Tasha 0:00

It might have snuck in under the radar when it released in the US on Netflix in 2018, but Veronica premiered at number two in box offices across Spain the year before. Why? Because this story has always been a thing of media fodder and sensationalism there. The story of your everyday average teenage girl who went messing around with things not meant for her and got herself in trouble she couldn't get out of. I'm Tasha and this is Matt. This is Estefania Gutierrez Lazaro passed away in 1991. Everyone has been getting her story Real Twisty. Welcome to Real Twisty Setting Story Straight. This is part two of our deep dive into the 2017 film Veronica. So if you haven't listened to part one, what are you doing here? We we really encourage you to go back and do that before you jump in here so that you have the full context. And if you haven't watched Veronica, Lordy, what are you doing? Stop everything right now and do that first, then go listen to part one and then come back here to us. Because spoilers. Now, before we jump in, I want to thank everyone who listened to our first episode. We did a very quiet launch. We pulled a Netflix.

SPEAKER_04 1:36

This is still very quiet.

Tasha 1:38

It is still very quiet.

SPEAKER_04 1:40

We haven't really sent anything out.

Tasha 1:42

No, I told my cousin Michael, you told Lucy. I still have not personally told Lucy.

SPEAKER_04 1:49

I told Tanya. I don't know if she listens to the five a step.

Tasha 1:53

And our our kids know, but one of our kids is our editor. So he's forced to listen. Yeah, he's forced to listen. Um, and that's that's about all. Um so we didn't really tell anyone that we were posting it. We just built everything out and didn't actually invite anyone to any of our socials or our sites. We just built them.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Wow, and we learned our hosting platform, we learned how to post on all the different things. Yes, learned how to do video on some of the platforms.

Tasha 2:31

I kind of feel like um field of dreams, like if you build it, they will come, is what has happened to us. That's fine, you know. Um they can trickle in. They can trickle. So I like twisty trickle, like Antonito's like, it just leaked out. Um, so I hope those people that came back for part two, if you did, thank you. Yay! And if you didn't, I'm sorry for whatever you didn't like about part one. Um, but if you did, please drop a comment and let us know and tell us why and also what we can do to make the pod better, because you know, these are things that inquiring minds want to know. Um, I also want to say that if you listened to or watched our first episode anywhere other than YouTube, you got a little bit of a rough spell of sound there at the end of the episode. And Matt also sounds like he's in a tin can the whole way through on all of the platforms. Uh, we wanted to let you know we are aware and uh we know there are some issues. We decided it we hopefully we it's a different mic. It is a different mic today, but for the first one, we decided posted was better than perfect, right? Right just get it out there because we keep dragging our feet. Um we did go back and fix everything, and we were gonna repost it because we figured nobody's seen it. We'll just, you know, no one's listened. Surely we'll just repost the sucker. But then people were already listening to it. And so it was like, are we gonna mess anything up if we repost it? So we backed away slowly. Um, so we just asked that people, you know, hopefully you guys will show us some grace and that you have come back for part two. And now our editor, our brilliant son David, knows what's up and how to fix it. We think we've worked out Matt's mic issue with the new mic. Um, so let us know if this sounds better because by golly, we are trying, and we're using editing software that is new to all of us, and we're using recording software that we've never used before. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

So very new.

Tasha 5:17

Everything is a learning process. Um now I would also like to take a moment before we get started to point out some of you guys may have noticed we tried to release episode one, part one of Estefania's story on July 13th. That was our plan. We were gonna release it on Monday of last week. And we did plan Veronica to be our first story to honor Estefania because um we knew the date of her passing. Veronica was always gonna be in the first five stories because it's one of our favorite based on a true story films. It's one of our favorite movies, just period. And because it's a Spanish film, we feel like nobody watches it, and we just want everybody to watch it. Um, but when we started like really looking and landed on an actual launch date, and we knew that we were looking at the week of the 13th, I was like, oh, we've gotta move Estefania up because that is the day that uh she was taken uh out of her home to the hospital. And the next morning she passed. I was like, you know, we need to like that's just too kiss met. We need to honor her, we need to do her story. Um, and then we had like a gazillion technical issues, including I cannot even tell. So we I started trying to upload this episode, and it was like as soon as I started, the internet went from super speedy to slow as a snail. I feel like a teeny tiny little snail was dragging this episode through the internet webiverse trying to get it posted everywhere because it it took forever. It took forever, and it finally posted at 6 a.m. exactly was the time that it finished posting on July 14th. So picture it. I am literally setting it in this chair. I have been sleeping off and on all night.

SPEAKER_04 7:53

I was asleep the whole time.

Tasha 7:55

Matt has gone to bed because, you know, he's smart. David is asleep. I am in this chair, I'm reclined back, I've got the computer in my lap, and I just keep setting my alarm for like intervals to wake up and check it. And I wake up at 5:45 and I'm like, okay, it's so close. It's so close to being done. And so I'm watching it 6 a.m. exactly, it finishes uploading. So our first episode Veronica Part 1, Estefania the Vietcas case, part one, launched on the 35th anniversary of the day of Estefania's passing.

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, so not her day that was taken away.

Tasha 8:46

Not the day that she was taken away in the ambulance, but the day that she actually passed in the hospital. And that was not planned, but I think the universe just deemed it so, and so I'm thinking let's just keep going with releases on Tuesday. I intended them to be Mondays, but Tuesdays it is so our editor will like that. I I think he will, I think he will, especially on this one. So I think that's all of our announcements, other than like, follow, subscribe, share, which I did not say at the end of part one because I was just so freaking excited that we had it recorded that I just hit stop.

SPEAKER_04 9:34

Yeah, there was no call to action at all.

Tasha 9:39

I was just like, that was real twisty. Um, so yeah, I'll try and remember it this time. But uh yeah, do you have any announcements before we get started?

