October State of Mind

The Hauntingest Time of the Year

October 07, 2020 Ricky A Schroeder Season 1 Episode 5
October State of Mind
The Hauntingest Time of the Year
Show Notes Transcript

October is actually, finally here! We don't have to pretend anymore! Ricky Schroeder celebrates with more haunting tales to chill your bones! Discussions of halloween decorations, haunted homes for sale, creepy Amazon, more Halloween activities for 2020, scary movies including Gerald's Game and Alone, as well as new scary movies coming out this month, creepy true stories and more!

Stories
1) Brent Heuser @Brentpumpkins - Taipei
2) Nicole - Where is Your Dad?
3) Sarah - Ghosty Lady

References:
https://fox28spokane.com/grandmother-worried-after-images-of-creepy-pandas-show-up-in-amazon-order-history/
https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2020/09/arts-spooky-szn-soon
https://matadornetwork.com/read/irelands-haunted-house-sale/?fbclid=IwAR2Rx_GZamP1GRE0tmjafBen4GqT4IUuyku1kjCHIpOQinb1KIVc5ERceS4
https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/legend-of-lizzie-borden-and-maybe-a-ghost-lives-on-in-victorian-house-for-sale/
https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/haunted-house-legal-case-for-sale-nyack-new-york/
https://lockportcave.com
https://scareyourfriend.com
https://www.gaycities.com/outthere/51962/drag-race-queens-hit-road-halloween-drive-shows-across-us/
https://www.allhallowsgeek.com/a-the-boulet-brothers-dragula-special-is-coming-to-shudder-this-october/

Music:
Intro, Outro, and Scary Movie songs by Brian Barr

"Unnatural Situation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Shadowlands 4 - Breath" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Scheming Weasel (slower version)" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 "Comfortable Mystery 2" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

 "Comfortable Mystery 4" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Additional Music by Fesliyan Studios

 

Ghost Bus, Joe Wayman

 

Underneath the lamppost,

In the middle of the night,

A ghost bus make a silent stop,

A strange and fearful sight.

 

At the bus stop at your corner,

Something big and green climbed down.

It's looking for your bedroom,

And it has searched all over town.

 

You thought it couldn't find you,

That you were safe and you were sound.

You thought that you could hide,

Where you never could be found.

 

But now it's almost here,

You know it loves the dark of night.

There's only one thing you can do,

Quick! Turn on the light!

 

 

Intro

            Hello all you boos and ghouls and every soul in between! Welcome back to October State of Mind. The podcast that transports You to October and Spooky season, no matter when you’re listening, no matter what month it is before you put those headphones on it’s always October in here! Scary movies, haunted buildings, true ghostly and creepy stories and news, all things that come along with autumn and Halloween. We’ve got it right here on October State of Mind. I’m your host. Your…….ghost host, Ricky Schroeder. Rick or Treat if ya nasty. Welcome everyone to our first ever actual October Episode of October State of Mind!! Ahhh I’m so excited! No need to transport you to October today, because we are actually living it!! Unless, of course you’re listening to this episode sometime in the future. Whenever you’re listening to it, thank you for listening at all! I know you have a lot of choices when it comes to your seasonal spooky entertainment, so we thank you for choosing October State of Mind.

