DARK WEB: Dear David

In 2017, cartoonist Adam Ellis began posting a Twitter thread that terrified his followers. He claimed that after a series of horrifying dreams, the ghost of a boy named Dear David was haunting his New York City apartment. What he captured on film convinced people his experience was genuine. But one final tweet made them wonder if Dear David may have possessed Adam, too.

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  So I have something I want to get off my chest. Because while I'm a diehard believer through and through, there is one thing that really gets me questioning some supernatural phenomena, particularly ghosts in the digital age. Like, we have so many ways of capturing things: cameras, social media, Ring Door cameras. Even our private moments aren't really that private anymore. Which, if that's the case, wouldn't you think that we'd be catching ghostly phenomena all the time? Like, for the whole world to see? Wouldn't we have some concrete validation by now on whether or not this stuff really exists?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Well, if you ask reporter Adam Ellis, he'd probably say, "Good point, Ashley, and lucky for you, I've got it covered." Because on August 7, 2017, Adam posted the "Tweet of All Tweets," back when they were called "tweets." It read, quote, "So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he's trying to kill me," end quote. For weeks, Adam kept the public updated with every little detail about his experience, including photos, audio files, even videos of his cats going nuts at the door every night around midnight.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  It made a lot of people wonder: Did Adam just invent a very ingenious method of storytelling? A horror story for the digital age? Or was there something really going on in that apartment? One that the entire internet had a front-row seat for? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural.

• 1:58Yvette Gentile?

  Hello and welcome back to So Supernatural. I'm Yvette Gentile.

• 2:02Rasha Pecoraro?

  And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecoraro. And like Ashley, I also have a confession to make. I am obsessed with all things Beetlejuice. Even though I'm a big scaredy cat, I cannot get that demon out of my head. I love Beetlejuice.

• 2:20Yvette Gentile?

  But regardless of whether you've seen the films or not, you probably know one famous detail about it. That if you say Beetlejuice three times, you summon this chaotic demon.

• 2:33Rasha Pecoraro?

  It is comforting to know that these movies that Tim Burton did are a work of fiction. But when you hear about things like this happening in real life, well, that's a whole other story. Because something similar happened to a BuzzFeed writer named Adam Ellis in 2017. He seemed to conjure a clingy little demon of his own after asking him three little questions.

• 2:58Yvette Gentile?

  And if you believe Adam's story, it sounds like that ghost wasn't going to stop tormenting him until he was actually dead.

• 3:14Speaker 03

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• 3:47Yvette Gentile?

  As a kid, I was a Brownie Girl Scout. And whenever we went on camping trips, I loved sitting around the campfire, listening to ghost stories. That said, I do love the suspense and thrill of a good creepy story.

• 4:01Rasha Pecoraro?

  I have never been and will never be a camper, but surprisingly, I've always loved stories about spirits and hauntings. And I think that's because mom believed in all of that stuff, you know, in psychics, in mediums, and everything supernatural. In fact, I remember one particular sleepover where mom was with me and all of my friends, and we did the Ouija board. And we ended up conjuring the spirit of George Hodel. And of course, we freaked out. And if you don't know who that is, small plug, go check out the podcast Yvette and I did a few years back called Root of Evil. But these days, instead of sleepovers or camping trips,

• 4:43Rasha Pecoraro?

  people seem to be getting a lot of ghost stories from online forums, social media, and TikTok.

• 4:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  It all started on what was known as Twitter back on August 7th, 2017, when a New York-based BuzzFeed writer and satirical cartoonist named Adam Ellis put this tweet out into the world. "So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he's trying to kill me."

• 5:14Yvette Gentile?

  That's a wild way to start a thread. And it's especially weird when you look at Adam's background, because Adam is a 31-year-old cartoonist. His bread and butter is making funny cartoons. He's never dabbled in horror or anything like it. So to those that know him or follow his work, this post is out of character for Adam. That's probably why so many people take this thread at face value when they see it. As wild as it sounds, they think there's no reason for Adam to lie.

• 5:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  So Adam begins the thread by explaining that at some point earlier that year, he was sleeping in his New York apartment when he had a dream. Well, sort of had a dream. He says he was actually half awake at the time. Adam gets sleep paralysis sometimes, so this isn't totally out of the norm for him. Sleep paralysis can cause people to feel like they are awake in bed, only they can't move or speak.

