Sowell began dating a woman named Lori Frazier. So interestingly enough, Lori was actually the niece of Cleveland's mayor, Frank Jackson.

[02:00:18]

So I climbed his way to, I don't know, local local politics.

[02:00:24]

Great. Yeah, great.

[02:00:26]

So he and Lori dated until around 2007, 2008, and Lori Frazier even remembered later. He took good care of me, good care of me.

[02:00:35]

So according to Tonya Doss, Frazier and Sowell lived together and what looked like a normal, quote unquote, normal. You know, she already said he seemed like a regular guy, monogamous relationship.

[02:00:46]

It seemed as if Frazier actually might have been leading him down a life of more stability. He got a job as a rubber molder at a place called Custom Rubber Corp. interest.

[02:00:56]

And. Yeah, and you don't think of that as like a I don't know a thing, but I guess someone has to mold the rubber.

[02:01:02]

Oh, well, that's like that was the the room I always wanted to work in at ISIS.

[02:01:06]

I've always. Oh, interesting. They call it the rubber room.

[02:01:09]

I was like, damn, I always wanted to work in the rubber room, isn't it rubber room also like what you say about an insane asylum or whatever those old timey.

[02:01:19]

Oh I don't know. I never I only knew it was like the room where you make rubber. So let me see.

[02:01:26]

I just wanna make sure I got that right. I would have thought it would be like a like a like a leather sex dungeon.

[02:01:33]

Well, like I said, I don't know why, because rubber and leather are not the same.

[02:01:36]

Here I go. Yeah. Rubber room, informal, a room padded with foam rubber for the confinement of a violent mentally ill person. That's what they used to.

[02:01:44]

Never that's what they used to call in the old timey, quote unquote, like insane asylums where they had the white room padded rooms where I had no idea.

[02:01:55]

I really just thought it was because we made fucking rubber. I am so sick.

[02:02:00]

No, I mean, it's I think it's like a I don't think it's like an official term or anything, but.

[02:02:05]

Well, hopefully that's not offensive to anybody. I really just thought, like, oh, the room where we make rubber obviously be called the rubber room.

[02:02:10]

So I mean, it makes some sense. But no, it's it's I, I think that's that's like the only redeeming, redeeming quality thus far about him is that I always wanted to be a rubber molder when I worked at NASA, so.

[02:02:23]

Oh, and that's the last good thing I'll say about him. Oh sweet. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:02:28]

So he worked at this rubber company molding rubber and the president, Charlie Brown, later recalled that he was a very good employee.

[02:02:35]

So again, just like a conflicting outlook from a different person in his life.

[02:02:40]

Right. So his girlfriend, Laurie Frazier, everything to her seemed pretty positive until 2007, when his personal and work lives started to kind of unravel and simultaneously women on or near Imperial Avenue where he lived, began to go missing.

[02:02:58]

This all started with Crystal Dozier. She was a 35 year old mother of seven who went missing on May 17, 2007, in July 2007, after Sowell didn't show up for work two days in a row. He was fired by Custom Rubber Products Corp. and suddenly he didn't have a steady job. So his means of self self support drastically changed. He began collecting and selling scrap metal and collecting unemployment benefits. And once those checks started rolling in, he was using them to buy crack cocaine.

[02:03:30]

And that is where his addiction began.

[02:03:33]

So he had not been using crack cocaine until now.

[02:03:37]

OK. So it was also around this time that so next door neighbor, Councilman Zack Reed, I'm like, I don't know where all these council people and politicians are suddenly, like, welcoming, warm arms open or weird.

[02:03:51]

Yeah. So it's strange how you suddenly surrounded by all these like politicians.

[02:03:56]

But so local councilman Zack Reed, his next door neighbor, first complained right around this time about a horrible odor that permeated the streets of Ohio Avenue.

[02:04:06]

OK, well, I. I think I could bet money on what that smell is.

[02:04:10]

It was the rubber, you know, it was not the rubber. I wish it was, but it's not.

