United States of PTSD

S 3 E: 1 Spooky Season: Culture, Legends, and Fear

• Matthew Boucher & Julia Kirkpatrick • Season 3 • Episode 1

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What if the Halloween traditions we've come to love are rooted in ancient fears and legends? Join us as we kick off season three of "The United States of PTSD" with a thrilling exploration of Halloween's origins, tracing its journey from Celtic rituals to the influence of Irish Catholics in America. With Julia taking a break, Cora steps in, bringing her delightful stories of crafting unique Halloween costumes for her kids—imagine a Rhode Island hot wiener and a cozy shark roaming the streets! As we reminisce about the creativity of past Halloweens and the impact of COVID-19 on social gatherings, our enthusiasm for the holiday remains undiminished. Together, we plan to celebrate Halloween across different cultures, eager to embrace the spooky season in all its forms.

Ever heard of the notorious razor blade in the apple myth? We unravel its urban legend status while examining the real fears that reshaped Halloween safety in the 1970s and 1980s, spurred by the Tylenol murders and other tragedies. Our discussion highlights how societal fears often target strangers, even though most harm comes from familiar faces. Cora and I delve into infamous cases of treat tampering by family members, challenging our perception of safety in the festive season. We share childhood tales of Bloody Mary and other eerie legends, exploring the thrill they bring to the Halloween experience.

Prepare for a spine-tingling journey through fear, phobias, and the paranormal. From horror movies inspired by societal unrest to the allure of ghost tours in Mystic, Rhode Island, our conversation uncovers the excitement of encountering the supernatural. Discover stories of Mercy Brown and the vampire panic in New England, where fear led to desperate measures amidst a tuberculosis outbreak. As we reflect on these chilling narratives, we consider their impact on cultural traditions and personal fears. Join us for a captivating episode filled with history, ghostly encounters, and an undying love for the spooky season.

https://uknow.uky.edu/research/uk-folklorist-explains-spellbinding-history-halloween
University of Kentucky

UK folklorist explains the spellbinding history of Halloween
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-019-01105-0

The Razor Blade in the the Apple: the Social Construction of Urban Legends
Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi
Social Problems, Jun. 1985, Vol. 32, No. 5, pp 488-499
Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems
https://www.jstor.org/stable/800777

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/phobias

https://www.rihs.org/have-mercy/
Oct 31, 2016
Rhode Island Historical Society
Jennifer L. Galpern, Research Associate/Special Collections

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/politics/bernie-sanders-kamala-harris-israel-gaza/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-has-undeniable-complicity-gaza-war-killings-say-former-us-officials-2024-07-03/

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die
License code: S4CEQWLNQXVZUMU4

Artwork and logo design by Misty Rae.


Special thanks to Joanna Roux for editing help.
Special thanks to the listeners and all the wonderful people who helped listen to and provide feedback on the episode's prerelease.


Please feel free to email Matt topics or suggestions, questions or feedback.
Matt@unitedstatesofPTSD.com


Speaker 1:

This podcast is not intended to serve as therapeutic advice or to replace any professional treatment. These opinions belong to us and do not reflect any company or agency.

Speaker 2:

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the United States of PTSD. This is going to be season three, our first episode of season three, and I want to just do a quick announcement before we get started. So Julia is going to be taking a little bit of a break right now. She is going to be focusing a little bit of a break right now. She is going to be focusing on her private practice, which is fantastic, and I want to thank her for all the work that she did in season two. So cora is now going to be the official co-host for season three and the anticipated plan is that this will go on until about april of next year.

Speaker 2:

Cor, cora, correct, right? And obviously Cora will have the opportunity to stay if she wants to afterwards. If not, there is already a plan for season four. So we are moving ahead and I want to thank all the supporters we have. We are at an all-time high for downloads and listens and I'm super excited about it. And just a quick shout-out to Wendy and Julia for helping to get us this far. And, cora, thank you for all the amazing research you have been doing to make this even better.

Speaker 2:

It just keeps getting better and better and better. So, and all the great guests because we've had in the past, I want to thank all of them as well. And happy Halloween everybody. My goal is to get this.

Speaker 1:

I think we're going to try to have this released on Halloween, because I think that would be awesome Instead of Monday, which we usually release on. So Cora do October 31st, and it was actually a sort of New Year's Eve. People believed that that was a day when the veil between humans and the spirit world was the thinnest during the agricultural cycle, and it was also a day when animals were slaughtered. So I think we get a lot of our sort of blood and gore from that tradition of slaughtering animals. We have written records from the ninth century in Ireland that date back to celebrations of Halloween, but we actually believe that it happened a lot sooner. We just don't have records to prove that it was in place. As Catholicism came into Celtic regions it became adapted into Christianity. November 1st is All Saints Day, so the Christian church kind of took it, took a little spin on it and made October 31st the All Hallows Eve, and so that's how we get the name Halloween.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, cora, for that. It's interesting when I went to Rome and Greece you learn about, especially at the Roman Forum, you get the history of how each new religion that came on stole stuff from previous religions and adapted it because they couldn't get people to believe something new. So they would take the old things and then they would turn them into new versions of current things. Turn them into new versions of current things. Samhain or Halloween is no different than anything else. To you know to try to take away the original meaning of that.

Speaker 1:

Sure, and then actually from there we have Great Britain. Catholics started kind of taking that tradition of mumming, being in costumes, dressing up on Halloween, and the tradition was that single people or children would go around and they would knock on doors and they would ask if the house wanted a blessing and if the house said no, the house could receive a trick, and if the house gave out a little bit of drink or a little bit of something to eat, the people would send them a prayer or a blessing.

