Listener Stories: Vol. 113

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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. girl it's march what i know we are a sixth done with this year thank god that's a sixth done oh yeah okay two twelfths yeah you're right yeah yeah yeah yeah very nice eight weeks eight out of 52 would you say like because i feel like there's a point in the year when you realize you're not thinking of the year as like the last i feel like i always hit this point where i'm like oh it's 2026 it's usually by march i feel like march is where it starts to really sink in that we're stuck in in this particular time at this particular moment agreed yeah yeah no 2026 uh it's starting to feel that way i think i um i'm almost there so maybe by actual march because we're obviously recording this in advance that's right yes we're still in the thick of not understanding our time and place in the universe right now so bear with us please as we read you these listener tales yeah yeah thank you to everybody who wrote something in whenever you chose to could have been yesterday could have been nine years ago um no but that's that's the fun roulette of this particular game we do we'll never we'll never know but um luckily we did uh we reached out to patreon uh or to our patrons i always forget how to how to actually say that um for a topic request we had um thank you eva for picking the request anyway the topic this week or this month is full moons love that and that was suggested by oh my gosh who was it suggested by me thank you sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean to scream. No, I couldn't. I couldn't find it in time. Thank you, B. Great topic suggestion. I'm surprised we have not covered full moon stories. I'm shocked we haven't done any sort of lunar because, well, as we record this, yesterday was the new moon and yesterday signified the start of our entry into the year of the fire horse. And so it was a big astrological time and I just kept thinking about it, but it never occurred to me to do stories about the moon. That's so fun. yeah i uh do you have a favorite phase of moon yes thank you for asking people don't ask that enough i know if it were a first date i would ask i'm really into a waxing gibbous is what i'll say i would be so basic and just say full moon oh i see well i do love a full moon i think the excitement of the waxing is that it's becoming a full moon so it's like oh almost any day now here comes the full moon that's fun i would have i would have really respected that answer um if it were a first date i recently had a imagine if it was on that myspace quiz that we used to take you know what myspace i would have been like this bitch is crazy i love her yeah this is fucking nuts no i had uh i told you i had a friend date a first friend date recently yeah how did that go not good um and i i asked questions like that and i think that's not her vibe um that's okay oh no honestly i think i told you this already five minutes and we both knew we did not like each other so we said awkwardly you've not told me this when would i heard about this i i feel like i said the whole thing on the podcast at some point but uh no we realized when we last wow no when we last spoke i believe that you were you had just committed to the friend date i don't think i even heard the aftermath at all no i've had a few friend dates recently and a lot of them have gone very very well and this one was a real stink fest but neither of us liked each other so it was fine like and and i feel like part of that is like oh that feels like okay at least you're secure in knowing like oh that's just not for me yeah you know like it's not like it because i feel like when in your 20s you're trying to figure it out and you're like forcing friendships or you're like oh this is the kind of person on paper i would but like if it doesn't work it doesn't work i think it was one of those situations where i've never had this before i'm sure others have and can say that this is a normal feeling but um we had incredible texting energy for like two weeks before we hung out. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. And then after the dinner, we both ghosted each other. And honestly, the only feeling I had was, thank God, because I did not want to have to like play this out, you know? No. Wow. Okay. So it's a mutual ghosting. Listen, I'm all mad at respect for a mutual ghosting in my humble Gemini flighty opinion. It's because it was mutual. If I was really feeling it, but neither of us were, I knew I could smell it on her that she was not feeling it either. And that's going to just amplify it in your own you know it's just going to be like a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point you're like okay we both know what's happening it's like i'll never see you again well i'm sorry to hear that that's a bummer but that's fine they can't all be winners you know and then also like when you have something like that you're like oh see that makes like the friends i have made like that much more of a yeah no i think legit connection the other friend dates i've been on um they went so well that i think this one didn't was fine it was bound to have all of them were like this i'd start having yeah yeah then you'd be like what's going on yeah yeah but anyway i did i think one of the reason she didn't like me is because i asked fuck ass questions like that i was like what's your favorite type of moon i think she was like i don't know and don't care this is not for me wow really i'm surprised by that she wasn't quirky she was like normal oh see that's not for me either you know but i i wanted the weird the weirdo i wanted a weirdo anyway it's okay you're not weird i guess if you're listening to this congratulations i guess if you answered with your favorite moon and didn't say, um, that's not for me, then maybe you and I would be friends. If not, it seems like it's not going to match, but that's okay. That's okay. We learned a lot about each other. I learned you don't have a favorite moon, but I learned you have a favorite moon. Thanks. And that's why this works. I'm telling you. I, uh, anyway, that's how did we get here? Oh, moons. That's the topic of today. You know, the silly thing is you can just say full moon and you would have been like, that's a great answer. You know, it's not like you have to come up with something crazy, like a waxing gift. Like you don't need to make a show of it, like a spectacle like I do you know about everything so like you could just say full moon and then it's like okay that's an open open way to answer that question I don't know what shape is a waxing gibbous what does it look like it's where the oh my god my brain I'm like trying to because I learned it where with the x and then I think of it as prescription never mind it really doesn't make sense when i say it out loud um it's okay i'm with you it's where it's getting bigger it's not waning it's like where it's almost a full circle but there's like a little chip that hasn't yeah it's growing into a full moon yeah right yeah what's the toenail looking one that's a crescent i like her that's a crescent a toenail one is really very like mystical too i think yeah yeah i like that okay good to know yeah would you like to tell the first story since Thank you so much, man. You are just like such a gentleman today. Really? I feel like I just keep talking and not shutting the fuck up. No, you're like, what kind of moon do you like? Hey, why don't you go ahead? I don't know. Please. Listen, here I go on my red carpet. Okay. This is from Ryan. He, him. Love that for all of us. The subject of this is everything has a ghost, even the moon. Okay. I love this already so much. this is what i wanted