Episode 318: Your Urban Legends LXXIV (with Corinne Caputo)

Did you know, a ghost bird? Just a dinosaur. We’re joined by writer and comedian Corinne Caputo to explore your creepiest stories, get her opinion on Team Ignorant, and Zombie Jurassic Park.

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of suicide, fire, death, arranged marriage, dueling, and animal death. 

Guest

Corinne Caputo is a writer and comedian in New York City. She is the co-host of Pale Blue Pod, an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe, but want to be its friend. Most recently she penned the three episode comedic radio play, Space Trash, for Yale’s Summer Cabaret, about three female astronauts past their prime. Her first book, a self ­help parody titled How To Success: A Writer’s Guide To Fame and Fortune was published in March of 2017 by Chronicle Books.

Housekeeping

- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends Games and Feelings! Now weekly!

- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books

- Call to Action: Games and Feelings is an advice podcast about games. Join Question Keeper Eric Silver and permanent guest Jasper Cartwright weekly as they recommend games, answer advice questions, and play whatever quizzes Eric comes up with. New episodes every Friday!

Sponsors

- Calm is the #1 app to help you reduce your anxiety and stress and help you sleep better. Get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at calm.com/spirits

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Find Us Online

If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at http://spiritspodcast.com/books.


Transcript

AMANDA:  Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.

JULIA:  And I'm Julia.

AMANDA:  And this is episode 318. Your Hometown Urban Legends with a first for Spirits. Listen, New Year, new us, Corrine Caputo, welcome to Urban legends and Spirits.

CORINNE:  Hi, thank you both for having me. I'm so excited.

JULIA:  We're excited to have you. I think the first question that we have to ask you is, ghosts?

AMANDA:  Opinions?

CORINNE:  Oh my god, I am someone who is obsessed with hearing anyone's ghost story. Like that's kind of my go-to icebreaker question for a new person is like so have you ever seen a ghost? 

AMANDA:  Oh, damn.

CORINNE:  I am someone who never ever wants to see them. 

JULIA:  Okay.

CORINNE:  But I want to hear every story and I am deeply scared of them. So this is—

JULIA:  Great.

CORINNE:  —recently, I—not recently, in the last few years, I had a roommate who was like, what can they do? Like what do they do? They just there? And I was like—

JULIA:  Oh no.

CORINNE:  And for that— in that moment, It really suits me, where was like, oh my God, you're so right. They're just there, they're just hanging out in the corner. I'm like afraid they're gonna kill me. Like as a kid I was—would run through the house, if it's dark, and like slam into walls and whatever's going on. Whatever will get me into like my bed the fastest. 

AMANDA:  Sure.

CORINNE:  But I do have an obsession with them. I did a web series a few years ago, about girls getting hit by a car and dying in New York and now they're ghosts. 

JULIA:  Whoa. 

CORINNE:  So I have— I love them. I got married about a month ago.

JULIA:  Congratulations. 

CORINNE:  Oh my god. Thank you. And in my vows, I talked about how I was dressed like a ghost in my white gown.

JULIA:  That's true. That is true. If you died that day, that'd be the outfit you were in for eternity.

CORINNE:  Exactly. And I did include in my vows, that I vouched never die.

JULIA:  Okay. Cool.

AMANDA:  I love that Goodstart.

JULIA:  Set the expectations high.

CORINNE:  If I'm gonna claim to be a ghost, I have to also pad it with like, just kidding, just kidding.

AMANDA:  Now Corinne you also got married on the Staten Island Ferry.

CORINNE:  I did.

AMANDA:  Which is not only an incredible flex but kind of, I mean, kind of a risky scenario for becoming a ghost. I'm glad Julia—it was at my wedding party. I'm glad Julie you didn't bring up to me, the fact that I was dressed as a ghost on my wedding day because I would have been pretty freaked out about like a freak accident.

JULIA:  Well Amanda, I did tell you that you looked like a fake court queen.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  So I think that was my way of kind of pushing that into the agenda. 

AMANDA:  Thank you.

CORINNE:  We did get married on the ferry and there was a—a strange guy. I—I thought there would be strangers at the wedding, like of course we're on a mass transit.

JULIA:  Sure. 

CORINNE:  We tried to like go against traffic on an off-peak time. There was a guy who like joined the group, everyone thought he was like an uncle or grandfather or someone. We didn't know him at all. 

AMANDA:  Ohh.

CORINNE:  And he's in like all the photos.

JULIA:  Incredible.

AMANDA:  Wow.

CORINNE:  And he's truly the spookiest looking person you can ever—I will send you a picture after this.

JULIA:  Please.

AMANDA:  Yes.

CORINNE:  He looks exactly like Willem Dafoe.

JULIA:  Oh, are you sure it wasn't Wilem Dafoe though?

CORINNE:  I know [3:26] as soon as I—

AMANDA:  Are we sure?

CORINNE:  I was like, he would just join a wedding party.

JULIA:  He could [3:30]

CORINNE:  He also set himself in the center of things. So like he is the first face I see as the bride. It was so funny and so weird. And like so much of wedding planning and the actual wedding is like surrendering to like the chaos of it. 

JULIA:  Hmm.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  And we were just like, okay, this man's in all the photos, he's wearing like a little heart sticker that he got from my mother-in-law. It was just like—

AMANDA:  Wow.

JULIA:  That's beautiful.

CORINNE:  [3:52] part of the gang. He filmed the whole thing. I'll never see that video. 

AMANDA:  Wow.

JULIA:  No you won't. A 100% [3:58]

CORINNE:  I will never see that. So he could have been a ghost to me.

JULIA:  Could have been.

AMANDA:  You know, I was thinking recently about—there have been a few times in public where like somebody was like, oh, or like I took a photo of people I'm like, oh, that's really nice photo, do you want it, or like I was abroad and was like okay, take a picture of me I don't have a camera phone. Like can you email it to me? And those are lovely stranger interactions. But I do like to think of myself after death, like haunting people's I would say family photo albums.

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  Probably just like cloud storage. Just like photos of me in the background of their like lovely weekend in New York, or their you know, like daring you know, day in Boston and I'm just like there's mid iced coffee sip in the background.

CORINNE:  Yeah, that's the dream. And like, like the future goes on, everything looks like the Jetsons. And then I'm here in like my 2022 outfit and they're like, she's such a spooky ghost.

AMANDA:  Incredible.

JULIA:  [4:49] that's great. 

AMANDA:  Well, Corinne, speaking of spooky things that are also lovely. You are the co-host of Multitude's newest member show Pale Blue Pod, which is all about becoming friends with the universe. Can you tell us a little bit about the show, and how it's been going so far?