            Have you decorated for Halloween yet?? I’m just beginning my decorating journey. I wish I were better at decorating and crafts and everything like that. Every year I buy Martha Stewart’s Fall/Halloween edition of her magazine and I flip through it and see all of these creative decoration and recipe ideas and I think, Oh, I could do that! But then I realize that that is not my ministry, and I either just don’t do it, or I try and it ends up looking like if the Netlix show, Nailed It, did a Halloween decorating edition. Like, I bought a couple cheap mannequin heads, because I had this brilliant idea that I could stick them behind our curtains and it would look like ghost faces coming through the curtain, but when I tried to do it, I realized the curtain was too thick, so you couldn’t see any features of the face through it. Im gonna figure something out though… You also may be surprised to know that my decorating every year is usually just putting out a bunch of Halloween cards and making a little Halloween mantle. It’s harder when you’re in an apartment in the city, whereas if you have a house you can decorate your lawns so other people can see, so usually I just do something modest inside. And surprisingly I do very little Halloween decoration shopping, just because I have a hard time spending money on it. my mom usually just gets me some Halloween stuff for Christmas and that usually goes into my display. My dream is to one day have enough money to just hire someone to go all out in decorating the apartment for Halloween, since decorating and crafts and stuff are so intimidating to me, I can just hire someone who I know will do a fantastic job, so I won’t be disappointed in my own results. This year, however, for sure in response to the pandemic and in effort to make the season as spooky and celebratory as possible given the circumstances, I’ve been on a bit of a Halloween decoration buying spree, and I’m trying a little more crafty stuff. My problem is, I haven’t, like slowly accumulated stuff over the years, I’m just kind of trying to buy everything right now but it’s expensive! I haven’t gone crazy with spending money, yet, but I’ve certainly spent more than I normally do on decorations. Bats, and table cloths and table runners, and some fun light up ghosts, and fall garlands and things. Probably I will get more too. Trying to combine both the spooky Halloween decorations and the autumnal decorations in a way that seems natural. We’ll see how that goes. I was tempted to get spider webs but upon returning to the apartment after months of being away there were already cobwebs here so it was already perfect! I’ve also been verrrrry tempted to buy that new 12 foot skeleton that they’re selling at Home Depot. Nobody tell my fiancé, but It would juuuuust fit in our living room. I looked online the other day and if it had been available to ship I think I would’ve ordered it but it looks like you have to pick it up, and also, it’s like, too expensive….but I mayyyy still do… If you’d like to contribute to my Ricky secretly buys a 12 foot skeleton and doesn’t tell his fiancé about it until he gets back to the apartment at the end of the month and records his reaction fund, my venmo is RickyASchroeder. Just like my Instagram and twitter. How are you decorating this year? Same old decorations? Trying anything new? Breaking out the mcdonald’s Halloween nuggets from the 90s? Send me ya pics! I love looking at people’s Halloween displays, especially the really involved ones, and imagining that I could actually do that myself. Alright, as I wait for you to send me ya pics, We’re going to start off today with a story from my friend Brent Heuser, who lives in New York City. Brent, it just so happens, is an amazing pumpkin carver. He’s been featured for his incredible work in forbes, newsweek, bbc, at the Nintendo store, NFL on fox, Korean tv and has had his own residency of pumpkin carving at the highline hotel in new York. You can follow him and see some of his fantastic work @Brentpumpkins on Instagram. Now, the story he sent me today is so great. It’s a long one, but it’s a really good one. So without any further ado here’s Brent’s story.

BRENT Taipei (15min)

I was traveling for work overseas. I spent a long summer in Asia, first Japan, then Korea, then to Taiwan. My company had put us up in a hotel in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of Taipei, Taiwan. 

 

It was hot. I was there in August and it was, like, really, really, REALLY hot and humid to boot. I was on the 18th floor of my hotel and the air conditioning did not reach my room very well because I was so high up. The lack of good AC made it impossible to sleep soundly. I tossed and turned in the heat until I finally was able to fall asleep. 

 

That’s why, when the first time it happened, I wasn’t so sure what to believe. I woke up in the middle of the night to the feeling that I was being watched. My bed was directly across from the bathroom door, and a few feet to the left of that door was a little hallway maybe 8-10 feet long that led to the entrance of my hotel room. From my bed I could see down that hallway a bit, but not in perfect view of my hotel door. It was too dark to be sure, of course, but I found myself suddenly pulled awake from my sleep and felt a weird energy of some sort of presence coming from that dark entrance hallway. I felt like I was being watched. I couldn’t tell if it was just the delirium from the heat or if there was something ghostly going on. I am a believer in ghosts and otherworldly things. My forearms had a tingly, electric feeling that I’ve only had when I’ve been in one other spooky place. That spooky place was confirmed to be haunted. I turned a lamp on. Of course nothing was there, but I was so startled that I left the light on the rest of the night. 

 

The next day the AC in the hotel had broken completely. My room felt like a sauna. The front desk told me I could change rooms for lower floor, but despite the weird incident during the night, honestly, I rather liked my hotel room. It was big, kinda swanky, and (despite the heat) the high floor made me feel fancy. That was, until the next time it happened. 

 

This time, I was awakened out of my sleep by my own shouting. I came to, screaming at the same hallway in the corner of my hotel room, where I had found myself drawn to the other night. I was shouting, “I know you’re over there!” and, “What do you want?!” I frightened myself. I had bad nightmares as a child, and used to sleepwalk as kids do, but I don’t remember ever waking up like this. I was shouting things, barely aware of what I was saying. I challenged what I thought was a Ghost in the corner of my room. It was the oddest, scariest thing because I almost felt out of control. Like my instincts knew something wasn’t right and had woken me up to defend myself. I slept with the lights on, once again... 

 

That’s when I started to do some digging. I googled “Haunted Taipei,” and I couldn’t believe what came up. There has been a lot of war, and a lot of death, sadly, in the country’s past, AND  there were PLENTY of ghost stories. 4 major hotels that are said to be haunted so bad that even some of those ghost hunting shows had done episodes there. However, none of these hotels were mine. So, I said to myself, calm down. It’s probably just the heat, and bad quality of sleep... but I still felt like something was up. 

 

It happened, AGAIN. I woke up. Shouting. Shouting at the corner of my room where that gloomy hallway leads to the door and out of my hotel room. I felt trapped. I felt like something was just standing there, watching me. I gathered myself from my sleep shouting, and was able to coherently ask, “What do you what?! ...Can you please let me sleep?!” By this point, the ghost stories, the lack of sleep, the heat, and these nightly visits from something... some energy I couldn’t see but I could certainly feel... it was all taking its toll on me, and I felt like an absolute crazy person. This continued almost every single night.

