Endless Dread: Haunted Hayride

In keeping with Endless Thread tradition, Ben and Amory are celebrating spooky season with another installment of "Endless Dread." This time, we're bringing you along on both an actual haunted hayride — thanks to McCray's Farm https://www.mccrays-farm.com/haunted in South Hadley, MA — and a digital one, through a handful of spooky stories from the internet. Ben introduces Amory to a TikTok commentary https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1nztwly/and_everybody_just_lets_it_happen/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button on recent ICE raids disguised as a parody of consumerism. Amory tells Ben about an auditory illusion https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/1ns3fqi/whattttt/?share_id=-aIc9ufMew9P5LD_kD6bw&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 that has risen from the dead (Twitter) to unsettle the living (TikTokers and Redditors), and about a "vampire" from Rhode Island https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/sfznkh/til_after_her_death_mercy_browns_heart_and_liver/ who was exhumed and turned into a tonic to cure tuberculosis. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi, sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 1:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory "She's a Witch" Severson.

• 1:13Amory Sivertson?

  Ben "Boogeyman" Johnson.

• 1:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  We are publishing this episode on Halloween of 2025, and once a year, we do a thing in commemoration of Halloween. It is different every year, and this year, we wanted to go on a haunted hayride together and do-

• 1:28Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, did we?

• 1:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  -a haunted house. Yes.

• 1:30Amory Sivertson?

  Did we want to do that, Ben?

• 1:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I think it was we. No, it wasn't we? No?

• 1:36Amory Sivertson?

  Uh, you know.

• 1:41Amory Sivertson?

  I live to tell the tale, so I can't complain.

• 1:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  There you go.

• 1:43Amory Sivertson?

  But we also wanted to bring you a kind of haunted hayride, or haunted house, from the internet. So, we kind of did both. We went out near where Ben lives and freaked ourselves out, but we also told each other some internet-y spooky stories.

• 1:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah. Rated PG-13, maybe?

• 2:03Amory Sivertson?

  I think that's fair, yeah. Earmuffs, kids. Maybe, maybe instead of listening, just tuck yourself into bed and, uh- Make sure you check there's nothing in your closet.

• 2:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ooh, without further ado, thanks to McCray's Haunted Hayride in South Hadley, Mass. And the internet. We bring you this year's special episode of Endless Dread.

• 2:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  What's the thing that's gonna, what's the thing you would like to avoid?

• 2:41Amory Sivertson?

  I have come to, I'm going to the wrong place to avoid the thing I want to avoid, which is people jumping out at me.

• 2:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you're in the back.

• 2:49Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 2:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's not a good place to be.

• 2:51Amory Sivertson?

  Well, let's not be in the back.

• 2:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  But you might be in the back. That's the thing. It's just the luck of the draw. Wherever your seat on the wagon is. This is it. Look at this.

• 3:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  What are you seeing? I'm seeing lots of floodlights.

• 3:06Amory Sivertson?

  It looks like a

• 3:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lots of cars.

• 3:09Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, what's that over there? A big, a big skeleton?

• 3:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Big statue of a

• 3:16Amory Sivertson?

  The Grim Reaper?

• 3:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, it looks kinda grim.

• 3:20Amory Sivertson?

  It looks pretty grim to me.

• 3:23Amory Sivertson?

  Okay. We're just going on a little hayride.

• 3:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Just going on a little hayride.

• 3:30Amory Sivertson?

  Hello?

• 3:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, where are we? Which way is, what's down this way?

• 3:34Speaker 05

  What's down which way you wanna go? That way?

• 3:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which is the most scary way.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  You gotta get on the cart first.

• 3:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  It'll drop you off and it's got not one, but two haunted houses. And you know what? I think I smell poopies already. Are you scared, little girl? Are you gonna go home and leave the lights on?

• 3:57Amory Sivertson?

  Probably.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  Well, have a great time then.

• 3:59Amory Sivertson?

  Thank you.

• 4:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  I like that they just assumed that you were pooping instead of me.

• 4:08Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, that's fucked up.

• 4:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  They're like, she looks incontinent. He seems fine.

• 4:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, how are you? Um, I think we won, um, can we buy tickets for the hayride here? Okay.

• 4:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's the first scream in the night.