CORINNE:  It is. It's been going really great. Moiya, Dr. Moiya Mctier, an astrophysicist is a friend of mine. We met because I used to host a comedy show about space in New York. And she was a recurring guest because she's just so easy to get along with and then hang. 

AMANDA:  Yes.

CORINNE:  The show sadly ended during COVID or because of COVID. And then she reached out to me over the summer and was like, what do you think of Co-hosting a space podcast together? And I immediately said, yes, had no idea what it's about. But I was great. 

JULIA:  Great. 

CORINNE:  And then we had our first meeting. She's like, I thought it would be like, asking more questions [5:30] curious. And I was like, no, I'm all in. Like, let's go. 

JULIA:  Yeah. I get to make a podcast with you. Excellent.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  Let's go. And I have a history of space. I used to teach at a Space Center when I was living in New York. And that was like my day job. And it was the craziest day job you could have, but it was so fun. So I have a love, a deep love for space. But I am very afraid of it. It's like staring at the ocean for too long. And you're like, oh, I don't know about this.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  Yeah. 

CORINNE:  But Moiya has been really great at kind of, you know, holding my hand and explaining these things to me. And so much of fear is like the absence of like knowledge about this thing. So her kind of breaking it down into these manageable bites is so soothing.

JULIA:  Yeah, as anyone who's listened to our advice from folklore episodes, you're very familiar with Dr. Moiya McTier, and she's the most soothing person I feel like I ever met in the history of anyone. 

CORINNE:  She's so excited. 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

CORINNE:  So I'm like—

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  I'm so willing to like match her level of like, oh, let's go. This is amazing.

JULIA:  Absolutely.

AMANDA:  Incredible. Well, I am so eager to get your perspective and your feedback on some of these hometown urban legends that our listeners have written in with.

JULIA:  Yeah, Amanda, I'm happy to go first. I don't think I've read this one. It's been in my part of the inbox for a while now. And it is related to our call for stories about haunted hotels that we did a while back.

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  Corinne, have you ever stayed in a hotel that you were like, this is definitely haunted?

CORINNE:  Okay, I'm a— yes. I went to the Austin Film Festival three years ago. I didn't stay at the hotel Waiki—I don't know what I can think of the name of it. But there's like this one hotel where like most of the speaking takes place in, and that one is like famously haunted. So I was definitely googling it beforehand, just to like, be like, who am I looking out for at the top of the staircase, like who's ghost?

JULIA:  Was it the Driskill Hotel?

CORINNE:  Yes, it's the Driskill. That's it. They felt like it could have been haunted, but I feel like anything with like ornate carpet could be haunted.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Like, it's kind of quiet in here, and there's molding.

CORINNE:  Yeah, yeah.

AMANDA:  Like I have lived in such shitty apartments.

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  That I'm like, if you have crown molding in your house like I think you have a ghost behind there. 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

CORINNE:  I—When I moved into this apartment, we like made a joke with the landlord or I made a joke that was like, is it haunted? Because it's like the top floor of this, like, 100-year-old building? 

JULIA:  Oh, 100%.

CORINNE:  And she was like, no, but if you're interested in that I have something else. And I was like, huh?

JULIA:  That is my kind of like landlord. Oh my god.

CORINNE:  I freaked out. I was like, actually I need you to tell me there's no such thing as ghosts. And this is not haunted. And nothing's ever been haunted and this is fine.

JULIA:  I—I'm not pro-landlord here on this podcast. But if I was renting a place, and I was like, Is this place haunted? And they had an option where I could check, yes, haunted, please.

CORINNE:  Yes haunted.

JULIA:  100% would be like, thank you for offering that.

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  We need—we need like a haunted roommates.com. Like, I think that's great. I think it's saving money because there are people who would absolutely be interested in renting a haunted place.

JULIA:  Also as long as that ghost was paying for part of the rent. I'm fine with that.

CORINNE:  You got a cut.

AMANDA:  Exactly.

CORINNE:  You got like a steep discount?

JULIA:  Yes. 

AMANDA:  100%. Well, Julia, tell us about this haunted hotel.

JULIA:  Right. So this is from Patrick, and he titled it  “You asked for haunted hotels, and I work in a big one!”

AMANDA:  Yay. 

JULIA:  He says  “I was just listening to the urban legends episode three or four where you asked for more haunted hotel stories, and I've got some good stuff for y'all. So I work at the Omni Homestead Resort, which is America's oldest resort and has existed in some capacity since 1766”

AMANDA:  Damn. That's like, that's like roll old. 

CORINNE:  That's very old.

JULIA:  As Patrick points out “that's older than the country by 10 years and it has seen some serious history”. 

AMANDA:  Wow. 

JULIA:  “The only story that the hotel actively shares is one about a woman who was left waiting in her hotel room on her wedding day” again, Corinne, going back to the fact that you were dressed as ghost. 

CORINNE:  It's a haunted day.

JULIA:  Oh my god. It's so haunted.

AMANDA:  It is.

JULIA:  “And he never showed up, so she, you know, did herself in” is the way that Patrick describes it. “Supposedly, she's seen on the 14th floor, but I haven't spoken with anyone who's actually seen her. That's not to say that the place isn't hella haunted, though because it absolutely is. I'll share my experiences first and then get a few from some co-workers. I actually worked here for a summer in college as a culinary intern. This would have been the summer of 2013. I had two real encounters that summer that literally changed me into a believer. For the first encounter, I was working in the main kitchen doing prep work for the dinner shift. A Co-worker was prepping vegetables in an area around the back end of the kitchen. He left to go use the restroom. Now the area he was working in was only accessible by walking around a large vegetable walk-in and past all the other cooks. He had been gone for about maybe 10 minutes or so when I heard a loud crash from his prep area. When we went to go look, one of the trays of chopped vegetables had been tossed a solid five feet from the table.”

AMANDA:  No!

JULIA:  “There was no way for anyone to have done it unnoticed. But none of us had seen a thing.” 

AMANDA:  All those minced carrots on the floor. 

CORINNE:  Oh my god.

AMANDA:  Terrible.

CORINNE:  That's a lot of labor to just toss away. 

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

JULIA:  My god. Yeah. This is also a great moment Corinne, where we can ask you probably the longest-running question of our urban legends episodes, which is if you hear a loud or creepy noise—

CORINNE:  Oh my god.

JULIA:  —in the middle of the night, do you ignore it and hope that nothing happens? Or do you go and investigate?