• 6:16Yvette Gentile?

  It's a creepy experience for sure. And if you haven't already, you guys gotta check out Ashley's earlier episode on sleep paralysis. It's so fascinating and also it's so terrifying at the same time.

• 6:29Rasha Pecoraro?

  Adam claims that night while he's having this episode, he looks over at this green rocking chair that's next to his bed. Only, there's a young boy sitting in the chair. He doesn't offer up in age, but from what I can tell, he's anywhere from three to seven years old. And there's something wrong with his head. As in, there's a huge chunk missing from it. Almost like his skull was smashed in.

• 6:58Yvette Gentile?

  Adam later draws a sketch of what he sees and he includes it in the Twitter thread. And y'all, it is freaky. You should check it out on our socials.

• 7:08Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, even though it's just a drawing, it is really creepy and really, really disturbing. But things get even creepier because Adam says the boy just sits there staring at him. And while Adam wants to scream and run, all he can do is stare back. Because of that half-dream, half-awake sleep paralysis state he was in. Then it gets worse. The little boy gets up and starts walking towards Adam's bed. He gets closer and closer. But no matter how hard Adam tries, he can't just snap himself out of the paralysis. The boy is now almost close enough to touch him. And that's when Adam finally wakes up.

• 7:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  He's so scared, he's screaming out loud. But when he looks around the room, the boy is gone. He thinks, okay, it was just a dream after all. He tells himself there's nothing to worry about. All of this is unfortunately common with sleep paralysis. This confusion between being awake and being asleep. He's convinced it was just another episode.

• 8:16Yvette Gentile?

  A few days go by, and I don't know the exact date, but according to his Twitter thread, Adam has another dream. This time, the little boy isn't actually there, but the nightmare is still about him. You see, Adam dreams that he meets a girl in a library, and he doesn't recognize her, but she walks right up to him and asks, "You've seen Dear David, haven't you?" At first, Adam has no idea what she's talking about. But after a little bit of back and forth, he realizes Dear David is the boy with the dented skull, the one that he saw the other night. And that's when the girl adds

• 8:58Yvette Gentile?

  that Dear David is a ghost, one who visits people in their dreams, always at the stroke of midnight. According to her, if you see this spirit, you can ask him whatever you want. Just start by saying, "Dear David", and he'll answer your question. But you only get to do this twice. If you ask Dear David a third question, he'll kill you. As soon as the girl finishes explaining all of this, Adam wakes up again. Once more, he tells himself, "It's just a dream. I don't have nightmares like this, ones that are so specific and so bone chilling

• 9:43Yvette Gentile?

  that you're just still thinking about it the next morning." I mean, not to this extent. Rasha, I know that you do suffer from nightmares, and I know that it's terrifying to you because I get the text messages in the morning from you.

• 9:58Rasha Pecoraro?

  I do, and I have recurring nightmares a lot, but they're always a little different each time. And that started happening after Mom died. And it's hard. It's hard to recover from nightmares that shake you to your core. I can only imagine what Adam was going through.

• 10:16Yvette Gentile?

  And just like you're saying, Adam wonders if his latest dream, nightmare, premonition, whatever you want to call it, has meaning somehow. Maybe there's even some truth to what the girl said.

• 10:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  Sure enough, a few weeks later, Dear David appears to Adam in another dream. As soon as Adam sees the boy in the rocking chair, he asks a question. Dear David, how did you die? Dear David replies, "An accident in a store." Not the most detailed answer, but it's something. So Adam decides to ask a follow-up for his second question. He says, "Dear David, what happened in the store?" And again, the ghost answers. This time, he says, "A shelf was pushed on my head." Now that phrasing really gets Adam's attention. Because Dear David doesn't say "a shelf fell." He says "it was pushed."

• 11:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  Which shocks Adam so much, he can't stop himself from blurting out a third question. Dear David, who pushed the shelf? Dear David doesn't answer. In fact, right then and there, Adam wakes up with his heart racing and sweat soaking the sheets. Immediately, Adam knows he's made a huge mistake. He just asked Dear David a third question. He's basically doomed himself. That is, assuming he really is talking to the ghost of a dead boy. Adam still isn't sure. Maybe these are just some really weird dreams and nothing more. So he tries not to worry about it too much.