 

I told some of my coworkers about the ghost stories in Taipei. They were intrigued. I asked, “You guys haven’t like... seen anything have you?” No one had. It was only me. Because of the delirium and lack of feeling safe at night, I was really beginning to feel dragged down. A co-worker asked me if I was alright, that I didn’t look well. I asked her if she believed in spirits. She said she generally did. So, trying to not sound too crazy I confided in her, “I don’t know... my room is, like, haunted or something. I love ghostly movies and I love the ghost hunting shows... But I feel like somethings happening in my hotel room and I’m so scared that I just want it to stop. It’s funny you see stuff like this on TV, but when it feels real, you want nothing to do with it.” My co-worker seemed both afraid of my story and afraid of me because I was completely genuine and terrified. I must’ve looked and sounded insane. She said, “Sweetie, why don’t you just change rooms?” Duh, brilliant, so that was absolutely what I tried to do. 

 

I went to the front desk, and asked to change rooms. It was the weekend and the hotel was now completely booked. There were no other rooms to escape to. If I had just moved to another room, a lower floor, when the AC problem first began, I may have not been in this claustrophobic mess. I retreated to my haunted room for yet another night of feeling like something was showing up late at night, just to watch me. 

 

Then one day, I was putting on my shoes to leave for work. I was sitting across from the bathroom door that was ajar. I saw with my own eyes the faucet turn on and a short stream of water flow out. Then the door to the bathroom gently glided opene a few inches further. A paper from the desk next to the door flew to the ground, and I heard a creak in the floor near the window. It was as if someone had washed their hands, turned off the faucet, and went about their business alongside of me in my room. This happened in the middle of the day. I quickly grabbed what I needed for the day and ran. I told this story to a group of my co-workers. I think by this point they thought I was going nuts from being overseas too long or something. But I had witnessed it. I saw it happen.

 

I was terrified, I was drained, I was over it. I couldn’t change rooms, I couldn’t leave Taipei. I couldn’t change hotels as our company was paying for this one specifically. I was in a foreign speaking country and I truly felt like I was going crazy all by my lonesome. 

 

Then the AC finally came back on. It was late at night again. I called to the front desk to say my room was still really hot, even though the air had been fixed. They said it was probably the coils of my AC that had to be unfrozen or something, so someone would come up and take care of it. A front desk attendant and a repairman came up to my room to fix the situation. The front desk guy spoke perfect English so I decided to poke his brain about the... ghostly situation... of Taipei. 

 

I asked him, “So this may sound crazy, but I hear Taipei has a lot of ghost sightings, and hauntings... do you believe in that stuff” 

 

He said, “Oh yes. I don’t just believe it, I know it to be true.” 

 

I shuddered. “Between us, I won’t tell the other guests, is this hotel haunted?”

 

“Without a doubt. By several spirits,” he replied. 

 

Waves of chills ran through my body. “Several spirits...?!” I asked.

 

“Oh yes.” He was a quirky, slender, medium-height man. The way he spoke so frankly made me both believe him, and also think he may be slightly off his rocker. I imagine this is what my co-workers thought of me when I told them what was happening in my hotel room. 

 

“Tell me more. I love ghost stories,” I probed.

 

“Well there’s a little girl. She’s very playful. I don’t think she’s aware that she’s dead. She’ll move things, play with things, play pranks on the maids,” he told me. I shivered and thought of the incident where the water had turned on, and the paper dropped to the ground in the middle of the day. Had the spirit of a child done that...?

 

I asked him, “what else?” 

 

He carried on, “Well there’s a woman who wanders the hallways. I think she may know she’s passed but she’s terribly sad and won’t let go of something. She only wanders the lower floors. Don’t worry she won’t come all the way up here.” He smiled. 

 

I confessed, “Well, it’s funny you mention that, because I think that little girl ghost must be playing tricks on me. I had something happen the other day.”

 

He quickly replied, “Oh no-no. She doesn’t come up this high either. She’s down on the second floor, where the maids do laundry and we have event rooms.” I shuddered to think of what could be visiting my room then. “What’s happened to you?” He asked. 

 

I confessed further, it felt like I was talking to a ghost therapist, someone who finally would understand what I was going through. “Well, I keep waking up at night to something watching me. I can’t see what’s watching me, but I wake up startled out of my sleep shouting at something in the corner of my room. It doesn’t move, it just is, I don’t know... There. It happened my first night and almost every night since. There was also an incident where some things moved in my room, but that was daylight. I don’t know I feel like a crazy person.” 

 

He said, “Don’t feel crazy.” He comforted, “That’s just the old man coming to visit you.” 

 

My adrenaline spiked, “There’s an old man too?!” 