CORINNE:  This is such a challenging question because it really—there's a lot of dependencies. So if I hear noise in the middle of the night, and it's not in the three o'clock hour, then I'm more willing to check it out. But I've decided like, and I think a lot of people, that's like witching hour. So I'm like—

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  I will not be out of my bed from 3 am to 4 am. Like I am in bed.

AMANDA:  True. 

CORINNE:  But a lot of the times I'll be woken up by a noise, and then I'll realize how badly I need to go to the bathroom. So then I'm like, well, I don't know if I can fall back asleep like this. And it's scarier to be awake, so maybe I should just like make a run for it. Go to the bathroom, run back, which is often what I do. And then my heart rate is at like 400 beats a minute. And then you know, it sends me into an anxiety spiral of like, I'm not healthy enough. I'm not doing whatever. And then you fall back asleep and you forget you were haunted at all. We also have squirrels living in our attic, or they're just running on the roof. I don't know. So I'm often woken up by like, little creatures making noises. And I have to hope that it's an animal and not a ghost.

JULIA:  Okay, alright. 

AMANDA:  Yeah. At least you have a plausible excuse.

JULIA:  Right.

AMANDA:  Where you hear something you're like must be the squirrels.

CORINNE:  That would be a squirrel.

AMANDA:  And then you know, your brain knows how to categorize. 

CORINNE:  Yes, exactly. Somebody was like, well, I hope it's not something worse. And I was like, what would be worse, like don't tell me that.

JULIA:  A larger animal, a raccoon perhaps.

CORINNE:  Yeah, exactly.

JULIA:  We're often like, kind of struck by in stories that our listeners send us in. They'll be like, yeah, you know, I saw a shadowy figure with glowing red eyes staring at me from my bedroom door. So I turned over and hit my head under the pillow and just like stayed there until morning. And I'm like, what, what? You just have ignored it and hoped it went away. But our editor Eric is very pro, as we call it team ignorant, which is if I'm not looking at it, it might not still be there.

CORINNE:  That I—I still sleep like this, but especially as a kid, I would sleep with the blanket over my head and only my face is showing. So at least my ears were covered because I was very afraid of like, I don't know, a ghost getting in through my ears.

AMANDA:  Fair. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  We haven't investigated that. But it is—it is an entry point.

CORINNE:  But it was like if it can't see it, then this is not a threat. 

AMANDA:  Alright.

JULIA:  That's true. Famously, Catholics believe that's how the Virgin Mary was impregnated. So maybe [13:15] 

CORINNE:  Maybe I heard that as a kid. 

JULIA:  Maybe you're bringing that energy.

AMANDA:  Yeah. And you were like, no, I can't get pregnant or haunted if my ears are covered. 

CORINNE:  And I was like, oh, okay, I'll just plug up my ears. 

JULIA:  Hmm. Yeah, yeah. There you go, that makes sense. Continuing on with Patrick's story. So “now the second encounter requires a little bit of information about the building itself. The current main building of the hotel was built in 1901 after a fire burned down the original building”. Already passed.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Classic. Yeah.

JULIA:  Already not a good sign, you know.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  “When it was built, a secondary hallway behind the main areas was built for staff use. These hallways are solid, concrete, and creepy enough in their own but that wasn't what spooked me. I was walking through one of the hallways to cut across the building as I headed back to my housing building. This was somewhere between 1 and 2 am as we'd had an event that ran late. As I rounded the corner, I saw a man that I thought was a maintenance worker walking at the end of the hallway. He didn't seem to notice me and I was really tired. So I didn't feel like talking anyway. We walked in the same direction for a few feet. And then he turned and walked through a solid concrete wall.”

AMANDA:  Nooo.

CORINNE:  No. [14:27]

JULIA:  “I booked it out of the building. I later learned that there used to be a doorway there for an office that was converted into storage, and that door hadn't existed for at least 40 years”. Incredible. I love the trope of just like ghosts are interacting with floor plans that used to exist that don't exist anymore.

CORINNE:  That's so funny.

JULIA:  And that's why they walk through walls. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  That's my favorite theory of all time when it comes to ghosts.

AMANDA:  Yeah, there are patterns that are haven't been updated to match the noose around. 

JULIA:  Exactly, exactly. So Patrick continues. “I came back this past January to be a supervisor for the front desk. A few months in, one of our night auditors moved to another state and as one of the only people who had worked that job at other hotels, I started covering a few nights a week. When I tell you I experienced something pretty much every audit shift, I promise I am being 100% sincere. The most common thing is the Sunday of footsteps on the floor above the desk, despite the section being only office space and always empty overnight.”

AMANDA:  Dang.

JULIA:  “I always regularly see and hear the legs of a person coming down the stairs, but the legs always vanish before a full body gets into view.”

AMANDA:  Oh no. [15:47]

CORINNE:  That's so spooky. 

JULIA:  Where's the rest of it? Ooh. “The footsteps sometimes continue down the Great Hall, which is extra creepy because that means they walk right in front of my desk. I've also had a pine cone thrown at me that I have no clue where it came from.”

CORINNE:  What?!

AMANDA:  Alright, that one might be a squirrel.

JULIA:  [16:09]

CORINNE:  That has happened to me, but it was a squirrel.

JULIA:  Hmm. Yeah, squirrels like, get out of here, this my house. “As for coworkers, one of the security guys walked past a bookshelf that was perfectly normal. When he came back the other direction, maybe five minutes later, every book had been stacked in a spiral.” That's some poltergeist shit.

CORINNE:  I don't like that. 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

AMANDA:  Wow. Shapes really take it to another creepy level.

CORINNE:  Absolutely. It's like a summoning, it feels like a [16:36]

JULIA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  Like it's too intentional.

AMANDA:  Yeah. And it's a design.

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  Like a intelligent mind has been like let me build this shape. Like those hummingbirds that build like really geometric nests. Like a little too much for me. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Yeah, I was—I was gonna say like, it'd be one thing if it was like a chaotic mess 5 minutes later like someone just messed with it.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Right.

JULIA:  The fact that they created. That's any poltergeists.

AMANDA:  Exactly. That's basic haunting, that's mid.

JULIA:  Yeah. But like the shape, Amanda like you said brings it to a new level.

AMANDA:  Damn.

JULIA:  “The woman working the concierge desk got a call from a kid that said his room's toilet was overflowing. She sent maintenance up to look into it and it was discovered that the room was in perfect condition. No one had been checked into it for days and the name on the caller ID wasn't in the system.”

AMANDA:  No. What?!

CORINNE:  Wait, do we think that's a prank call, or the call was coming from inside the hotel?