[02:04:15]

So at first, nobody thought much of it. And because it was a lower economic area and complaints simply were not given the attention they deserved, they're just kind of largely went ignored. So no matter how many times people would complain, people dismissed it. You know, authorities dismissed it and it just kind of became a nuisance that people just had to deal with. So in late 07, early 2008, Sowell ended a nearly three year relationship with Lori Frazier.

[02:04:43]

And in retrospect, Lori claims to have smelled the stench of what she thought. She kind of realized later.

[02:04:49]

Like, I think that was a smell of decaying bodies. That was like her gut instinct.

[02:04:54]

Yeah, but I think so. Lori, I think you're on to something. But Sowell told her no, that's just the smell coming from my stepmother.

[02:05:04]

Oh, my God. She smelled like a dead fucking body that I. I literally wrote in my notes. It gives new meaning to the phrase. She says, don't worry, my stepmother, just poor stepmother leave her out of this. She still smells like a dead body.

[02:05:18]

You imagine hearing that in hindsight and being like, what the fuck that I do? Like what? Yeah. How did I let you live in my house? How did I get dragged into this? It's it's awful.

[02:05:28]

And so that's what he insisted was happening. And when Lori moved out, she dismissed it basically as coming from the neighboring sausage shop.

[02:05:38]

There was a place called Ray's Sausage Shop next door. And I'm thinking, shouldn't he just have used that as an excuse? It's a better season.

[02:05:45]

It's my step mom like to say I live next door to a literal sausage shop, like to say that I'm I live next to a place that probably has some rotten meat in their dumpster or something like not like, oh, my stepmom smells like the sausage factory after a bad batch. It's so just extra rude, like it's so not important, but like so rude, it is so.

[02:06:12]

So yeah. So Laurie was like yeah he was telling me all these things and I just kind of dismissed it. But as we probably know, Laurie's first instinct had actually been correct. So it would not come as a surprise to any of us that more women around this time went missing.

[02:06:28]

So to Shana Culver was last seen in June of 2008.

[02:06:31]

She was 33 years old and she had drifted in out of her family's life so often that it had gotten to the point where they stopped reporting her missing, which is just extra sad because. At a certain point, they just assumed she would come back and she never did. So sad it is. It's really, really, really sad.

[02:06:49]

And then there was Lashonda Long, who was last seen August 08. She was 17. And at the age of 17, she had three kids but was deemed unfit to raise them. And she, at 17, was the youngest of all of Sowell's victims.

[02:07:04]

Yikes.

[02:07:05]

OK, then there was Michelle Mason, who was last seen in October of 08 before she went missing. The 45 year old had experienced a pretty like, triumphant kind of comeback period in her life. She had kicked her heroin and crack addictions.

[02:07:19]

She was living independently. She hadn't been arrested in years, like she was very proud of having turned her life around.

[02:07:24]

And then she, you know, became a victim of Sowell. So it's so sad.

[02:07:30]

It's all very, very, very tragic. None of it's happy. But I mean, just so I have nothing else to say, I like I'm just like, yikes, every time. It's just yikes.

[02:07:40]

Tempt him the entire story. Yes. And then there was Tonia Carmichael, who's 53 and was last seen November 10th, 08.

[02:07:48]

And although these women going missing weren't linked to Sowell yet, there were other cases at the time that were clearly linked to him. But how fun were being fully dismissed by police. Right. So here's an example.

[02:08:00]

On December 8th, 2008, a bleeding woman literally runs up to a police car and tells police that Anthony Sowell asked her if she wanted to have a beer with him. And when she said no, he punched her, choked her and tried to rip off her clothes.

[02:08:13]

Oh, my God. Police went to Soul's home, arrested him. However, police later said no charges were filed because the woman didn't want to talk to detectives.

[02:08:22]

Oh, my God.

[02:08:23]

I'm like, she's covered in blood. She already told you what happened? I understand. Like, it would be helpful to have somebody like, you know, recount things, but, like, this person has been traumatized, probably doesn't have a great experience with police for obvious reasons. And now you're demanding she, like, walk you through this all over again. It's it's just infuriating how often this guy just gets off the hook because.