at that dinner i'm telling you that yes exactly and you know what a ghost some people some people just have no taste you know i know i hope you all are doing fantastic your stories have become a lifesaver on my commute to work every day and i have a story i think you might be interested in this happened a little under a year ago while i was driving home from grad school the drive is about three and a half hours and takes me through very rural cornfields of the Midwest. It was the dead of winter and the turn of the new year. So the sun was setting very early in the day. Oh, good. And you're in the middle of a fucking cornfield. This is going to go. Couldn't be, couldn't be, couldn't start the story better. Couldn't. Yeah, nothing bad. Nothing good can happen from here on that. On this specific drive, I was not able to leave until the sun had already set. So the whole drive was going to be in the dark. I had done this drive a good amount of times by now and knew the route by heart, but I still use a navigation app just to be extra cautious smart half an hour into the drive the night was completely upon me and the moon was shining full and bright i could see car lights in front and behind me i passed a few cars every minute or so and it felt good knowing there were other people on the road although ever since i left i had this strange feeling when people talk about having strange feelings they usually say they feel it in their stomach or gut but this was different i felt it in my hands oh i've never had interesting have you had that i feel a lot of things in my hands but over the years i've learned i think it's like a trauma response a circulation issue it's a circulation issue i've got restless leg syndrome it's in my fingers yeah uh no i think it's like a trauma response so i don't know but i remember when we first started um doing this show like i would talk about how i would feel like my left arm would start tingling. You were like, you're having a heart attack. See, it's medical, surely. Anyway. Interesting. Okay. But I don't know where we're going with this. So I don't know if that's the same or not. If it ends with him in a hospital, then we know. Yeah, that's true. It was circulation issues. Yeah. Okay. I felt this in my hands and the feeling was heavy, like anchors trying to slow me down. I figured I was probably just getting a little tired and focused on driving. While most of the drive is straight through cornfields, there is one area where I have to drive through a patch of trees and over a bridge before taking a hard curve north. I remember it so well since it is one of the only spots where the road takes such a hard turn. I was approaching the trees and the feeling in my hands became heavier. I kept peering down at them and tried stretching out my fingers to make the feeling go away. Suddenly, I was at the turn and had to focus on going around the curve the trees blocked my view of the sky and any headlights in front or behind me were cut off as well as i came out of the curve and the last few trickles of trees i knew something was wrong i didn't know what it was at first but i soon looked up at the sky and could not believe what i was seeing the moon had grown what seemed like five times its normal size oh my god so the sky is the moon you're just in the moon scared What is he, like space traveling? Yeah. Crazy. That's freaky, dude. Okay. I don't know why that scared me so much. The moon had grown what seemed like five times its normal size. The color and shape were the same, but its heavy, bright presence sat in the dark sky, immovable. I don't know the best way of explaining it, but basically if you took a coin and held it up to the sky at arm's length, you would see the approximate size of the normal moon. But the moon I was seeing was much larger than that. It was like if you took an apple or baseball and held it up instead of a coin. Ugh. I also noticed all the car lights behind and in front of me were gone. Stop. Doesn't that feel like simulation? Like, I don't. Yeah, I feel like you actually got dragged out of your. Into like a different. It's like the sim accidentally got picked up and brought to a different house. And it's like, wait a minute. This one's way closer to the moon. Yeah, no, I would be. I would absolutely have a panic attack. like maybe you ended up on like mercury for a second you know yeah wait no that's the wrong i understood where you were though son i'm so sorry i didn't mean that my my thought like can you astral project outside of earth you can yes yikes okay yeah you absolutely can yuck no thank you for me yeah yeah that's a no dog thanks anyway hey here we go okay so yikes all the lights were gone around uh let's see the darkness surrounding me and the endless fields felt somehow darker than night the only light i had other than the moon was from my headlights and the navigation app lit up on my phone i peered down at the app and saw that i currently did not have any service oh god oh god this is like a twilight zone episode you know like oh my god i like it's like there's no service in space like and also i imagine yeah if your car headlights are on what is it flashing on because it feels like you're so close to the moon that you almost can't even like like it would just hit the moon like the lights wouldn't reflect well five times the moon's normal size i feel like is like i feel like it takes up your whole vision no no i feel like if it were well like i guess i'm thinking about like the biggest moon i've ever seen at a normal scale and then bop bop bop i still feel like you're like driving down the road straight into the moon am i a crazy person yeah no i think like i'm picturing it more like it's up in the sky but it just appears a lot bigger and closer i i just because i mean i don't know tell me he stopped the car is he still driving i don't know girl great question oh my god maybe i don't know um yikes okay let's find out let's see uh the only light i had well but also he's going around this huge curve right in the middle of the night the only light i had other than the moon was from my headlights and the navigation app lit up on my phone i peered down at the app and saw that oh and he also said it's like holding up a baseball so it's like oh yeah like yeah so it's okay so you can still see you see other things but that's freaky dude to see like the moon that you see every single day like suddenly i had a nightmare like that once that a planet was coming towards us anyway i mean yeah i would think like a meteor crash or something scary is the moon coming to us are we coming to the moon neither one's really good i think okay the darkness around um i didn't have any sir anyway the darkness speaking in tongues okay the uh i look at the phone at the app and so i currently did not have any service and my location had drifted into the middle of the fields okay this is not great so you Think about the magnet. Think about the magnet of the moon. And now your magnetism, your gravity, you're all fucked up in that way. Like you're so creepy, dude. