Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark MFM Minisode 459 About this episode Happy Halloween, Murderinos! This week’s hometowns include a giant pumpkin, pipe bomb party and tales from Spirit Halloween.
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Transcript 6,294 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
0:06 Speaker 00 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
0:35 Georgia Hardstark? The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Sunny's life is pretty great until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception, his mom.
0:48 Karen Kilgariff? Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nivola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.
0:55 Georgia Hardstark? Watch the Hulu original series Phony.
0:57 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
1:01 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
1:03 Speaker 03 In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. And what the feds uncover is a complex scheme of staged wrecks, financial fraud, and a pair of conspiring lovers behind it. This is a story about fake accidents that led to real consequences. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
1:56 Karen Kilgariff? Hello and welcome.
1:57 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder.
1:59 Karen Kilgariff? That's Georgia Hardstark.
2:00 Georgia Hardstark? That's Karen Kilgariff.
2:01 Karen Kilgariff? This is a minisode. God damn it.
2:03 Georgia Hardstark? It's okay. We can still introduce ourselves in our minisode. Maybe we should start doing that.
2:06 Karen Kilgariff? No, I think we should be, yeah, 10 years in. Let's keep it mysterious. Oh, I think you go first this time.
2:12 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. We have special Halloween hometowns for you guys because it's spooky season.
2:16 Karen Kilgariff? And if you're watching the video, you can see that Georgia has a very special Halloween-inspired t-shirt on right now.
2:22 Georgia Hardstark? I found this at a vintage shop when we were in Denver and it reminded me of candy corn. And I was like, this is perfect for the show. Want to see something really spooky?
2:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
2:29 Georgia Hardstark? Look at the size of that fucking zit on my forehead.
2:31 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God. It's the ghost of your teenage years. Where'd that come from?
2:36 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know. Touring breaks me out so bad.
2:39 Karen Kilgariff? Dude, here's the thing. I watched the other day and the bags under my eyes, like the, it was hilarious. I was just like, no one's ever going to mention that I have huge, like, exhaustion bags.
2:51 Georgia Hardstark? Because only you think that.
2:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, but good Lord, I could slap some fucking restrictor on there, do something.
2:59 Georgia Hardstark? It's all bad. It's all bad.
3:00 Karen Kilgariff? It's all, we're doing a lot of things.
3:02 Georgia Hardstark? We're aging. We're aging. We decided to, why don't we go ahead and record this for posterity? Great idea.
3:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
3:07 Georgia Hardstark? Us. All right. This one's called Perfect Halloween Hometown. MFM crew, let me jump right in. I went to middle and high school in a small Vermont town called Woodstock. It's quiet, historical, no stoplights kind of town, and it reeks of its Puritan past. Central to the town is a green, like a small park, where most of the community events take place, including farmers markets, snow sculpture contests, et cetera. It sounds like a Hallmark movie, doesn't it?
3:33 Karen Kilgariff? Snow sculpture?
3:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
3:34 Karen Kilgariff? Like, just, I'm going to give you a couple of examples. Snow sculpture.
3:39 Georgia Hardstark? But there is one community event in particular I'd like to tell you about. In 1834, the eldest brother of the ransom family, Frederick, aged 20, died of an illness that made him very pale and lose his appetite for food. Three months after his death, the younger brother Daniel became ill with the same symptoms and began to waste away. The family feared that the dead son was a vampire draining his little brother from beyond the grave. I feel like 1834 is a little late in the game to be believing that, right?
4:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, agreed.
4:09 Georgia Hardstark? Like 16 something, maybe.
4:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's like, or if you lived out in the country, late 1700s, but yeah, come on now.
4:17 Georgia Hardstark? So this is on them. The family dug Frederick up and upon examining the decaying corpse, one Dr. Frost determined that there was fresh blood in Frederick's heart and that he had likely sucked it from his brother.
4:28 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
4:29 Georgia Hardstark? Sir.
4:30 Karen Kilgariff? Sir. We need a second opinion on this one.
4:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. The townspeople gathered together at the green with a blacksmith forge to burn the body because as we all know, this is how you release a curse.
4:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
4:43 Georgia Hardstark? But this got me. The younger brother Daniel eats the ashes of his brother's vampiric heart to try to cure him. Daniel was only three years old, which means they're fucking forced to be in this baby. The rest of the ashes were buried in a box in the center of the Woodstock green.
