WEBVTT
1
00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:05.919
To the restless, the insomniacs, the stressed out, the overwork
2
00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:10.439
the doom scrollers, the worried, and the board. This is
3
00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.720
for you. Good writing is meant to make you think.
4
00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:20.199
This is the opposite. Sure funny and unfortunately true stories
5
00:00:20.359 --> 00:00:23.000
that have mostly to do with nothing to help you
6
00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:27.120
turn off your brain and turn on your rim. All
7
00:00:27.199 --> 00:00:30.800
names have been changed to protect the guilty. These are
8
00:00:31.039 --> 00:00:33.719
Anxiety Addicts Bedtime Stories.
9
00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:42.200
Hi, this is Joe, and welcome to a very very
10
00:00:42.479 --> 00:00:47.880
very special episode of Anxiety Addicts Bedtime Stories. This specific
11
00:00:47.960 --> 00:00:52.320
story is read by Kristen Sevie, who is an actor,
12
00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:56.359
a passionate storyteller, and a podcaster based in New York
13
00:00:56.439 --> 00:00:57.000
and Maine.
14
00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:02.640
Kristen is the star right researcher of Murder She Told,
15
00:01:03.079 --> 00:01:07.079
which is Mine and Morgan's favorite true crime podcast because
16
00:01:07.159 --> 00:01:09.959
Kristen has an ability to paint a picture and tell
17
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.760
a story of an entire.
18
00:01:12.879 --> 00:01:16.599
Person's existence in a way that is really heartful and beautiful.
19
00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:22.000
So enjoy tonight's story. Trigger warning you think it's scary,
20
00:01:22.040 --> 00:01:26.159
but it's not. So enjoy, Sit back, relax, put your
21
00:01:26.159 --> 00:01:28.359
feet up or down, and sweet dreams.
22
00:01:30.719 --> 00:01:34.159
Shauna is a millennial through and through, and she's not
23
00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:39.120
about to apologize for it. She loves athleisure, trending, water bottles,
24
00:01:39.359 --> 00:01:43.159
gentle parenting, getting in her daily steps, and her not
25
00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:50.840
so secret obsession true crime, particularly podcasts. How meta are we?
26
00:01:51.920 --> 00:01:56.079
But this podcast is about a whole lot more than podcasts.
27
00:01:56.920 --> 00:02:01.079
Shauna's nine to five is structure business. She started from
28
00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:05.400
the ground up renovating old homes in North Dakota. She
29
00:02:05.519 --> 00:02:09.199
documents her before and after photos on social media, has
30
00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:13.919
three admittedly adorable children, and likes nothing more than putting
31
00:02:13.919 --> 00:02:16.960
in her headphones and listening to an episode where she
32
00:02:17.159 --> 00:02:22.240
tries to solve a murder while installing hardwood flooring. She
33
00:02:22.360 --> 00:02:25.400
has to remember not to press her sander down too
34
00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:30.080
hard right before they catch the perpetrator. Shauna enjoys her days,
35
00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:36.280
her family, her business, but sometimes the dark, gory and
36
00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:40.840
kind of traumatic podcasts get into her head, and Shauna
37
00:02:40.919 --> 00:02:44.439
finds herself lying in bed, awake in the middle of
38
00:02:44.479 --> 00:02:49.080
the night, suspicious of every creek and grown emanating from
39
00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:52.840
her one hundred year old farmhouse. Early in September of
40
00:02:52.919 --> 00:02:55.759
last year, while cleaning up the dinner dishes as their
41
00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:59.719
kids fought over the remote Shauna recounted the day's episode
42
00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:03.240
to Wit, her husband of almost a decade. But I
43
00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:07.719
knew it was the neighbor all along, yeah, Witt replied,
44
00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:12.080
paying little attention to the horror of whatever grisly murder
45
00:03:12.120 --> 00:03:15.719
that Shauna was so casually reporting. You should have been
46
00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:16.520
in the FBI.
47
00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:17.520
Now.
48
00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:20.759
Shauna wasn't an idiot and knew that Witt was being
49
00:03:20.919 --> 00:03:23.599
kind of a dick. But she'd been feeling like she
50
00:03:23.719 --> 00:03:26.680
missed her calling as a detective for some time now.