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. Okay. I wondered if I should try to get off at the next exit and give myself a moment to figure out what was going on But I realized there were no exits off the road anymore What Okay so someone in the room in the control room is like shit we got to get him back in the right timeline Control, alt, delete. Yes, control, Z, control, Z, control, Z. Like, don't let him get off the highway. Oh, this is so creepy, dude. okay uh i drove for maybe 15 minutes and still no other cars exits or even poles or buildings oh my god all i had was the giant moon and the endless darkness i was getting worried at this point could not figure out the best move then just as suddenly as before this heavy darkness was gone the normal night sky came flooding back in and my eyes had to adjust it was blurry for a few moments and i had to slow down because it was hard to see the road i blinked frantically for my vision to come back and when it did, everything was normal again. The feeling in my hands was gone, the lights of other cars flickered around me and the moon was normal size again. Yuck. The rest of my drive was uneventful but I was so anxious to get home. I was too tired by the time I got home to try and figure out what happened. I just needed to get into bed. I looked at the clock and realized it took me way longer to get home than it should have. Yeah, and I feel like the being incredibly tired happens after like being abducted or something. Yeah, ew. So maybe that was just like a screen memory that the aliens put in like oh here's your moon i feel like his car was a was in the middle of getting beamed up and then one of the like supervisors on the ufo was like oh not that one and they put him back down like he was like half abducted you know it feels like he like has still kind of like the weird like like um that must feel really shitty though to get like rejected from an abduction like i just know you'd write a whole book about it you'd be like i'm going to like a memoir yeah i think i'm gonna write one anyway just in case no i but i feel like it's Something something pulled him closer to the sky, it feels like. Yes. But he didn't go full abduction. Yeah. But the fact that he was like for 15 minutes, the moon was so much closer is so weird, too. I don't know. So I'm like, it feels like a screen memory, you know, which is when they say they abduct you and then they put a memory in. But it's like off. That's what that's called. And you're like, that's like, that's weird, though. Like, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that or that doesn't make sense. it's like how they perceive they just like oh here's your moon and your fields yeah and they like the dimensions were off yeah i like how that's like just a default video on their computer that right it's like a screensaver or something that they're just like putting you in for a minute yeah interesting yuck i don't know anyway that feels kind of weird but okay um the rest of my drive was unfurl uh it took a full hour and a half longer than normal the drive the next day my mom told me she tried calling me a few times, but I had no notifications of anyone calling me during the drive. Now with more energy, I decided to try and figure out what happened. I could not come up with any good explanation other than my tired imagination somehow getting the better of me. I searched online through forums to see if others had similar experiences, but nothing was coming up. The last topic I searched for was the current phases of the moon, and I was terrified when I saw the search results. According to every source, last night the phase was supposedly a new moon, not a full moon oh so you're totally i feel like you're right about the screensaver nonsense what the fuck they're like here's a moon don't ask they didn't even think about yeah oh the fact that you find out it wasn't even a full moon that's so sinister oh my god totally an image implanted in some way is i'm not like a conspiracy crazy person but i feel that's my gut man makes makes sense to me if it was a new moon i should not have been able to see it at all yet somehow my whole drive home, I saw a full and bright moon hanging up in the sky. I was super creeped out by this discovery, but did not know what else I could do about it. It did remind me of a story I heard from a friend in college. Their grandparents live in Arizona about an hour outside of Phoenix. They said their grandparents believed in something called a ghost moon, some type of ethereal cosmic presence that came out during new moons and played tricks on it. I've chills right now. That's my new favorite moon. I'm freaking out. That's a change your answer. And I'm going to Hop on the bandwagon because that's kick ass. Yeah. That's really gave me chills. And played tricks on anyone going out under the night sky. Ugh. They said to have seen it twice before. And while I did not want to believe in a folk story, this folk story, I couldn't stop thinking about it for a few days after. It has been about a year since that night happened, and I try not to think too much about it even today. But there is one thing I know for certain. Whatever I saw in the sky that night, it was not the moon. Ugh. Oh, my God. Thanks for listening, Ryan. horrific that's just terrible horrific um sorry we immediately immediately went alien but that's just the only thing i could think of i i wonder if full moon is going to accidentally become a little more ufo themed especially because our next story is alien themed so i feel like maybe just moon lunar space ufo all kind of fold into each other interesting okay i know you've got three pets and i've got one but i gotta take this one over You got to take this one because I know this is Hank's whole deal these days. It's his whole personality. It's so almost annoying. I'm like, we get it. It's like he has some secret deal with them I don't know about, the way that he's obsessed with Pets Table. Pets Table is a personalized dog food from the team behind HelloFresh. They offer both human-grade fresh and gently air-dried options, or you can mix both to see what your pup prefers. There's nine different recipes. They're all formulated with a board-certified vet nutritionist. My dog is obsessed with the beef and berries. When you open that bag, Christine, it smells like candy. I like. Oh, my God. I've thought about. One of these days, I'm going to do a little taste test. I know it. I've thought about it. I literally I use it as a topper for his other food and he'll eat around his other food just to eat that. And then he'll go to bed. He's like, I'm done. I've had the best part. You can have the rest. Here you go. I've never seen a dog react the way that he reacts to Pet Stable. It's it's beyond. So please, if you have a dog who is food motivated and wants to eat something that smells like candy, you got to show the Pets Table. Help your dog live their best life with high quality food from the Pets Table. Take advantage of this limited time offer. Get 55% off your first box plus 10% off your next two at thepetstable.com and use code DRINK55. That's thepetstable.com, code DRINK55. My mom and I did a late Christmas this year and she sent me some very wonderful things. But one of the things that I have sent her away is a Lola blanket. If you've ever heard me describe my mother as a combination of Kris Jenner and Lucille Bluth. Right. That type of person would like this blanket. High standards. Yes. It's so luxurious. It is. She'll have no idea where I got it from. Just know that I got it from a little blankets, everyone. Everybody else. Mom, don't listen. But Lola is the world's number one blanket. It's crafted with ultra soft luxury vegan faux fur. My mom's not going to know it's a vegan or faux. What animal did you kill for this? Who did you poach this from? And a signature four-way stretch that sets it apart. It's machine washable, which is even more wonderful. It's double hem for durability and stays flawless. No pilling, no shedding. Yeah, yeah. I use it in Leona's room for when I have to sleep on the floor. I bet. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40% off select Lola Blankets products with code drink at checkout. Just head to lolablankets.com and use code drink to get 40% off your order. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola blankets. Our next one is from Mare, who uses she, her pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns. And the subject line is Little League Alien, which is precious. Okay. And Mare says, I grew up in a rural area of upstate New York near Rome, and we spent a lot of time being little degenerates at Little League Fields about a quarter mile from my house and my cousin's house. my cousin myself and other neighborhood kids always felt like something was kind of off there one time when my cousin and i were 12 to 13 we were chasing each other through the woods around the little league field with airsoft guns the sun was getting lower so i yelled to my cousin that we needed to get home and ran out of the woods i thought he showed up right up ahead of me but he came out of the woods on the opposite side of the field we were both so confused like wasn't i just chasing you through the woods and yet they came from different areas yuck He and I both said we were chasing each other, but clearly not because we weren't anywhere near each other. Doppelganger ghost children. Yeah, that's not good. That's not good. Can't stand that. We convinced ourselves that maybe we were both chasing deer or something that we never felt right. But that never felt right because we had grown up in these woods and knew the difference between four legs and two legs. I would think so. I would think so. Four-legged or two-legged sounds. Sorry. Also probably different amounts of legs. Also a deer and a person, yeah. about 10 years later, I was at the same little league field with my then boyfriend and we were just hanging out in a new relationship, being all cute and gross. And it was a full moon, very bright and an almost cloudless sky, which is rare in upstate New York. We were just bullshitting, looking at the stars when we saw someone come out of the woods where there was an entrance to a little trail. It was around midnight. So anyone out, out and about was likely to be one of our friends. They looked like our buddy, John. so we started shouting hey man hey john what's up we didn't get any answer and we're getting a little creeped out oh yuck yuck my boyfriend started walking towards the person to see who they were um because in a rural area everyone knew each other and the person still wasn't responding to anything we were saying and i was kind of freaking out so i grabbed a big stick and went towards with my boyfriend this is like how horror movie like i really this is the most horror movie like don't go over there but like in the moment you don't you're like it's john oh and you know what's even creepier about that too is that it feels like whatever this creature is grew up with them like it's not it's still not playing like a little kid version of them it's like it knows their new ages so yuck okay wait oh i see what you're saying oh that's horrible because i feel like if 10 years ago you remember chasing your 10 year younger cousin and all of a sudden And it looks like your friend who's probably the age you are now. Oh, I didn't even put the cousin thing together. It just occurred to me. Okay. Oh, that's bad. That's just gross. That's gross. And if it so it must have known you were there and known to like to morph into something you would recognize and chase after and walk towards. Or maybe since this is a small town, everyone knows everyone. Maybe he just picked a random person in town that day and imitate and you just happen to recognize the person. Anyway. Okay. We were, uh, so we have a big stick. We're going with the boyfriend. We have a big stick. Good, good. We were inside the little league field and the person was on the outside of the fence. We got to about 10 feet away from them and there's this full moon just shining down on all of us. The boyfriend is asking the dude if he's okay. And we get no answer. They had on what looked like khaki shorts and a beige hoodie with the hood up. They look up and all we see is this dark face with a long curving nose that almost looks like a beak and enormous black eyes. What? We grab each other, totally freaked out, thinking, what the hell am I looking at? And while we're looking at this, it changed shape from a human figure with a weird ass face to a signpost. Hey. Hey. So I think I'm religious now. Yeah, I'm upset. I'm upset. I'm upset. Hey, so now every signpost I see in my fucking town, I'm going to be like, I don't recognize you. I'm going to start tapping it. What about the sign you have in your house? Don't even win me. Just kidding. Like a picket sign on a wooden stake. It literally went from a person to a fucking street sign. And not even a person. Like a person to a demon to a street sign. Every time I ever hung out with John ever again in my life, I'd be like, fucking reveal yourself to me. I don't know what's going on. reveal yourself john oh my god i know your secrets john it never occurred to me that aliens i mean i in my mind they morph into people that we know or like critters it never occurred to me they would also just turn into like inanimate objects that you would walk right the fuck past that's like puck wedgie energy oh my god it's like oh i'm gonna turn into a stop post a signpost and like turn you around and get you all mixed up very few stories really freak me out these days this one that one got you we freaked the fuck out and got out of there obviously we had to go on part of the trail through the woods to get back out of the car they both saw it sorry the fact like i feel like one person's brain can turn something into and like scare you and like make you misremember but like the fact that two people both at the same time were like that just turned into a sign post i would be like oh my god i would almost and and yet still be afraid to like because like if if the boyfriend is someone like like i'm dating allison allison would find any logical reason to not believe what she just saw i would still be scared to be like you saw that right that thing became a fucking street sign because she would gaslight the shit out of me so that way she could protect her own sanity yeah i mean a lot of us probably would try to fucking protect our insanity so i feel like i i wouldn't even say anything to my own partner i'd be like okay i think i just snapped it and nobody else saw that um would you run though yeah i'd run and i'd have to explain myself later i don't know what i would do i don't know what i mean i feel like if there was a person that your that like your partner was talking to and then all of a sudden they were just gone and there was a sign there instead like clearly yeah wow i'll have to check with allison see what she would do in this situation but that like truly for the rest of time i would i first of all where's your phone take a picture take a picture because one day that street sign is not going to be there But then I guess people could say, oh, yeah, they just took the street sign out of the ground. I don't fucking know. I have no idea what I would do. I'm panicking. I wasn't even there. Honestly, though, and also like the threat that that would pose in the immediate moment, you probably wouldn't take a picture. You'd probably be like, fuck this. And I wonder, was that like a silent warning of like you didn't see me stop talking to me? Or could it not even hear us and thought it was just like going like, why would it do that in front of you and not say anything? yeah what was the point of that like when you just morph into a bird and fly away and get out of the situation like why are you turning into something that's just going to stand there in front of our faces and not say anything to us maybe it's that thing we all say like oh i want to crawl into a hole and die or like i wish the earth would swallow me up and he just like turned into a signpost he's like i just bury myself right here i like what would have happened