5:00 Karen Kilgariff? Good lord.
5:01 Georgia Hardstark? Cool. I have been to the cemetery that Frederick was originally buried at, even on school field trips, but his grave is gone. Urban legend says that some students from the high school dug up the spot in the green that was supposed to house Frederick's ashes. When they reached six feet, the earth shook and they heard screams and a deep rumbling. Needless to say, no one has fucked with digging up that shit since. But my best friend's mom still lives in town and recently went out on a blind date. The guy was good looking and younger than her, so they went out a few times. That's all it takes. Good looking and younger. Especially, you know, in Woodstock in a small town.
5:35 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
5:36 Georgia Hardstark? That's all you fucking need.
5:36 Karen Kilgariff? Is he dumb? Stop talking about that. Does he have any common interest in you? I don't know why you keep asking me these questions.
5:42 Georgia Hardstark? Until he said that he thinks he's a distant relative of the Rancin family and that he's a vampire too. Stay sexy and dump him if he wants to drink your blood, cat. As an afterword, it's, it is likely that the real cause of Frederick and the rest of his family's eventual death was tuberculosis. I sent this in once before and forgot to sign it, so, Kachina.
6:04 Karen Kilgariff? Cat, you nailed it. You nailed it, Cat. That was really good. So fucked up. But also it just makes you think of like that stuff that used to happen back then where it's like one old guy with a beard and he's just like, "Yeah, you know what this is?" And no one checked me on this. One elected official with like a fucking MD. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to reach at the subject line of this one. It says, "Hey, MFM fam. Let's give her something they legit say in my hometown. I grew up in rural farmland, Ontario, Canada, where my parents grew ridiculous and hideous town fair award-winning giant pumpkins. We're talking the over 300-pound variety. And back in those days, their place was also the local
6:44 Karen Kilgariff? party house slash barn where they hosted, among all the other festivities, an annual Halloween rager. My uncle, who works for the government, doing not sure what but has access to explosives, got the great idea to blow up that year's biggest pumpkin as a way to end the night with a bang." I love it. That's the person I want to meet. Yeah. This went on for a couple of years without incident, just chunks of pumpkin all over the yard. Then came the year we barely speak of still to this day. My uncle decided to up the ante that year. I need to meet this man. He's fun. He is what it's about. Yeah. This is just making life fun. Yeah.
7:25 Karen Kilgariff? And explosive. And basically accidentally built a pipe bomb. Oops. I was always too cool as a teenager to attend these parties, so I was just arriving home that night, high as hell, and when I stepped out of the car in the long driveway before the barnyard, I heard, "Don't move. Stay back. It's pumpkin time."
7:45 Karen Kilgariff? I noticed my parents, friends, and family cowering in the barn, all dressed up like lunatics. Then came the blinding white light and the loudest bang that hit me in the chest and echoed throughout the surrounding woods. Stunned, scared, and mortified, I stood in the driveway as also stoned. Yeah, right. Stoned, stunned, scared, mortified, I stood in the driveway as I started to hear chunks of pumpkin and rocks rain down on and around me, including in my hair, on all the cars, in the trees, and on the roof. No one could say anything from shock for several moments. And then my uncle frantically started yelling, "Is everyone okay?" Miraculously and thankfully, everyone was. Drunk people with explosives. Yeah. Terrible idea.
8:29 Karen Kilgariff? It's, it's bad enough when they're just firecrackers. Yeah. Family and friends, wide-eyed and in shock, started to look at one another and basically pat down their bodies in search of damage among all the fake blood and ridiculous costumes. They had exploded the pumpkin in our massive fire pit, which was surrounded by big boulders. These rocks had exploded in the blast and became projectiles. Holy shit. One went through the barn doors like a cannonball, close to my aunt's head. Everyone just mumbled quietly, and the party was, without saying, officially over. Still in shock, and as the bitchy teenager I was, I stormed into the house and up to my room. So embarrassing. This is about me. Stupid. You blew up a boulder, and it hurts me the worst.