51
00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:31.479
She'd been obsessed with one series after another, and swore
52
00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:34.719
that she figured out the killer long before the official
53
00:03:34.759 --> 00:03:40.199
investigators ever did. In the middle of caulking and painting
54
00:03:40.319 --> 00:03:43.439
or wiring, she'd yell at the top of her lungs,
55
00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:48.960
check the husband, or it's the gardener, generally scaring the
56
00:03:49.039 --> 00:03:51.639
shit out of her construction crew. A lot of the
57
00:03:51.639 --> 00:03:55.960
guys worked with Shauna were deeply superstitious, and her outbursts
58
00:03:55.960 --> 00:03:58.560
would rattle the dude using a circle saw or a
59
00:03:58.639 --> 00:04:02.479
nail gun, and her firsts were most definitely becoming a
60
00:04:02.599 --> 00:04:08.039
personal injury liability. Stop listening to that garbage, George, the foreman,
61
00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:11.159
would instruct Shauna as she installed a new ceiling beam,
62
00:04:11.960 --> 00:04:16.079
but Shauna couldn't. The podcasts put her in the work zone,
63
00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:20.279
made the time go by, and occupied a different part
64
00:04:20.279 --> 00:04:24.360
of her brain than her hands on labor, and if
65
00:04:24.399 --> 00:04:28.839
she were being honest, she was kind of addicted. Her
66
00:04:28.839 --> 00:04:31.920
heart would race when the narrator described the scene and
67
00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.319
the investigation, and her brain would crank out its own
68
00:04:35.439 --> 00:04:41.000
list of possible suspects. The only one she disliked were
69
00:04:41.079 --> 00:04:45.120
the unsolved ones. Okay, Shauna, Yeah, I hear that a
70
00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:50.360
lot those offended Shawna's sense of justice. She was okay
71
00:04:50.439 --> 00:04:53.639
with the horrifying tales, but she needed to know that
72
00:04:54.040 --> 00:04:58.839
in the end, justice was served. George thought it put
73
00:04:58.839 --> 00:05:02.000
a bad energy out the world to be entertained by
74
00:05:02.040 --> 00:05:08.279
other people's pain. Shauna did not like this categorization at all. Here,
75
00:05:09.279 --> 00:05:12.279
George took the phone, pulled up the Purple Square app
76
00:05:12.519 --> 00:05:15.639
and typed in a couple words, Listen to this instead.
77
00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:19.759
These won't cause any harm. While George may have thought
78
00:05:19.759 --> 00:05:22.639
that he was saving Shauna from her downward spiral of
79
00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:26.519
true crime horror and opening up her mind to brighter horizons,
80
00:05:27.120 --> 00:05:33.360
he just substituted one addiction for another. Because George introduced
81
00:05:33.439 --> 00:05:38.040
Shauna to stories of the supernatural. It wasn't long before
82
00:05:38.079 --> 00:05:44.680
Shauna's post dinner conversations revolved around alien encounter conspiracies, historical
83
00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:53.319
haunting stories, and tales of spiritual reincarnation. Wit wasn't exactly entertained.