• 11:57Yvette Gentile?

  He also doesn't tell anyone about the dreams yet. Remember, this is months before his Twitter thread.

• 12:04Rasha Pecoraro?

  And at first, Adam does what any reasonable person living in the 21st century might do. He Googles children's deaths in New York department stores. He's looking for a news article, an obituary, anything that can confirm what Dear David told him and prove that he's real after all. But, he finds nothing. He even tries searching other D-names in case he misunderstood the girl in his dream. But there's no record of a Devon, or a Dylan, or anyone else dying in a department store either. This reassures Adam that these are just dreams. They're not real, so he just tries to go on about his life.

• 12:43Yvette Gentile?

  Thankfully, he's got plenty going on to distract him. You see, he's moving from the downstairs unit of his duplex to the upstairs one. The upstairs apartment is a little bit bigger and it's nicer. And it just became vacant, so Adam wants to upgrade while he can. And for the first few months in his new place, Adam actually has some peace and quiet. No more dreams about Dear David, nothing to worry about. That is, until the summer of 2017. It's the first week of August when Adam notices his two cats are doing this weird thing. At the stroke of midnight, every night, they go sit by the front door, like there's something

• 13:26Yvette Gentile?

  or someone out there, and they're just waiting for them to come in. Of course, there's no reason for anybody to be outside of Adam's apartment in the middle of the night, especially if his unit takes up the entire second floor of the two-story building. There's no through-traffic or neighbors on that floor. Well, Adam looks out the peephole one night, just to see if there's someone creeping upstairs after all, and he sees some kind of movement, only it's too quick for him to know what he's actually looking at. And that's when he gets creeped out enough to hop on Twitter and tell his story. That day in August, he posts a long thread covering everything that we just told you so far.

• 14:12Rasha Pecoraro?

  And the next day on August 8th, he posts an update. He says the cats are still staring at the door, so he takes a photo through the peephole to see if his camera can capture something, anything, and it does. He gets a picture of a weird shadow by the stairs leading up to his unit. It looks like something might be lurking just out of sight. Either way, Adam is terrified. He double-checks that the door is locked and bolted, so nothing can get inside, and he tries to go to sleep. But how do you sleep when you're scared out of your damn mind?

• 14:49Yvette Gentile?

  I mean, Rasha, you know me, I would not be sleeping at all.

• 14:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  No.

• 14:54Yvette Gentile?

  I would be up and out of that apartment so fast, calling all my friends, like, "Come and get me." Especially because this continues, we're not talking just one time, this is like night after night. The moment that midnight hits, his cats walk over to the door, sit there, and wait. And by the way, this is completely new behavior for his cats. They've never did anything like this before at Adam's old unit. As days pass, Adam tries to get more pictures, but he can never capture anything definitive. So he changes his focus from trying to record images to trying to record sounds.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 16:07Yvette Gentile?

  He downloads an app that's supposed to tape people talking in their sleep, and he lets it run all night long. In the morning, Adam checks that sleep-talking app, and there are three clips that make his hair stand on end. Spoiler alert: they're not of him talking. One of the clips is just 16 seconds of a weird, staticky buzz. He doesn't know what to make of it, especially because that static isn't audible in any other clip. It's almost like something is interfering with the app, but just for those 16 seconds. The other two videos are snapping or cracking sounds

• 16:49Yvette Gentile?

  as though something is moving around inside his apartment. Freaky as all this is, the cats, the sounds, the nightmares, it sort of just becomes Adam's new normal.

• 17:03Rasha Pecoraro?

  But on the night of August 11th, things take a turn. It's a Friday, and Adam can barely keep his eyes open. He's not sure why, but he's exhausted. He goes to bed early, and then he has another one of those nightmares about Dear David. Except in this one, the boy is holding Adam by his arm and dragging him around.

• 17:27Rasha Pecoraro?