• 4:34Amory Sivertson?

  Our show is called Endless Thread, but our scary episode is always called Endless Dread. We heard this was the place to be for some spooky times.

• 4:44Speaker 06

  I can assure you that.

• 4:47Amory Sivertson?

  So you work here?

• 4:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:49Amory Sivertson?

  Would you mind sharing your name with us?

• 4:51Speaker 06

  My name is Ken and that's Carl.

• 4:54Amory Sivertson?

  Ken and Carl. And how long have you been working here?

• 4:57Speaker 06

  Carl's been here too long.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  A long time. Next week, okay, that line will go around, it'll come up here, and it'll go down to that second light down there.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  You're gonna enjoy it.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  He's probably got 70 workers here, so he's gotta have people.

• 5:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 5:19Speaker 06

  And you will get scared.

• 5:21Amory Sivertson?

  No doubt, no doubt.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  I can already smell the poopies here.

• 5:24Amory Sivertson?

  It's him!

• 5:25Speaker 05

  It's not about that, huh, Don?

• 5:27Amory Sivertson?

  It's him!

• 5:30Speaker 06

  We hope you guys enjoy it.

• 5:32Amory Sivertson?

  Thank you, thanks Kenny. Have a good night.

• 5:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  These folks are just like buying corn.

• 5:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  There's the beer, that's the beer tent. Right on the back of that wagon and I'll get you on the next ride. Okay, thank you.

• 5:52Amory Sivertson?

  The back of the wagon!

• 5:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Back of this ground.

• 5:54Amory Sivertson?

  I don't want to be on the back of the wagon!

• 5:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, remember what I told you? The back of the wagon is the scariest spot.

• 6:01Amory Sivertson?

  That's not good!

• 6:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  I hope we get this guy as the driver, because his mustaches will protect us, I feel.

• 6:13Amory Sivertson?

  I really don't. I'm not into this. I'm already upset.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  This is the slap happy trailer.

• 6:20Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  Because the tractor's slap happy.

• 6:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Kind of go forward, backwards, sometimes it bumps, sometimes it don't.

• 6:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  I try and do my best to keep you from doing that. But I'm gonna make sure I do it good for you to make you wake up.

• 6:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're fucked. Translation, we're fucked.

• 6:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  You and I are in a giant cart behind a pretty large-

• 6:51Amory Sivertson?

  A large tractor.

• 6:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Tractor.

• 6:53Amory Sivertson?

  Driven by a man with a majestic mustache.

• 6:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  But we're pointing, the way, the direction we're going into is very dark.

• 7:00Amory Sivertson?

  Into the darkness.

• 7:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Amory Sivertson?

  Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty.

• 7:07Speaker 07

  Alright guys, just listen up real quick. There's a couple rules of the ride. Please keep your hands inside the cart at all times, your feet underneath the seat at all times. My characters do come up on the cart. You guys are gonna get scared and you guys might jump out of your seats. All I ask is that as soon as you guys compose yourselves, you know, make sure you guys, you know, your pants aren't wet or anything like that. But you guys do sit down as soon as possible, just for your safety. Alright, other than that, guys, enjoy your ride.

• 7:35Amory Sivertson?

  They come up onto the cart? You didn't tell me that. That's not okay.

• 7:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, that's gonna, you're, you're gonna be messed. There's no question.

• 7:49Speaker 07

  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to McCray's Haunted Area.

• 7:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy.

• 8:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you think so far? Pretty much fine, right?

• 8:07Amory Sivertson?

  I, I don't know if I'm even gonna be able to like, look at anything. I'm trying to like, look straight ahead.

• 8:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Now we've got some skeletons, a pile of skeletons.

• 8:15Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 8:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, we got a demon here. We've landed on a demon.

• 8:18Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 8:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, no. Oh, no.

• 8:25Amory Sivertson?

  No.

• 8:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, now we're being, now, now we're surrounded by-

• 8:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is a creepy place. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Ream, ream, ream.

• 8:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  That was, okay.

• 8:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  I gotta do it alone.

• 8:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, God.

• 9:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's a lot.

• 9:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, man.

• 9:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, God.

• 9:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Chainsaw. It's a chainsaw scarecrow.

• 9:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Chainsaw scarecrow.