SPEAKER_04 9:53

Um, I do not know. Okay, just here for the ride.

Tasha 9:58

Okay, okay. Well, then I think we do a quick recap, is what we need to do. And I mean quick because you guys have already put in the hard work on part one. Yeah. Right? So, as we mentioned, we're reviewing the 2017 Spanish film Veronica, um, directed by Paco Plaza, who co-wrote the film with Fernando Navarro and story editor Coral Cruz. And as I mentioned last week, while Veronica is a horror film, um, and next week's film is a horror film as well. That is not where this podcast is going to be living. Um, the podcast covers anything based on a true story. Horror just happens to be the genre that we're starting in. And also, can I please go off trip for a second and just talk about how much I hate the word horror? It is very hard for my mouth to say. I don't feel like I'm saying that word correctly.

SPEAKER_04 11:04

As long as you don't go off topic long.

Tasha 11:06

Okay. Okay. So I'm not going to tell you what film we're covering at the end of this. You're going to have to stick around to the end to find out. But rest assured there will be other genres coming soon. So, Veronica. Veronica is about a 15-year-old latchkey kid. Um, she named Veronica, who tries to reach out to her recently deceased father using a Ouija board in the basement of her creepy ass Catholic school during an eclipse. And the ceremony does not get closed. She ends up possessed or cracked, or at the very least, moving into womanhood and having her first period. Um, trying to keep her younger brother Antonito and her sisters Lucia and uh Irene safe, she decides to close the Ouija ceremony correctly to rid herself of the being that has attached itself to her and she needs to close the door. So she's like, I'm gonna do all that. But all hell breaks loose instead. So she calls the police for help. Um, they arrive to find Veronica in the midst of some sort of like frozen gymnastics backbend thing. Um, she dies. The cops are completely freaked out, and the movie ends with a police report and crime photos that remind us that this was based on a true story. But for all intents and purposes, we gather that her closing the ceremony and being a sacrifice worked, and Ant-Man and the twins are now safe. We in part one discussed how the movie echoes themes of Spain's recent freedom from the Francoist dictatorship, the dismantling of the Women's Protection Board that imprisoned and abused girls between the ages of 11 and 24, and put impossible standards on women, um, and the rise of parapsychology in Spain at this time, as well as several biblical references that pointed to the release of the control that the Catholic Church had on the Spanish society leading up to this point in history. How'd I do?

SPEAKER_04 13:32

That was a great summary.

Tasha 13:34

Thanks. I managed to fit a two and a half long episode into one chunky paragraph.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Two and a half hour.

Tasha 13:42

Yes. Okay, so I do want to touch on one question that I had in the first episode that I've been chewing on all week. And it's the fallen crucifix at the beginning of the episode. And I want to ask your opinion on this. So I wonder if it's so you know how there's that church teaching that harboring sinful thought is as bad as committing it. Matthew 5 teaches that a man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart, and it also teaches that um being angry with um another person is as bad as committing murder. And then James 1 says that when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin. So my theory is that along with like this Catholic kind of theme that we've got going through the movie, that maybe the crucifix already falling was because Veronica had already set the plan in motion. She had already taken the steps, she'd already like, yes, she hadn't played with the devil yet, but like she had already made these decisions in her mind, and so it was as good as done.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Oh, I know that Rosa like led them through the basement of Ouija. But the Ouija was Veronica's.

Tasha 15:21

Ouija was Veronica's. She bought the Ouija, she brought it in her occult books, she had all the equipment.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

All the supernatural books, all that stuff.

Tasha 15:33

So but she hadn't opened the Ouija board. She opened it when they got down there. But she bought it.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

I also think that her mom could have accidentally knocked it off because I was towards her mom's room. So that's my shallow perspective.

unknown 15:54

Okay.

Tasha 15:55

Well, this is not the last time that we're going to talk about the movie Veronica in this episode, but let's move on to the story of Estefania Gutierrez Lazaro because that is why we're here. So I'm going to start with the story as it's been told for the last 35 years. Estefania was a 17-year-old girl in Baikis who played with a Ouija board to try to contact a friend's boyfriend who had died in a motorcycle accident. We see where Diana's story came from with the, you know.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

The boyfriend.

Tasha 16:30

The boyfriend. Um, they were discovered by a teacher mid-ceremony, and the teacher broke the ceremony up, tore the board up, and the session ended without a proper goodbye. After this, Stefania started having hallucinations. She was hearing voices and she was seeing figures in her home and falling into these trances. Now, during these trances, she allegedly saw people around her, relatives and monks, and some figures that she couldn't tell what they were.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

That's creepy.

Tasha 17:14

That is very creepy. I don't like that. I don't like monks.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

I don't know if you get into this. Is this the first time they ever played with it or had they done it before?

Tasha 17:23

Well, this is just the story that that everybody tells.

SPEAKER_04 17:27

Okay.

Tasha 17:28

This is a story that like is known in Spain. All right. So this is the legend of Estefania at this point. Um so there were reports that in one of these trances, she physically attacked one of her siblings, even like growling like a wild animal while she did it. Her health was deteriorating. Um and on the day of her death, um her sister said that uh Estefania told her mother she was going to die that day, which ties into telling Rosa in the basement, this is the day I'm going to die, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Crazy.