Speaker 2:

Cora, do you dress up for Halloween?

Speaker 1:

I'm a Halloween mom. I make costumes. I love making costumes for my kiddos. This year, my daughter will be a Rhode Island hot wiener, oh my God, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Maybe we should give a little bit of a background on that. So Rhode Island and New York are the only two states where hot wieners are actually still served. Yes, rhode Island has a big. I mean they are fond of their hot wieners. I remember when I was in my college days, way back, when there was a place in Providence where they actually would put them on their arms. Do you remember?

Speaker 1:

that when they would like load them up and they're like of course.

Speaker 2:

I can't do that anymore now because of sanitary reasons. So funny, I love that. So she's dressing up as a hot wiener. What's the other one dressing up as?

Speaker 1:

She's way more traditional. She's got this really cozy shark costume. Shark week yeah. That's great Matt. Do you like being dressed up?

Speaker 2:

You know I love it and I used to throw big Halloween parties every year when I lived in Providence. I would throw one that was themed every year too, so I would have different themes. I mean, we did things like heaven and hell. I did. I think I was telling you and Mike about this one called toxic circus. I did the seven deadly sins and I would always do food associated with the theme, and I did this largely by myself. So I would spend lots of money and create dishes, for you know, like when I did seven deadly sins, I did a dish for every single sin that was at the party.

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, covid put a damper on me throwing parties and I think post COVID, people have still been leery about socializing. I think they lost a lot of their skills during COVID and, you know, I think just in general, people are not as reliable as they used to and, as you know, throwing any sort of party or event is a lot of money and when you do that and you know people cancel at the last minute or people don't show up, it's incredibly frustrating. So now I've decided what I'm going to do is just travel every October for two weeks and go somewhere in Europe, which is what I've been doing I love that.

Speaker 2:

But to answer your original question, I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. I wish it was Halloween all year round.

Speaker 1:

Well, you are not alone. I have a funny statistic this year, or 2018, americans spent or people in general spent $9 billion on Halloween and an estimate of $3.4 billion on costumes alone.

Speaker 2:

It's really close to the amount that people spent on Christmas, right? I think there was that one point where maybe I might be misremembering this, but I thought Halloween one year was actually more profitable.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Because of how much people you know get into it. You had brought up an interesting well. In your research you had discovered something about the sexualization of Halloween costumes among women, which you know how many times I've referenced Mean Girls, but that's also talked about in there too, where the one time a year it's okay for women to dress provocatively. I think you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you know, traditionally costumes are kind of like an opportunity for people to try on identities, to try to be like understand what it feels like to be somebody else. So I definitely think that people enjoy being a little bit prettier, going a little bit over the top. But marketing in America has really targeted women and we don't find a difference between the teens and the adult women when we're talking about marketing and sexualized costuming. So as a parent, I find that really kind of disturbing.

Speaker 2:

That's a whole. I mean we could certainly spend an entire episode talking about the over-sexualization but then the lack of sex education and lack of awareness and how we still live in a very puritanical country about don't talk about sex but like be as sexual as possible. But you know it's okay to go watch them and get their head blown off because that's you know right. I mean like seriously, like that's how violence is great, encouraged and God forbid we talk about like nudity or sex, but we'll show it as much as we can.

Speaker 1:

So that's, you know, pretty disturbing In the research. One of the other things I thought was pretty interesting was American urban legends and the razor blade in the apple.

Speaker 2:

That actually that happened, didn't it? Or that's not a myth? Right, that actually did happen, correct? No, it did not happen. Really, that's an urban legend, yeah.

Speaker 1:

It did not happen Really. That's an urban legend, yeah. So basically in America, the Irish Catholics in New York in the 1900s started trick-or became like a very celebrated holiday in America and people started dressing up all the time. In the 1950s it was especially popular and that's when kids are going out trick or treating like completely alone without any other adults. But you also have. But you also have so then in the 70s what you have is people social workers, health workers talking about child abuse, which you know was a really important thing. We started having laws made against child labor laws and things like that. With trick-or-treating, people started getting like more concerned that strangers could possibly hurt their children. We don't know where the razor blade came from, but there are no historic reports of a child being injured by a razor blade.

Speaker 2:

That's fascinating. I really thought that there was some truth behind that.

Speaker 1:

So the study I was looking at looked between 1958 and 1982. During that period there were 76 reports nationwide of some sort of incident where a child possibly could have got hurt by a contaminated treat. So in that time period you have 1970 and 1971 with increases of reports. The highest report is 10. So it really wasn't like a big thing that was happening nationally.

Speaker 2:

You know what would be interesting if we compared that to how many kids have been on some sort of medication that was recalled by big pharma for causing problems or some sort of health scares in kids, or even like the Tylenol crisis that happened before, my guess is those would be a lot higher than the amount of kids that are hurt by trick-or-treating Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

But you know it goes back to the whole stranger danger thing too right, like you know, we are so focused on stranger danger when the statistics show that it is most likely family members or relatives or friends who have used kids and kidnap kids and assault kids versus like absolute strangers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought all of that up, matt, because that's exactly what happened. So the other major spike we saw is in 1982. It's one month after the Tylenol murders, which I don't know if everybody knows that story, but it happened in the Chicago region. A total of seven people died after taking Tylenol tablets. Later on they found that the Tylenol tablets had actually been laced with potassium cyanide and to this day the culprit was never found. They made a mass recall of Tylenol and everybody just had to like dump it and get rid of it and this event created a bill, which was really good because that has increased safety for all sorts of different products that we consume. But the other thing that there were two really famous cases that happened about the Halloween treat tampering and ironically enough, they were both family members that were involved. It wasn't stranger nature or anything like that.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's actually not like I mean. When you look at the numbers, it isn't ironic, because that's the I mean again.