• 9:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Gas mask clown butcher?

• 9:37Amory Sivertson?

  There's a clown.

• 9:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Gas mask clown butcher.

• 9:44Speaker 07

  When the car comes to a complete stop, you guys are gonna exit the car and head up towards the haunted house to meet the greeter. Have a great night, guys.

• 9:52Amory Sivertson?

  Thank you.

• 9:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

• 9:55Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 10:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  So you and I are on the haunted hayride in real life, but also we are gonna do an internet-based haunted hayride together right now. We're gonna go room by room and try to freak each other out with some spooky little stories.

• 10:15Amory Sivertson?

  That's like haunted house, but this is our haunted hayride.

• 10:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, we both have to go like this.

• 10:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Like the wagon stopped, you know what I mean?

• 10:24Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 10:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know?

• 10:26Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 10:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  The wagon stopped, alright. What do you got for me?

• 10:33Amory Sivertson?

  So this is from the subreddit, Black Magic Fuckery.

• 10:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, yep, I'm ready for some fuckery.

• 10:40Amory Sivertson?

  You're ready, okay. So I'm gonna play you a little spooky piece of audio.

• 10:53Amory Sivertson?

  What do you hear?

• 10:59Amory Sivertson?

  Don't overthink it.

• 11:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's weird. I hear like a kind of like lightsaber sound. It's like

• 11:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  and then I hear, I'm gonna say I hear green needle.

• 11:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's what I hear.

• 11:15Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, that listen, I also heard green needle.

• 11:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 11:19Amory Sivertson?

  Um, so the question is whether you hear green needle or the word brainstorm.

• 11:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 11:29Amory Sivertson?

  Do you know anything about the origins of this audio before I go any further?

• 11:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, I don't know anything about it, except for, I, I know this video, like I've seen the video. It's this woman, um, she, she has like a caption above her head and it says, you will only hear the word you are reading. And then she points and there's two things that appear. One of them is green needle. And the other is brainstorm.

• 11:56Amory Sivertson?

  So this TikTok video, it has 34,000 upvotes at the time that we're recording this. It was posted just a couple of weeks ago.

• 12:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 12:05Amory Sivertson?

  Which, when I first saw this, my thought was like, oh, it reminds me of another auditory illusion that we actually covered on this show when it blew up back in 2018 and that was.

• 12:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, Yanni, Yanni.

• 12:21Amory Sivertson?

  Yanni Laurel.

• 12:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yanni Laurel, that's right. Which is sort of like the, the dress, right? Like is the dress uh, black and gold or blue and gold or white and gold, right?

• 12:31Amory Sivertson?

  Blue, blue and black or white and gold.

• 12:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Blue and black or white and gold. That's right. Yeah.

• 12:35Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so that particular one broke in 2018. What I was not expecting to find out about this brain needle, green, brain needle, green storm.

• 12:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Brain needle, green storm.

• 12:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right.

• 12:50Amory Sivertson?

  About this one, brainstorm versus green needle.

• 12:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 12:54Amory Sivertson?

  Is that this also initially went viral in 2018.

• 12:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 12:59Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 13:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  What? I mean, that's not, it's not unusual for something to be posted on Reddit that is years and years old.

• 13:07Amory Sivertson?

  And yeah.

• 13:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  To go viral because none of us have a memory anymore. We're all goldfish now, when it comes to the internet.

• 13:14Amory Sivertson?

  This was same month, May of 2018.

• 13:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 13:17Amory Sivertson?

  Very shortly thereafter.

• 13:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  For real?

• 13:20Amory Sivertson?

  For real, went super viral on Twitter at the time.

• 13:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 13:25Amory Sivertson?

  And the origin, the origin of this, are you familiar with a kid's show called Ben 10?

• 13:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ben 10?

• 13:34Amory Sivertson?

  Or Ben 10 Alien Force?

• 13:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, my God, I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe all of a sudden. No, I don't know.

• 13:41Amory Sivertson?

  I do a little bit too, because I haven't heard of this. I mean, I'm a wrong, wrong age demographic for us, but apparently the audio from this brainstorm, green needle clip comes from a 2014 vlogger's review of a Ben 10 Alien Force toy.

• 13:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  What?

• 13:59Amory Sivertson?