 

“Yes,” he said. “He’s very old, very frail. He doesn’t know that he’s dead. He slowly wanders the hotel. It’s very sad because he’s completely blind. I think he lost his sight in some terrible way. He doesn’t hear very well either. So he’ll kind of wander around and just... linger. Trying to see or hear what’s around him. Sadly he probably never will.” 

 

“Oh my God. That explains everything. Something comes into my room, and it just stands there, in this hallway. I don’t know what it wants, but I’ve called and called to it to leave me alone and he can’t hear me.”

 

“Sounds about right. You must be in tune with something, or he’s trying to connect with you. Maybe he can just barely hear your shouting so he keeps coming back to try and figure out who you are.” The man explained. “As for the things shuffling around in your room, I’d blame that on the soldier. The old man doesn’t really do things like that, because he can’t see.” 

 

A soldier now?! I was done. Several spirits. I was scared and vindicated at the same time. 

 

The repairman had fixed the AC, the and cool air poured in. Before the front desk man left, he spotted some Pokémon toys I had gotten while in Japan. He also noticed my guitar that I traveled with me. “Your things really like you. These toys, your guitar, they’re precious. Belongings that we love, love us back. If you set your Pokémon up to face the door, and maybe sit them on your guitar, that should do it. They’ll protect you.” I thanked him for the advice and for fixing my AC.

 

Again I reiterate, it all felt insane. But how was I not to trust what this man had said after completely validating what I went through? He could have been messing with me, but I truly don’t believe that. He was otherworldly in the way that he spoke. After they left, I quickly sat my up Pokémon toys on top of my guitar case, facing the door. A couple of plush pikachus, and other characters defended me that night, and for the rest of my stay in Taipei. 

 

I don’t know if it was the personal line of defense I had    facing my hotel room door, or the cool air finally kicking in, but I didn’t have one more ghostly experience in my hotel room for the rest of my stay.

 

 

Spooky News (10min30s)

For today’s creepy news, here’s a little consumer warning for you. Whenever you’re buying online you always want to double check and do your research on the company you’re purchasing from. Read reviews from other customers, check out the seller and the company, Make sure they’re legit. Sometimes everything will work out, like this past summer I found the perfect gift for my dad. A neon sign of a Budweiser logo and a trumpet, if you knew my dad, you’d know it to be perfect, so my sister and I spent a lot of money on it. It was only a few days after I made the purchase when I received an email from the company saying they were upgrading my order for free but that it might take a long time because of the pandemic, and it was all written in very broken English with no grammar to be seen at all that I thought, oh…maybe I should’ve made sure this site was legit. So I did a little googling and found that this site had a multitude of 1 star reviews of people who had never gotten their product, or had gotten it but it wasn’t at all what they asked for. There were a few people who said they got their order and were happy, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, even though I was certain I had gotten scammed, but I sent constant emails to the company, and would you believe the neon sign actually showed up and it looked great! Obviously that’s not the creepy story. Sometimes these orders don’t work out… I just read a story about a grandmother in Washington, Mary Miller, who, knowing her young grandson loved Halloween, went on Amazon and purchased three light up pumpkins that sing and tell jokes, to be delivered to her grandson. My kind of people. The woman described the pumpkins as looking really cute and being excited to help her family decorate for Halloween. However, this purchase was made through a third party on Amazon, not Amazon proper, and a few days after she ordered the pumpkins she went online just to see if they were on their way. When she clicked on the order, however, the image of the cute innocent pumpkins was nowhere to be found, and in it’s place were pandas, and not the cute kind. The image showed two adult cartoon pandas crying as they looked up at a baby panda hanging, while another panda below, that had a human face was pointing toward a casket. There was Chinese writing on the images that a translator said was mostly nonsense, but did mention something about cremation. When Amazon was made aware of the problem the third party seller removed the images and refunded Mary, but the package is still on its way. And what will be delivered remains to be seen…

 

Now it seems like so many people are packing up their lives and moving these days. The fall is the time to do it after all. My cousin recently forced me to watch the comedy central show, Nathan for You, on Hulu before it expired, which I hated but also really loved. It’s hilarious and made me laugh a lot, but it’s also just super cringey and feels a little mean spirited at times. Essentially, this guy Nathan, who was playing a caricature of himself, would go around to real businesses and talk to real people and give them ridiculous ideas on how to improve their business, from telling a frozen yogurt shop to release a poo flavor, or convincing a haunted house to make people really believe they had been exposed to a potentially deadly virus so that they would sue the haunt for publicity, obviously this was years ago. all the while just making things as uncomfortable as possible. It’s so dumb and I loved it and also hated it. Anyway, one of the episodes Nathan suggested to a realtor that she brands herself as the ghost realtor, giving the guarantee to her customers that every house she sells is ghost free. Now, if you ask me, that doesn’t sound like the ghost realtor, that sounds like the No-ghost realtor. There are plenty of us who actually would like to live with a ghost, so for today consider me the true ghost realtor, as I’ve got a couple listings for you, guaranteed to ghost you.