Tasha 18:18

That night, Estefania and her sister were sleeping in the same room, and from a dead sleep, supposedly Estefania went into a violent trance and did not come out of it. Her parents called for medics, and the doctors could not revive her. So it's kind of the story gets kind of like mixed up here. Some people say she died at home, some people die say she died at the hospital. Um, but either way, she could not be revived and she died. And there was an autopsy report that said she um died a sudden and suspicious death by pulmonary asphyxiation with no known cause. So immediately after her death, the family began to experience strange phenomena in their house. Doors began opening and closing, and appliances were turning on by themselves, and crucifixes were falling off the walls in the doors. And they heard bangs and sets of threes, which is very three, very biblical. Yes. There's the whole like if it's banging in a set in a set of three, it's mocking the Trinity. Yes. They heard screaming sounds and voices. They even claimed that a framed photo of Veronica spontaneously caught on fire. All of this kept going on until the family moved out of their bedrooms and into the living room where they began sleeping together out of fear. So the mother, Concepcion, she wrote to specialists for help and she reached out to parapsychological experts that she knew from television and radio. And many of them started coming to the home to conduct studies in person and aired their findings on various programs on TV and radio and in newspapers and wherever they could. And then on November 19th, 1992, things really came to a height in the house, to such a violent state that the father, Maximo, called the police. And when the police arrived, the family was huddled together, frightened, outside in the freezing cold, and they all went inside, where the officers witnessed and documented many strange events, including swinging door, crucifixes ripped off of the wall, sudden drops in temperature, um, strange noises, and a mysterious brown slime on a table, which gross, right? Slimer. This became the first and only police report in Spain in all of their history to document supernatural phenomena and was considered validated proof by many of the paranormal. So the story continues that despite visits from the local parish, from parapsychological investigators, exorcists, and um, despite receiving blessings and cleansings from leaders of all kinds of religions, the events would not stop. And the family finally sold the apartment, moved out so that they could find peace. But the people who moved into the apartment after them claimed that they never Experienced anything strange, which automatically I heard that, and I was like, okay, that's just like Amityville and the Conjuring House.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

This follows the family.

Tasha 22:10

The Velisca house, where it's just the family, like nothing happened after that one family. So that's the story that's been told for the greater part of the last 35 years. The media stepped in and the ghost story took off, and it was like really stamped real. Like they got the stamp of authentication by the police report, which was written by Inspector Jose Negri. So so far we've heard Veronica's story and we've heard Estefania's legend. But what really happened to the story?

SPEAKER_03 22:55

What is the true story?

Tasha 22:56

What is the true story? Well. Right, grab your coffee. Join us. Estefania was 17 and she did live in an apartment in Baikas, Madrid, uh, with her mom, Concepcion Lazaro, and her dad, Maximo Gutierrez, and her five siblings. Now, for a long time, the two youngest kids' names were kept out of the press. Um, but one of them just could not help themselves and had to publish a book about the case. So we now know four of the five siblings' names, uh, Ricardo, Maxie, and Kirabina, who are in the documentary. Correct. Um, and who were basically in the um media straight from from the word go, because I don't know how old Kiribina was, but Maxie was 10 um when Estefania died, and uh Ricardo was 16.

SPEAKER_04 24:07

So the youngest one.

Tasha 24:09

Yes. Um, and then one of the two kids that had been kept out of the press, but kind of just put herself there is Marianella. She wrote a book that is now out of print called My Truth via Ekas File. Um, you I cannot find this book anywhere. Maybe if you are in Spain, you'll have better luck than me. Um the reviews on Amazon are very positive, right? Chef's kiss. Like it's a good read. Um, but yes, she goes pretty quiet after this book goes out of print. Um, their address was eight Lewis Marin Street Apartment 4A. So the movie kept the building number eight, but the street name, apartment number were changed. Their working class neighborhood was depicted in the movie. Um, but they killed off her father. They gave her three younger siblings instead of five, and they changed everybody's names and ages, including that of the lead police inspector. Um, but most notably of the names and ages that we see changed, they made 17-year-old Estefania, 15-year-old Veronica.

SPEAKER_04 25:34

Well, yeah, the father died, but someone else in real life passed away.

Tasha 25:41

Yes, but not until that actually happened after the film was made.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Oh really?

Tasha 25:48

Yep. And we will get to that.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yes. I did not know that.

Tasha 25:52

Yes. So, um changing her name and her age. I think that they changed her age because they wanted to add the eclipse in to kind of play with like the mystery of like this Ouija ceremony gone really, really wrong.

unknown 26:16

Yeah.

Tasha 26:17

I think they wanted to play with the moon mother Mency's correlation more, and it's easier to say that a 15-year-old girl has not had her period than it is a 17-year-old girl. You know, if a 17-year-old girl hasn't, most people are going to be at the doctor going, what's happening? Is there something uh medically going on? But a 15-year-old, it's, you know, that's more plausible, I think.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Right.

Tasha 26:47

Um for the name change, I think that they borrowed Veronica from one of Spain's urban legends. So I'd like to kind of take you through that if I can.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

We've got all the time in the world.

Tasha 27:02

We we all know how I feel about research. So there is a Veronica in Spanish lore, and Veronica is like our Bloody Mary. Really? Which, yes, um, I found reference to a number of different versions of this game, but what's really interesting is that this game started in Spain in the 1990s. So Veronica That was recent. Veronica and Estefania entered the Spanish zeitgeist, if you will, at at like the same time, which is really interesting to me. Um but to invoke her, luckily you don't need like Antonito's killer art skills, but calling upon her basically has the same effect as Antonito's drawings. So like be prepared. Um, or as Scar would say, be prepared. Like, it's not a good time, okay? So if you obviously the the most simplest one, if you say Veronica's name three times in a mirror, um, you will be calling forth the spirit who will strangle you to death upon her arrival. Welcome to Ninner. Sounds like a great time, right? So one story attached to this says that she was a girl who died while playing with a Ouija board, um, but her soul got trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead. And um another one said that she was this one's really kind of like so much darker than just you like dark. But this is like this one really bothers me in so many ways. So this one said that she was a girl who was obsessed with her hair. Obsessed.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Please don't tell me she eats her hair.