Speaker 1:

That's how it is.

Speaker 2:

I mean we like to believe it's not. I think part of that comes from the fear that we're vulnerable, that we're vulnerable right like we are vulnerable to people, mostly that we care about and that are closest to us right and instead of looking at that and accepting it, we want to look outside and say no, no, it's all the people out there. It's like not the people who are close to me yeah, and that's definitely what happened, um.

Speaker 1:

One of the instances was an eight-year-old, um. He ingested heroin with his Halloween candy, but then it was later found out that the Halloween candy had nothing to do with it. It was actually heroin that was in his uncle's house. So, unfortunately, that eight-year-old died and then the second death involved another. Oh, I'm sorry. The first death was a five-year-old. The second death was an eight-year-old. He ingested Halloween candy and it was later found that his father had contaminated it with poison.

Speaker 2:

Wow his own father.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's horrifying.

Speaker 1:

I know that's really gross On many levels.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, between you know, 1958 and 1982, that's what this major study was looking at we don't have anything that tells us about, like historic information about kids getting hurt. There's a couple that maybe they got hurt a little bit, but nothing serious and definitely no deaths. And so if we look at this example as like urban legends, they tend, like urban legends, tend to be oral, so it's just stuff that we're talking about. It tends to be human problems rather than like the supernatural and they're told as if they're true, which I have definitely encountered, especially with this Like. I remember my mom telling me all the time how, when she grew up, there were, you know, kids getting hurt with apples and blades and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Um, was that the biggest was that the biggest urban legend you remember from childhood?

Speaker 1:

there was bloody mary oh my gosh. Yes, bloody, mary yeah, that one was really scary to me for those of you that I'm sure everybody knows this.

Speaker 2:

But for those of you that I'm sure everybody knows this, but for those of you that don't know it, the legend is and I think it's from Mary Queen of Scots right that if you go into the mirror at night and you light a candle and you say her name three times, that she appears and kills you or like does something. And did you ever do it?

Speaker 1:

I was at a sleepover and some kids were doing it and admittedly I just kind of walked out slowly and they didn't realize I was not there anymore.

Speaker 2:

I have a funny, terrible story about that. So my freshman year of college I was living on campus and one of my roommates so I ended up dating. Later on he was terrified of horror movies and just everything scary and we had gone out to see the movie Candyman. So this was back the original Candyman. This was was back the original Candyman. This was a 92. Candyman was very similar in the sense that you would go into the mirror and you would say Candyman's name three times and he would come and kill you. And back in the college dorm we had a suite with bathroom that had like multiple stalls and showers and all that stuff. So he was in the bathroom, one of the stalls, and I went and I turned off the mirror and I said Candyman three times and he was up there screaming.

Speaker 1:

Oh no.

Speaker 2:

I was like, okay, that was a little terrible thing that I did.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever done any other kind of pranks during Halloween?

Speaker 2:

I don't think so. I mean no, nothing I can think of. I mean that one just stood out to me because I think we had actually just seen the movie. So that's what you know, that's what brought it up for me. No, I think I'm more about decorating and having the festivities.

Speaker 1:

I was doing the research because a lot of the horror and the American Gothic that's part of the American culture right, it comes from Puritans, the witch trials of Salem and Americans actually put a bigger spin and focus on the horror part.

Speaker 2:

But the pagan rituals weren't spilling blood as sacrifice or anything like that, like the only blood they had was in relation to killing animals for food right yeah, I mean that they, many of the holidays that we celebrate, come from pagan traditions that they have tried to just cover up and steal as their own. Many, many, many of them, if not all of them, and I think that most people, I think, know this. At that point you know it's funny you talk about horror because I grew up on horror movies. I mean I would watch them. This is all the time I would go out and watch horror movies. You know, I think there's certainly a lot of draw to it.

Speaker 2:

I remember there was a study one time years ago and I looked for it and I can't find it again that said something about during periods of civil unrest or when our society isn't doing well, that horror movies spike more, which I'm sure there's a sense of trying to understand the darker side, even when we did that ghost tour the other day. So, um, cora and my other, my other student, I took them to a ghost tour for and dinner for covering my vacation when I was away and the guide had said something about for the women here, we know that you all like serial killers. Do you remember when she said that? Or were you like, oh, I missed that at the very beginning she was.

Speaker 2:

She was talking about how all the women like crime show podcasts. I don't know if it's just women, but I mean it certainly is. A lot of people do like it, and I think I mentioned this before the moms group that I ran for a long time. They all listened to crime shows and murder shows because there's almost this need to understand. But we also, as a society, we glorify that shows because there's this almost this need to understand but we also, as a society, we glorify that.