if she like tapped on the street sign and be like am i crazy i thought that was a fucking person for a second hear this fucking story because you'd probably be gonzo i don't know yeah i'm like is this thing violent like was this like your last warning to step away or like would it have hurt you i have no idea i mean it had like black giant eyes and like a beak nose i feel like it can't be that lovely man i don't like it at all we didn't even say a word to each other until we were about 10 minutes back into the drive back to our apartment i know it sounds crazy and unreal but i have never been so terrified in my life that's not crazy or unreal i would also be scared and i would go to a third place first like how we went to denny i be like that thing not following us home just trick it um because for all you know his best friend turned into your car You know what I mean No don say that Em Come on Oh my God It would make – that would be the first step into my journey in an institution. Like to question your entire – everything around you. The TV remote when I got home. This microphone. It's an alien. This place was truly weird. there was another time that some of my friends were there late at night and heard freaky noises coming from the woods that scared them so much they climbed on top of the concession stand jesus and they called my buddy's dad who showed up with a giant flashlight the dad said he heard the noises like groaning and whispering coming from the woods and was so disturbed he couldn't wait to get out of there the field is all overgrown now and no one plays there anymore at least not kids and tree and teenagers anyway i said trees because my thought was of course it's overgrown that's actually the whole family gathering it's all the aliens they're just all fake trees they're just weeds um wow that is fucking crazy and i'll never forget you mayor thank you i know right all the same haunting i wonder what it's is it just trying to scare you you know i'll never stop thinking that's even alien i don't even think that's even alien i think that's like some sort of shape-shifting ghoul. I don't know. Exactly. I don't even know what creature to blame it on. I have to assume alien because it like morphs into other things, which for some reason is in the alien category for me, but. I feel like it's very like poltergeisty, like trickstery alien behavior, like to doppelganger and like not necessarily hurt you, but like scare the shit out of you. I don't know. Could it be like a skinwalker? Yeah, maybe something like that. That's true. we did already have like a folk story in the first story of the moon the ghost moon which by the way also gonna remember that forever i yeah this actually um wow i i would like to know about these woods part of me is like so sick and i want to like fly to those woods immediately like i want to bring my own stop sign or something and just like post it up and be like oh this was your buddy like i'd do something just to be like turn into this right now but i'm gonna walk away when i come back there better be two stop signs you know i don't know i don't know you're gonna tap on it and see what happens i would leave candy or something i would try to appease them but i'd be like show yourself i've heard the rumors let's do this interesting why am i so sick yeah i don't know man i don't know i don't know what's wrong with me like in an overgrown little league field no thank you i don't want to be i don't want to invite whatever fucking energies are swirling around there the fact that it's like this little league field and it's not even used by like it wasn't even used 10 years ago when this happened like clearly the energy is not right you know if like people are not even playing baseball games or like and it's just a bunch of teenagers hanging out like that it's something's off part of me is like was there something like in their small town infrastructure wise like did they get a different field and that's why they don't go there anymore Or did everyone slowly feel like something was up and they just stopped opting to use it? You know, like I'm also curious about that. Yeah, it feels like it. I mean, which I just read for the first time. So that's why it's on my mind. But like the like parts of the city you don't really go to. But like, you know, the misfit kids hang out there. Yeah, it just feels very Stephen King to me. OK, now what do we have here? This is from Katie. She, her. It's called Full Moon Spirit Capturing. okay i mean i'm fascinated by all of this okay good evening christine m eva and all little friends on the last listeners cast you asked for full moon story oh oh well then maybe we did this november 2020 we asked for full moon stories um or maybe be just uh remembered for us six years later and was like you guys never did this yeah um we'll see on the last listeners cast you asked for full moon stories and I thought maybe I'll send mine in with the slim chance it'll end up in an episode. So where do I begin? I've always had the eye for spirits and things of that variety, including but not limited to auras, spirits, spirit animals, past people, and many more. I decided one day that I would try and capture the spirit of my dead cat. He died the day before in a rock which had called out to me. So, oh, which called out to me. So I found a rock, bathed my crystals and meditated in the full moonlight to try and see if i could bring him back safe to say i think it worked oh gosh this is why i don't mess not i'm saying that this person's messing with it but i know i'm not equipped to handle shit like this so i would i tread with such caution because i know myself i would slip and do something wrong or say it out loud and then yeah mess it all up you know a sneeze yeah totally totally okay so let's see safe to say I think it worked. I'd moved my crystals and his rock inside but didn't have them in my room because I was keeping them close to moon water in the hopes it would do something. After a while, I decided to move them into my room and that's when things started getting weird. I moved them probably a month after him passing. Oh, okay, so this is now a month later. Okay. After I moved them into my room, I noticed things happening which he used to do like the sound of him licking himself, the sound of him scratching my door, the pressure of him at my feet and purring noises when I was drifting off. It was comforting knowing that somehow I had allowed him to stay with me a little bit longer before he decided to go. He had to be put down unexpectedly. So he got to say goodbye properly like he wanted to. Aw, thanks for reading my story. I hope it gave you some kind of happiness. I have many other stories about encountering spirits of dead loved ones. But that's for another time. Oh, just wanted to add that my 60th birthday was on a full moon, which definitely makes me some kind of a witch. That's fun. that is so fun thank you katie very fun no um that's a much better story than whatever the hell may or may be read um no that that was very very sweet um yeah it's like a palate cleanser for sure palate cleanser great way to put it um and thank you for waiting six years for that story i mean really yeah appreciate you okay i'm really excited about this sponsor salie um because we a lot of have been there, you're looking for that sketchy airport Wi-Fi that's just not connecting and wants you to put in all this info or you're waiting for a local SIM card in a long line somewhere where maybe you don't speak the language or you're new to the area. Saley fixes all this because you can ditch the roaming fees and significantly reduce or even eliminate those massive roaming charges with affordable local plans. But it's easy. It's not like those long lines you install at once. You can travel everywhere. You only need to install a Saley eSIM one time. 