Tasha 29:06

No. Oh no, oh, no, oh, oh, no. That's I can't do hair in the mouth. I can't do when he dies at the end of Buffy. Um, I can't do hair in the mouth. I can't do like chewing on fabric. Oh so uh no, she she was just obsessed with like how beautiful her hair was. So she would spend all day sitting in front of this mirror in her bedroom brushing out her hair, her long, beautiful hair. And so this man decided to play a prank on her, and one day he hid in her closet as a prank, jumped out at her as a prank, covered her mouth with a handkerchief so that she could not scream as a prank, and cut off all of her hair as a prank.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Wow.

Tasha 30:09

Yeah, so devastated about her new do.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

I would not do that to any woman.

Tasha 30:14

Thank you. Devastated about her new do, she killed herself. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

So devastated.

Tasha 30:22

Yeah. Uh so for this one, the twist is that before you called her name three times, you had to stand in front of the mirror and brush your hair a hundred times, which first of all, I could not do because I already shed like a dog, so I'm pretty sure I would be bald by the time I got to number a hundred times.

SPEAKER_04 30:39

Well, that's what I was thinking with her, right?

Tasha 30:42

But then also, in what world is what this man did a prank? This is straight up flat out fucking assault. Like, um, I read this and I was like screaming at my computer screen because I I just don't know that I want to live in a world where this is deemed a prank. I do better, people. Do better. Um, so another version of the Veronica game is called Nine Times Veronica. Uh yes, I believe so. Uh Nine Times Veronica tells the story of a teenager, Veronica, who lives in a small village, and she played a paranormal game with her friends in an abandoned house late at night. But she didn't follow the rules, she didn't take it seriously, and because of that, she died and she was unable to rest in peace. She don't fuck with the rules, man. Like, you gotta follow the rules. We learned that in the first episode from the legends, the 14 legends. Like, that's that's a real thing in Spain. Yeah, you gotta follow the rules.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Follow the rules.

Tasha 32:02

She did not, so she died and she's unable to rest at peace. And so now she takes revenge on others who don't follow the rules, respect the dead, you know, or take things seriously. So it's really giving Veronica the movie, right? Like, because Veronica did not respect that guideline between what you're allowed to mess in, this girl went messing around and stuff she shouldn't have been messed, messing around in, you know. So the game requires saying her name nine times with your eyes closed, and they it calls for like having a bunch of props placed around you. If you umce you do that, you've called her name nine times with your eyes closed, if you've successfully contacted her, you ask her. Let me try this again. So you I'm gonna get this outright. So you got the props all around you, you close your eyes, you say her name nine times, and then you ask her a question about love or death. Love or death, everything else is off the table. There's no money, there's no what am I gonna be when I grow up? It's not, do I get to go on this trip to Morocco? No, love or death.

SPEAKER_04 33:29

Yeah, like is it just a general question, or is it like so-and-so gonna die? When am I gonna die? I don't know. I just girl gonna like you.

Tasha 33:41

I well, like love. I think love is the question, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:47

I would have been denied that.

Tasha 33:49

You would you would have been messing around. I would have been considered messing around, I think. If she is successfully contacted through this, then she'll start moving the props in response to like indicate the answer to after you say the name, you can open your eyes, yeah. You have to, or you don't know what the props are doing, I think. I think, or maybe you just sit still. I don't know. But what I do know is that if you do the game, I I didn't read the instructions too much because I am not calling forth Veronica. Thank you. No, if you do the game wrong or you take it lightly, or you like goof around, she's not moving props, she's hurting you. So no, no. Now, if you are a pure virgin girl, and only a pure virgin girl. So I guess like the extra virgin olive oil brand of pure virgin girl, no guy, yes, can be a guy, no guys, no um anywhere else on the spectrum. Like we don't need a no nothing. Um non-binary, like nothing. You are a pure virgin girl, anything less you are out, but you also may be thinking you're lucky stars in a minute that you held that person's hand that one time. Uh, you can see her by standing in front of a mirror at midnight with a lit candle and saying her name three times. She will take your place in the mirror in the reflection. And when you see her, you can ask her who your true love is, and she'll tell you his name and replace her vision, like her picture now with what he looks like. So she'll turn into a picture of him. Sounds great, except that it also brings a curse. So uh what happens next is that you do meet your true love in real life, happy, happy, joy, joy. But as soon as you meet this person, you die.

SPEAKER_04 36:22

Wow. Right? Why even play the game?

Tasha 36:25

I don't know. In another version, when you call her to you through a ritual that I am not describing because this one is dark, dark, dark, she's just with you from now on, for always. No getting rid of her. Veronica is the monkey on your back for forever and ever and ever. So I think this is probably where Paco got Veronica's name from. I think it makes sense, especially since one of the versions is specifically about a girl who FAFO'ed with a Ouija board. And have you yet to look up FAFO to figure out what that is? Okay. Um, so it makes sense. You know, they both entered Spanish paranormal lore around the same time. You know, I I can't say 100% because I've not had a conversation with the man, but you know, as well as the opportunity. She is newer than Bloody Mary, but Paco, you know, if I'm wrong and you need to clarify, please call me.

SPEAKER_04 37:33

Or come on the podcast.