[02:08:45]

Yeah, because situations like this. Yeah.

[02:08:49]

So however, while these women were being attacked and some obviously murdered, tragically, in the meantime, Sohail had joined an online dating service and his biography on the website reveal, like his profile reveal that he was a master looking for a submissive person to train, which like that's not what you're doing now, but that's not what this is like.

[02:09:13]

Not like the other. That one really, really, really awful one. Earlier when he went up behind someone and said like like really demeaning to her and like, yeah, that was not a consensual experience. No, no, no, no.

[02:09:27]

You're not like he's making it come off as like a BDM like relates like partnership.

[02:09:31]

And it's like that's not what he has been really fucking insulting to the BDM. It is. I mean it is. I can't imagine like the only time you're ever like anyone's ever hearing about this kind of stuff is just through, like serial killers. I mean, anyway, it's just an extra kick in the crotch to them. But OK, so he's full blown lying.

[02:09:50]

But yeah, he's making up some excuse as to what he's doing, did he. And we know if he legitimately thought that he was doing that or.

[02:09:59]

No, I don't think so. I think he was trying to find a way to, like, get people to come over. He was always, like, making up lies about like, hey, I've beer.

[02:10:07]

Hey, I have shelter for you.

[02:10:08]

Hey, I have oh, I don't know. Yeah, OK. I just and I can't say for sure. Just wanted to confirm that he knew what he was up to. But also I'm assuming he knew what he was up to. Master manipulator.

[02:10:19]

So yeah. So meanwhile his house was the site of regular neighborly cookouts. Neighbors would come to play chess and drink together and hang out. And during these party months, two women came forward saying they had gone to his place for a good time. But then things turned violent. One of the women was Tonya Doss, his across the street neighbor who he had dated for a while. And she would later say in interviews and to police that Sowell attacked her on April 21st of 09, saying he slapped her, choked her and forced her to strip naked.

[02:10:49]

After he ran out of crack, she curled up on a bed and eventually he left her alone and she was able to get away.

[02:10:55]

And it was around this time that Sowell also started using alcohol and drugs to lure women with criminal pasts to his house.

[02:11:03]

So typically, these encounters began unthreatening threateningly, but they would turn violent once the beer and drugs ran out or if they asked him any question that he thought was he didn't like or, you know, I mean, anything, anything, anything, anything.

[02:11:16]

You're not safe, right? Like there's nothing. You're not doing anything wrong. He's just picking and choosing something he couldn't very well have just been like, I don't like your fucking face and just. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[02:11:26]

So he was just kind of finding an excuse to, you know, go off the rails on September 22nd of 09. So well, persuades a woman named Letendre Billups to come over, but he becomes angry.

[02:11:38]

He hits her, chokes her and rapes her as she passes out. Fortunately, she is able to get away after promising him fifty dollars, she said. I'm going to go get fifty dollars. I'll bring it to you and I won't tell police about the incident. Of course, he lets her go when she goes to police to tell her about tell them about the incident. OK, good. Yeah. However, progress with the case was slow because according to police, the victim was difficult to reach.

[02:12:01]

Oh my God.

[02:12:02]

I don't even know what that means. What? OK, yeah. Next.

[02:12:07]

It just so easily all of these are so easily dismissed. And this is I mean, how many times has somebody come up to police and said, this guy has raped me?

[02:12:15]

And it's like, well, I won't let him go home again? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

[02:12:21]

It's infuriating during this time.

[02:12:24]

However, on October 20th, 09, an ambulance is sent to Sowell's house after neighbors called 911 to report a naked woman falling from a second story window.

[02:12:36]

Sowell tells rescue workers he and the woman had been doing drugs and that she accidentally fell out of the window. But EMS takes the woman to the hospital and calls police who go to his home. But Sowell has fled.

[02:12:48]

He is not there. Convenient, very convenient.

[02:12:51]

Police then go to the hospital where the woman refuses to talk to investigators. And then nine days later, October 29th, police finally get a warrant. They enter Sowell's house. And this is when all of this comes full circle to the beginning of these notes. As we've already covered, in 07, one woman had gone missing. In 08, four women had disappeared. And then throughout 09, Sowell had murdered another six women who.