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Head to chime.com slash drink. That is chime.com slash drink. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and the secured Chime Visa credit card are provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Terms apply. Limited time only. Must open the new account and complete qualifying activities to earn rewards. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1% APY applies. No minimum balance required. Chime card on-time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details on applicable terms. This is from Sarah. He uses she, her pronouns. Thank you for normalizing pronouns. And the subject is laughing ghosts and the full Halloween moon. Oh, my God. And Sarah says, let's start off by saying my home is over 100 years old and my guest room particularly the closet at the front of my house is where most of the activity occurs so as soon as you walk in yeah right at the door i regularly smudge my home because things just get weird and after i do they tend to settle down my dog also acts weird and chuffs and is on alert and there's activity where he is usually a sleepy loaf. After a while, I noticed that the increase in activity coincided with the moon cycle, with the most activity being when the moon was full. Oh my God. But this particular... That's so cliche. I fucking love it. I know. It's like, what is this on a... You want to live on a soundstage or something? Werewolf. Yeah. But this particular story takes place on Halloween of 2020. Oh, bad year. Bye. Energy was crazy. When the moon was full, blue, and a harvest moon. I remember that. So one could say I was screwed from the get go. And you're stuck in your house because you're quarantining, I'm sure. Oh, and probably children are showing up unannounced and you haven't even seen people. You know what I mean? Like trick or treaters. Oh, God. That's totally right, Christine. Oh, God. Nothing worse than just children appearing at your door. I mean, we can all agree on that. So the week leading up to Halloween slash the full moon, I started hearing stuff in my house that would make me wake up in the middle of the night. This was fairly typical, but usually at this point I would smudge my home and off I go. But a friend of mine who sends this stuff was coming over for Halloween, so I left it to see if she noticed anything. I love that. You're like, I'm going to see if this girl has an opinion at all. I feel like I would do that with you. I'd be like. Yeah, you totally would. We both would, I think. And I wouldn't be able to pull it off, but I'd mess it up. But yeah, that would be kind of a fun experiment. I'd be waiting nonstop for you to go, what the hell is going on in this house? Yeah, you'd be like looking at me a little too intently, I think. And I'd be like, why are you staring at me? Yes. I'd probably notice your energy more than I would notice the energy of the house. Yeah, I would be the weird activity. As the week continued on, things became more and more intense. One night, the sound of someone walking around was so loud and clear that I searched my home for an intruder to find nothing. I mean, and that's so scary because you're like about to call the police. And it's like you'll regret not calling the police if someone has broken into your home, obviously. Yeah. But you'll regret calling the police if it's a ghost. And that's also a rough... I don't know, man. That sucks. Then the next morning as I was getting ready for work, I saw the reflection of a human shadow walk behind me in my window. That's where I draw the line. Absolutely where I draw the line. I'm so lucky and I hope that it stays this way. But this house came with no bad vibes, which I love. So good. But I never think that there's a ghost in the house, which is so wonderful if you're out there and you're keeping quiet keep please keep being quiet to keep it up keep it up um but if i moved into a house and all of a sudden you know every full moon or so there's just humans walking around i'd be like this ain't gonna work for me like this is just if i start seeing things in mirrors like that is where i absolutely i think that's where i would freak like that's where i would really freak out agreed um and my favorite part is sarah then said but i was in such a rush I just ignored it or tried to ignore it. I'm like, there's no way I would be sitting in my driveway, looking at all my cameras inside my house being like, is it there? Paranoid. Yeah. I would turn paranoid. So it's Halloween Eve. Uh, and my friend leaves around 11. I was hanging out on my, I would ask your friend to stay through 3. AM. I feel like a hundred percent. You're not leaving sleep over bitch. Um, I was vibes are weird and I don't care. You're staying here for the rest of the night. Maybe your friend intentionally left at 11 and was like, this is too fucking crazy. I don't know about this anymore. Yeah. I was hanging out on my bed with my dog with the lights on and I start to hear movement in the hallway and kitchen, which was odd because it usually only happens after I've fallen asleep. So this thing's getting cocky. I don't like this. Yeah, it's expanding its own boundaries. As time went on, the noises became louder. And after about 20 minutes, the sound of something pacing up and down the hallway outside my bedroom was continuous. the fact that it was building up to that like it was like here's what i want the end result to be pacing outside of this person's bedroom and then it has to build gradually over time like that's gives me the heebie-jeebies dude like momentum it's like it's intelligent uh and the dog by the way seems to just be goddamn chilling where is this dog um the array of noises coming from my kitchen and guest room were also increasing and it was loud then all of a sudden this loud scurrying noise came from under my bed and ran towards my closet it sounded like a giant rat um no my dog started freaking out thank you oh but couldn't find or smell anything um and then 10 minutes later there was a loud knock on my bedroom door this is a horror movie needless to say me and my dog had resolved to not sleep that night sitting petrified in each other's arms the walking and the loud noises continued and after an hour finally slowed down uh it finally slowed down and came to a stop i was able to turn out the lights without pooping myself why would you even try i would never never turn the lights off again and me and my dog were finally able to fall asleep the noises picked up in the middle of the night but i was just trying to sleep because fuck this that's crazy because i would have gotten myself a dog-friendly hotel that minute i i don't know i don't know what i i don't know what i would have done but i think i would be way too scared to fall asleep but i don't know i mean and i would have climbed out of the window too because who's knocking on my door i would not have gone out the door i don't think i imagine in that moment you have keys on you at all moments like you don't leave your keys in the living room on a night where you know they're going to be knocking on your door oh i hate this this is so scary dude i'm freaked out so the morning comes and i immediately smudge my house but i knew i would need to do it again because something still felt off but i continued with my morning because i can't stop for every paranormal entity that walks into my life wow yeah you stand alone babe um i was like it would have taken over if i ever texted christine i can't record today i have to absolutely cleanse my house that would be well understood i think i would be like actually just facetime and i record it for us for patreon yeah