9:14 Karen Kilgariff? It's my problem now. So they stormed into the house and up to their room, only to find the shock from the blast had blown out my bedroom window and all the windows on the backside of the Oh, my fucking god. How's that for a bratty teenager? You fucking idiots. I stormed downstairs, where a small remainder of my family was gathered, basically in tears, saying, "You guys went too far!" And everyone knew this to be true. The silence was still so eerie, no one knew what to say. Then the phone started ringing. The neighbors were all calling around to each other. The town had come to the conclusion that an airplane had crashed in our fields and were asking, "Should we call the cops?" My mom had to nervously talk them down, Oh, my god.
9:58 Karen Kilgariff? muttering something about homemade fireworks. Needless to say, that was the last year they grew pumpkins, exploded them, or even had a Halloween party. Damn. We can finally chuckle about the absurdity and the thankfully injury-free outcome of that fateful Halloween night that went off with a real bang. Stay sexy and don't accidentally build a pipe bomb with stolen explosives to blow shit up as a party trick. Laura.
10:23 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, that's amazing. Can't you just chunk those punkin' chunkin', you know, when they like make slingshots? Just do that.
10:28 Karen Kilgariff? I know. You don't need explosives. You can do any manner of slingshot. Or, I mean, if you're out on a farm, how about a shotgun? I don't know.
10:37 Georgia Hardstark? So many ideas.
10:38 Karen Kilgariff? So many violent ideas to replace the other violent idea.
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11:12 Karen Kilgariff? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
11:15 Georgia Hardstark? Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
11:18 Karen Kilgariff? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt, it's designed to help you relax and get in the right state of mind for a good night's rest.
11:28 Georgia Hardstark? If you need a reset after a crazy day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to get a boost of topical magnesium that can help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.
11:39 Karen Kilgariff? Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast-drying formula.
11:42 Georgia Hardstark? Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.
11:47 Karen Kilgariff? I was kind of blown away the first time I used this spray because I do have problems sleeping. And when there's something this simple, you just sprayed on your feet and suddenly you're asleep and the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? Like, it actually is that easy.
12:02 Georgia Hardstark? And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?
12:05 Karen Kilgariff? How dare you call my feet stinky?
12:08 Georgia Hardstark? For wellness, you can feel find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle. Goodbye. There are plenty of things that keep you up at night. Your sleep tracker shouldn't be one of them.
12:18 Karen Kilgariff? You know that feeling, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting all the times you said something weird?
12:23 Georgia Hardstark? And then you wake up and check your sleep score. Now you have to start your day knowing that you failed at sleeping.
12:29 Karen Kilgariff? Hatch Sleep Clock does it differently.
12:31 Georgia Hardstark? It tracks your sleep from Your nightstand, no ring, wristband, or judgmental score waiting for you in the morning.
12:36 Karen Kilgariff? Instead, you'll get personalized insights to understand your sleep and recommendations to build a routine you'll love night after night.
12:43 Georgia Hardstark? Fall asleep to the next chapter of an audiobook like The Odyssey, a nervous system reset meditation, or a calming sound bath.
12:49 Karen Kilgariff? Then you can find out which gives you 20 more minutes of deep sleep each night.
12:54 Georgia Hardstark? Hatch Sleep Clock.
12:55 Karen Kilgariff? The sleep tracker designed to get you to sleep. Available now on hatch.co.
12:59 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
13:02 Georgia Hardstark? All right, this is a Ouija board story. Hi Karen and Georgia. A friend of mine in middle school was obsessed with all things scary and had an October birthday. So naturally, her 14th birthday party was Halloween themed. There were about 10 girls in attendance, and my friend's parents, two of the nicest people I've ever met, had planned tons of hilarious now, but terrifying at the time, activities. Think haunted hayride, tarot card readings, an uncle dressed as Michael Myers. Those fucking uncles, man.
13:32 Georgia Hardstark? Love the uncles.
13:32 Karen Kilgariff? Just kind of standing in the doorway with a hockey mask on.
13:35 Georgia Hardstark? And a seance tent that was rigged with a fake rat on a string to rattle leaves and scare the shit out of us when we thought we were summoning dead celebrities.
13:43 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, they're doing real work.
13:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I bet she was an only child. To cap off the night, we broke out the Ouija board. We played around for a few minutes, then began receiving the words, help, water, and rez, R-E-S. We were freaked out, but not as freaked out as we were when a woman was found in her car in a retaining pond, reservoir perhaps, two days later. The woman was said to have gone missing on Friday and was found on Monday. The party was Saturday night. I've never believed much in supernatural forces, and even at 14, it was the asshole of the group trying to rationalize away the messages. But I still get chills thinking about it. We're from a very small town, and rumors about the woman's death ran wild. It doesn't seem that there was any serious criminal investigation,
14:30 Georgia Hardstark? and sadly, no justice was ever served for the woman or her family. Her mother is adamant that she was murdered, and 16 years later, she's still trying to solve the case. Thank you for all you do, researching, writing and producing this podcast. It's gotten me through many long drives slash days at work. You rock, anonymous.
14:48 Karen Kilgariff? Anonymous.
14:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, doesn't wanna
14:50 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
14:51 Georgia Hardstark? Spread the town's gossip.
14:52 Karen Kilgariff? That is
14:54 Georgia Hardstark? That's spooky.
14:54 Karen Kilgariff? That's quite something to carry if you're a 14 year old, even if it's, can be written off as coincidence.
15:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:00 Karen Kilgariff? It's big.
15:01 Georgia Hardstark? Not a lot, but it's enough to be fucking creepy as shit.
15:03 Karen Kilgariff? And it hooks you into another person's mortality.
15:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:07 Karen Kilgariff? Which I think that, once that happens to you at a young enough age, you're just like, well now I can't stop thinking about this.
15:11 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
15:12 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, okay. I'm not gonna read you this subject line. This email starts, "Just travel with me, won't you? Back to Halloween 1980, where I'm eight years old and my sister and I are preparing to get ready to go trick or treating in my grandpa Leo's new neighborhood. He had recently moved in with his girlfriend Beverly, who had a huge old house on a nice tree-lined street that was bound to have better candy than we could get where we lived." That's what it was all about.
15:40 Georgia Hardstark? Hell, yeah.
15:41 Karen Kilgariff? "Which was above our dad's store and the main commercial drag in downtown Albany, New York."
15:46 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
15:46 Karen Kilgariff? That's badass.
15:47 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:48 Karen Kilgariff? To grow up over your dad's store.
15:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. In Albany, beautiful Albany.
15:52 Karen Kilgariff? Come on. I think it is beautiful.
15:54 Georgia Hardstark? Must be, right?
15:54 Karen Kilgariff? It's like upstate.
15:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:56 Karen Kilgariff? "But I had another reason to be excited. This year I had dreamed up a creative and terrifying Halloween costume. I was going to be a ghoul. Inspired by the episodes of Scooby Doo."
16:10 Karen Kilgariff? "Inspired by episodes of Scooby Doo and perhaps the movie Young Frankenstein, I had it all figured out. Hunchback made of balled up socks? Check. Matted hair, courtesy of one of my mom's old hair pieces from the 60s? Check. Deep circle drawn around my eyes with my mom's brownish lipstick? Check. However, the best part of this costume, the part that would get everyone's attention as I lurched terrifyingly from porch to porch, was the green glow in the dark body paint that I had persuaded my mom to get us." And then parentheses, it says, "My sister was going to be a glow-in-the-dark witch. Not very creative, if you ask me. I was dressed, ready to go. Glow paint applied, not just to my face, but to my hands as well,
16:53 Karen Kilgariff? so that unsuspecting homeowners would see an eerie green hand reaching out from the darkness for what would hopefully be a false-size Snicker bar. But it was still frustratingly light outside."
17:05 Karen Kilgariff? We've gotta go with six. We've gotta get you back by eight. And put a jacket on. It's cold. No. No way I was gonna be able to wait for the sun to set before I could gaze upon the full effect of my truly terrifying glowing ghoul getup. It's such a kid's story. So I asked my grandpa if there was a quote closet or someplace dark in this as yet unfamiliar house that I could step into so that I could see how glowy in fact my glow in the dark skin was. He said there was and walked me to a door just off the dining room. A word about my grandpa. He probably had ADHD. I know I do. But back in the olden days, they just called him absent minded and accident prone. He survived getting hit by a trolley on two separate occasions.
17:52 Karen Kilgariff? Oh my god. I feel it. Those Albany trolleys are real fast. Careful. He also, a few years after this Halloween, cut off a bunch of his fingers while operating a jigsaw they were successfully reattached. Oh my god. Accident prone. That's what they called it back then.