            If you’re living in the USA, and looking to move out of the country, A) I don’t blame you and B) may I suggest Ireland? Since Ireland’s noted Most Haunted House is currently for sale! Loftus Hall, the 22 bedroom, 27,000 square foot Georgian mansion was allegedly visited by the devil in the late 18th century. According to the legend, a dark stranger came to the house on horseback telling the Tottenham family, the owners of the mansion, that his ship was forced to dock. The Tottenham’s invited him to stay. One evening, Lady Ane Tottenham, decided to entertain their guest by playing a game of cards with him in the tapestry room. During their game, Lady Ane happened to look down and noticed that where the stranger’s feet should’ve been were a pair of cloven hooves. Immediately upon her noticing these goat like appendages, the stranger vanished up through the ceiling in a poof of smoke. She is said to have died from the shock…a few years later…which I don’t know if we can attribute dying years later to that experience, more likely, you know, it’s the 18th century, a lot of things can get you in a couple years, but for the sake of the legend we’ll go with it. The house has been restored by the Quigley family who runs ghost tours as the house is still said to be haunted by the devil. A priest even came to exorcise the building, apparently to no avail. And all this devilish goodness of 63 acres and a private beach can be yours for a cool $3 million!

            What? You don’t have 3 million laying around? Ireland’s too far? Ugh, okay I suppose we can look cheaper and closer….How about a gorgeous waterfront home in West Nyack, NY, famously known for being the center of a haunted house legal case? This 4,628 square foot, 5 bedroom, and 4.5 bathroom Victorian home was built in 1890 and is perched right next to the Hudson river. The listing says it looks unassuming, but I don’t know about that. It looks very assuming to me. 1 Laveta Place is the address, and if you google that, you’ll find it’s starring role in the 1991 legal case, Stambovsky vs Ackley, which came to be known as the “Ghostbusters” ruling. Helen Ackley was the seller of the home and Jeffrey Stambovsky was trying to buy it. This case made it to the state supreme court is the precedent for requiring New York State residents to disclose if they believe their house to be haunted. Yes, it is a legally haunted house. Ackley owned the property from the 70’s thru the 80s and experienced lots of ghostly occurrences including her daughter being shaken in bed from an unknown entity. However, when Stambovsky tried to purchase the house, neither Ackley or the listing agent made him aware of these hauntings. Ackley wasn’t trying to keep it a secret as local and national publications had reported about it, but because she hadn’t disclosed this information initially to Stambovsky, once he found out about the ghosts, he wanted to get out of the contract. Now some people speculate that Ackley was only trying to draw attention and interest in her house when talking about these spirits, that perhaps she didn’t actually believe it to be haunted, but as the State Supremem court ruled and set the law from this case, If you say your house has spirits and you don’t disclose it to your buyer, you are liable to lose your deposit” Now the house has been sold three times since then, including to Ingrid Michaelson, and no one since has reported seeing any ghosts, but maybe they just want to keep their deposit. It’s truly a stunning house that has had some gorgeous renovations, with incredible river views, and maybe a ghost or two, and can be yours for only $2million!

            What?? 2million is still too expensive for you? Ugh fiiiinne, we can go cheaper. I’ve got one last listing for you.

There’s a lovely Victorian home in Fall River, Massachussetts for sale. Built in 1887 it sits on a Half acre lot, with 7 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Nearly 4000 square feet and beautifully restored. Antique looking, but working appliances, some original wallpaper, six fireplaces, oh, and former home to Lizzie Borden. You know, of the axe murders? Now, no, this isn’t THAT house, where the axe murders actually took place, that’s a little ways a way and has famously been turned into a Bed&Breakfast that attracts hundreds a year, (I’m sure I’ll talk about it in a future episode) but this is where Lizzie lived in her final years, after her stint in jail, before she died at the age of 66, her wake held in the parlor of the house. Many ghost hunters have visited the house saying that Lizzie and her sister Emma still roam the halls, and someone who keeps coming through to say he’s Lizzie’s boyfriend. The listing agent of the house says people have claimed to be pushed in the house. The owner, who also owns the actual murder house, had initially intended to turn this house into another Lizzie Borden B&B, but ran into permitting issues and storms, and with COVID, decided to let it go and sell it, and it all can be yours, legends included for $890,000.

            Alright, now that I’ve set you up with your new dream home, you’re welcome, I’ll wait for my commission thru Venmo, I’ve got another story for you. 

 

 

Nicole  (California) Where is Your Dad? (3min 45 sec)  

. I feel like no one believes me when I tell them this story, but two people were there to  witnessed it.