JULIA:  Well so the hall if it was coming from inside the hotel would have come up on their system in the caller ID.

AMANDA:  Right.

CORINNE:  Of course.

JULIA:  So it was just a random number. It might have been like someone was able to call from the outside or something like that. But I don't know. 

CORINNE:  I just hate that a kid did it.

JULIA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  That's a high-effort prank though. 

AMANDA:  Yes, to like spoof the caller ID like, do kids even know about caller ID? I don't even know if that would be a thing.

CORINNE:  That's a good question.

JULIA:  Yeah, I don't think that's a thing anymore. Is it? 

CORINNE:  I did.

AMANDA:  Damn.

CORINNE:  My phone can tell me when spam is calling. 

CORINNE:  Oh yeah. Right.

JULIA:  So the kids can figure out how to game that system then we're fine.

AMANDA:  Dang.

JULIA:  Patrick finishes up with “anyway, I love my job, but the place is absolutely haunted. It's got a really fascinating history, and I highly encourage looking it up. I hope you'll enjoyed this rambling mess of an email. Love the show and wish you all the best, Patrick.”

AMANDA:  Thanks, Patrick. 

JULIA:  That was great. I love that multiple people have stories there. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  You fully saw a man walk through a wall, so that's pretty cool. And the I will just continue picturing the image of the bodyless legs coming down the staircase and then walking right past your desk. Terrifying. 

CORINNE:  That is so creepy. I don't like that at all. 

JULIA:  No, it's not a good time. Imagine first off working nights and then also being like, yep, I saw some legs and then they disappear.

CORINNE:  I could never. Oh my god to be working during the creepiest time, probably with the least amount of staff you'll ever have.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  And then the most amount of activity—paranormal activity is like really not cool.

JULIA:  No, it's a bad time. It's a bad time. Shout out to the people who work [18:57] shifts like by themselves, because I simply couldn't. 

AMANDA:  And shout out to Patrick for saying that he had experience working night audits because I would simply lie and be like, no idea how to do that. Sorry. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Couldn't take the night shift. 

JULIA: Oh no.

CORINNE:  Possibly.

AMANDA:  I think possibly. As a kid, I said I didn't know how to vacuum. My parents laughed in my face. And I was like, I'm sorry, I simply can't vacuum, I don't know what you mean.

JULIA:  Couldn't possibly know how to vacuum. You never taught me

AMANDA:  Could possibly learn. Am I an advanced student, doesn't matter. Couldn't possibly learn. 

CORINNE:  I don't know how to do that. 

AMANDA:  Well, Julia, believe it or not, I also have a story about a conspirator who did an internship at a haunted hotel. 

JULIA: Really?

AMANDA:  But first, I'm going to need to grab a refill. Let's go.

[theme]

JULIA:  Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. First I want to thank our newest patrons, Anna, Kadda, Minke, Amanda, Maya, Amanda M., and Juliet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on Patreon. You join the ranks of our incredible supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Cicuta Maculata, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Megan Moon, Nathan, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi. And of course our legend-level patrons Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty. And you also the person listening to this right now can join our Patreon at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. If you want more urban legends episodes every month, or if you want to enjoy our new benefits like tarot drawings, bonus video advice podcast, and even more. Check it out at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. I'm gonna make a recommendation for you right now. And it is also our Multitude show of the week, it's Games and Feelings. You've probably heard us talk about Games and Feelings. It is an advice podcast all about games. But exciting news, It's now going weekly. Every week join question keeper Eric Silver as he answers your questions at the intersection of fun and humanity. Also excitingly, Jasper Cartwright, who is an actor, a d&d player, and the host of Three Black Halflings has joined as a permanent guest. Eric, Jasper and various Multitude folks, including myself sometimes are recommending games, answering advice questions, and playing whatever quizzes Eric comes up with. And this weekly schedule also brings back one of my personal favorite shows, which is what's your Favorite Pokemon, And then I say something nice about you, where Eric interviews people about their favorite Pokemon and then says something nice about them. You know, it's—it's all in the name. If you like what you hear and you want to level up your emotional intelligence step, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. A new episodes every Friday. And now let's hear from our sponsors. Listen, some mornings, you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. Or you have a long day of work and there's still so much more to do. Maybe you've been feeling like you just can't catch a break and you never know what kind of day you're going to have. But with Calm, Calm can help you handle every kind of day. Calm helps you stress less, sleep more and live a happier, healthier life. Their guided meditation, sleep stories and relaxing music tracks, and daily movement sessions are all designed to help give you the tools that you need to improve the way that you feel. And over 100 million people around the world use Calm. 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That's blueland.com/spirits. And finally, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are the times where you feel like your best self? Like what are the types of things that help you get there? For me, I feel like my best self when I am well rested, when I can focus on what I need to get done for the day, and when I don't stress about the little stuff. And when you're at your best self, that you can really do these great things. But sometimes life gets you bogged down, or you may feel overwhelmed or like you're not showing up in the way that you want to. And working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of yourself because when you feel empowered, you're more prepared to take on everything that life throws at you. And I know that talking to my therapist once a week really does help me feel like I'm prepared for the things that life is going to throw at me. 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AMANDA:  Alright, folks, we are back. And Corinne, what have you been drinking and enjoying lately up there in Maine?

CORINNE:  Okay, such a fun question. My husband is a former bartender so he really loves mixing cocktails still, which has been so fun. And I got him like a big textbook of like every cocktail for our wedding. And we've been making this—it's almost an Espresso Martini, but it has rum instead of—what does it typically—vodka?

JULIA:  Yeah, it's like a—

AMANDA:  [25:57] Yeah.

JULIA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  But it's so fun and good, and we've been using it. We've been drinking it with decaf coffee this time because we are getting older. 

JULIA:  True.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  [27:07] can't possibly do that. And we have another favorite drink. There's a cocktail bar near—it really close to our house in Portland Maine, called Jewel Box. And they got a James Beard like semi-finalists nomination for like outstanding bar program. We're so excited for them. But they have the best cocktails I've ever had. They sell these bitters called leather bitters. I don't—I don't actually know what's in it. Certainly not leather. But—

AMANDA:  But is it like a muskie kind of like that kind of?

CORINNE:  Yeah. Exactly. So we bought a bottle and have just been like putting it in like whatever we feel like, or he—he does it, I'm not doing any of this. I'm constantly turning to him. And I'm like remind me what I like to drink. But that's been so fun. We love that bar so much.

JULIA:  That sounds incredible. I—finding your local bar that has just the best cocktail. 

CORINNE:  Yes.