  Adam is much bigger than this child, and he feels that he should be able to fight him off. But he can't make his body move. It's like he's experiencing sleep paralysis again, except this time, he's fully aware that he's dreaming. When he wakes up, Adam sort of shrugs it off. Nightmares about Dear David are routine by now. But then, he steps into the shower. He looks down, and that's when he sees a bruise on his arm right where Dear David was holding him in his dream. This solidifies it for Adam. Whatever is haunting him is real. It's physical, and it can harm him.

• 18:18Yvette Gentile?

  Since early 2017 or so, Adam Ellis has been having nightmares about a ghost named Dear David. Throughout August of that year, he posts almost daily updates on Twitter. Adam even makes a few changes to his apartment in hopes of feng shui-ing it all away. He moves that green rocking chair from his bedroom into the living room, and he ends up buying a new Polaroid camera that he plays around with for fun. He walks all around his unit snapping photos, and the pictures inside his apartment are all very normal and boring-looking. Until he tries to snap a picture of the hallway outside his unit.

• 19:00Yvette Gentile?

  It comes out pitch black. Adam is sure that he didn't cover the lens with his finger. It's also not an issue with the lighting in the hallway, because he tries taking pictures with his phone, and they all come out normal. The problem is only with the Polaroid, and only when he's trying to photograph the hall. So he takes a few more pictures from a bunch of different angles. And each time, when he presses the shutter, the hallway is well-lit. But every photo shows this inky blackness where the hallway should be. I mean, it is wild.

• 19:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  By that September, Adam wants to spend as little time in his apartment as possible, which, can you really blame him? I know, we'd both be like, "Get us out of here, let's move." So Adam plans a few different trips. Some are long vacations, some are brief sleepovers with friends. Every time he's gone, though, Adam leaves a pet cam on in the living room so he can keep an eye on the cats. This camera has a motion detector in it, so it only records when the cats are actually in frame and moving. And it pings Adam's phone each time it's activated. One weekend when Adam's gone, he keeps getting notifications. Except when he checks the camera, there's nothing in the living room.

• 20:26Rasha Pecoraro?

  His cats aren't in frame, so he doesn't know what's setting off the motion detectors. Until he notices something impossible. The old green rocking chair is swaying on its own. He even tweets a video of the empty chair swaying back and forth. Adam shares another video, too. It shows a turtle shell hanging on the wall in the same room. And later that same night, the shell goes plummeting to the ground. Nothing touched it, nothing bumped it, there was no reason for it to fall, but it did. Even when Adam returns home, he leaves the pet camera on.

• 21:09Rasha Pecoraro?

  He wants to know if there's anything else going on while he's asleep. Sure enough, he gets clip after clip of his cats staring at the same empty space. This always happens late at night after he's gone to bed. Sometimes, they stare for hours. Occasionally, the cats swat at something, only there's nothing there.

• 21:33Yvette Gentile?

  About two weeks go by before Adam posts another update. He says that since he's gotten back, the electronics in his unit have been acting up. In fact, weird things are happening throughout the building. Remember the hallway outside his door, the one that always shows up black on the Polaroid film? Well, the light bulbs in it keep burning out. They only last a few days before they need to be replaced. Then, one morning in October, not too long after he wakes up, Adam hears these scratching noises at his door. It sounds like something is trying to get in. Hoping to catch whatever it is, Adam puts what I think is his cellphone camera up against the peephole, and he snaps a picture.

• 22:18Yvette Gentile?

  When he looks at the result, he sees what appears to be a misshapen, dented, human face pressed right up against the door.

• 22:27Rasha Pecoraro?

  I had to stare at this photo for quite a while to see what Adam saw. But when it finally clicked, I couldn't unsee it.

• 22:36Yvette Gentile?

  Needless to say, after that, things quiet down for a while. Adam tweets about bad dreams he's been having, but he goes a couple weeks without giving a Dear David update at all. Until one night in late October, Adam is home when he happens to glance out his window. It's pretty late, I mean, it's somewhere between 11:00 PM and midnight. The building next to his is only one story tall, so Adam's second-floor unit looks out over that building's roof. And to be clear, this isn't a roof with a deck or anything. People don't usually hang out or go up there. Except, Adam sees someone standing there. It's dark, so he can't make out much, but he can tell that they're watching him,

• 23:20Yvette Gentile?

  staring right into his home through his window. Adam immediately freaks out, I mean, rightfully so, but he still thinks, "I've got to document this." So he grabs a camera, and even though he snaps two pictures, neither one clearly shows the figure. The first is blurry, so there could be someone on the roof, but you really can't tell. And the second picture just shows an empty rooftop, like that mysterious person just vanished.