Speaker 2:

I think there's a difference between horror and watching something like freddy krueger or, you know, jason vorhees, because you know it is so outside of the realm of reality that there's no chance that that's ever going to happen to you, versus glorifying serial killers. I do think that that's a fundamental downfall of our society, one of the many downfalls of our society, and that we just keep doing it. We give them lots of attention and then we wonder why we have more than any other country in the world. Because we give them a lot of props and we have celebrities, play them on TV and we make movies out of them and we make books and we make memorabilia and that's very problematic, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've actually. So my kids have not been exposed to horror, but they've. My older daughter really loves Halloween Always has. She's been a witch several times, like just loves it. My younger daughter is a little bit more cuddly and likes the dressing up part, but that's and the candy, of course. Of course I've been trying now that they're getting older, I've been actually trying to be like oh we can, you know, watch scary movies now together. They have no interest and part of that is developmental, like they just don't necessarily want to watch movies with me anymore.

Speaker 1:

But my younger daughter and I found this series on Netflix called Mr Midnight, and I think you had mentioned, didn't you mention that the other day, mr Midnight, and I think you had mentioned, didn't you mention that the other day. Yeah, so what? What I really love about it is kind of what you were talking about in terms of, um, horror as just like an outside supernatural thing that's happening that doesn't have to have violence and it doesn't have to have a glorification of anybody, um, and so there are all these like spirits and it's about the supernatural and ghosts and things like that. Nobody gets hurt ever and I love it nobody gets hurt it's so hokey, it's so hokey that.

Speaker 1:

But that's what's great about it too. It's a little bit like watching like scooby-doo, where you're like they cannot ever catch the bad guys, you know like they're always chasing and things like that. But there's something really wonderful there about you know, not having gore, so we've been really enjoying that in my household.

Speaker 2:

There's an excitement to being scared. Think about all the money that's put in in haunted houses, right, Like I used to go to universal halloween horror nights every year for for like at least six or seven years and the adrenaline of going through those houses knowing that you're not really going to get hurt. But it doesn't make it any less terrifying when you have like really scary things jumping out at you or like loud sounds, and there's this, there's this rush like you just you know I get, and I think a a lot of people get, when you're in it and then you get out of it. It's like, wow, that's that felt great because you know the whole time I'm in line. I'm like, oh God, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? There's this buildup.

Speaker 2:

It's like getting on a roller coaster Although you know now I love roller coasters, but before you know, maybe, when I was afraid of them, the buildup of being in line of oh my God, why am I doing this, why am I doing this it's like terrible. And then you get on it and you go through the whole thing and it's over and you're like, oh my God, that was like the best thing ever. Let me go do it again. It does Like there's a lot of fun in that stuff and there's a lot of fun in being scared when you know it's safe. Scared right, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But I do remember there was one, um, there was one year I don't remember when it was that I went into a haunted house and it was after one of the multiple bazillion school shootings that we had and there was a guy dressed up as a soldier and he pointed a gun at me in the haunted house and I remember like vividly saying out, like get that thing out of my face. And he did like immediately, immediately, he like put it, he put it down. I think that there are certain times, obviously, when even haunted houses, as funny as they can, can be triggering to people where but you know.

Speaker 2:

You also know what you're. You know what you're signing up for, like if I know I'm going to a haunted house, I know that there's a likelihood that I'm going to see something that might not, that I might not like.

Speaker 1:

But I think the end result of it still for me is enjoyable. Yeah, I've never been a big fan of haunted houses. I love them at like theme parks where they're again. That reality shift is there Right. I've been through a couple where people touched me and that made me feel so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that I don't think is ever okay. And then you have those weird places in California and like I think there's other States that have this where you can pay like a ridiculous amount of money to get kidnapped and put through these like intense, like haunted houses that you get money for If you can successfully go through the whole thing. But that to me is a whole nother realm, that's like. That's like outside of anything I would ever want to do?

Speaker 2:

no, me neither but you know, the other thing that we wanted to tie into this is phobias, because phobias and fears are common things that people have and it goes in the spirit of halloween right being afraid of things and what you were talking about with that like adrenaline rush.

Speaker 1:

That's really a symptom of fear and that's it's a physical response. It's normal, completely normal, and it's triggered by something that is in fact a real threat, whereas a phobia is a set of fear or something like an object or an experience, or it can even be just being out in public, and a phobia is actually can be an imagined thing or it can be real, but it triggers a lot of that same physiological response the heartbeat, panic attack, you can people like start sweating, you feel really scared, shortness of breath, and so it's this whole. They're actually feeling those sensations, but most likely the threat isn't real.

Speaker 2:

That happens to me Every time I get blood taken. I have a massive blood phobia, which is also genetic. It does run into families. I've gotten way better about it than I used to be. But I know if you would talk to my mom when I was younger, they would have to have multiple people hold me down so that they could take blood from me. And I know there was one time where I really tried to get it done without taking a Xanax or anything. I was like you know what I'm going to go in practice? My breathing, I'm going to get through this. It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 2:

And I went in there and I told the phlebotomist. I said you know, usually I don't do this really well and I have a vasovagal response where I'll either pass out or go into this intense like panic mode. And I said but you know, today I'm going to do it. I just need you to keep talking to me and I'm going to breathe. Everything's going to be great. And he did and it went really well. And I was like, wow, I am doing this, I was getting through the whole thing. And then there was a lull in the conversation where he stopped talking and I stopped talking and I could hear suction and I instantly went from zero to a thousand. It was like get that out of my arm, I of my arm. So now I do the whole Xanax laying down butterfly needle. They have to be talking to me. It's a big, big, big deal for me.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I'm sorry, that sounds so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2:

It's really common, though A lot of people have it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so there's actually. It's called the blood injury phobia. It's a separate phobia than normal phobia. People who have it tend to be are more likely to be women actually, more women have it than men but it is a very common phobia and it ranges from extreme disgust to physical fainting to physical fainting, and a lot of times people just won't get their blood taken or avoid hospitals because of this phobia. So, interestingly enough, though, some people have either the fear of their own blood or the fear of other people bleeding, but most people don't have both things. Where do you fall in that category?