for the episode yeah i was listening to music in my room and on the shitty little speaker and i laughed at something and two seconds later my exact laugh came through the speaker like an echo and this is where i drew the line because now it's copying her me and my dog got the fuck out of there and went to my mom's for the rest of the weekend my mom has spent an exorbitant amount of time studying different facets of spiritualism and i told her what happened she immediately went on to cleanse my house from afar having me draw out of the draw out the rooms of my house. Even when I was drawing the house, I could feel like whatever was there was influencing me because for the life of me, I could not get the proportions or the layout of my house. Right? No, it wants you to do it wrong. Oh God. Weird. Especially considering it's a square house. Oh my God. Stop. That makes me think like it was almost like channeling you and making you draw the original blueprints. Oh, interesting. Because if it refused to let you draw what's currently there and it usually stays in one part of the room and not like maybe an addition from later. I was thinking it was trying to influence the floor plan so that the mom couldn't cleanse the space where it was hiding. That's worse. Yeah. So it could like it could stay in the house. Yeah. So it could like have its little creepy corner. Fuck this big time, dude. Once I drew the house. Oh, my God. Once I drew the house, she said she was able to clear it, focusing a lot of time on my guest room. She said it felt okay and that she would check it again at night. Lo and behold, when she checked it that night, she said that activity had drastically picked up. Oh, mom did it wrong. And now she suspected there was a portal in my guest room. Uh-huh. Um, okay. Yeah, because the full moon is opening the portal. Duh. Oh, anyways, happy days. She cleansed the space again and things have been fabulous. Wait, that's absolutely what was happening at that fucking baseball field. You're right. they're just like it's like inviting bad energy it's like it's like inviting anyone but like bad energy can probably get through there and just show up and like scare you and harass you sarah that was a horrible story i actually for a moment forgot about mayor i you know wow oh my god that was fast wow i wow i don't like either of your lives that sounds really really scary um either of your lives i'm so sorry you have to go through that i really leave us out of it please please oh my god i'm really actually kind of creeped out okay um there's something about portals that feels so oh and the full moon the new moon i do know is a portal or no no sorry eclipse season is a portal i believe and we are in an eclipse season right now excellent um but i wonder if sarah's guest room is doing okay no no not in that way i hope yeah seriously imagine sarah leaves and a new family moves in they're like oh we have children that'll that that old guest room will be the kids room oh my god those kids are gonna a nursery or something they're gonna write to us one day i feel like jeez wouldn't it be crazy if after all these years some two different people have written about the same location they just both happen to live there different times that i wish there was a way to categorize that somehow i wish that's so cool we just have to read everybody's census records that's all yeah that's easy call the government yeah yeah yeah get them on hey eva get the county auditor on the phone on the horn okay this one is from d pronouns they them and it says wine stealing ufo oh my god christine stole a ufo ah they better not come to my house because i need that that sounds it sounds like xenon so far wine sure does sure does she's like i'm not drinking it i'm just taking it home with me yeah in my stomach yeah yeah in my stomach hello and that's why we drink family. I've been listening to the podcast for years and it kept me sane through some long night shifts. I never had anything interesting to share, however, until N covered the Moringa and Mirasol abductions. I don't like all this abduction talk. It's really freaking me out. I told you the UFOs and the aliens were going to get involved in this. No, you're totally right. I was talking to my grandma after listening and randomly asked if she believed in aliens since they were on my mind. And I got a very enthusiastic yes as a response and a story to go along with it. So now I'm telling you about how my grandma's brother-in-law got abducted sometime in the mid-80s. Oh my. She wasn't present at the abduction, but she witnessed the aftermath firsthand and it was enough to convince her that aliens are real. Oh my God, that's crazy that you don't even witness an abduction, but just the symptoms of one. Just the aftermath. Yikes. Okay. But you know how you hear that when people say like, oh, as the police officer who interviewed him could tell, like he was really terrified. Something was off. Yeah, something was actually wrong. Oh, that gives me the creeps. Okay. My grandma's sister lived and still lives on the outskirts of a small town. One day while my grandma was visiting for the summer, her brother-in-law and a friend of his took the train to the nearest city to go help a friend with house renovations. They stayed the whole day and only caught the last train home, arriving back in town well past midnight, carrying a bag with two bottles of homemade wine and another with some food that they'd gotten as a thanks for the help. food and alcohol as a thank you is common practice where i'm from okay and where i'm from and i love that for all of us same now the trains now the train stop in that town is actually outside of the town and there is about a kilometers walk to their house along a road surrounded by grain fields with no street lights on it they put up lights later but the 80s didn't care much about that what happens next is my grandma's retelling of what her brother-in-law explained happened to them the night was clear and the moon was not full but as they walked girl just say it a second full moon suddenly appeared low in the sky what in front of them it started growing bigger okay i'm like now the sky is a simulation i kind of believe that like maybe we're not in simulation but the sky is i gotta be something happening here don't like that's some truman show shit or like yes or like the aliens had a big projector and i think they were trying to cast something on the moon and they missed you know or it's like their ufo and they're like we'll just disguise it as a moon they won't know any better and it's like we're not that stupid you know we're pretty dumb you could have put anything else you could have literally put like a giant burn and we would have been confused but the moon i usually know where that is they honestly could have put they could just been a ufo we would have been less alarmed probably yes than like the giant moon that's a good point it's such a good point ew but like now i'm freaked out that this is a thing happening multiple times this giant moon showing up oh my this oh i don't like this one bit okay um as they walked a second full moon i hope we're not freaking out ryan probably we are um okay a second full moon suddenly appeared low in the sky in front of them it started growing bigger and brother and again it's not a full moon but it a full moon appears yeah they realized it was coming at them at a great speed this is my dream i had one time the light got I will. Okay. Fair point. The light got so bright, it hurt to look at, but he couldn't close his eyes. Then he felt something grab him by the shoulders and pull him up into the light. Last he sees in the light is a big X like shape, X like shape coming into view as he's taken. Next thing he knows. I