• 23:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  And it gets worse, because over the next few nights, Adam begins hearing noises from above his unit. Thumps and thuds, like someone is walking around right over his head. And remember, Adam's living in the top apartment. He doesn't have upstairs neighbors. From what I can tell, he doesn't have a roof deck either. But he feels like there isn't much else to do besides keep sharing his story. Then, on the night of November 5th, Adam has another nightmare about Dear David. And it's just like the first one. The ghost appears in a chair and watches Adam lie there. Now, Adam has been obsessing about this boy for over three months,

• 24:35Rasha Pecoraro?

  looking at pet cam footage, taking pictures, recording sounds. It's second nature for him to document everything that happens to him. So the moment Dear David shows up, Adam picks up his phone and takes a picture of him. And to be clear, this is all happening in his dream. Then Dear David gets up out of his chair and walks towards Adam's bed. Each time he takes a step closer, Adam gets another picture. It goes on like that until Dear David is right at Adam's side. And then, Adam wakes up. But the next day, when Adam is looking through the photos on his phone, he doesn't expect to see pictures from the night before. After all, he thinks that he didn't actually take any photos.

• 25:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  He just dreamed he did. Except, right at the top of the gallery with his most recent images, he sees a bunch of photos of his bedroom at night, including one with a very distinct human figure sitting in a chair. It's hard to make out much because the room is so dark. But if you turn up the brightness on whatever device you're using, you can see it very clearly. It looks like a boy who's no taller than the back of the chair. He seems to be wearing a striped shirt. And one side of his head is completely caved in.

• 25:56Yvette Gentile?

  Oh, hell no. I mean, you know, you know me so well. If I am put into this scenario, it would be, "It's time to move. Thank you landlord. I need to look for another place. Like, get me out of this apartment."

• 26:11Rasha Pecoraro?

  But Adam? No. Adam sees this as an opportunity to double down and prove this thing exists once and for all. Beginning in mid-December, he sets up a camera to photograph his room every few seconds. So he's not recording a video exactly, more like a time lapse. He ends up with thousands of pictures. And after one long restless night of tossing and turning, combing through all the photos, sure enough, he sees Dear David a lot. The first image shows him standing at the foot of Adam's bed, just watching him sleep. There's a bunch of pictures like that, like he's just standing there for a while. Another image shows Dear David in the chair, and then he vanishes.

• 26:57Rasha Pecoraro?

  Later that same night, he reappears, except this time Dear David is right next to Adam's head. Then he climbs onto the bed, stands on Adam's chest, and he turns his face to look right at the camera lens. It's like Dear David knows he's being recorded. The last picture shows Dear David's dented head in an extreme close-up. It looks like he's charging toward the camera to try and grab it or stop it from filming.

• 27:27Yvette Gentile?

  This guy is very courageous for, again, staying in this apartment because I could not handle this. This is just too creepy for me, so...

• 27:39Rasha Pecoraro?

  Luckily for Adam, it's almost Christmas and he's planning to visit some family out of state in Montana. So he's putting some serious distance between himself and Dear David.

• 27:49Yvette Gentile?

  Except when he gets to Montana, weird things keep happening. Sometimes Adam wakes up early in the morning to find human footprints in the snow outside of the house. Now, no one else is awake yet, and the prints weren't there the night before. It makes him think someone is walking around casing the house while everyone is asleep. And worst of all, these footprints are small, like child-sized small.

• 28:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  When Adam gets back home to New York, he keeps photographing himself in his sleep. Even though most of the pictures are of him alone in bed, he still has the uneasy feeling that he's being watched. He also starts hearing things when he's awake, like someone is talking to him when no one's there.

• 28:38Yvette Gentile?

  Now, for context, Adam posted the first tweet about Dear David in early August 2017, but he's still having bad dreams and feels haunted by the end of January 2018. So we're talking about nearly six months of escalating weirdness. And during that time, it's worth noting, Adam does everything he could think of to get rid of the spirit. He sprinkled a line of salt across his doorway, he burned sage, but none of it worked. The haunting went on.