84
00:05:54.079 --> 00:05:57.240
You don't really believe all this stuff, he cringled his
85
00:05:57.319 --> 00:06:01.360
forehead while drying the casserole dish No, of course not,
86
00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:04.839
Shauna lied, while moving plates around the bottom rack of
87
00:06:04.879 --> 00:06:08.360
the dishwasher. Do I believe this stuff? She wondered that
88
00:06:08.519 --> 00:06:10.720
night in bed as she put in her mouth guard
89
00:06:10.759 --> 00:06:14.439
to fend off her nighttime teeth grinding. The dentist had
90
00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:17.839
told her on multiple occasions that she needed to do
91
00:06:17.879 --> 00:06:21.879
a better job of decompressing before she slept, or she'd
92
00:06:21.879 --> 00:06:26.680
be toothless by fifty. Shawna knew that she needed to
93
00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:32.439
focus more attention on relaxing and relieving stress, but the
94
00:06:32.519 --> 00:06:38.199
truth was that wasn't really her jam. Sure, the idea
95
00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:41.720
of sitting in some lavender scented bubble bath while reading
96
00:06:41.759 --> 00:06:44.839
a romance novel sounded like a great way to spend
97
00:06:44.839 --> 00:06:48.639
an evening, but ripping out that old bathtub and replacing
98
00:06:48.680 --> 00:06:52.560
the rusty plumbing while listening to in depth reporting of
99
00:06:52.639 --> 00:06:58.959
how Bugliosi prosecuted Charles Manson sounded way more appealing. Shauna
100
00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:03.360
thought in her own that George's podcast was a step
101
00:07:03.399 --> 00:07:08.160
in the right direction because people weren't getting hurt. Even
102
00:07:08.199 --> 00:07:12.920
the alien abduction stories, while sure in some cases, ruined
103
00:07:12.959 --> 00:07:16.600
people's lives because of the obvious stigma of telling your
104
00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:19.720
neighbors that little gray men came out of the sky
105
00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.560
and invited you into a flying saucer for a rectal
106
00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:28.040
examination isn't the greatest way to become the most popular
107
00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:30.560
person on the block, but it wasn't what Shauna would
108
00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:34.839
classify as tragic. Shauna ruminated over her choice of audio
109
00:07:35.079 --> 00:07:38.240
entertainment as she got ready in the morning, pulling on
110
00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:42.519
her favorite army green carpenter jeans and steel toed boots.
111
00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:49.279
So did she believe the stories? Well kind of. There
112
00:07:49.399 --> 00:07:52.439
was no way that humans were the only intelligent life
113
00:07:52.439 --> 00:07:59.839
in the universe right Statistically that would seem highly, highly improbable,
114
00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:04.839
and Shauna dealt with people all day. She questioned whether
115
00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.519
humanity was really as smart as he gave itself credit for,
116
00:08:09.079 --> 00:08:13.120
and what about the supernatural stories, the tales of witches
117
00:08:13.199 --> 00:08:18.399
and warlocks and people who seemed to communicate with the dead. Well,
118
00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:22.759
when Shauna first started listening to George's episodes, she looked
119
00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:25.959
down on those people and enjoyed laughing at them as
120
00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:29.000
she laid the kitchen tile or cockd a bathroom. But
121
00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:33.279
after binging hours of this type of content, Shauna found
122
00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:37.279
herself slowly convinced that there was just as much evidence
123
00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:41.559
proving as spiritual afterlife as there was disproving it. And
124
00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:46.720
what about monsters. Nope, that was where Shauna drew the line,
125
00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:51.840
but that didn't make the stories any less entertaining bigfoot
126
00:08:52.159 --> 00:08:57.320
lock ness the yetti. Those sightings and conspiracies made the
127
00:08:57.399 --> 00:09:00.240
day go by just as quickly as her old true
128
00:09:00.279 --> 00:09:06.120
crime favorites. However, Shauna didn't find them as truthfully compelling.
129
00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:12.559
That is, of course, until a Tuesday night in late October.
130
00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:19.279
As the grove of aspen trees shed their leaves, carpeting
131
00:09:19.320 --> 00:09:24.559
the ground in a satisfying crunch. The days quickly grew darker, shorter,
132
00:09:25.080 --> 00:09:29.159
and colder. Shauna and Wit had let their daughter Mabel
133
00:09:29.399 --> 00:09:33.159
talk them into carving a dozen pumpkins, which now adorned
134
00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:37.080
their covered porch. She also talked the couple into adding
135
00:09:37.159 --> 00:09:40.679
a new member to the family, a husky puppy named
136
00:09:40.679 --> 00:09:46.759
Echo who talked more than Mabel. And Shauna liked Echo see.
137
00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:50.039
Their one hundred year farmhouse was a work in progress,
138
00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:53.840
with way too many rooms for Wit and Shauna to monitor.
139
00:09:54.320 --> 00:09:59.360
As Echo trailed Mabel everywhere, usually howling or whining at something,
140
00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:03.960
it was easy to know where their only child was playing. Now,
141
00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:08.440
if Shauna were being totally honest, her switch from true
142
00:10:08.480 --> 00:10:14.159
crime podcasts to supernatural ones wasn't necessarily helping our sleep better.