  So I'm going to send you a link.

• 14:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, that's a cool looking toy.

• 14:05Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, little light up toy.

• 14:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  The cool technology sound makes more sense because it looks like a, it's like a electrical zap that's happening in the toy.

• 14:14Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, yes. And unlike the Yanni Laurel debate.

• 14:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 14:18Amory Sivertson?

  Of 2018, where it really came down to two words being on top of each other in the audio file, and it was about which frequencies your ears are more inclined to hear, upper or lower. This debate, brainstorm versus green needle, is absolutely solvable because the toy is saying the name of a character in Ben 10, which is?

• 14:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Brainstorm.

• 14:47Amory Sivertson?

  Brainstorm, yes. This auditory illusion, I would say, is almost more mysterious to me because as the TikTok video that then just went viral on Reddit explains, you can train your brain to hear what you want it to hear. So if you're looking at the word brainstorm, you hear.

• 15:11Amory Sivertson?

  If you're looking at the words green needle, you'll hear.

• 15:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's why, why is that?

• 15:18Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so The Telegraph talked to a psycholinguist named Susie Stiles, great name, back in 2018 when the story broke.

• 15:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 15:27Amory Sivertson?

  And she said, "This is a great reminder that everything we think we experience via the senses is just our brain's best guess at reality."

• 15:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  What?

• 15:37Amory Sivertson?

  So, nothing's real, nothing's certain, nothing's known. We're just out here, hearing different things and thinking different things and coming to different conclusions and everything is fine.

• 15:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow. You know what? I mean, that makes so much sense, considering the time that we're living in.

• 15:57Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, it's like you're more likely to seek out information that validates what you already believe. And this is, you're more likely to hear what you're thinking. So, it's both an explanation and a totally unsettling reality.

• 16:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm.

• 16:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, I got a little spooky number two.

• 16:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  When Halloween comes around, you probably dress up, you probably go to a couple of parties, right?

• 16:25Amory Sivertson?

  Maybe 10 years ago, not so much anymore.

• 16:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, let's put it this way. If you were to go to a party and dress up, what would your vibe be like? What genre of costume would you be getting into?

• 16:39Amory Sivertson?

  This year, I will be handing out candy and I'm going to dress up as Jane Goodall.

• 16:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 16:48Amory Sivertson?

  So I guess usually I go for not so spooky, more just something I admire.

• 16:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah. I mean, I'll do whatever as long as it's hot. Like, I'll be a hot zombie. I'll be, I'll be like a...

• 17:02Amory Sivertson?

  I'll be a hot potato.

• 17:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'll be a hot, I'll be a sexy potato.

• 17:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  As long as it's hot.

• 17:07Amory Sivertson?

  I'll be a flaming hot cheeto.

• 17:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, no, I like that Jane Goodall is your zone because I think there's this genre here of how people dress up that like you can go scary, but you can also go like political. It's not maybe, I wouldn't call it activism, but it's like this like thing where people are taking this holiday and they're actually reminding you of something that's real that's happening in the world that we should be, that we should be worried about.

• 17:41Amory Sivertson?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  So I want to play you another video based thing from TikTok. I think it's a really interesting exploration of this kind of thing.

• 17:53Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 17:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  So this is going to take you two minutes, but you should watch it.

• 17:58Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 17:59Speaker 07

  Taylor Swift launches Target exclusive vinyl of her new album, Life of a Showgirl. Imagine an ice cold Diet Coke and salty fries, only at McDonald's. Drive to Target. Drop into Home Goods and save, save, save. What's on your kid's list this holiday season? Don't raid your closet. Raid TJ Maxx for your fall fit check. Drive to Target. Get it now. Get it now. Get it now.

• 18:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  How would you describe this?

• 18:29Amory Sivertson?

  So it's a woman who is like putting on a fake cheesy smile. She's doing like a commercial for Target, a fake commercial for the store Target.

• 18:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  And Taylor Swift and...

• 18:45Amory Sivertson?

  Taylor Swift's vinyl album, McDonald's fries, ice cold Diet Coke. And then she starts doing a sort of mashup of some of the words in these fake ads.

• 18:56Speaker 07

  Don't raid your closet. Ice cold Diet Coke. Ice, ice, ice. Drop into Home Goods. Home Goods, Home Goods. Good home, good home, good home. Ice dropped into good homes.