JULIA:  It's such a great experience of like moving to a new place.

CORINNE:  It's really made the city feel like more like home. 

JULIA:  Yeah, exactly. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  We moved here during COVID and like it just felt so lonely for so long. And the—it's just nice to have a go-to spot. They don't have any food, like not even nuts or something.

JULIA:  Wow. 

CORINNE:  So we have gotten there.

AMANDA:  [28:14]

CORINNE:  [28:14] like let's have a drink and then we'll like go cook at home. And then we're like one drinking and we're like, let's go out.

JULIA:  We're already partying. 

AMANDA:  I'm not leaving.

JULIA:  Come on, man.

CORINNE:  They're definitely helping stimulate like the Portland economy by getting me in and then being like now you need to eat.

AMANDA:  [28:32]

JULIA:  Extremely so. 

AMANDA:  Also during COVID, a woman-owned brewery opened near my house called to Thalea, which has been getting more and more distribution in the Northeast and I'm so stoked to see.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  I can find it in my local beer distributors now. It's wild.

CORINNE:  I think I've seen it even up here.

JULIA:  Wow.

AMANDA:  Yeah, it's a beautiful branding also, which I really appreciate in my beer, but they have one on top right now. They normally do a lot of like funky beers, sour beers, fruity beers all which I love, but I am at heart like a lager stout Porter girl. And so their chocolate oat stout right now is so good. The tasting notes are bittersweet chocolate caramelized brown sugar and toffee. Which are essentially my three favorite things. 

CORINNE:  That sounds so good. 

AMANDA:  So I am loving that and it's only 5.5%, which for like a dark kind of, you know, very like heavy body beer is nice not to be like hit you over the head with booze. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Well, Amanda, speaking of hit you over the head with booze. I have two—I have a stout and porter recommendation for you specifically. 

AMANDA:  Ooh. 

JULIA:  Of course, it is from Blue Point Brewery. They don't sponsor me, but they should. But the ancho chili stout is like a Mexican hot chocolate stout.

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  Which is out of this world. And they also have the rainbow cookie, Porter. So it's like a little bit of like vanilla, a little bit of chocolate and then it's got that like hint of raspberry in it and it's a tight as hell.

AMANDA:  Incredible. I am—I'm going to see you this weekend. And we're gonna have to go.

JULIA:  Do I have a four-pack already waiting for you? Yes, yes, I do. 

AMANDA:  Yaaay.

JULIA:  True friendship is seeing a beer and buy it for your friends.

AMANDA:  Thank you. Alright, guys, you want to hear about this haunted internship this time in Germany. 

JULIA:  Woo, yes.

CORINNE:  Oh my gosh.

AMANDA:  Let's do it. This comes from Leonie she/her, and it's titled Cordula von Gemen - The Castle Ghost.

JULIA:  Wooo. Castle ghost, castle ghost. We also Corinne like several of our listeners have written us in and being like, oh you know, you know back in the day my family used to own this castle. I'm like excuse me, What? You guys just own a castle?

CORINNE:  Oh my god that's so—how? I didn't know that could be uh—I mean like of course they can be owned, but in my head, they're like—

AMANDA:  Yes.

CORINNE:  Half fictional.

JULIA:  Yup. 

AMANDA:  Exactly.

JULIA:  Will just Europe littered with castles.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Just—all of them just falling apart, but just like littered with castles.

AMANDA:  In Ireland, they'll basically give one to you, as long as you commit to like bringing it up to building standards. So that's our long-term plan for Spirits when we get to 6666 patrons, we are going to buy a castle in Ireland.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  By we, I mean the [30:56]

JULIA:  Amanda is the only one that can do it, because Amanda has citizenship and the rest of us don't, but.

AMANDA:  That's right.

CORINNE:  It's so funny. I was gonna say oh that they wouldn't take me, but I'll try.

JULIA:  [31:05]

AMANDA:  They'll take pretty much anyone to be honest.

JULIA:  Listen, if I get moved to Italy and buy a castle, I will. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  I know. So Leonie says in fact, “hi, everybody. When you talked about listeners living in castles in the last urban legends episode, I took that as my sign to write in.”

JULIA:  Excellent.

AMANDA:  “I apologize in advance for my syntax as English is my second language” Leonie, you're doing great. 

JULIA:  You're doing great.

AMANDA:  “For context. I grew up in a small German town and after graduation, I decided on a voluntary year before going on to become a bookseller.” Based on a cursory Google, this is like a year of volunteer service that you can do in Germany for like places in the—in the country. 

JULIA:  I love that. That sounds great.

CORINNE:  Great.

AMANDA:  Very good. “So I did my volunteer year at a youth center in an old castle. It's over 900 years old and surrounded by a real moat. It is a gorgeous building. And you can find photos by typing" and I'm going to try my best here. Jugendburg Gemen” 

CORINNE:  Oh, good pronunciation. I don't know what I would have said.

AMANDA:  I tried. I tried. It's extremely Castle shaped like you look at it, and you're like, yep, that's an old castle. 

CORINNE:  Yeah, it really is.

JULIA:  Oh, I like the little like, the—the bow. It looks like a top of a chess piece, like a bishop in chess. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  That's exactly what it looks like.

AMANDA:  It's very pretty. So Leonie continues, “we volunteers got to actually live in the castle building during our time there. There were nine of us, all between 18 and 25. So you can imagine the shenanigans we got up to. Our tasks included working with the gardener, the caretaker in the kitchen, housekeeping, and reception. Working at reception sometimes included giving the guests a little tour on the building. Most of our guests are groups of teenagers and young adults on class trips or seminars usually between 15 and 25. That tour will take us around the ground floor through a hidden door into the tower, up the stairs through the attic, to a balcony, and back down again.”

JULIA:  Nice.

AMANDA:  “Before we took the guests through the attic, we would tell them to keep the lights off so as not to disturb the bats. (There were no bats, those lived in the basement) or the ghost.” A lot in this sentence.

JULIA:  There's a ghost.

AMANDA:  “Sometimes volunteers would even sneak into the attic beforehand using a spare key and hide their scratching against wood or rattling chains to scare the guest.”

JULIA:  Kind of mean.

CORINNE:  Oh my god.

JULIA:  A little mean, not gonna lie.

AMANDA:  “And this is the story we told them right before we entered the attic. Around the year 1500, Cordula von Gemen was 14 years old. And since she was her parent's only child, the castle and its ground would be inherited by whoever she ended up marrying. So her parents went to find a fitting husband for her. And they decided on  Count Johann. He was about twice Cordulas age and since dental hygiene wasn't great and life was hard, he was less than attractive.”