Tasha 37:34

Yeah, or come on. Like we we would love to talk to you. Um, so we do need to revisit Franco for just a second. Um, when he died in 1975, the democratic state began to establish and the culture slowly started to change. And the constitution of 1978 formally undid the authoritarian control of Speens media. The state-run newspapers were shut down, the government monopoly on radio was lifted. So it allowed for an increase in private ownership of the press and media, television stations, and just a general freedom of artistic expression and the press, journalism. It was a time when Spain was still coming out of the Franco dictatorship. Freedom of thought and expression was really increasing across the country. So collectively, they're still like really exploring what they believed, what they could believe. I mean, before this, they were told what they could believe. Now it was like now it's a floodgate up. Yeah, I mean, everything. So this just continued to expand and grow in the 80s and 90s, and they did a lot of that exploration through television and other media. It was kind of the wild west of journalism. They were getting a handle for what was legit news and what was tabloid news, and what drove ratings really set the standard for what was allowed um in the news programming. So you'd turn on the evening news and you would find a paranormal interview mixed in with stories about the economy and tomorrow's weather. And if it brought viewers, the media grabbed it. Um a paranormal event, though, was never presented on these shows as like just a crazy ghost story. You know, like if if we, and I think that we might have mentioned this in the first episode, but if today you went and you turned on the six o'clock news and somebody down the street was, you know, going on and on about their house has uh haunting or whatever, if the news is covering it, it's probably not like a legitimate this house is haunted. It's probably like look at all of the fanfare that's going on, or you know, they've taken a different angle. It's not legit, there's a ghost. Yes, like that. Yes. Um, but back then, if they were presenting it and they were like, dude, ghost, uh, paranormal event has happened. If a story broke, it was always presented as serious news, even like on the official news broadcast. So Estefania was one of the top three cases. She's her story said to be one of the top three cases of paranormal phenomena in Spanish media. Um, the first two chronologically are the Belmez faces in 1971, which we talked about last week. And then the second one is the Lenares Planet. I'm gonna say this again because I'm saying it wrong. The Lenares Palace Hauntings in 1990 in Madrid. Madrid was just like a slamming hotspot for this stuff. Um, the Belmez faces were covered in local newspapers and books and um prompted parapsychological. Why am I having these words are hard? Parapsychological studies at universities across the country for years and years. But restorations of the Lenares Palace in 1990 began, and we all know what happens when you disturb a very, very, very old property mat.

SPEAKER_04 41:59

Yeah, a spirit's coming knocking.

Tasha 42:01

Yeah, that's when all the ghosties get active because they're like, What are you doing in my hotspot, buddy?

SPEAKER_04 42:06

You know, we learn that from Eddie Murphy.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Yes, Eddie Murphy. That's definitely where we learn that.

Tasha 42:24

Um workers began reporting doors opening and closing of their own volition. They heard footsteps in empty rooms, moans and screams in the middle of the night, and they heard voices. There were alleged EVPs captured of three different voices, and these EVPs were released to the public on local radio stations in Madrid in 1990.

SPEAKER_04 42:55

Yeah, I'd like to hear those.

Tasha 42:56

I would too, right? Um, then so that's 1990, and then came Estefania in 1991, and her case did more than just ask Spain, like what they believed happened to a soul after the body passed, right? Because these first two cases were all about like, is it possible for these souls to still be walking the earth? Could they still be picking around and like make contact with us? But Estefania's case really asked, what happened when you tempted forces you were never meant to interact with? Because they were like, could the other side bleed through? And Estefania posed this question of what if you invited it through? That's a little dangerous that's a little dangerous. And it also begged the question had the Catholic Church been right to impose their strict sanctions? All along. You know?

SPEAKER_04 44:04

That's debatable.

Tasha 44:05

That's debatable. But it was a debate.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

Yes.

Tasha 44:09

So in the film, Veronica's story began Thursday, June 12th, 1991, and ended with her death and the police report on Sunday, June 15th, 1991. So the story, the whole story took three days. But Estefania's story began at least a year before her life ended and continued for years after her passing. Her friends Lupe, Antonio, and Tonyin say that Estefania and her friends had begun playing with a Ouija board at school around 1989, before class, in between class, you know, in the hallway. If there was like a corner that they could be in where it was dark enough that they could like set it up, they found an empty room, they were playing with the Ouija board. But 1989 was like a good hot minute, right? Before Estefania's death occurred. Yeah. July 14th, 1991. So what actually happened there? And why did the Ouija board like this little board game play such a main role in the story? That's pretty hardcore board gaming to play almost every day. Almost every day, just hanging out in school. I don't know I don't you know you say that, but today with people's phones, like kids with their phones in school. Cell phones are everywhere in schools. I mean, I think it's kind of the same thing. Like social media in schools have kind of the same effect as probably what the release of a Ouija board did then. And you know why? I'm gonna tell you why. Are you ready? I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you the history of the Ouija board.

SPEAKER_04 46:18

Oh, nice. So I forgot that part didn't get aired.

Tasha 46:25

What you don't know is that uh this once lived in episode one. Yes, I got it. Does it now is in episode two? So during the American Civil War, spiritualism attracted tons of people who were desperate to try to connect with loved ones that had gone off to war and never came home. So at the time, you'd go to a spiritualist and you would try to talk to your loved ones, you'd ask your question, and then the medium would go through the whole alphabet. They would call out a letter and they would silently wait for a knock. It would go through every letter of the alphabet, and it was slow and it was boring. And so people were looking for a quicker way to do it. Communicating with the dead in the US back then was common, it was not weird, and it was definitely not considered as opening the gates of hell. So in 1886, newspapers started reporting about a group of spiritualists in um camps in Ohio that had begun using kind of an early form of the Ouija board. A man named Charles Kennard read about this, he read this article and his eyes just saw like he lit up with dollar signs. He was like those cartoons, you know. I just see like and like big dollar signs in his eyeballs. That's all I can see. He's a cartoon to me. Yes, trying to make money, yes, he is definitely that guy. He's swimming in swimming in the dollar bills, y'all. So in 1890, he and four investors opened up the Canard Novelty Company exclusively to make Ouija boards. They did not make anything else. That's all they made. Um, the Ouija back then was much like what we have today. It was the alphabet number zero to nine, yes, no, and goodbye. And it was sold with a planchette. It was marketed as both a mystical oracle and family entertainment.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

FYI, you need to buy one that has the word goodbye in it.