• 19:07Amory Sivertson?

  Until it's basically just a bunch of these words cut together to call out ICE raids taking kids from their homes.

• 19:15Speaker 07

  Ice dropping into raid your good home, your good kids. Ice dropping into raid your good home, good home, good kids, good kids.

• 19:25Amory Sivertson?

  And she lands on a place of referencing...

• 19:31Amory Sivertson?

  The allegations of zip ties being used to tie kids' hands together and.

• 19:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which we should say are, you know, the sort of official statements about that have been that zip ties were not used and yet there are witness accounts of zip ties being used in this building in Chicago in which US citizens and non-US citizens were pulled out of the building by ICE and arrested and tied up with zip ties, according to some reports.

• 20:02Amory Sivertson?

  And so, over the course of the video, this, this cheery kind of like, get it now, at Target, becomes a like, do you get it now? Do you get where I'm going with this?

• 20:13Speaker 07

  Imagine as your kids, you can't save, save, save.

• 20:20Speaker 07

  Get it now?

• 20:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  One of the kind of meta aspects of what this woman is doing is she's, you know, she's using words that might not normally be censored on the platform. And so, a thing that I've been seeing recently, and I don't know if you've seen this as well, but I've seen creators on TikTok, on Instagram, elsewhere, as they are talking about things that are expressly political and raising the alarm, so to speak, the captions can sometimes be different from the words that are being said. And what I see in that as a possibility

• 21:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  is people are basically anticipating or assuming a level of censorship on these tech platforms, or at least algorithmic punishment, in terms of whether this stuff might actually get surfaced for viewers. And so, they're, they're trying to basically like, work around that. So, I saw one recently where. A creator who has, who is basically a political commentator was talking a lot about Nazis. And every time he said the word Nazi in audio, the caption, which I think he had edited, surfaced a different word than Nazis. It was like funny guys or weirdos or whatever.

• 21:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was like switching the word Nazi out and swapping in another word. And I think that's an effort to essentially prepare for or avoid some form of algorithmic censorship driven by state powers, whether they are US state powers trying to control TikTok in the United States or state powers outside of the US, which I think is really interesting when you think about this video because she's basically reordering words that might not be expressly caught up by, by state censorship. But she's, you know, she's clearly in the US.

• 22:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  So she's like raising the specter of state censorship and she's also trying to get across a message to you as the viewer that you should be scared about this and it is spooky. And the music in the video itself is kind of like spooky music. And so I think it's like a good reminder that sometimes when we think about, you know, what's, what's scary, a lot of it is like, you know, silly and spooky and, and, you know, not real and bizarre and whatever comes out of horror movies. But often horror movies like science fiction are trying to have a conversation with you about like what's really happening and what are real things that we should be thinking about and worried about.

• 23:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I thought this was a good example of that.

• 23:13Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Amory Sivertson?

  These days with that TikTok censorship, you could just claim it's an auditory illusion. You could be like, you heard Nazi? I said cupcake.

• 23:32Amory Sivertson?

  No Nazis here. It's messed up that you heard that.

• 23:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's an interesting thing, too. Like, it makes you think about whether or not words on screen are actually easier to censor and like pick up by the censorship tools than audio, right?

• 23:48Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, yeah. Easier to censor a caption.

• 23:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Revolution will not be televised, but it might be podcasted, guys. Just think about it.

• 23:57Amory Sivertson?

  All right, well, I think we should take a little spooky pause.

• 24:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Grab a candy bar.

• 24:02Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, it's a candy bar break. And we'll be back in just a minute.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Hey, Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 25:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, we're back. You got it. You got another little spooky for me on our haunted hayride, our digital haunted hayride that we're on while we're on the real haunted hayride.

• 26:10Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, I do. And this little spooky starts with a capital T. And that stands for tuberculosis.

• 26:25Amory Sivertson?

  That was a good guess.

• 26:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  My efforts to bring the music man into everything are dashed again. What?

• 26:36Amory Sivertson?

  It stands for 76 trombones.

• 26:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, if you saw 76 trombones coming down the street at you, that might be a little spooky.

• 26:48Amory Sivertson?

  That's too many trombones.