Speaker 2:

That's interesting. So I really have to think about that. I mean, I know it's definitely largely my blood, and the phobia, as irrational as it is, is that because I have a lot of tattoos, and phlebotomist Sybil will often say to me oh, you get tattoos without a problem. How come? Like you know, you can't have blood work without passing out. Well, because the difference is and this is what I tell them all the time is when I'm getting a tattoo done or when I get shots, they're putting something in my body. When they're taking blood out, they're sucking the life out of me. That's what. That's what's in my head.

Speaker 2:

Right, like they're like we're taking a vial, like I get it logically, but in my head it just feels like that's it, like they're, they're what's the word? Exsanguinating?

Speaker 2:

yeah, they're like exsanguinating me and I'm gonna like bleed out. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there was a I think it was halloween part two of the series, the original one, not the rob zombie one. There's a scene where a nurse gets killed by putting in I think Michael Myers puts a needle in her and bleeds her out. I still, to this day, cannot watch that scene because it just causes me too much anxiety.

Speaker 2:

But I think, in terms of other people, I know there've been scenarios where I've seen other people have some sort of injury and been a hundred percent fine. But then there's also been scenarios where I haven't been fine. So I know, even if it's like a small cut, like people would laugh at me, but I would get like a small cut and I used to not even be able to put a band-aid on myself. I'd be like I'd have like, uh, you know, paper, paper, towel, like holding it down, and they'd be like somebody put a band-aid on because like I couldn't even look at it I'm definitely better than I am now with that stuff like now that that's fine for me um much.

Speaker 1:

Well, I shouldn't say fine, it's way better than it was but yeah, it's like put a lot of work into making it okay though in term.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, definitely there was actually. Now that I think about it, there's one time where this may have more been shock than anything. I was at a former friend's house who I am not very friendly with anymore because she was dating this. I'll make a very long story short. She was dating this woman who was a terrible, terrible, terrible dog owner and just a terrible human being at their house and the dog was sitting on my lap and you know I'm an animal person, I've had animals my entire life and it was a very small I think it's a lapsu-wapsu and I moved too quickly and the dog jumped at my face and like literally just bit me and I like it happened so quick.

Speaker 2:

I don't even remember feeling the bite, it was just very like numb, almost because the adrenaline. And I looked over at one of my other friends and he turned really pale and he was like you need to go to the hospital and I was like what? And of course I go in the bathroom his blood gushing out of my face and I actually was strangely calm. Again, I don't know if it was the adrenaline, I don't know if it was all that stuff that was happening, but going to the emergency room. I just had pulled in like a cloth on my face and I was for the most part fine, which is weird because normally that would send me like right over the edge, but it didn't, so that I guess that's some progress right. But I think it was probably the shock and the trauma that just made it okay in that moment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, actually my father has been through something similar. He's always been really afraid of other people's blood and he got a really bad cut on like a saw, and before he passed out which he did eventually as he was very calm and was able to like walk a certain distance and get help, and then eventually he passed out because it was a lot of pain. But I don't. I think that's that might be sort of common.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you have? Any?

Speaker 1:

phobias Not that I know of. Honestly, my sister, when I was little, had a terrible spider phobia which is pretty common.

Speaker 2:

So that goes back, by the way, to the urban legend about the spider bite. You know that right.

Speaker 1:

Oh, gross yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know that one.

Speaker 1:

Which I totally believed until I was probably 20. Yeah, how do you have any other phobias than love?

Speaker 2:

Not that are that intense. I mean, I definitely have a little bit of fear of heights, but not to the point that it would be debilitating. I think it's a little bit more of. Again, it's physiological, where I get some vertigo if I'm near something like, or too close to, something that has an edge, um, but definitely not that I can think of.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think we also have emotional phobias that are not maybe rooted in the same type of. The emotional phobias are not as physical, they don't carry the same level of adrenaline. I think that goes with it, as you know, like a like a fear of dying. But, and you know you could argue that pretty much all does that one of is it john cabot zen, one of the buddhists actually the john cabot zen, or I could totally I think he talks about in one of the books about how all fears are really the fear of annihilation, that you're going to die somehow, and I guess that makes sense if you really think about it, like all phobias do boil down to some type of like I'm going to die.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, when I was looking at the phobia research, they kind of categorize different things. So there's social phobias, which get kind of classified as like fears of being in big crowds, and then of course there's agoraphobia, which is the fear of being outside, in public, and that usually happens when people start having panic attacks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and what are some of the other common ones? There's claustrophobia is pretty common.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, claustrophobia, fear of flying, they kind of clump some of the animal ones. So dogs is really common, spiders, snakes, are very common. There are some beliefs that snakes and spiders and heights are some of the bigger phobias that a lot of people have from a long time ago. So it's kind of like a genetic inheritance possibility with those three.

Speaker 2:

Well, that would make sense. I mean, if you think about it, especially with like spiders and snakes I mean back before we were able to identify what's poisonous and what's not poisonous, there are certainly spiders and snakes out there that have enough venom to kill somebody very quickly if they get bitten. So I'm sure there is like a primal survival fight or flight kind of coping skill that goes with that. And same thing with the fear of heights, I would imagine too.