• 29:10Rasha Pecoraro?

  But it does sound like he finds a solution somewhere along the way. I wish I could tell you what the solution is, but Adam never specifies. All I know is on February 2nd of 2018, he just tweets, "Everything is fine." The next update comes almost two weeks later, on February 13th. Adam posts, "Please don't worry about me. I'm okay, and everything will be like it was before." He ends the tweet with a smiley face. And to be clear, I don't mean a smiley face emoji. He tweets an emoticon, you know, a colon and a parentheses right next to each other? Which is what people used in the days before emojis.

• 29:51Yvette Gentile?

  This is weird for a few different reasons. First, Adam has been so detailed in all of his posts up until now. He's shared photos, clips from his pet cams, audio from the sleep-tracking app. The list goes on and on. So for him to now say that everything's fine and drop it there, it's just weird. Almost like, what changed? What are you hiding?

• 30:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, also, the tweet doesn't sound like something Adam would write. Most of his tweets before now have been grammatically correct, with capitalization at the beginning of each sentence and a period at the end. Basic stuff. But the "everything is fine" and "I'm okay" tweets both have little errors in them. Sentences that begin with lowercase letters, missing punctuation. Plus, when he types "everything is fine", there's an extra space between "is" and "fine". Then there's the smiley emoticon. According to his followers, Adam doesn't use emoticons. That's completely out of character for him. It's as if someone else has gotten access to more than just his Twitter account.

• 31:02Rasha Pecoraro?

  Like, maybe, his body.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables, it's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 31:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  In February of 2018, Adam Ellis tweets that he's fine after months of strange occurrences and eerie encounters with the ghost of a dead child. Except his followers believe he's anything but fine. There are wild rumors going around that he's been possessed by the spirit of Dear David.

• 32:02Yvette Gentile?

  Now, look, I have to say, this seems a little far-fetched even for me. We've covered cases about possessions on this show before, and they are devastating. You can't live a normal life when something else has control of your body like that. But Adam seems to maintain his high-profile job writing and making cartoons for BuzzFeed during this time. He still sees his friends and coworkers regularly, and nobody who knows him thinks anything is wrong.

• 32:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  People have been taking Adam's tweets at face value as truth. But what if he wasn't telling the full story? At this point, many are starting to wonder if the whole Dear David thread might be a giant hoax. When Adam talks about his bad dreams, hearing scratching noises at the door, or his lights flickering on and off, he could be making all of that up.

• 32:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  As for the photo and video evidence, it could have been photoshopped. It's not that hard to snap a picture through a peephole and edit it to look like a face, or to add a creepy little boy to a photo of an empty rocking chair, or to make that boy stand on top of you while you sleep. After all, so many of the pictures Adam tweeted were either blurry or very dark. That makes them look more mysterious and spooky, but it could hide the signs of photo manipulation, too. When it comes to motive, consider this: Adam is a professional writer. A viral Twitter thread could help his career. It's evidence he's a good storyteller.

• 33:35Rasha Pecoraro?

  And that Twitter thread, for what it's worth, didn't only go viral. Professional ghost hunters and mediums were calling Adam nonstop. They all wanted to meet Dear David for themselves. Adam even sold the rights for a Dear David movie. The horror film came out in 2023, right around Halloween time, and the title is, logically enough, Dear David.

• 34:01Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, but here's what I found interesting. When Adam promoted the movie, people kept asking him in interviews, "How much of what you posted was real?" And Adam said, "I've never been interested in convincing anyone that ghosts are real. I just wanted to tell my story. If it was fiction, I probably would have updated more than once every couple of weeks." Which, I gotta say, is a fair point. It's not like he was tweeting about Dear David every day, or even every week. If this was all made up, you'd think that he'd be adding details on a regular basis. Right? I mean, keeping the momentum going and keeping the audience engaged. But according to Adam,

• 34:42Yvette Gentile?

  he only wrote about the haunting when there was a new development to share. So the fact that the story played out so slowly with so many gaps between posts, well, some think that's evidence he's telling the truth. And then there's the fact that Adam doesn't write horror. He's a comic writer and his specialty is satire. So if he's going to make something up, why would it be something so horrific, so close to home?