Tasha 48:39

If it has not, as if it doesn't say goodbye, what we've learned from the story is you need to say goodbye to said Ouija board and find one that says goodbye. So before they could like market the board and sell the board, they had to prove that the board worked.

SPEAKER_04 49:00

So how did they prove that?

Tasha 49:03

Well, let me tell you, Matt, because I know this is a story you've never heard before.

SPEAKER_04 49:07

I've never heard this.

Tasha 49:09

So the patent officer required that the board spell out his first name because he was like, You guys only know me as Mr. Patent Officer. You don't know me as Mr. Michael Patton Officer. Um, he was sure they that the Kennard team did not know his first name. So they sat down at the board with Mr. Patent Officer, whose last name I didn't write down, so I can't tell you.

SPEAKER_04 49:35

Name Joe.

Tasha 49:35

I don't know. But they the board knew his name and the board spelled it out. And so Mr. Patent Officer gave them the patent for the Ouija board because they proved that it worked. Now, I'd like to note that one of Pennard's four investors was a patent attorney. So I'm not saying that the spirits had an inside tip, but I am saying that maybe it wasn't above board. That was my I'm not good at for the spirits. So patent people. Yeah. So people are always like really angry about mediums and and like people like the spiritualists in the Ouija like story, but they were like really upset when the Ouija board got patented and marketed and started selling all over the United States in stores. Do you know why, Matthew?

SPEAKER_04 50:35

I I would think it's kind of like outsourcing or something like that.

Tasha 50:41

Yes, it completely removed the middleman in the common man's search for the spirit world. And so all these people were like basically out of the job. Um, but regardless, in America, the sale and use of the Ouija board surged during some of our most uncertain times, like World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic, prohibition. People couldn't drink and they were like, give me the Ouija board. In 1944, during World War II, World War II, a single New York department store sold over 50,000 boards in five months. That's a lot of Ouija boards. It is a lot, a lot of Ouija boards.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

One store.

Tasha 51:26

One store. When Parker Brothers bought out the board in 1967, it was during the height of the Vietnam War. It was the summer of love and serial killers and race riots, and the sales of Ouija boards outperformed Monopoly. It was the only game to do so, and it did so by selling over two million boards that year.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

Wow.

Tasha 51:56

That's a that's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 51:57

So it started in the 40s.

Tasha 52:00

No, it started earlier. It started in let me scroll back up to my notes to look. 1890 was whenever they came together to make this board. So it's still flying off the shelves.

SPEAKER_04 52:14

1970s. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Tasha 52:16

Yeah. So aside from trying to reach a lost loved one, Ouija boards were really just a fun game. But while boards were flying off the shelves in the US, they hadn't reached Spain because Ouija boards were censored by Franco's dictatorship in the Catholic Church for being heretical. They were not legally manufactured or sold in Spanish toy stores until the late 1970s and early 80s, following the transition to democracy, which coincidentally timed with the thematic release of The Exorcist, which really changed the face of Ouija from this like innocent game to a tool of Satan. So before 1973's Exorcist, which is another movie based on a true story, and I'm not giving anything away from the movie. No spoilers given, but um, you know, before that movie, Ouija boards were largely a parlor game. In fact, uh Norman Rockwell once illustrated a man and a woman flirting over a Ouija board while playing the game on the cover of a Saturday evening post.

SPEAKER_04 53:42

Yeah, you told me that and I did not believe it, and I looked it up and I it's so cute.

Tasha 53:48

And they looked adorable, they look so sweet.

SPEAKER_04 53:52

I would buy a Ouija board just from that.

Tasha 53:54

I want them to put that on Valentine's Day cards and hand them out everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 54:02

That is funny. So sweet. Knowing Ouija boards now and growing up in the 90s, like I would have never thought he would have made that artwork. That sounded demonic. Yes, but he made it look amazingly cute.

Tasha 54:17

Apple pie.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

They could be at the diner getting ice cream at the same time.

Tasha 54:21

It's it's adorable, it's the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my life. I just can't. But when 12-year-old Reagan played with the Ouija board and The Exorcist, it led to her possession. Spoilers. And they tapped into that fear. And so did many uh religious groups and popular televangelists. You know, I'm not saying not saying how I feel about this, but some televangelists like really saw some dollar signs. Um, and so this was when the Ouija board really um became this negative force quote tool of Satan. Yeah. Um and they really tapped into the satanic panic. Like they it it just was used in a whole dirty kind of way. But that was also when it was introduced to Spain. So keep all that in mind, okay? So Estefania and her friends are playing with the board at school, and the story from her friends in the documentary are kind of wild. Tonyin, Tonyin, Tony. I, you know, I have a problem with his name. There's a there's a trill over the end, and so I'm not quite sure how to say his name. I'd really like to just call him Tony.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

I think that's what his English form is.

Tasha 56:03

Well, he says that one time a teacher made them leave before they could finish their ceremony, and that a kid tripped going down the stairs afterwards and broke his leg as a result.

SPEAKER_04 56:17

Yeah, I remember hearing that.

Tasha 56:18

Yeah, and then Antonio says that one time the glass broke and smoke rose from the glass into Estefania's nose, and she got upset about it, and she was like, I'm never playing Ouija again, and she never did. Kiribana says that, or Kiribina, I can say her name. Sister. Kiribina, her sister, says that a kid told the family this story after Estefania's death, and said that Estefania believed the smoke was the spirit of her angry grandfather who hated his daughter Concepcion so much and had died months before this event, bowing on his deathbed to get her from beyond the grave. Which, girl, what did you do to make your dad so mad? Like, what happened there that he was like on his deathbed and was like, I will come back from the grave to get you.