• 26:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's TMT.

• 26:53Amory Sivertson?

  TMT.

• 26:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Too many trombones.

• 27:01Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, no, the T stands for tuberculosis. What do you know about tuberculosis?

• 27:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I know, you cough a lot. It can be terminal. It's not good, right?

• 27:13Amory Sivertson?

  You cough a lot. There's usually like blood in the coughing in what comes up. So do you know what causes it or no?

• 27:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nope, no idea.

• 27:22Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, well, according to some New Englanders in the 17 and 1800s.

• 27:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was sin.

• 27:27Amory Sivertson?

  Vampires. It was caused by vampires, Ben.

• 27:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  What?

• 27:33Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 27:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 27:34Amory Sivertson?

  These are not blood sucking vampires like we think of today with, you know, the pointy eye teeth. These vampires were deceased people sucking the life out of their living relatives.

• 27:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whoa. And not in like a, you know, coworker kind of way where they come over and they want to talk to you for a long time and you got stuff to do. Like, they weren't doing that.

• 27:57Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, not a coworker vampire, not an energy vampire. The way to stop them in this great New England vampire panic was to exhume the undead, but dead, person's body from the grave.

• 28:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  What does exhume mean? This is a question I've always had. What does exhume the grave? What does that mean?

• 28:19Amory Sivertson?

  You are exhuming.

• 28:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know when you're ooming? You know when you're ooming? You're exhuming.

• 28:27Amory Sivertson?

  You're hooming. No, you're exhuming. It's to get them out of the grave.

• 28:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Why don't they just say that? Why are they gonna say exhuming?

• 28:36Amory Sivertson?

  All right, they're digging them up out of the graves.

• 28:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right.

• 28:39Amory Sivertson?

  And in some cases, they would just flip them over and be like, that'll do the trick.

• 28:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  What?

• 28:44Amory Sivertson?

  Just give them a flip.

• 28:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  The coffin or the person?

• 28:48Amory Sivertson?

  The person.

• 28:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, they have them like face down and then they re-bury them? Oh, that's creepy to me.

• 28:54Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Or, or you could cut out some of their organs and burn them.

• 28:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, I mean, as everyone knows.

• 29:02Amory Sivertson?

  Which brings us

• 29:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yikes.

• 29:04Amory Sivertson?

  to a Today I Learned post on Reddit from several years ago by a since-deleted user that reads, "T I L. After her death, Mercy Brown's heart and liver were burned and the ashes mixed into a tonic that was given to her sick brother to drink. Her father believed that she was a vampire and that the tonic would cure the brother of tuberculosis."

• 29:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Amory Sivertson?

  It didn't. He died two months later.

• 29:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Narrator voice. It didn't.

• 29:36Amory Sivertson?

  Yes. Brutal. So this was Mercy Lena Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island, or just Lena Brown, as her family called her.

• 29:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 29:46Amory Sivertson?

  She dies of tuberculosis in 1892 at the age of 19. Tuberculosis was widespread at this time. It's devastating. It's the Leading cause of death in the Northeast.

• 29:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  And how do you actually get it now that we have science?

• 30:00Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, a bacteria. It's a bacteria. Yeah, it's a, it's an infectious disease caused by, I think it's called bacillus.

• 30:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah, sure. It's one of the bacillus ones.

• 30:09Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, yeah, everyone knows bacillus. So her mom dies of tuberculosis nine years before she does. One of her older sister dies of it. So tuberculosis is, is running through this family. It's not well understood and people are filling in the gaps of what causes tuberculosis with folklore, you know, that it's the work of the undead or a vampire that's causing it.

• 30:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Man, oh, man.

• 30:33Amory Sivertson?

  Mercy dies. Meanwhile, her brother, who's the only son out of seven children, is dying of tuberculosis. And her widower father wants to save her brother. So about two months after Mercy dies, he agrees to have the bodies of Mercy. One of his other daughters, Mercy's older sister, and his late wife exhumed, ex-humed.

• 30:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes. He's like, we already ummed him. Let's exhum him.

• 31:02Amory Sivertson?

  To try to find out which of these three dead relatives is sucking the life out of his son Edwin.

• 31:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 31:09Amory Sivertson?