18:12 Karen Kilgariff? Just on Halloween though. So it's perhaps not the biggest surprise that grandpa opened this door for me, closed it behind me, and then realized that he should perhaps have told me that this was not a door to a closet, but the door to the stairs leading to the basement. I remember a moment of confusing weightlessness and then the hard slam of my butt on the earth-packed floor. Oh my god. I remember seeing the silhouette of my grandpa at the top of the stairs, frozen in horror. Oh my god. Convinced that he had killed his granddaughter. I was fine. I only cried when I realized how freaked out everybody else was. But the next year, I played it safe and dressed up as Cleopatra. It's been sexy lady costumes every year since. It's safer.
18:55 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy and trust, but verify. Ava. P.S. A special thanks to Karen for her "You're Too High" song. Imagine a middle-aged woman, me curled in a fetal position, whisper singing "You're Gonna Be Fine" after an ill-advised second brownie. No. No second brownie. Never a second brownie. I'm not that high. I'm gonna have another one. No one's ever that high. You're gonna be fine. Oh. And then it says, "Love you ladies." I love "Trust But Verify." Yeah. That's a good one. That's an old saying. Is it? Let's steal it.
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19:58 Karen Kilgariff? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
20:00 Georgia Hardstark? Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
20:03 Karen Kilgariff? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals, powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt, it's designed to help you relax and get in the right state of mind for a good night's rest.
20:13 Georgia Hardstark? If you need a reset after a crazy day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to get a boost of topical magnesium that can help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.
20:24 Karen Kilgariff? Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast-drying formula.
20:28 Georgia Hardstark? Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.
20:32 Karen Kilgariff? I was kind of blown away the first time I used this spray because I do have problems sleeping, and when there's something this simple, you just spray it on your feet and suddenly you're asleep and the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? It actually is that easy.
20:47 Georgia Hardstark? And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?
20:50 Karen Kilgariff? How dare you call my feet stinky.
20:53 Georgia Hardstark? For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.
20:58 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
20:59 Georgia Hardstark? There are plenty of things that keep you up at night. Your sleep tracker shouldn't be one of them.
21:03 Karen Kilgariff? You know that feeling, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting all the times you said something weird.
21:08 Georgia Hardstark? And then you wake up and check your sleep score. Now you have to start your day knowing that you failed at sleeping.
21:14 Karen Kilgariff? Hatch Sleep Clock does it differently.
21:16 Georgia Hardstark? It tracks your sleep from your nightstand. No ring, wristband, or judgmental score waiting for you in the morning.
21:21 Karen Kilgariff? Instead, you'll get personalized insights to understand your sleep and recommendations to build a routine you'll love night after night.
21:28 Georgia Hardstark? Fall asleep to the next chapter of an audiobook like The Odyssey, a nervous system reset meditation, or a calming sound bath.
21:34 Karen Kilgariff? Then you can find out which gives you 20 more minutes of deep sleep each night.
21:39 Georgia Hardstark? Hatch Sleep Clock.
21:40 Karen Kilgariff? The sleep tracker designed to get you to sleep. Available now on hatch.co.
21:44 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
21:48 Georgia Hardstark? Secret holes in walls?
21:49 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, hell, yes.
21:50 Georgia Hardstark? Ready? Hi, Karen and Georgia. I've always loved listening to your podcast. My mom and sister first played it for me when I was 15 and I loved it, but I was too busy being 15 to listen consistently. It's only now that I'm going through every episode from the beginning, and I'm hoping you still want stories of secret slash spooky holes.
22:08 Karen Kilgariff? Always. Every way.
22:10 Georgia Hardstark? Never question yourself. Because being the big kid that I am, now 17, I work at Spirit Halloween. How fucking fun is that?
22:17 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
22:18 Georgia Hardstark? And this year, and this year, we've seen a lot of weird shit.
22:24 Georgia Hardstark? We're in an old Forever 21 this year, because they're always in like abandoned, they were like in our abandoned CVS last year.
22:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
22:30 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, well, this year, we're in an old Forever 21, which has both an upstairs and a downstairs. We only use the upper level. The downstairs is closed off from us completely and shut off from the rest of the mall as well. So it's like an old mall, it's upstairs only, but the whole upstairs and downstairs used to be Forever 21.