[02:13:16]

So all of this kind of culminates in their, you know, finally making it into his home and seeing the carnage and everything that he's done. Some of the women that he had murdered, the six women that he had murdered throughout 2009, six in one year are as follows. Kim Wilesmith was last seen January 17th of 09. She never married. She was actually the only one of his 11 victims who didn't have children and friends, described her as the artsy type.

[02:13:43]

Then there was Nancy Kobs, 44, who was last seen on April 24th, 09, before she developed an addiction to drugs, she had been an active mother of three children. Amy Hunter was last seen in spring of 09 and in her final years, according to her family, she had felt overcome by life's troubles and had sort of retreated into a house near where Sowell lived. Then there was Janice Webb, who was last seen in June of 09.

[02:14:06]

And before 48 year old Janice had developed her crack cocaine addiction. She was known as the family jokester. She loved to play pranks and she loved being with family. And then there was a Fortson who was last seen on June 3rd of 09.

[02:14:21]

Her biological mother struggled with the drug addiction and her father suffered from alcoholism, according to friends. And she'd already kind of had a tough life and was a mother of three and was found dead at only 31 years old.

[02:14:33]

And finally, there was Diane Turner, who was last heard from in September of 2009. She was 38 and she was the last of the victims to go missing. And her remains lingered unidentified in the Cuyahoga County County coroner's office the longest. It took more than a month to confirm her identity because she had been so removed from her family, like her connections with her family were pretty tattered. And so it took them a while to find someone to identify the body.

[02:14:59]

So all these women's bodies, all of the above were found that one day and Anthony Sowell's house either in the house or buried nearby in the backyard in shallow graves. And just as a refresher, that means they found 11 bodies on his property that day. And this is in addition to all of the women who had escaped and, you know, said they had been raped and attacked.

[02:15:22]

So the 11 were just the ones that he had murdered and. My God, that, you know, isn't even part of the bigger or that's only a part of the bigger count of his crimes. So two days later, October 31st, he they finally found and arrested so well, he was charged with 85 counts of murder, rape and kidnapping. Wow. I know.

[02:15:45]

It's like when you hear it all kind of together, like 11 bodies, and it's just outrageous.

[02:15:50]

Oh, my God. He pleaded first. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but then he later changed his plea to simply not guilty. OK, on July 22nd of 2011, he was convicted on all but two counts against him, including the murders of the 11 women whose bodies were found in his house.

[02:16:08]

And on August 10th, jurors recommended the death penalty. And on August 12th, the judge upheld this recommendation for the death penalty.

[02:16:15]

Wow. However, so he had served 10 years until last month, February of 20, 21, when he died of an undisclosed terminal illness.

[02:16:24]

OK, so as he was on death row, he died. He served 10 years and he died last month. So it's kind of coming back into the news a little bit because of his death. Got it. OK. Wow.

[02:16:35]

That is the story. It is heinous. Horrendous. There are a couple of documentaries, if you're interested. There is the one I mentioned the vice documentary. And that one's good because, I mean, I really like that one because the guy who covers it talks about how he grew up in Cleveland. He's black. His parents were police officers during this time. And so he is a very, like, unique connection to the area, to the family time, the time, the families that even the police investigation, because he, you know, has family in the force.

[02:17:08]

So it's very interesting, like how he gets to approach it from such a personal standpoint. So I really like that. It's on YouTube. It's called the Cleveland Strangler.

[02:17:17]

I was going to say I really I always love a good vice documentary. They do them so well.

[02:17:21]

I know they do. And like I know they get a bad rap and sometimes I like it's just like an eye roll because they're like, we're so edgy. Yeah. But I think like this, they do have a great team of, you know, editors and researchers. And this was definitely really well done.

[02:17:36]

And so I definitely recommend and you know, he talks one on one a lot with the kids and parents and friends of the victims, which is really cool to see, like. Just like to humanize them a bit, you know, because obviously we see victims like who are sex workers, who have drug addictions and oftentimes by the media, they get kind of lumped into just kind of a dismissed yeah. Group who aren't taken as seriously.