  So they, they dig up Mercy's mother and sister. They are both decomposing normally. They're mostly bones because they died almost a decade before that. But Mercy's body shows almost no signs of decomposition and she still has blood in her lungs, which some thought to be the sign of a currently feasting vampire.

• 31:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy.

• 31:30Amory Sivertson?

  So the villagers remove Mercy's heart and liver and they burn them on a rock nearby.

• 31:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  As you do.

• 31:40Amory Sivertson?

  Right. It's like the 1890s equivalent of driving a stake through her heart, I guess.

• 31:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, Freddie, you got that hot rock?

• 31:46Amory Sivertson?

  You got that.

• 31:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Make that rock hot. We're gonna, we're gonna cook the stuff on the rock. Okay.

• 31:52Amory Sivertson?

  They cooked him up. The ashes are then mixed with water and turned into a tonic that is given to the brother Edwin to drink, thinking that it would cure him. As we know, it didn't. He dies a couple of months later. But a couple important things to note. Mercy dies in January of 1892. In Rhode Island, which means it's cold. And as one Redditor put it, she was, she was a mercysicle. Or I'm like, just call her a mercical. She was a mercical. No wonder she hadn't decomposed. Her body was so well preserved because it was winter and it had only been a couple of months.

• 32:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, that'll do it.

• 32:36Amory Sivertson?

  That'll do it. Um, but some other fun facts. Smithsonian Magazine notes that Mercy's, your favorite word, exhumation.

• 32:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Amory Sivertson?

  Um, is referenced in H.P. Lovecraft's The Shunned House, which is a short story about a man being haunted by dead relatives that includes a character named Mercy. And furthermore, that the character of Lucy in Dracula, like the original Bromstoker's Dracula.

• 33:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lucy, who's Lucy?

• 33:03Amory Sivertson?

  She's a teenage girl who might have also had tuberculosis and gets turned into a vampire and is exhumed in the book.

• 33:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 33:12Amory Sivertson?

  So she was potentially inspired by Mercy. And the, some say the character name Lucy is a combination of Lena, what she was called, and Mercy, her, her first name.

• 33:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh.

• 33:23Amory Sivertson?

  But also like, there are a bunch of comments in this, this very popular Reddit post about Mercy Brown saying things like, don't tell anti-vaxers about this. And like, you're giving anti-vaxers new ideas.

• 33:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm.

• 33:37Amory Sivertson?

  But as someone who, you know, made a series with me about the history of vaccines and anti-vaxers.

• 33:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:46Amory Sivertson?

  The interesting thing is like, this idea of grinding up the, the ashes of the heart and the liver and serving it to your son, to me, sounds a lot more like the, the history of early virulation and inoculation.

• 34:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Absolutely.

• 34:00Amory Sivertson?

  Um.

• 34:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, that's the thing that's so interesting about this stuff, right? Like, you know, the, the 17 and 1800s, there's all of this like, pretty weird experimentation that is, you know, connected to what ends up being like scientific shared truth, right? Like, you start to figure out like, oh, like, uh, this thing seems to work. Let's start playing with this and maybe it'll be an actual thing. And sometimes it is a thing and sometimes it's like, no, whoops, we killed somebody.

• 34:33Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and Edwin already had tuberculosis. He was, he was deathly ill to begin with. So you can kind of, I mean, it's hard to imagine, and yet you can almost understand how desperate the father is.

• 34:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Absolutely.

• 34:47Amory Sivertson?

  And tuberculosis, it killed more than a million people as recently as 2023. So this is, this is not, this is not gone.

• 34:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Totally eradicated.

• 34:58Amory Sivertson?

  And while I don't recommend grinding up your, your egg-homed loved ones' organs.

• 35:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, don't put it on a hot rock.

• 35:07Amory Sivertson?

  Don't put it on a hot rock. Yeah, we do, we do interesting things when we're desperate, but.

• 35:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's true.

• 35:13Amory Sivertson?

  We're pouring one out for Mercy Brown and, but no organs involved.

• 35:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mercy deserved mercy, that's for sure.

• 35:22Amory Sivertson?

  Well, she was dead. She didn't know. Or was she?

• 35:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, our haunted hayride of the internet is wrapped up, but we're about to go into the haunted house in real life.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Listen on, if you dare.