22:47 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, so you enter on a, I'm just trying to-
22:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's like Burbank Mall. You know how like they closed the Bed Bath & Beyond, that was two floors?
22:53 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
22:53 Georgia Hardstark? And they probably only use the top floor now for whatever it is.
22:56 Karen Kilgariff? Got it. Spirit Halloween.
22:58 Georgia Hardstark? Let's do something very specific that only like a handful of people who listen would understand.
23:02 Karen Kilgariff? I can only understand things like this if you explain them to me in terms of Burbank.
23:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I can tell you all about Burbank.
23:08 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I get it. Yeah, yeah. I totally get it.
23:09 Georgia Hardstark? The downstairs is closed off and shut off from the rest of the mall. One day, my coworker nonchalantly mentioned that during a walk-through, they found an old dressing room downstairs with bed sheets, food, liquor, a fucking gun holster, and signs that someone had been hanging out in there for quite some time.
23:26 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:26 Georgia Hardstark? But no one was actually there. I was creeped out, but I moved on with my life. 17-year-old. At least for a few weeks. Then my manager casually asked me if I'd quote, "seen the holes we found in the walls yet." Me trying to hide the fact that I was low-key excited, asked her, "Where?" She led me to them and let me tell you, there is a whole fucking shitty man-made creepy tunnel. One end is hidden behind an old fridge. Not sure why there's a fridge. It's just sitting there in a poorly lit, unused storage room with cords and random crap everywhere.
23:58 Karen Kilgariff? It's the perfect thing to cover a big hole that a person can go through.
24:01 Georgia Hardstark? Perfect. And the other end of the tunnel opens into a room with all the ventilation and pipes. There's also a whole secret door in another wall made with a saw, hinges and pegboard. So someone like was there long enough to make a door they could open and close.
24:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
24:18 Georgia Hardstark? And this is all upstairs, totally separate from what we found downstairs. I hate the thought of people secretly inside a fucking wall because girl, get your peeping Tom ass out of there. I apologize if this is too long, but I thought maybe you'd give it a chance. I love you guys. Thank you for keeping me company while I work this scary ass job.
24:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
24:37 Georgia Hardstark? Stay sexy. Heart emoji. Love, Ari.
24:40 Karen Kilgariff? Ari, I would like for you to check in every once in a while because the spooky season is upon us, but also there have been stories over the years, people being able to be squatters in malls is like the easiest thing.
24:52 Georgia Hardstark? Seriously.
24:52 Karen Kilgariff? Nobody's there.
24:53 Georgia Hardstark? Also, like, I bet she hasn't told her parents. And like later, they're gonna be like, why the fuck didn't you tell, like, we would have made you stop working there.
25:01 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
25:01 Georgia Hardstark? Or we would have, you know, had some, but it's just like, oh yeah, you didn't, I didn't tell you.
25:05 Karen Kilgariff? Just do not close alone. Cause that's the thing that those fucking like businesses where they're just like, oh, this 17 year old assistant manager, she can close by herself. It's like, absolutely not.
25:15 Georgia Hardstark? No, 100%.
25:16 Karen Kilgariff? No. Hopefully, since everyone knows there's holes in the walls.
25:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they have like security and someone walking under their cars.
25:22 Karen Kilgariff? But I do want to hear like all the things that happen in Spirit Halloween.
25:25 Georgia Hardstark? That's good.
25:26 Karen Kilgariff? I bet it's fun times. Okay. But you have to listen to that, like, the one weird witch at the front, like, make noise all day.
25:35 Karen Kilgariff? Reach out. Do you work at Spirit Halloween? What store did your job replace a store of? Okay. The subject line of this is, uh, no, I'm not gonna read it. Okay. So it says, "Hello murder besties. I have a zillion things to thank you for, but I'll save them for the end and try to truncate this email so it isn't horrifyingly long. I'm catching up on episodes and heard something about prankster teachers, and I had to talk about Mr. Bream. Do you remember prankster teachers? No. But we're bringing it all back with Mr. Bream. Let's do it. "He was the legendary 7th grade history teacher at my combined middle high school, and he always made his classes fun, interactive, and truly a joy. I have no idea how this man tolerated 7th graders all day, but he was clearly a saint.