• 35:12Rasha Pecoraro?

  Of course, there's always the possibility that Adam was telling the truth. But maybe he was mistaken about what was really going on. Because, you know, sometimes you hear a scary story and that it gets into your head. And then suddenly, everything seems dangerous and high stakes. So picture this. Adam has a creepy dream about this little boy with a dent in his head. Afterward, he can't get it out of his mind. And then he notices little things like noises in the wall or lights burning out. Instead of chalking it up to mice or faulty electrical wiring, he assumes these are all signs of a ghost.

• 35:52Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, but to play devil's advocate, what about when he visited his family in Montana? He found child-sized footprints in the snow. That wasn't all in his head. I mean, he took pictures. Could some of this stuff be photoshopped or edited? Of course. But there's some evidence Adam tweeted that would be kinda hard to fake on your own, particularly the videos. Like making his rocking chair move on its own? Or knocking the turtle shell off the wall without touching it? Plus, are we supposed to believe that he trained his cats to stare into space and swat at things we can't see? And okay, I know that Adam couldn't find evidence of a boy named David dying in a department store accident in New York.

• 36:37Yvette Gentile?

  But who knows? Maybe he passed decades before, or even as much as a century ago. After all, some of the mythology surrounding him turned out to be inaccurate. For example, Adam learned in a dream that Dear David would kill anyone who asked him more than two questions. But Adam is still alive. Dear David scared him an awful lot, maybe gave him a bruise or two, but he lived to tell the tale. And we don't know why that is.

• 37:08Rasha Pecoraro?

  Frankly, we don't know why any of this happened, or why Dear David appeared to Adam in the first place. We don't know what he was hoping to accomplish the whole time he was scaring Adam out of his skin, or why he seemingly went away just as quickly as he appeared. All of which were problems for the people who adapted Adam's Twitter thread into a feature film. So it should be no surprise that the writers of the Dear David movie changed up the story in some major ways to give it a full narrative. For example, they added a whole backstory where Dear David hated bullies, and in the film, Adam was a huge bully. That's why Dear David chose to torment him.

• 37:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  In the movie, Adam also defeats Dear David by burning his own home to the ground. But that's something that didn't happen at all in real life. Except, while the Dear David movie was a work of fiction in a lot of ways, there was one eerie parallel between the film and real life. Or two, if you count the fact that Adam had a brief cameo in the film. Anyway, when they shot in an empty house in Toronto, the set was apparently haunted. On filming days, the stars would get to hair and makeup early, which means that only a few members of the crew were there. But they said during that time, the lights would turn themselves on and off.

• 38:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  They also had a prop rocking chair on set, which was a replica of Adam's. And just like with the real version, this one would sway on its own too.

• 38:42Yvette Gentile?

  Which makes me wonder, was the spirit on the set of Dear David actually the Dear David? Did he follow Adam all the way to Toronto? After all, Adam never publicly said that he got rid of the little boy's ghost. Just that, everything was fine and he was okay. Now, he didn't offer any more context for those weird tweets, or all their typos, but maybe we can read between the lines and speculate. Did he find a way to get along with the specter that was haunting him? Or maybe, he and Dear David just agreed on a way to... coexist?

• 39:22Rasha Pecoraro?

  I don't know if that's incredibly sweet, or incredibly creepy. Maybe both. Which is often the case with these scary stories. We don't always know what the supernatural wants, or why it chooses the people it does. But that's part of the intrigue. Maybe the message of this Dear David story is to stop letting our ignorance make us afraid. Maybe, when we encounter the unknown, we should respond with curiosity and empathy. And find a way to make peace with the things that truly terrify us.

• 40:08Yvette Gentile?

  This is So Supernatural, an Audiochuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod, and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all-new episode.

• 40:28Yvette Gentile?

  So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 40:34Speaker 04

  I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot?

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Your podcast is amazing. It's such an amazing show altogether.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  You guys have actively ruined all of their audio dramas for me.

• 40:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  Keep doing what you're doing, because it's awesome.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you. At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app, or just go to weopenat6.com.