A few months after my parents died, I met up with a couple friends to have dinner and drinks at this local joint. The owner is from Italy. His wife and son travel back and forth between countries quite frequently. His son was like 5  years old at the time. Super cute little boy who was bilingual, speaking both Italian and English. That night, I was still deep in grief and most likely still in shock from my parents recent deaths. I was sitting there drinking my beer and kind of zoned out, in my own head, while everyone chatted. It was a really crowded and loud night. I had never met the kid before, but that night he came straight up directly to me and said hi. I smiled and said hi back, and then he asked me, “Where is your dad?” I was 35 years old at the time, it had been quite a while since anyone wondered where my dad was. I stumbled a little and, not knowing what else to say, I said “Well....he died.” He says “I know.” I said “You do? …Do you know how?” (It felt really weird to ask him that, but you had to be there. It didn’t feel like I was talking to a child.) Then he says “With a gun. Right here.” And points to his chest. My jaw DROPPED. I had never met this kid, and it was my first time meeting his parents as well. I guess, it’s possible someone could have told him about my parents, but I hadn’t told anyone where my parents had been shot, and their autopsies were sealed, so there’s no possible way he could have specifically known that part. Then later, when I left to walk out to my car, he was outside playing with other kids, but saw me from across the parking lot and yelled “Goodbye! I love you!!!” It was the strangest experience of my life. I had to ask my friend afterward if it really happened because I thought maybe I was losing my mind.

 

There have been a few really WEIRD coincidences after they died. One day my sister accidentally overdrew her bank account, but she had really wanted to buy something to wear to a party that night. That same day, she receives a check in the mail that she wasn’t expecting at all. So she says out loud “Thanks, mom.” Then she goes shopping and finds a random coat that she decides to purchase. She gets home and looks at the tag and the brand name is Valerie Stevens. My parents’ first names.

 

 

 

HALLOWEEN/COVID

Halloween is fast approaching! And I’m realizing I don’t have a costume yet! Ahh! I was going to be Elvira, but decided I’d like to save her for a year where I know I’m going to go out and people can see my whole beautiful face not hiding under a mask. So I’ve gotta figure something out…But there are plenty of things to do this spooky season. From outdoor activities and all the haunts that have implemented COVID procedures to virtual at home experiences!

Psycho Clan, the group behind wildly popular blindfolded haunted house theatrical experiences here in NYC has developed a way to bring their haunted house experience to you! Now, I went to their experience last year, I Can’t See!, by myself, and I loved it. First off, I went by myself because everyone I knew was too chicken to go to a blindfolded haunted house experience, but I had so much fun. Basically in I Can’t See, I was blindfolded and given headphones which put me at the center of a scary story of friends who meet up one night and decide to go explore a haunted hosue, complete with 360 degree stereo surround sound pre recorded atmospheric sounds and voice actors as characters in the story. You basically hold on to a rope walk alongside of it as workers at the haunt guide you physically when to stop, start, sit, stand, and everything, but the best part is that truly make the story come alive. At key timed moments they would grab or push you to startle you, touch you with different textured props made to feel like whatever was happening in the story bringing the scene in your ears to life. One of my favorite parts was when i was guided to a wooden bar as the sounds of a lively bar filled my ears and the smell of stale beer filled my nostrils, then a drunk guy came in on the audio, and I felt one of the performers leaning on me as if he were the drunk man. Then the man on audio threw up and I felt liquid on my arm and smelled something foul. Obviously I knew no one had actually thrown up on me but they had done such a great job, it was hilarious. At the very end you were thrown into a tiny closet like room and instructed to take your blindfold off, to find the words “Don’t Die” written on a door that wouldn’t open. Only those of us who had paid close attention to the whole evening were able to escape the room….alive.

            So now, Psycho Clan has made their experience available to you, you can purchase the audio download which comes with digital instructions on how to set the stage in your own home to bring the scary story to life for your family, roommates or close friends. I’m imagining based on my experience last year that it will be somewhat involved, and if you want to be the one experiencing it you’ve got to ask someone else to do it for you, but for $15, and the ability to do it whenever you want and wherever you want, I’d say go for it! You can find out more at scareyourfriend.com

            So im’ starting to discover there are more caves in New York than I ever thought about. Last episode I talke about the Howe Cavern’s first foray into the haunted arts, and now I’ve found that the Lockport Cave and Underground Boat Ride is also offering a spooky Halloween tour. Located near Buffalo, this spooky boat ride through the cave has been operating for 40 years and was featured on Ghost Hunters. “Your tour guide will lead you by lantern light along the dark waters of the Erie Canal, telling you folklore, tales and hair rasiing stories as you prepare to enter the forbidden tunnels and caves under Lockport” Also, after their experience with Ghost Hunters, they now offer a special four hour paranormal investigation experience open to all levels of paranormal investigative experience. As with most responsible business, covid precautionary measures are in place.