143
00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:18.559
Sounds that made Shauna's hair stand on end escaped from
144
00:10:18.559 --> 00:10:22.960
all corners of the house as temperatures dropped drastically at night,
145
00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:26.879
they'd shake Shauna from a dream that occasionally involved some
146
00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:29.960
kind of ghost or mythical creature. And that is what
147
00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:35.240
happened on this particular October night, the twenty ninth, a
148
00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:39.399
day before Halloween, which just happened to be a full,
149
00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:46.960
shockingly orange harvest moon. The ironwood, ponderosa, and cottonwood had
150
00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:49.639
all been in need of pruning over the summer, but
151
00:10:49.759 --> 00:10:52.879
both Shauna and Wit had been too busy with work
152
00:10:53.159 --> 00:10:57.159
and Mabel and the basement renovation to take time to
153
00:10:57.200 --> 00:11:02.399
cut them back. Last eyes herself over this lapse as
154
00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:06.320
she lay in bed, listening to the leafless branches scrape
155
00:11:06.320 --> 00:11:09.559
against the side of the farmhouse like an old lady's
156
00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:14.600
fingernails against the thick window panes. The wind was fierce
157
00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:18.200
that night, and Shauna crossed her fingers that it wouldn't
158
00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:21.759
take down a power line because she had way too
159
00:11:21.879 --> 00:11:26.600
much work planned for the following day. Somewhere downstairs, echo
160
00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:31.200
howled the moon, his tone ringing through the ancient walls.
161
00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:36.399
Then another sound made Shawna jerk her head towards the door.
162
00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.000
She felt her heart beat quicken, jumping to her now
163
00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:49.480
tight throat. It was mabel mom. Her voice trembled. That
164
00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:53.759
sound sent a chill through Shauna's bones. The joke in
165
00:11:53.799 --> 00:11:56.759
the family was that Mabel could sleep through an earthquake.
166
00:11:57.720 --> 00:12:00.879
Even as a baby, Shanna learned that she could build
167
00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:04.919
nursery furniture a mere three feet from her infant not
168
00:12:05.039 --> 00:12:08.679
wake the sleeping girl. Maybe it was Shawna's prolific use
169
00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:13.279
of power tools while Mabel was in utero. Whatever it was,
170
00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:16.600
nothing could wake her when she was out for the night.
171
00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:20.360
So to say, it was unusual to have Mabel pad
172
00:12:20.399 --> 00:12:22.399
into her parents room in the middle of the night
173
00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:28.720
was an understatement. I can't sleep. Shauna reached out and
174
00:12:28.759 --> 00:12:32.279
pulled her strong little daughter into her bed. She couldn't
175
00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:37.399
explain it, but something felt weird. What is it, honey?
176
00:12:37.840 --> 00:12:40.679
She tried to keep her voice as even a non
177
00:12:40.799 --> 00:12:48.639
alarmist as possible, but that's certainly not how she felt inside.
178
00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:52.840
Something is making a really loud noise in my room,
179
00:12:53.639 --> 00:13:00.279
in my wall. I think it's a monster now. Who
180
00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:02.960
knows if Shauna would have laughed this off had it
181
00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:06.639
not been the night before Halloween in a very old
182
00:13:06.799 --> 00:13:11.000
home with a howling dog, a full moon, branches that
183
00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:14.960
sounded like hands scraping across her windows, and her head
184
00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:18.000
was not chalk full of very detailed stories of the
185
00:13:18.039 --> 00:13:23.480
other worldly. We don't know. What we do know is
186
00:13:23.519 --> 00:13:26.559
that Shawna took the baseball bat from her closet and
187
00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:31.840
walked down the old hallway, floorboards groaning under every step,
188
00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:35.720
to Mabel's room, and the sound she heard in there
189
00:13:36.039 --> 00:13:41.200
vibrated through her entire body, turning her blood to ice.
190
00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:47.759
There was a noise coming from the wall, a noise
191
00:13:47.919 --> 00:13:53.120
a loud enough to wake Mabel Turner Johnson and the
192
00:13:53.159 --> 00:13:58.000
noise sounded as though, well it really didn't want to
193
00:13:58.039 --> 00:14:03.120
be there. The rational part of Shawna's brain momentarily poked
194
00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:08.080
its meek little head out. It has to be an animal,
195
00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:12.480
Shauna told herself, and then repeated it out loud to Mabel.