SPEAKER_04 57:20

Maybe he's pro Franco. He was not.

Tasha 57:24

I don't know, but that is some that's some spite.

SPEAKER_04 57:28

Like there's people out there. I don't know them, but there's people out there.

Tasha 57:33

That's that's some tea. Anyway, regardless, all these things happened, if they happened, at least a year before Estefania's passing. Okay, not three days, like the movie depicts, and definitely not during or around any clips. Um, Estefania was not obsessed with the occult or with Luija. She was just a teen girl playing with it at school with her friends. They were all just kind of testing limits and testing the boundaries of things that had been previously forbidden. It's kind of like when a kid gets their license and they're like, but how fast can I drive the car now that I don't have mom and dad in it with me? You know, or they turn 21 and they can legally go to the bar and drink. Sometimes they're gonna be curious about those limits. Her friends all say that the Ouija board plane stopped at the school long before July 14th, 1991. The next year, Estefania started having medical episodes. This part is true. All of her siblings have confirmed it. She starts going into what we're gonna call at this time trances. We're not gonna give away anything. We're we're gonna call it what what they were calling it at the time. They were calling it trances. All of the kids witnessed this. They also witnessed Concepcion slap her violently across the face to try to wake her up from them. Um, during the trances, Estefania does say that she sees figures around her. Um, when Concepcion asks her, like, what did you see? Um, but what didn't really get reported a lot is that her parents did take her to doctors and hospitals and they started running tests on her. And the story that gets around is that all of the tests came back that that she was perfectly healthy. Um, but in actuality, they were still waiting for test results to come back when she passed away. So um it was reported, the legend kind of grabbed hold of what went along with the legend was that she was a perfectly healthy kid, no weird things going on with her health, and then she just died suddenly.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:15

The transits were just within a year, right? When they started.

Tasha 1:00:19

They were within a year. But the the the thing here is that what I'm saying is it's fairly new to them. It was fairly new, but they're talking like the story is being told like nothing had ever happened. And then she played with a board, and then all of a sudden this happens. So even as the legend is is being built up, like right after her death, it gets told like it's this sudden thing. When in actuality, there was like some time there, and the story is being told that she went to the doctors and they were like, Can't find a thing wrong with her. She's a perfectly healthy kid. When in actuality, she went to the doctors, they were still running tests, they were still doing things, they were waiting on test results to come back when she died. During this time, too, Estefania's a normal kid. She gets a degree in dressmaking, she makes a lot of her own clothes. She sees her boyfriend. She she presses a red flower that he gave her inside of her diary. Red was her favorite color. So, you know, she wears a lot of like red lipstick and clothes decorated with red flowers. Um, Ricardo says in an interview that she was a confidant, she was a protector for the kids, she was always cheerful, she was smiling, she goes to school and she takes care of the kids because, as Kiribina says in the documentary, Concepcion was too sick to do anything. So Estefania at this time is raising the kids. And Maxi said she never really had a childhood because Kiribina was too sick to take care of the kids, so Estefania raised them. Estefania was the parent.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:19

I mean, Concepcion.

Tasha 1:02:20

Concepcion, what did I say?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:23

Oh my heavens.

Tasha 1:02:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:25

So which kind of reflects what Veronica is in the movie.

Tasha 1:02:30

Yes. Yes, there is like a a real parentification of Estefania, just like there was of Veronica in the movie. Her dad worked, her mom was in bed, and she took care of the kids and the house. Sometimes she uh they the kids reported that sometimes she would even go without food. If there wasn't enough food to stretch, she would go without food to make sure the other kids ate. Um, and during all of this, Estefania was scared. I mean, she had these weird things happening to her body.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Yeah, right.

Tasha 1:03:10

So, you know, that kind of ties in with Veronica. Veronica was scared about what was happening to her body. Yeah. So that's a tie, but Estefania was she didn't know what was happening. She knew something was wrong, but she didn't know what. And we know that she was scared because she asked her mother for specific burial instructions, or she gave her mom specific burial instructions. If she was to die, she wanted to be before they found out what was wrong with her, she wanted to be buried with red roses and a photo of the family with her on the coffin so that she wouldn't go into the next world alone. She didn't want to be alone, she wanted her family with her, right? And I just think like that's gotta be so incredibly terrifying at 17. Like, I'm and like the thought is almost too much for me at my age to think about like what comes next. But she's just a kid, yeah. You know, she's thinking about dying before she's even had a chance to live, not just because she is so young, but also because the few years that she has had has been spent being a mom when she shouldn't have been a mom. Yeah, it's just really heartbreaking. Um, but so the evening of July 13th, 1991, Estefania and Kiribina um slept in the same room. And Kirabina recounts hearing Estefania gasp in her sleep and sit straight up, which is reminiscent of that shot of Veronica in the basement when she sits straight up. And she says after she does this, she just falls back lifeless into the bed. And Kiravina starts screaming for her parents um who rush in and they called the medics. Um, they moved Estefania to another room, which when I heard that, I just thought was crazy because I was like, we would never in a million years move somebody in that state to another room.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:28

Like I don't know if they were thinking of their other daughter, maybe seeing everything that was happening.

Tasha 1:05:33

Well, she said that it was because they needed room for the medics to be able to get into her. But my thought is like, you do not know what is happening to your child. So if do you know, like if you move her, what is that gonna do to her body? Like, I would just be like, keep her where she is and make a way for the medics to get to her.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:56

Like some similar episodes. In the past. I do not know. They're still looking into.