wonder if that's like underneath, like the lights. I don't know. um next thing he knows he's waking up on the grass on the side of the road covered in sweat and with his shirt missing but his vest on and buttoned see this is that i'm gonna throw up like this is terrible his friend was on the asphalt in a similar situation although i don't know if he was missing any clothes they were shaken and a little disoriented but managed to get up the bag of food was scattered some way down the road while the only thing remaining from the bag with the wine was the bag itself the bottles were nowhere to be found the two made their way back home only to discover it was nearly 5 a.m they had lost about three hours oh my god just like that guy just like ryan lost an hour and a half yeah on a commute through grain through fields empty fields it's also weird that this is very similar to the oh the moon like a different image of a moon appeared or it's like yeah it feels like the same computer file on that on that last ufo 100 it feels like the same memory the same screensaver just like reappearing yeah um oh god this gets even creepier okay they lost three hours they told their story and my grandma's sister didn't believe it claiming they were making up an excuse for finishing the wine and getting drunk but my grandma swore as they were completely sober and obviously very distressed in the morning. The brother-in-law insisted on taking them to where it had happened, but only a few minutes under the sun made a nasty rash breakout on any exposed skin they had. Um, so they had to go back in. The rash stayed for several days and he was feeling sick the whole time. I think that's like what radiation poisoning. He never spoke about what happened after that first night claiming he felt like if he did, they'd come back. And I've heard that. Yeah. i've heard that that like they don't want to bring it up because it's going to draw them back my fear is more et based where it's like i would be afraid that the government would come get me oh yeah that too and now i'm being tested on but like i would i i i feel like if i had a rash i would love to know what the what the medical chart said was the because if it wasn't radiation if it was like some lotion they put on me or something that is not of this earth like i i don't know that's so creepy i know but it's hard to imagine a dude in the 80s going to the doctor and being like an alien put this on me yeah right right or like hey can you tell me where this rash came from and hopefully they would be i don't know i have no idea but yeah all horrifying the rash did for several days uh yeah he he didn't talk about it ever again because he felt like if he did they'd come back it was enough for my grandma to become a believer though she and her sister did go to look for the wine i like that i love it they did go to look for the wine eventually but found nothing maybe they were just flung somewhere in the fields but i like thinking that the aliens developed a taste for homemade red thank you so much for reading and thank you for making an amazing podcast love d wow that's quite a tale um shocking i and that's i that's very interesting to this is the stuff that like entire movies are based off of like this is a like a story you've got here so you're right so the uh the rights so your grandpa great uncle brother-in-law whatever yeah rights to his story i um i feel like we don't get a lot of people who witnessed like i feel like we get stories from people who either claim that maybe they um had like a mini abduction happened to them or they lost a lot of time and they don't remember what happened but it's interesting to get a message from somebody who is like the second rung yeah like i witnessed someone who was i would love to hear more stories like that from people of like this didn't happen to me but i saw firsthand how scary this could be and i witnessed like just how real the in the aftermath like how real it was for yeah oh that's intriguing am i like that yeah maybe a future topic um we have one last one and this is very interesting and i'm nervous to tell this one because this is apparently a submission from um the uh crypt is unscripted poetry slam oh god okay which we did not have a crypt is unscripted this year no this year we did not but uh i'm glad that this will be our little taste of what could have been this is from river who uses they them pronouncing normalizing pronouns and the subject line is cryptid poetry slam submission so love it and i the reason i'm nervous to tell it is because I never know what like oh the rhythm or pattern they want me to say this yeah yeah so I believe in you I don't believe in me but I'm gonna just channel it it'll be bumpy before I figure it out so anyway this is called seaweed queen of the underworld whoa I don't know how the full moon plays into this at all here we go through the murky nope Already messed up. Through the dark, murky waters, the Kelby swims. Seaweed trailing through her mane, hooves, and fins. The time to feed is ebbing near. The full moon will shine through the skies, crystal clear. From the dark seas, she will rise to find a human fool enough to ride. The back of this sleek, beautiful beast to join past souls, sacrificed for a feast. She hears her victim walking along a path nearby, whistling along not knowing he's about to die oh god she runs full tilt through the fields and trees her seaweed mane whipping in the breeze the target and is finally in sight he must be tired it's nearly night she slows her gallop to a graceful trot despite her power she's silent in her stock when the time is right she steps into the fading light and the man stumbles and gasps at such a beautiful sight he reaches out his hand to offer his smell not knowing he's about to be taken to a watery hell oh she offers her back to this doomed stranger so unaware of the depth of this danger he climbs on with a thanks and presses his legs into her flanks but she turns with a buck into the air and when he grasps her seaweed main hair he realizes his horrible fate A ghoulish death he can't escape. His body has become fused to hers. He feels weak and his vision blurs. The salty seawater hits him like a knife. His final thoughts racing through his life. He thrashes in panic as his lungs begin to fill. Into the hellish realm of the Kelpie, she swims down, down, down with her kill. Whoa. Wow. Very, very good, River. My goodness. That's spooky. man I like that we at least got a little poetry moment I'm sorry that I had to be the one to tell it but it was very well done I loved it I didn't know where we were going it got so dark oh my goodness I big fan big fan of creative writing because I certainly am not that but well done everybody thank you everyone for your stories this was a wonderful way to start March see you in April April for April Fool's episode April Fool's yeah I wonder what that's gonna be I don't know we don't have an idea yet but yeah um write in you can go to and that's why drink.com and there we have story submissions there maybe we could do for April Fool's we could do like if you were pranked by a ghost or something I think we did that did we maybe it sounds like something we did I'm pretty sure but if you have that please send it in that's a great story I mean it's still a great topic sorry everyone no no if we are but maybe we didn't but um i think ghost pranks was definitely something we asked for but it feels like something we've done send them in again i don't know uh no thank you everybody and then as you just said you can submit things for our website and that's why drink.com yes yep uh and and yeah that's it thank you everyone we'll see you for our regularly scheduled programming every Sunday and that's why we drink.