JULIA:  Cool, cool.

AMANDA:  “Still Cordula didn't have much of a choice, so she agreed to the match. Now at the time, travel was really hard and took a long time to do. So weddings were stretched out over a whole week before the actual ceremony. So guests will be kept entertained by musicians, storytellers, and acrobats, no matter what time they got there during the week. On the evening before her wedding, Cordula saw a young musician perform, and she fell in love on first sight. Talking to the man, she found out that he reciprocated the feelings.” 

JULIA:  Oh, it's not gonna end up good. 

AMANDA:  I know, not gonna end well. “Cordula went to ask her father to call off the wedding. But before he could even give her an answer, they were interrupted by Count Johann who had overheard their conversation.”

JULIA AND CORINNE: Nooo. 

AMANDA:  “Deeply offended by the thought of being exchanged for a poor common musician, Count Johann challenged the young man to a duel.”

JULIA:  Uh-oh.

AMANDA:  “The duel took place in the courtyard of the castle with Cordula watching from the window of her room in the tower. Count Johann being a nobleman who was trained with weapons, and the young music—musician and being just a commoner, the poor boy didn't stand a chance.”

JULIA:  Yeah.  

AMANDA:  “Seeing her beloved flying, dying in front of the chapel in the courtyard, Cordula was overcome by grief and of course, plummeted herself out the window into the courtyard below. She died in the arms of her beloved.”

JULIA:  Noo, somehow worse.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  I know. “So having died this tragic way, Cordula never got to rest, we told guests. Well, she is still haunting the castle today. Whenever it snows the snow melts a lot faster in some places in the courtyard, forming a line between the tower and the chapel. The door between the staff lunch room and the kitchen would frequently open by itself. Lights flicker, floors creak and groan, sometimes things fall over and doors slam shut without anyone being near. One time the light even flicker while my co-worker was telling this story, giving his listeners a good scare. The staff of the castle talk about and treat Cordula like a friend. Greeting her when these things happen. I've always found that really lovely because Cordula was never hurt or actually scared anyone. She probably is just watching over the castle and the people there. And whenever two or more of us volunteers were away and something fell over. We'd say something like, oh, hi Cordula, it's nice that you're visiting.”

JULIA:  That's got real theater ghost energy. I like that. 

CORINNE:  Yeah, yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah. “Now this is where I have to pop the bubble a little.”

JULIA:  Uh-oh.

AMANDA:  “Cordula von Gemen was a real person, and she was the daughter of the Lord of Gemen around 1500. But she did indeed marry Count Johann in 1492. There wasn't a musician or a tragic love story that we know of. Instead, she lived until 1528.” 

JULIA:  Pretty good. Pretty good.

AMANDA:  Pretty good for those days. Pretty good. “And there are a lot of rational explanations if you want to look for them, for all of those occurrences around the castle. It's a very old building, floors are old, and would just creak and groan with changing temperatures. The wires are old and fail hence flickering lights, and the door of the lunchroom just won't close properly if you don't use enough force. And as for the courtyard, there is a hot water pipe underneath the plaster that explains the melting snow. Still, though, I like to think that Cordula stuck around the castle after her death, watching over her family and her home, listening to us tell the story about her, and carrying on her legacy. This might not be her real story, but I think she enjoys it.”

JULIA:  I like that. 

CORINNE:  I like that. 

AMANDA:  “Stay creepy. Stay cool from Germany, Leone.”

JULIA:  That's really sweet. Yeah, it's kind of sweet in a way like the story is tragic, but at least we know historically, it wasn't as tragic as [36:44]

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  The implication is so, that's something at least.

AMANDA:  Exactly. But I thought because this one was a bit of a you know, a rationally explained urban legend. I do want to give you one that I think there are no explanations for which involves creepy cats.

JULIA:  Oooh.

AMANDA:  Creepy cats. Corinne, any pets in your life—

CORINNE:  Oh my gosh.

AMANDA:  —pet feelings—

JULIA:  Besides the squirrels that are living in your attic.

CORINNE:  Literally, that's my pet right now. [37:10] Like put its paw through the ceiling last winter.

JULIA:  Oh no.

CORINNE:  I don't think it was expecting to see me on the other side but.

JULIA:  Well, you weren't expecting to see it. So I think it was a fair trade you know.

CORINNE:  I am allergic to cats and dogs, but I am very willing to ignore that and get one.

JULIA:  A big mood.

AMANDA:  Yeah. 

CORINNE:  I really want a dog, we can't have them in this apartment. So which is probably for the best as I figure out, if I really can just live off a Benadryl a day, which I don't think anyone should. 

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  But gosh, I would love them. My husband really wants a cat, so we'll see.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Well, that is good to hear. So maybe run the story [37:46] so. This email came in from CeeKay, she/her, who titles it Tabby Twofer. “Hey creepy cool friends, I have a story to share about the newest additions to my family. When my husband and I bought our first house together, one of the first things we did was get a cat. We adopted a little black ball of fluff from our local animal shelter and named him Cecil.”

JULIA:  Nice.

AMANDA:  “Not long after that, a friend of ours picked up a stray kitten off the street, nursed him back to health, and put him up for adoption. So of course Cecil got a brother named Carlos.”

JULIA:  Okay, I see you're—welcome to [38:18] references here.

AMANDA:  Yes, I see it. Okay Julia, how about this one? The next line of the story is, “but Kevin came with a backstory.”

JULIA:  Okay, okay, CeeKay, I see you. I see what's happening here.

AMANDA:  We know, we know. CeeKay signed off by “yes, I did name all my cats after [38:32]”

JULIA:  Incredible. Great.

AMANDA:  CeeKay continues. “My sister works at a veterinary emergency hospital. One day she texted me about a kitten who needed a home and sent me a picture of a sweet little gray tabby. When I went to pick him up, she told me his story. The kitten who we named Kevin has been something of a neighborhood stray. A local kind soul had been feeding him and his brother whenever they came around, and she brought them in when they got hit by a car. Kevin miraculously wasn't hurt, but sadly his brother didn't make it. The local kind soul couldn't take on the vet bills, so she surrendered the surviving kitten to the hospital for adoption. And now comes the creepy part.”

JULIA:  Uh-oh.

AMANDA:  “Cecil, Carlos, and Kevin are all very cuddly kitties, and they often jump up on our bed at night for pets and snuggles. Cats being cats, they're very graceful and quiet about it. But there's no mistaking the feeling of a 10-pound furbaby walking around on your blankets and draping themselves over your feet.”