            Now anyone who likes drag queens and spooky things, listen up! Have you watched the Boulet Brothers’ Dragula? It’s basically the monster version of RuPaul’s Drag Race meets Fear Factor, and thru the streaming service Shudder, they’re launching a spin-off this month entitled The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Resurrection, which is a two horror horror movie/documentary/reality competition in which competitors from Dragula’s first three seasons will compete against each other for the chance to get ‘resurrected’ and earn a spot competing on the upcoming fourth season of Dragula, they also win 20,000 dollars. Unlike past seasons of the series which brought competitors to Hollywood, ​this time the judges will travel across the country to where each artist lives and work. The competitors will be challenged to design three original Halloween-themed looks and present them in performances to be filmed at haunting and horrifying real-world locations including an abandoned Georgia train station and a haunted mansion in the woods of North Carolina. So, I watched the second and third seasons this summer, and had mixed feelings about the show, but mostly liked it. It goes to a little bit of the dark side and gross side of horror, which isn’t my favorite. Like even if a horror movie is dark and gory, ultimately I know its fake, but in this show the elimination challenges they have them do can be truly…disgusting, and they’re real. On season 3, the opening scene was everyone picking a compact, the competitor who picked up the wrong compact had to eat a jar of live spiders. I couldn’t watch. They also occasionally do stuff with needles and raw meat and bugs, and even made competitors jump out of a plane. There’s also a lot of filler drama that seems at times unnecessarily mean spirited and nasty, but at the end of the day, the creativity of these spooky and horrific looks that these queens (and kings) come up with are truly incredible, so just to see those looks and the performances that come with them was worth it all for me. Also while mostly their challenges are just creating looks, occasionally they have fun acting/performance challenges, and some of the elimination challenges aren’t gross. Like the plane jumping was really exciting, sometimes they have to get tattoos or take a lie detector test.

            The Boulet Brothers say about their new venture, “We’re so excited to be bringing this special to life, and even more excited that it’s happening just in time for Halloween. The format is something incredibly different and it truly presents drag in an innovative way that has never been seen on tv before. It’s easily the best content we have ever produced, and the highest level of drag that tv audiences have ever seen. We are so proud of the cast and crew who made this happen, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Shudder to produce it”

            Also in other spooky drag news, Voss Events has organized drive in drag Halloween shows featuring cast members from Rupauls Drag Race, Asia Ohara, Aquaria, Yvie Oddly, Kameron Michales, Kim Chi, Voilete Chachki and Vanessa Vanjie Mateo.. Each queen will be playing the part of a trapped soul, recounting how they came to die, they’ll each share their chilling tale of death in an immersive stage performance sure to fright and delight! Producer Brandon Voss said in a statement, “Our wildly popular drive-in productions are proving the drag show must go on even through a pandemic! The show has been adapted to be even more interactive than the original arena production, bringing performances and haunts into the parking lot for an immersive experience we are dubbing a Haunted Parking Lot for a good scare. The queens will be putting on this drag Spooktacular for $69 per car teehee. You can drive to Philly, Boston, San Fran, Denver or NYC to see the queens haunt you on stage and via jumbotron all from the safety of your car 

       

Some Students at the University of North Carolina are discovering new fun and safe ways to celebrate Halloween this year.  Junior, Elizabeth Wheless says “This year, her and her roommates have decided to go all out for Halloween and make sure that it’s as festive as possible just for the three of them. She says, We went on a major rampage at two different Targets trying to find all the stuff that we could use to make both the outside of the house and the inside be as spooky or Halloween-y as possible”

Freshman Jackson Meade says his family has come up with an innovative way to do trick or Treating this year. His family is super into Halloween, usually planning months in advance for the night, but this year they repurposed old technology to create candy dispensers, and set up a texting service that will trigger a machine to disinfect the candy, all avoiding contact and spread. As Meade says Halloween isn't canceled for us, but we also shouldn't act like it isn't going to be different It has to be celebratory without being stupid”

 

 

Alright, and now I have another story you from my friend, sarah, who lives in NY. So Sarah sent me her story over some audio recordings, and after listening to it, I enjoyed the way she told her story and decided to let her tell it herself for a change of pace. I’m sure you’re tired of my voice anyway. So with this it opens the door to anyone who wants to submit their stories through audio recordings. I’d prefer the best quality recording you can get if this is something you want to do, but also I am still always accepting your written out stories (and poems) and you can send them all to RICKYOSOM@gmail.com So here is Sarah herself telling her story, Ghosty Lady.

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah (new York) – Ghosty Lady

 

 

 

 

 

Scary Movie

            What’s your favorite scary movie? October, obviously, is the month to binge on all the scary movies. There are so many. And I always get confused when Halloween movies don’t get released in October. Hocus Pocus, in 1993 was released in August. Like, what? Who decided to do that? Hocus Pocus gets 10/10 pumpkins from me, btw, and if you haven’t seen it, what are you even doing listening to this podcast right now? Being released on demand at the end of this month, on the 28th, is The Craft: Legacy, which is a stand alone sequel to the 1996 film, The Craft, which if you haven’t seen it probably won’t be necessary to watch first, but probably would enhance your enjoyment of this new one. Speaking of sequels, there’s been speculation about a Hocus Pocus sequel for years now, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I’d love to see the Sanderson Sisters back in action, but on the other hand, I feel like that first one was just so perfect, that any attempt to try and capture that lightning in a bottle again would just fall short. A better idea, I think, would be to turn Hocus Pocus into a musical, which there also has been speculation about. And if that comes to pass, and I’m not a part of it, I will go full Winnie and suck the lives out of all the children of Salem myself!