• 35:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, you're gonna go first, right?

• 35:53Amory Sivertson?

  No.

• 35:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, no, you're good.

• 35:54Amory Sivertson?

  No, no.

• 35:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  You're fine.

• 35:55Amory Sivertson?

  No, we fit side by side. We fit side by side.

• 35:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's true. It's just a bloody maze of bloody walls so far? You really didn't like going around that corner? You did not like going around that corner?

• 36:10Amory Sivertson?

  I don't like this. There's so many corners.

• 36:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  There's just a woman with a cleaver next to a, next to a fireplace.

• 36:20Amory Sivertson?

  Keep moving. Why are you still moving?

• 36:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  I knew that thing was gonna do that as soon as we started walking away. It was gonna do something crazy. Oh, that's cool. We're just gonna go this way. Okay. And then this guy in the corner just started jumping around.

• 36:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, God. Oh, God, crazy spider, crazy spider deadly clown guy. Or he's ripped the arm off of a toddler.

• 36:52Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, perfect.

• 36:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Perfect.

• 36:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh my god! Hold on everyone! Oh my god, come this way, this is where I'm gonna die!

• 37:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  I hate this, I hate this, I hate this part. This is not good.

• 37:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay. The spider walk was good.

• 37:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you think? How are you feeling? How are you doing?

• 37:21Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, the jump scares, yes, that's terrible.

• 37:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:25Amory Sivertson?

  But like, the world is so scary right now.

• 37:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 37:28Amory Sivertson?

  Like, as it is.

• 37:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 37:31Amory Sivertson?

  I mean, it's very well done, but I think like, the things that really keep me up at night unfortunately are like,

• 37:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Have nothing to do with-

• 37:39Amory Sivertson?

  Are real.

• 37:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  I feel like horror movies and like horror stuff, I feel like it's like trying to like, wake you up a little bit. I feel like when it's done right, it sort of takes, takes down a notch, some of the stuff that's scare, actually scary in the world. Somehow. It lets you laugh at death or something? In a way that like makes you feel like, it's good to be, it's good to like face death before you have to face death?

• 38:15Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Does that make sense?

• 38:16Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, well I think, yes, because death is like for so many people, their greatest fear before they feel ready for it.

• 38:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Amory Sivertson?

  If you can't laugh about it, even if the laughing is like, I was just so scared that now I'm going to laugh about it and talk about it and experience it with other people, then you just like lose your mind over it.

• 38:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:36Amory Sivertson?

  And so it's, it almost feels like we don't know what else to do with those, those feelings and fears.

• 38:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah. Alright, endless dread it is.

• 38:47Amory Sivertson?

  Another year!

• 38:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it's another year!

• 38:49Amory Sivertson?

  Another year, facing our mortality.

• 38:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's good, it's important!

• 38:53Amory Sivertson?

  On a hayride. With the chainsaw.

• 39:07Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 39:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was produced by Amory Sheziewicz Sivertson.

• 39:14Amory Sivertson?

  And Ben Boogeyman Johnson. Sound design terrors by our production manager, Paul Vikes.

• 39:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Editing by Meg Kramer. Our managing producer is Sumita Joshi.

• 39:24Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Franny Monahan, and Emily Jankowski.

• 39:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Big thanks to McCrae's Farm in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

• 39:34Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an unsolved mystery, an untold history, or another wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR.org.

• 39:47Amory Sivertson?

  Happy Halloween! Happy spooky Halloween!

• 40:02Amory Sivertson?

  I was so freaked out the first one that came on there for like, not like, ah creepy guy with a chainsaw, but I was like, safety first!

• 40:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, I knew you were gonna feel that way. I knew you were gonna feel that way.

• 40:15Amory Sivertson?

  You're twirling that a little too, uh, it's a little too much.

• 40:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is this guy certified? Is this clown, is this chainsaw clown certified?

• 40:25Amory Sivertson?

  Did he run his choreography before, now, tonight? Just to brush up, make sure that we weren't gonna actually get our hair shaved off.

• 40:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, yep.

• 40:36Amory Sivertson?

  It was good.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education. I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context. And just to explain why you're excited about it. Oh my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization, and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles. Disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  There are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 41:58Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 42:27Speaker 07

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.