JULIA:  That's true.

CORINNE:  Oh no. Oh no.

AMANDA:  “The creepy part comes in whenever since we brought Kevin home, hardly a night goes by that I don't feel kitty feets in the bed, only to open my eyes and find no kitty there. A few times in fact, I felt a cat on my feet, and sat up to see all three of my cats sitting outside the bedroom door in the hallway lined up staring at me.”

JULIA:  They're like mom, mom, do you see the ghost cat? Mom, do you see the ghost cat? It's right there. It's right there, mom.

AMANDA:  “If it is a ghost there's nothing malicious about it. I think it might be Kevin's brother looking for his share of Snuggles.”

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  “But because it's hard to pet a ghost, I usually just say, good night, kitty friend, and go back to sleep. Listen, I've been wanting a fourth cat anyway, and the spectral ones are way cheaper to feed.”

JULIA:  That's true. 

AMANDA:  “Stay creepy and cool, CeeKay”.

JULIA:  That's adorable. I love that. I like the fact that you've—you were like, I'm gonna adopt this cat and then you got a ghost cat as a bonus cat. So like, the ideal situation. Awesome.

AMANDA:  Exactly.

JULIA:  A true shock. 

CORINNE:  That's so sweet. That's the sweetest kind of ghost. 

JULIA:  That's true.

AMANDA:  Exactly. Yeah, really ideal scenario. And Corinne, I too am allergic to cats and dogs. I've been getting allergy treatments. It's been working a lot better for dogs and for cats it so sniffily.

CORINNE:  Oh interesting.

AMANDA:  And so I for one would love a ghost cat. No, no bills. When I go away on vacation,  that's fine. 

CORINNE:  Oh, yeah.

AMANDA:  I can just enjoy the sensation of a cat walking around me without, you know, the responsibility or the allergens.

CORINNE:  And that's kind of what I want. I want something to touch and love without—

AMANDA:  Yes.

CORINNE:  —You know, the burden of having a living object in my care.

AMANDA:  Yeah. The reason I know I'm not ready for pets, is I want them to be around for my— you know, like love and affection. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  And to have needs. 

CORINNE:  Yeah, exactly. Totally.

AMANDA:  I know that having my stuffed air bison from Avatar The Last Airbender is the best to right now. 

CORINNE:  Yes, yes. 

JULIA:  You know what, Amanda, just to keep our through line going. I have a very quick one before we wrap up. Alright?

AMANDA:  Yeah, let's do it.

JULIA:  This is from Milo, and Milo sent in two stories. I'm gonna read the latter half and then I'll save the other one for our bonus episode for this month, alright?

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  But Milo wrote in an email that is called “Demon hill or Maybe Fairy hill, who knows!” And then the story that I'll be reading, which is a Haunted hotel, turn to apartments. 

AMANDA:  Yaaay.

CORINNE:  Oooh.

JULIA:  So Milo writes, “I live in a haunted hotel turned apartment building. It was built in 1866 and consists of a large brick building, a tower, and motel-like rows. The tower was the first water tower in the town built in 1877, and both are well known in the town as it's on the main road. The hotel was so popular back in the day that Queen Elizabeth II and every Prime Minister of Canada until about the 70s had stayed here. The motel rows were built in the 70s. And sometime after that, the property was turned into apartments. I have lived here for just over two years, and I knew it was haunted before moving in. To be fair, the building is old. My apartment is located in the space where the ballroom used to be and is super haunted. There is consistently shadows passing me by on the edge of my vision while I'm sitting at my desk working, like people walking past. A ghost messes with my coffeemaker and microwave constantly, making them make weird noises regularly. I'm not sure what it is about the ghost that messes with my water pressure sometimes, but it does.” 

AMANDA:  Listen, we've come up with this theory, that ghosts find pipes really cozy. I think something about them reminds them of death or maybe of life. And so they just hang out in there all the time.

JULIA:  Amanda truly believes that ghosts and bathrooms are like, intrinsically linked, so—

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  I'm—I'm with you 100%.

CORINNE:  That's an amazing thought. I think that's where I want to—to see a ghost the least.

JULIA:  Yes.

AMANDA:  Yes.

JULIA:  In the bathroom. 

AMANDA:  Exactly. And they—they know that.

CORINNE:  They're searching for privacy too. They're like people rolling in here for a few minutes at a time. 

AMANDA:  Yeah. It reminds you of the womb, running water. 

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Listen, every time we talk about this theory, Julia, I come up with more [43:21] 

CORINNE:  More justifications. Alright. I'm willing to believe this.

AMANDA:  Including in many New York City apartments at least, you have the hot pole.

JULIA:  The hot pole.

CORINNE:  The hottest pole of all in time. 

AMANDA:  In your—in your bathroom, in your, you know, bedroom all over the apartment, but the one in the bathroom is—

CORINNE:  Searing.

AMANDA:  The worst. Exactly, because your bathroom is probably small. And you probably kind of brush up against it, probably unclothed.

CORINNE:  And probably, yeah, with like wet skin. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah. It's gonna leave a mark, and it's gonna shake and hiss when you're in the shower. And I have started saying to my hot pole, hello ghost, because I'd rather think of that then it's like a terrible radiator that is, you know, going off without me [43:59]

CORINNE:  [44:00] ghost is warm.

AMANDA:  Yeah, right.

CORINNE:  Because they're ice cold to me.

JULIA:  Well if it's a ghost from hell. So Milo continues. “It's also not just me that has noticed these things either. I share my apartment with my two-year-old little black cat named Nyx.” Again. I'm tying all the stories together here. We got cats and we got hotels.

AMANDA:  Yeah, you are. 

JULIA:  He also says “yes, he is named after the Greek Titan goddess of the night Nyx. We thought he was a girl, and by the time I found out that he wasn't, he'd started responding to the name so I couldn't change it.”

AMANDA:  Aaaah.

JULIA:  “He likes to watch the spooky things that lurk around my apartment and gets upset when they mess with things. They don't seem like angry spirits, and we all kind of exist under the agreement not to be dicks to each other.” Again, politeness is the best way of dealing with a ghost.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  90% of the time as we've talked about on the show. “They don't act like assholes and I don't get out the sage and salt.” Seems like a pretty good deal. “We haven't had any issues yet. My friends are constantly yelling at me, much the way I imagined you guys are right now reading this, about why I'm just okay living in a haunted building. But I mean, like I said at the beginning I'm—I'm pretty spooky on my own. So I guess ghosts aren't that big of a deal. Stay creepy and cool, and thank you for making work a little more enjoyable for me, Milo.” I will say Milo this seems reasonable in terms of levels of haunting where people just ignored it, like this, it seems very average in terms of a haunting.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

JULIA:  We've had people being like, yeah, you know, my child is talking to the ghost, and like sometimes, she just like walks outside with the ghost and disappears and I'm okay with it though because the ghost seems fine. I'm like, it's trying to steal your child. What are you talking about? So this is normal. Milo, you're doing fine. The rest of—so some of you, you know—you know who you are. 