196
00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:16.440
But it didn't sound like any animal that Shauna had
197
00:14:16.519 --> 00:14:19.879
ever met while living in her landlocked northern state. It
198
00:14:19.919 --> 00:14:24.200
wasn't just scratching or whining like a squirrel, raccoon, or
199
00:14:24.200 --> 00:14:30.360
a possum. No, it was a hum, a groan that
200
00:14:30.440 --> 00:14:34.759
seemed to vibrate through the unicorn clad room, and it
201
00:14:34.840 --> 00:14:40.440
felt like it was talking to them. Shauna grabbed Mabel's
202
00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:43.919
hand and dashed back into her room, shaking a snoring
203
00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.159
wit wide awake with a start. It has to be
204
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:51.679
an animal, he insisted, after groggy half listening to Shauna
205
00:14:51.679 --> 00:14:55.559
and Mabel's breathless story. Your head is full of those
206
00:14:55.639 --> 00:14:59.240
crazy podcasts. Of course, you think there's something creepy in
207
00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:02.480
the wall. He pulled his gray Army sweatshirt off the
208
00:15:02.519 --> 00:15:05.559
floor and over his head, Turning to his young daughter,
209
00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:10.799
There isn't he told her gently That stuff isn't true,
210
00:15:11.159 --> 00:15:14.480
he insisted, looking up at Shanna with a tone conveying
211
00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:18.120
that he didn't want to hear about any supernatural theories
212
00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:22.759
on this particular midnight. Mother and daughter each took one
213
00:15:22.759 --> 00:15:25.720
of WIT's hand and walked him down the crackling hallway
214
00:15:25.879 --> 00:15:30.720
and into her room. And what he heard there was undeniable.
215
00:15:32.159 --> 00:15:35.559
Wit didn't show how creepy the sound made him feel.
216
00:15:36.840 --> 00:15:39.519
You refuse to believe there was anything more than a
217
00:15:39.559 --> 00:15:44.320
perfectly boring and logical explanation for whatever it was. But
218
00:15:44.399 --> 00:15:49.200
the sound was real. It was a deep vibration, as
219
00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:52.440
if a very baritone voice was in a lot of pain.
220
00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:57.120
It definitely wasn't a rodent or a bird, but it
221
00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:01.919
also didn't sound quite human. He walked over to the
222
00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:05.960
wall and banged his fist against the wood, feigning confidence,
223
00:16:06.200 --> 00:16:11.600
but that backfired. The noise got louder. Wit jumped back,
224
00:16:12.240 --> 00:16:16.399
sensing his unease. Mabel and Shauna gripped each other's hands
225
00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:21.320
so so very tightly. Shauna's mind started digging a tunnel
226
00:16:21.320 --> 00:16:25.759
of its own. She imagined a corpse behind her daughter's wall,
227
00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:30.519
decomposed between the insulation for who knows how many years.
228
00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:34.960
She imagined his tortured spirit holding on to some kind
229
00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:38.720
of very important secret, now ready to claw his way
230
00:16:38.759 --> 00:16:41.799
through the sheet rock and into their lives. It was
231
00:16:41.879 --> 00:16:45.320
at that moment that Shauna would have sworn. She smelled
232
00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:49.440
rotting flesh, and the goosebumps on her arm were so
233
00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:52.879
hard that her skin began to ache, But her maternal
234
00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:57.360
instinct managed to stop her imagination from spiraling any further.
235
00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:01.639
My camera, she eked out to it what he looked
236
00:17:01.639 --> 00:17:05.400
at her so intently that for the first time in
237
00:17:05.440 --> 00:17:09.279
their eight year marriage, Shauna could see the true fear
238
00:17:09.319 --> 00:17:17.599
in his eyes. Shawna's brain grasped for the word. Remember,
239
00:17:17.799 --> 00:17:22.400
she was a contractor. She had a lot of tools
240
00:17:22.440 --> 00:17:26.960
and a lot of various contraptions. One of those happened
241
00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:31.079
to be a thermal camera. It wasn't a strange thing
242
00:17:31.079 --> 00:17:33.440
to own in her profession. She would use it to
243
00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:36.839
inspect a roof for leaks, or detect moisture or a