Speaker 1:

And I'd go a step further and guess food contamination. You know, when you accidentally eat something that's not, you're not supposed to, and we have like a biological response to that. So when we eat something or ingest something that makes us throw up, it triggers a response in our mind to remember that thing that made us throw up and we don't want to ever eat that thing again.

Speaker 2:

God, I have two terrible stories about eating. So one of them this is for a long time I didn't eat pudding because there was a scenario where my grandmother you know my grandmother grew up during the Depression, like you know most my grandfather did too. They would save cooking fat. Yep yep, right, and they would put in the refrigerator. My grandmother also used to make tapioca pudding all the time, and there was one day that I went in my grandmother's refrigerator.

Speaker 2:

I know you know the way this is going and I see this bowl of what looks like pudding and because usually she would leave the grease on the stove. So I thought, oh look, grandma made pudding and I took a big and I mean big spoonful of grease and I put it in my mouth and I would like it was the most disgusting thing I think I've ever eaten in my entire life, and that had I had an aversion to anything that even looked like pudding for years.

Speaker 1:

That's why, yeah, and if you've ever had a really bad encounter with a specific type of alcohol, you'll remember and tell people not to put that kind of alcohol in your drink.

Speaker 2:

Is that a personal story, or is that?

Speaker 1:

No, no. I remember from a psych class I was taking she was talking about tequila in particular that that's a common one, that people over it, uh, overdo.

Speaker 2:

Or, as I call it, to kill you, cause that's what I never liked the taste of that. I think that's like one of the most vile alcohols out there in terms of like taste.

Speaker 1:

And you know, a worm just never sounded very good to me.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. I mean, I think that's like very high end tequila, like I don't think I've ever seen a bottle of tequila that I've purchased or seen that had a worm in it.

Speaker 1:

I wonder if that's an urban legend.

Speaker 2:

I think it really does exist. I just think it's probably like a very high end, very high end, I would imagine. I don't know, we'll have to look that up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So you and I went on a ghost tour, which was super fun. I highly recommend mystic connecticut. We had an awesome time, um, and when we were, uh, going through the ghost tour, a few things like kind of stuck out to me that I thought we might talk about is.

Speaker 2:

Does that include the evp machine I was using or no?

Speaker 1:

yes, does it okay? Okay, go, go ahead. You want to start off with?

Speaker 2:

that. Well, no, I don't know where you're going, so you talk first and I'll add it in if it's relevant.

Speaker 1:

Well, so, mr, connecticut, if you've never been, is the port town in Connecticut. It's beautiful and when you walk around you just have this like good feeling, you know. But the history of it is really kind of disturbing and as we started our ghost tour, I was really kind of grateful that that's where the tour guide kind of started, with a telling of how there was a Pequot tribe that was massacred right in the town, that the spirit of those people, those ancestors, are said to still be in the town, that the spirit of those people, those ancestors, are said to still be in the town and causing fires I.

Speaker 2:

I do want to say this really quickly before you, before you finish that. What I found really interesting and I know I mentioned it to you and mike is as she's telling the story about the pequa nans and the puritans and how they trapped all the women and children in the in the building and then lit it on fire and burnt it down. You know, I remember looking at the two of you and saying, wow, nothing changes. Really nothing changes. That's exactly what's happening right now in Palestine and the genocide that's happening. It doesn't matter, like history just continues to recycle and people don't seem to care. That's my two cents on that.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, there is something really creepy to me after learning that, because I didn't know that going into the ghost tour Nor did I.

Speaker 2:

That was all new information for me.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's something I definitely should have known because I've I live in Rhode Island. We're really close. I've been to Mystic a number of times, you know. To be able to sort of pay respects to the people who lost their lives feels really important to me and that just in a kind of I think she did it respectfully, but certainly we could all do a little bit better to respect Native Americans in this country. Yeah, so I did actually like that part of the tour, though I enjoyed learning a little bit more history, that was true. Well, do you want to talk about your leader?

Speaker 2:

so I I have these two apps that I use. One's called ghost radar and the other one is called spirit hunter, I think. Let me know spirit talker and I was, let me see if I could even pull it up. There was a story about two kids that were oh man, I don't do you remember the story? I don't remember very much. It was two kids that haunted.

Speaker 1:

It was like it was called the Emporium, so it was kind of like one of those penny shops where there would have been lots of candy. There was a factory nearby. The story took place in the early or the late 1900s and these two kids, they think, were probably the fire keepers, so they probably lit lamps and things like that throughout the house. They actually didn't go into detail about how the children died, they just sort of disappeared in the story. But there have been multiple sightings of children in this building.

Speaker 2:

And there were two boys and one girl, correct?

Speaker 1:

I think it was just two boys.

Speaker 2:

Two boys, because there was a girl somewhere. I don't know if it was in the house. That was the brothel, but there was like the tickling ghost that she mentioned.

Speaker 1:

Well, the giggling ghost was a different building. There was a brothel in that same emporium upstairs and there was a story about a woman who actually left footprints in paint that was drying on the floor okay um, there was a man there who saw it happen.

Speaker 1:

He had actually been painting the floor and he heard like the click clacking of heels, and when he went downstairs he couldn't. He could still hear the sound, but he couldn't find the person. And later, when he went upstairs, there were women's footprints in the paint, and so it was pretty interesting, because they actually charged people in the town to come and see the footprints in the paint for a really long time.