AMANDA:  You're unnoticed, you're unnoticed.

JULIA:  But no, totally normal Milo. Acceptable as long as your cat and you are getting along with these ghosts. Totally fine. Doesn't seem like they're causing any problems really.

CORINNE:  Yeah, I think even I would stay in that place too.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah. I think you may have to attract a ghost cat to your apartment. Maybe that means like putting out things for—for cats, in order to terrorize the squirrels that do live in your attic.

CORINNE:  For them to finally leave me alone.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  [46:17] 

AMANDA:  Maybe some like ghost hawks. We don't talk about ghosts birds very often. We don't.

CORINNE:  I've never imagined a ghost's bird. Wouldn't—

AMANDA:  Right.

CORINNE:  That'd be a dinosaur. That would be

AMANDA:  That's true. That's true.

JULIA:  [46:29]

AMANDA:  It's a long enough timeline.

CORINNE:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  All ghost birds are dinosaurs. Yes.

CORINNE:  But maybe that would do the trick. I feel like one good ghost dinosaur would wipe out all the squirrels.

JULIA:  [46:39]

CORINNE:  It's pretty good, It's pretty good.

JULIA:  Sure would. Just like a small like Velociraptor ghost, just like going and picking them down. 

CORINNE:  Yeah, I'm gonna accidentally like manifest Jurassic Park.

JULIA:  But it's ghost Jurassic Park now.

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  You've taken it to a level that Michael Creighton couldn't have dreamed of.

AMANDA:  You know that movie would be very different if instead of giving the you know Amber preserved mosquito to some scientists, they brought it to a medium.

CORINNE:  Yes. Oh my god.

AMANDA:  You know.

JULIA:  There you go. Or just like a necromancer Amanda, because there's blood in there. So you know—

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  That's true. 

JULIA:  You did—they do a blood ritual. And now you have a zombie velociraptor. And that's all you need.

CORINNE:  That's the remake we need. 

JULIA:  Yeah.

AMANDA:  Yeah.

JULIA:  I'm sure there's like a Sci-fi channel, like very low budget version of what we're talking about here.

AMANDA:  Oh, yeah. No, you're right. The medium would only be asking the mosquito like what its unfinished business was, and then the answer would just be blood and that wouldn't be particularly compelling.

JULIA:  Alright guys, I did just Google zombie Jurassic Park, and there is a movie. Is that a movie or a video game. There's—okay, so I found a movie called the Jurassic Dead. Which I'm gonna read you the description because it sounds buckwild. A cracked scientist, first off, incredible description.

AMANDA:  You can't just say that copywriter.

JULIA:  A crack scientist aligns with the axis of evil. That's a thing already. 

AMANDA:  Yep.

JULIA:  To bring down the US of A with EMP blasts, toxic zombification gas and an unleashing of the ultimate undead killing monstrosity, the Z-Rex as it Zombie Rex. When I hotwired malicious squad and a crew of college hipsters are thrown together to do something about it. Chaotic predator thunder action runs amok.

CORINNE:  Oh my god, and it's [48:24]

JULIA:  Yes, apparently you can watch this on [48:26]

AMANDA:  Oh, not [48:31] is the zombie of platform.

CORINNE:  It really is.

JULIA:  It's got a 2.5 out of 10 on IMDb. And it is—

AMANDA:  At one star. 

JULIA:  Yep. Amanda, it's less than 90 minutes. So I think we have to watch it.

AMANDA:  Listen, what I'm hearing is that there is still opportunity. The market is still open for this film.

CORINNE:  The mar— there's this—we just identified a huge hole in the market. 

JULIA:  Incredible.

AMANDA:  So this is our plan. We get 6666 patrons, we buy a castle, we make it a b&b, we get a revenue stream. We use the money to fund the development of a zombie ghost dinosaur.

JULIA:  Film.

CORINNE:  I think that's so easy to do. 

AMANDA:  Yeah. 10 years tops.

JULIA:  I thought I found another one called Zombie Safari. But now when I google that, it just takes me to a Dallas haunted safari tour. 

AMANDA:  I was gonna say, that sounds like an escape room or something. It really does.

JULIA:  Truly, truly is. Yeah, it's a haunted hayride called Zombie safari.

AMANDA:  [49:26] Well, before we give away all of our excellent business ideas.

JULIA:  I'm sorry. 

AMANDA:  Corrine, why don't you let the people know where they can hear your voice and where they can follow you online?

CORINNE:  Yes. Please check out Pale Bluepod. It comes out every Monday with me and Moiya. And you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a paleblue pod.com That's so fun to just stare at. 

AMANDA:  So beautiful. There are—there are animated emojis. And you can also go to pale bluepod.space

CORINNE:  Yes.

AMANDA:  And that takes you to the same place. That's incredible. 

CORINNE:  Same space that's largely because my understanding of domain names is limited. So one day they will be merged, but for now—

AMANDA:  So cute.

CORINNEpalebluepod.com or dot space, we got them both. Yes, please. Listen, we're having so much fun making it, and we want to bring in every friend of the universe we can. 

JULIA:  I love it. 

CORINNE:  And you can follow me online. I'm really only on Instagram these days. 

JULIA:  Yeah. 

CORINNE:  Which is just corintellectual. So it's just intellectual with a COR at the beginning.

JULIA:  Easy enough to find. There you go. 

CORINNE:  Yeah. And there I am.

AMANDA:  Amazing. Well, thank you for being our inaugural guest.

CORINNE:  I'm thrilled.

AMANDA:  I so appreciate it. And I hope you're going away thinking you know, a little more open-heartedly and curiously about not just the space you live in, but the ghosts that share that space with you.

CORINNE:  Absolutely. I'm bringing in a cat as soon as we hang up.

AMANDA:  Amazing

JULIA:  And as you are considering the ghosts in the space that you currently occupy. Remember as always, to stay creepy.

AMANDA:  Stay cool.

[theme]

AMANDA:  Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.

JULIA:  Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.

AMANDA:  Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.

JULIA:  We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.

AMANDA:  Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.

JULIA:  Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.

AMANDA:  Bye!