[02:18:01]

But it's it's cool to be able to see, you know, their backgrounds, their families and learn more about them.

[02:18:07]

So there's that. And there's also one called Unsign. So definitely if you want to learn more, check it out. Wow. That was a really heavy one.

[02:18:15]

But who a lot. Yeah. My bad.

[02:18:20]

No, I mean, needed to be told but wow. That was I was a tall order.

[02:18:26]

That was a roughie that was, you know, one of the worst serial killers in Cleveland history.

[02:18:32]

Well, I'm glad I didn't tell that at our Cleveland show. Can you imagine?

[02:18:36]

And I told the torso killer and like, obviously that was heinous, but like. Yeah, it's thank God I didn't do this. Thank God when, you know, we pick up live shows again, we are not trying to tell horrific stories on stage and then expect positive prayers.

[02:18:54]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What time exactly? Oh my gosh.

[02:18:59]

Anyway, I don't know, I, I don't know.

[02:19:03]

So that's that, that's on that. Thanks for listening.

[02:19:07]

Thank you. And you can check out all of our stuff at and that's where you can follow our Sociales, our podcast. Please follow our Patreon. Always good stuff there. And as of tomorrow, Christine and I are opening many, many, many fan mail packages and oh, I'm so excited we're finally getting to them over Zoome.

[02:19:28]

So we're just a just a note that where those will be up soon on Patreon. So yes.

[02:19:34]

And Eva and Jess have come up with some really fun stuff that they do. I mean there's obviously the patron newsletter which is really fun and has some like fun perks and stuff.

[02:19:43]

And then on one as well, we're doing on Wednesdays, we're doing like alternate titles to episodes that Eva came up with, but that didn't get picked. And people can vote on their favorites or add their own titles they come up with, which I always have a really fun time reading. And then every Saturday now Emini are giving three clues about the next day's topic to see if anyone can guess kind of what we're covering.

[02:20:06]

So a lot of fun stuff. Sneak peek Saturdays as I sneak peek. I'm trying to coin it, but I think that's I think that's what it's called.

[02:20:14]

So good job figure. Well, do you want to shout out those places people can donate? Oh, absolutely.

[02:20:19]

Great idea. And then we will also put put those in the show notes as well. Oops.

[02:20:26]

Sorry, sorry. I know you probably already close out of your notes, but I don't know why I never do that. And today I think I was just like overwhelmed that I just hit like quit quits pages. Escape, escape, escape, escape.

[02:20:40]

So yes, I will definitely. Oh this is not this is my beach. To Sandy notes. It says bagel shop.

[02:20:46]

So we get it. Christine also has a show called Biju Sandigo. Listen to it.

[02:20:49]

And none of them are well organized or, you know, professionally monitored or taken care of.

[02:20:57]

OK, so here we go here a couple sources in my long rant.

[02:21:01]

So there is the Asian Americans advancing justice, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Fund in Atlanta that has a fund dedicated to helping people in the Atlanta area.

[02:21:13]

Asian-Americans in the Atlanta area, as well as the Community Action Fund, which is set up by hate, is a virus. And you can donate to both of those. They're still trying to reach their goal. So definitely worth checking out. There are also several go fund me as I think go fund. We actually created their own fund called like Stop Agent Hate. That is definitely worth checking out. And then a website that I really recommend and then I've bookmarked myself is called Stop AAPI Hate Dotcom.

[02:21:38]

And there you can not only learn more about the movement, but also report any hate incidents you might witness or, you know, seeing your day to day life that are that need to be spoken up about. So we'll put that in the show notes. But otherwise, thanks for listening and checking that out.

[02:21:52]

And let's see, let's do what we can do. Yeah. For the world, because it needs some help. A lot of help. All right, everyone.

[02:22:00]

And now I'm hitting escape and that's why we escape.

[02:22:06]

I was trying to escape the show.

[02:22:08]

It wouldn't let me drink.