Speaker 2:

Which makes you wonder if that was actually staged or if it really happens, you know, because obviously that's very profitable. But the thing I just saw I looked up the app because it keeps a history of what it said, and we were sitting in the restaurant that these two kids are allegedly supposed to haunt and it said I'm over here. Then it said I'm only seven. And then it said I'm hiding here. And then it said I'm hiding here and then it said we're not at peace, and that freaked all of us out. And then at one point Mike said something about age. And then it said age.

Speaker 2:

He was telling the story and he was like, oh, when I was 19. And then it said age, like right, as he said that was the other thing. That was kind of freaky and I know people are like, well, maybe it hears you, maybe it, maybe it doesn't hear you, but I was also telling a story about how, um, when my cat recently had, uh, passed away, they had sent me an email saying that the remains had been. The remains were in because she was cremated and the app turned on the phone later on that day. It was on my, it was on my counter, it was nowhere near me and it turned on and it said they cremated my body.

Speaker 2:

That was when I was like, okay, I was freaking out a little bit that's terrifying to me but you know, that's the stuff that, as much as I find it terrifying, it still like excites me. I'm like, oh, that's so cool you know.

Speaker 1:

No, you're pretty funny, you were really looking for it I really was.

Speaker 2:

I think I freaked out the waitress a little bit when I was working on the things it was saying. You know, I'm definitely one of those people that's like I want to see it. I want to see it right now.

Speaker 1:

What's your favorite ghost story?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a really good question. I don't know. I mean we talked about Mercy Brown. I mean that's not really one of my favorites, but that's a local one. I don't know if I can think of a favorite one off the top of my head. Do you want to tell the story about Mercy Brown?

Speaker 1:

for, like all the Rhode, Island listeners, I'm sure most of them know anyway, but so I'm from Exeter, rhode Island I'm sorry 1880s, I'm from the 1980s. So there was a couple, thomas and Mary Brown, and they had five daughters and one son, and Mary Brown was a farm wife. She was really hardworking, well-respected, and then she was. Her body was pretty much ravaged by consumption. She became really fragile. Everybody was kind of scared with what happened to her body, particularly.

Speaker 2:

And consumption is the previous name for tuberculosis.

Speaker 1:

Right right, which at that time was really hitting Rhode Island pretty hard, as other places as well. So she passed away in this like small rural town and then a year later her oldest daughter, mary, also got sick and she actually reported having bad dreams in which a crushing weight was stealing her life as she was sleeping which would certainly happen if you had tuberculosis because it affects the lungs. But nobody at the time was like putting that together. Several years pass after she dies and their only son starts to have tuberculosis symptoms. So he gets sent out West. But then his little sister, mercy, dies and it's like really quick and Mercy's only about 18 when she dies.

Speaker 1:

At this point it's been almost 10 years since her mother had first died. Her brother, edwin, comes back and as soon as he comes back to Rhode Island his tuberculosis comes back full force and he starts to lose a lot of weight, lose a lot of energy and everybody gets really scared. And during that time you have the New England sort of panic about vampires. So there were already like talk throughout the different states about if there were vampires and spirits were causing tuberculosis and consumption. When Mercy dies, edwin comes back and he's not feeling well.

Speaker 1:

The town goes into a panic and they really put pressure on Mercy's father to exhume the bodies and see if one of them had been stealing the life of Edwin. So the father doesn't want to do it at first, but then finally he does. He kind of succumbs to the pressure. They exhume the bodies and they find that mercy her. They take out her heart. Um, her mom and her sister's bodies were just bones at that point, which would make sense because it's been over 10 years. Mercy had only been buried for a couple of months and she was in like a crypt above ground in freezing cold weather.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because it was during the winter, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it makes sense that her body was still preserved. And even at the time and it was reported in the newspaper that a doctor who was looking at the body said this is totally normal, and still the townspeople didn. Looking at the body said this is totally normal, and still the townspeople didn't believe him and said if there's blood in her heart, she's certainly sucking the blood out of Edwin. What you mean? Even back then people didn't believe experts. History repeats itself. There we go all over again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so basically they cremate Mercy's heart and liver and make a tonic with the ashes and serve it to her brother. Tonic doesn't work. Her brother dies and that's kind of where the story of Mercy Brown ends. But what's kind of crazy to me is that she had three other or four other sisters, three other sisters and they all died subsequently. Afterwards they think that the family had like what's called galloping tuberculosis. So you are asymptomatic for years and years and then finally you have symptoms and you you pretty much die very quickly. So it's just, it's a really sad story, but people still go to the grave. I used to live in that town, so on Halloween especially, you see people leaving flowers and visiting and yeah, it's still a pretty big deal.

Speaker 2:

And her gravestone was stolen at one point in time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, which is crazy. I don't know how that happens, even.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean people do. People are not always the greatest.

Speaker 1:

I think this story, though it's really sad, and if you look at it from a feminist perspective, the town only did something when the son was in trouble. They kind of like persecute this like young child and nobody ever like gets really upset that the other daughters keep dying.

Speaker 2:

And I think the only, there was only one, one child that lived past the age of 25, right the rest of them all died before that? Yeah, and did she die? Did she die shortly after she turned 25? Do you know, or was it? No? Yeah, did she die. Did she die shortly?

Speaker 1:

after she turned 25? Do you know, or was it no? So the one daughter who did survive actually lived to be in her 70s.

Speaker 2:

Wow, which is actually for that time frame. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, you know. The other thing they talked about during the ghost tour is the pictures they used to take of because people would die really young, so the family, the pictures they would take of kids that had been deceased is I think it's called memento Morio or something like Moria, something like that.