            The 2020 remake of The Witches starring Anne Hathaway and Ocatvia Spencer is coming to HBO Max on Oct 22nd. It’s based on the Roald Dahl book, and centers on a boy who has run ins with real witches. The 1990 version originally starred Anjelica Huston and has become a bit of a cult classic.

            Paramount pictures just released the trailer for SPELL, a new comie coming on demand and to select theatres on October 30th. While flying to his father’s funeral in rural Appalachia, an intense storm causes Marquis (Omari Hardwick) to lose control of the plane carrying him and his family.  He awakens wounded, alone and trapped in Ms. Eloise’s (Loretta Devine) attic, who claims she can nurse him back to health with the Boogity, a Hoodoo figure she has made from his blood and skin. Unable to call for help, Marquis desperately tries to outwit and break free from her dark magic and save his family from a sinister ritual before the rise of the blood moon. The trailer looks really good, except it’s implied there’s an animal sacrifice of a black cat, and as a black cat owner and cat lover in general it makes me seriously question watching it. Whenever a dog or a cat is introduced in a scary movie just to have it die, it automatically loses two pumpkin points from me because it’s just a lazy and manipulative way to get the audience upset. And it’s not scary either, it’s just upsetting. Anyway, that aside, I’m hoping maybe that trailer moment was just a fake out, and otherwise it looks like a really good thriller.

            Now, I was going to reserve October for only talking about supernatural movies that I’ve watched, but I just watched Alone which you can find On Demand. It’s about a woman who packs up her Portland, Oregon life in a uhaul trailer and hits the road to move. Along the long winding roads she meets a man who immediately gives off ‘I’m a creep’ vibes, after having a bizarre road incident with him. After going on her way, she realizes he’s following her. Eventually he gets the better of her and she wakes up kidnapped in his cellar. She’s able to escape, but then she has to try and survive the wilderness with a crazy killer trying to find her. I have to admit, while the movie adds nothing new to the kidnap/survival genre, it was really well done, from the camera work, art direction, and performances, I was simultaneously impressed and also gripping my seat and yelling at the tv. Despite the familiar movie territory, it was incredibly satisfying and thrilling and I give it 8/10 pumpkins.

            Lastly, I finally got around to watching Gerald’s Game. It’s been sitting in my Netflix queue for a while, and I ended up really liking it. The basic premise is that a couple goes to their secluded house for a getaway in attempt to rekindle their fading romance. Their attempt to reignite that flame is thru an awkward role play game where the husband Gerald handcuff’s his wife, Jessie to the bed. However, when Gerald suffers a sudden heart attack, Jessie is left chained to the bed, with no one around to hear her screams for help, and as she sturggles to survive over the next few days without food or water, her mind begins to play tricks on her and she struggles to figure out what’s really happening and what’s all in her mind. First of all, I wasn’t expecting to be creeped out by this movie, I thought it was going to be more just like a survival/escape movie, but there’s a bit of a supernatural element in there that actually really freaked me out, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but that night when I turned off the lights in my apartment I kept thinking I saw something lurking in the shadows... the movie also deals with the real life monsters and traumas, as we go in and out of Jessie’s subconscious disturbing memories. At times it felt like they were spelling out every literary device Stephen king had used in the original story for us, as if we wouldn’t be able to make the connections ourself, but Overall I thought it was really well done, with some great performances and genuinely creepy moments so I give it 7.5 out of 10 pumpkins.

 

ENDING

Well, that’s all I got for you for this first October episode! I had some really great spooky stories today, so I skipped the longer haunted building section I normally do, although you still kind of got it when I put on my ghost realtor hat for you. Let me know how you like your new house, by the way. As always please send me your creepy experiences, send me some creepy poems, send me pics of your Halloween decorations, send me suggestions, send me anything! (As long as its nice and appropriate) You can follow along @OSOMpodcast on insta and twitter facebook and find me @RickyASchroeder on insta and twitter! Also, if you like what I’m doing, please leave me a 5 star rating and a nice review wherever you’re listening! For everyone who’s done that so far, I really appreciate it! It keeps me motivated to keep going! I hope that October chill in the air is making you feel alive, I hope the changing leaves are bringing you joy, I hope ghost stories are giving you the heebie jeebies and I hope you’re getting every ounce of fall and Halloween fun out of the month that you can! Until next time, It’s been my pleasure being your ghost host. Sleep tight everyone, don’t look under the bed and….Happy Hauntings!!