26:19 Karen Kilgariff? Halloween hit, and I had history for 3rd period. A bunch of kids from the earlier classes said that Mr. Bream was gonna give a pop quiz that day, which felt unusual for such a fun-loving teacher on the auspicious candy-based holiday that was October 31st. But oh, well, my anxious ass was already for that quiz when we walked in. He looked distracted and weird, and he said that he had something he needed to get off his chest before we started the quiz, and that he'd called down some of his older former students there because he wanted them to know too. He then proceeded to tell us a story about his 3 best friends and him going on a backpacking trip in Germany decades earlier, and that they'd come across an injured mountain climber as a snowstorm hit. They weren't able to rescue him, and they had to leave him behind.
27:04 Karen Kilgariff? It had been 40 years since then, and he'd always regretted it, but in the past 3 months, those 3 friends have died mysteriously on the last day of each month." So good. Yeah. "The last had been stabbed with a pita, a metal spike used for mountain climbing, and Mr. Bream was terrified he was going to be next. He knew that the climber had come back for revenge for being left for dead. At the end of the story, the lights suddenly went off, and Mr. Bream screamed, 'Oh, my God.'" How do you keep a straight face if you're Mr. Bream? I mean, you've gotta have the passion of a prankster in you, where you're like, "This is gonna scare the fuck out of them. I just can't give it away." Yeah, I was supposed to be an actor, not a teacher, but let's make the best of it. You have to, maybe he's deep down supposed to be an actor?
27:49 Karen Kilgariff? 'Cause he's tapping into something real. Seriously. So he screams, "Oh, my God." All the 7th graders scream before realizing that he's been fucking with us. Everyone laughed, and he checked in to see how we were all feeling after the story, making sure no one was too scared. While in retrospect, this story was far-fetched enough that we should've all known it was a prank, I was and am very gullible and believed every word right till the end. He then told us to make sure to tell kids in later classes that we had a pop quiz, so as not to spoil the joke. Love it. This teacher was also beloved enough that no one spoiled the Peeta Man story for the other classes for years. Oh shit. I went back and listened to him tell that story as one of the former students until I graduated high school.
28:33 Karen Kilgariff? I even got to be the one to turn off the lights a few times. Oh my god. Older kids didn't spoil it for their younger siblings and Mr. Bream told that story every year until he retired. Oh my god, I'm like gonna cry. I know, it's really good. That's like true unity of like, we're gonna keep your innocence and fuck with you a little bit and like. Yeah, but also like here's the reach that a really good teacher who cares can have. It's like amazing. Yes, it's fun to be in it. Clearly it's not upsetting. Yeah. Everybody loves a good story. Yeah. And the rest of the year was always fun and involved zero traumatizing. I'll always be thankful that I had a teacher who was so invested in his students having special and memorable experiences in the hellscape that was middle school. God, so true.
29:18 Karen Kilgariff? I remember mine, they were amazing. I mean, "Thank you for all you do in creating a space to talk about mental health and your experiences with therapy. Your podcast was no small part of the reason I left the entertainment industry." Me too. Wow, seriously. "And I went back to grad school to become a therapist myself." Wow. Amazing. "I've never been happier. Stay sexy and be awesome enough that your students will forgive you for scaring the shit out of them. Shauna." Shauna. Shauna. What a beautiful story. So good. Tell us about your memorable teachers. We want to hear all about them. And like legendary teachers. Legendary teachers, yeah, for sure. Cause that's amazing. That's beautiful. That's a great Halloween app. I've ever heard of one.
30:01 Karen Kilgariff? Also, we started posting some teacher wish lists. I'm sure those teacher wish lists are, there's still plenty. Yeah. So if you, there's probably some on our social media, but take a look around and see if you can't donate some bucks here or there, because that's, that's like, those are the people it's going to. Totally, totally. Amazing. Well, thanks for listening, you guys. Spooky Halloween. We do it. Oh yeah, spooky Halloween. Thank you, we've been waiting. All my life. Yeah, and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
30:45 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right production.
30:47 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
30:49 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
30:51 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.
30:54 Karen Kilgariff? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
30:57 Georgia Hardstark? And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
30:59 Karen Kilgariff? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
31:04 Georgia Hardstark? And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.
31:09 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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