Speaker 1:

I think right. Well, memento Moria is Latin, it's remember you will die. Throughout history, you have these little like pockets of periods where artists, especially like Gleamon, to Memento Mori, and so they make pictures of people being confronted with their death. I think the pictures you're referring to although I don't know the name of it occurred in the 1800s, when young children were dying and families didn't have enough money to actually take pictures of the whole family together. Unfortunately, you know, if you lose a child, that's your last chance, so they would actually, you know, stage the dead people next to other participants in the family. They're really kind of disturbing and heartbreaking no, they really are.

Speaker 2:

The only thing I can find is a post yeah, okay, so it says it's known as post-mortem photography or a momentum mori photographic.

Speaker 1:

So okay, I was.

Speaker 2:

I'm sorry I thought that that was the name of it. I just wasn't 100% certain. They're really morbid looking and sometimes when you look at the picture, you're not always certain which person is actually deceased Sometimes it's not always super clear.

Speaker 1:

But they are absolutely creepy. A lot of them actually took the photograph of the child and it looks like they're sleeping in their bed, which that is even more discerning to me.

Speaker 2:

But there are a couple where they have kids lined up in a line and one of them is deceased. Sometimes it's really obvious, sometimes it's not, it's just. I mean, I get it. It's a different time frame. We did different things back then.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, that was a fun episode. It was very, very much for Halloween. Well, that was a fun episode. It was very, very much for Halloween. I did want to.

Speaker 2:

I want to throw in a couple of things, because the election is next week and he sent me a message saying that the apartheid state of Israel bombed Iran and his mom and sister are there. So of course he was very upset about that and it's just really frustrating what's going on right now. And I saw a video of Bernie the other day and I know lots of people are Bernie fans, but if you ask me, there is no such thing, no such thing right now as any political leader that is on the right side of history in our country. They're all horrible, they're all compromised, they're all owned. You know where he's talking about. You know he's doing all these things to try to stop the war, but he can't say the word genocide because his master won't let him say that. It's really frustrating.

Speaker 2:

He particularly pisses me off because, if anybody knows about the state of Vermont, so at one point in time Rutland was known as the heroin capital of the United States and they have the second highest rate of homelessness in the country. The guy can't even take care of his own state. That's among other things. I mean, at one point, point relin had more bars per capita than any other country uh, I mean, I'm sorry than any other state in the country. And the retirement you can't. You know, a lot of people can't even afford to live there. So he's one of the people that always pisses me off because he is just like a I don't even know how to describe him. He likes to pretend he's doing all these great things when he really he's just a mouthpiece like the rest of them.

Speaker 2:

But what I wanted to say is I think I have gotten to the point where you know I think we talked about this a little bit on the car ride back that I know whoever wins is going to be terrible. So I mean I'm not going to at this point, lose sleep over it because I know it's just going to end disastrously. But what I want everybody to do is just remember that if we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, if that's what we continue to do, we're going to continue to get evil and that the only way to break that cycle is to stop doing that. Either option is terrible. We are pure voting for Harris.

Speaker 2:

You are signing the death warrant of pretty much anybody in Palestine. I mean, they have killed more kids under the Biden-Harris administration than I think in history and we continue to fund that. They continue to fund that with our tax dollars. You can turn a blind eye to that, pretend it's not happening, if you vote for her because you see her as the lesser of two evils. But you are signing the death warrant of kids and women in Palestine and other countries where we are just attacking them willy-nilly to prevent this.

Speaker 2:

You know, to keep this idea of self-defense. You know Israel has a right to defend itself by shooting babies in the head and harvesting organs. And you know what are they doing now Marching people with numbers on them and putting them in mass graves. Where have we seen that before? And again, that is under the Harris-Biden administration. So for those of you who think that she's this great person, she's not. And the other alternative is a psychopathic, narcissistic person who is going to continue to keep the country divided and everybody hating each other while spreading mass lies. I mean, neither one of them are good options. I think we have to stop pretending that they are. Again, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but if you do vote for either one of them, you do then not get to come back and say how bad you feel for the people dying because you signed it. That's my stance on that. I don't know, I just feel like I had to say it. I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Speaker 1:

I just want to encourage everybody to vote. Your vote really does matter, so I'm going to be neutral here.

Speaker 2:

You're going to be neutral. I'm so not neutral right now, and you know, I think you know. Again I mentioned this in Connecticut and Rhode Island we have career politicians that need to be voted out across the board. They certainly do not help the states. They are sending all of our tax dollars to bomb tents while letting the people in our country stay homeless. So again, that's my stance. So again, thank you everybody for joining us. We are going to be coming up with a new logo in the next week or so. Cora and I have an idea about doing like a free giveaway for some merch to get people to send ideas of things they want us to talk about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so please send us your what you want to hear us discuss. Uh, we love hearing from listeners and we really appreciate everything you do.

Speaker 2:

Thank you everybody and until next time. Have a great day, Enjoy your Halloween.

Speaker 1:

Happy Halloween.

Speaker 2:

Hello everybody and thank you again for listening. This is just a reminder that no part of this podcast can be duplicated or copied without written consent from either myself or Wendy. Thank you again.

People on this episode

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Matthew Boucher LICSW LCDP

Host
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Donna Gaudette

Co-host
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Dr. Erika Lin-Hendel

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Julia Kirkpatrick

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Wendy Picard

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