Tasha 1:06:03

Well, they the medics come, they take her to the hospital, and the doctors cannot revive her. And she died the morning of July 14th in the hospital. So for Veronica, this is where Veronica's story ends, right? The police are called in the day that she dies, and that's where this that's where the story ends. We get the police report that same day. Everything's tied up neatly with the bow. But for Estefania, the police don't get called in for like another year and a half. Um, and the escalation to that is just confounding to me. Uh, to get from Estefania's death to the police report is like there's a lot that happens. There it's a it's a ride. So the the family says that Ricardo starts hearing knocks in the house in August. So she dies July 14th, and by August, he starts hearing knocks in the house. And they said that Estefania had said she would knock to let them know, hey, I've made it to the other side safely. Yeah, like I'm good, y'all. I'm I'm safe. Um, but you know, Ricardo hears knocking, and that does not bring anybody comfort. They are scared shitless. And from there, things just go crazy. Like Concepcion went to the neighborhood priest, Carlos, for help, and he went to the house and he found the kids screaming in fear, is what Ricardo says. Concepcion tells Father Carlos that Ricardo hears knocking every night, and Father Carlos says, Well, when you hear it, say, Blessed soul, tell me who you are and what you want. And Father Carlos assures them that this should calm it down. Like the ghost just wants a little love and attention, like it'll be okay. And then Father Carlos like pieces out, and and we don't hear from him again.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:14

Like, that's that's his remedy.

Tasha 1:08:15

That's his remedy. Um, well, guess what?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:20

It kept going, it doesn't work.

Tasha 1:08:22

The you know, the knocking keeps going and it gets louder. Some would even say it becomes a bang, you know. Uh, one night they're all in the living room and the banging is hitting the door, it's getting a little bit louder, the door's shaking. So Maximo, the dad, he's like, yeah, no, he goes and he starts stacking furniture against it. And Kiribina says that that just seemed to piss the ghost off. Like, I mean, I get it. No one wants to be physically kept out of a party, right? I mean, like, it's a little rude to be like, sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:59

Hey, this is your daughter. I went in.

Tasha 1:09:02

So the banging gets more violent until the furniture's removed, and and then it stops, which to me kind of sounds like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Like, I'm just gonna keep on until I get my way, kind of thing. And then as soon as they got their way, like it stopped. So this doesn't. Concepcion's like, yeah, screw this. Everybody go get your mattresses. We now sleep in the living room. This is now where we are, and they ended up staying there, sleeping there for months.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:37

They would like go to the bathroom and twos or threes, like you know, they don't all the lights when they go to bathrooms, yes.

Tasha 1:09:44

So nobody's sleeping.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:46

No.

Tasha 1:09:47

Because, you know, yeah, Maxie's 10, but they've got two little kids that are younger than him, and one of them is a baby, so like no one is sleeping. So during this time, Concepcion starts writing to media people because that's the logical thing to do. She reaches out to radio and TV hosts and she says, Listen, my daughter died, and now she's haunting us, and we live in fear. Please come see, and come they did. So in February of 1992, the first group comes and they don't capture anything but some tasty food and drink.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

Yeah.

Tasha 1:10:27

Uh, which Concepcion was was sure to make sure was out there for him. And um, this just kind of continues with like several networks and parapsychological groups. Um, and the kids say that at one point it was like a 24-7 swinging door, like one person a privacy. Yeah, one person would go out as another person was coming in. They were like all scheduled back to back. Um, but it wasn't just people coming in, like Concepcion was making appearances on TV too. And Maximo just stood quietly by and let her tell the story, and he just kind of agreed with everything quietly, nodding and kind of let her do the talking until November 19th, 1992, or November 27th, 1992.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:28

Depending on the source that you read it from.

Tasha 1:11:31

So the documentary says November 19th. And then we the police report is dated November 27th. And this is why I have a problem with this is that if the event happened on November 19th, but the police report was not written until the 27th, then the inspector waited eight days to write up his report. So did he remember everything correctly by then? Was like everything still sharply in tune in his mind? But then if it happened on the 27th, does that mean that the documentary got the 19th wrong? And if they got the 19th wrong, are there other things that they got wrong? And if you can't trust the police or a documentary to get the facts correct, then who are you supposed to trust? Like, these are two sources that are supposed to be able to gather facts and report them back correctly. And how are you supposed to know which one's correct? I just don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:40

So I think logically, maybe he was just gathering other people's notes, like the other cops saw their statement, and then gathered it, and then he put it in it. That's my that's my understanding.

Tasha 1:12:56

I thought that too, until I started going back through all of the articles, all of the news sources, everything that I had looked at from Spain, and it it just kept saying the 27th. And then I was like, okay, so maybe it was on the 27th. So I I don't know. Whatever night it was, Maximo was the one who called the police.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:27

Maybe whoever directed that documentary needs to reach out to us and say why they did the night.

Tasha 1:13:34

Hit us up. We want to talk to you all. I we want the deets. Like, I really want the deets. I uh am hungry for the details. I always want the details. So Maximo calls the police and he says that for several hours now they have been experiencing parapsychological phenomena in the house. Things are moving by themselves, crucifixes are turning upside down, falling down. There's a poster that has mysteriously produced three scratches across it just out of the blue. The police on the other end of the line think that he is drunk as a skunk. And so they're like, Yeah, can we talk to your wife? Um, so he puts Concepcion on the phone. She says the exact same thing. She's like, Oh yeah, like he's not lying. So they're like, Well, guess we're going in. So they get there, and now again, we've got two stories, right? The police report says the whole family setting outside in the cold, all in the cold. But Ricardo says in the documentary that they're waiting in the living room when the police arrive. I don't know. Regardless, both of them say that the kids are freaked out when the police arrive. So Maximo tells the police that they've been having problems for months, months, I can speak, and um, that they've had their space and themselves studied by parapsychologists. Um, he shows the police their reports, he shows them magazine articles, news articles that have been written about them. He shows them recordings from the television programs that have been done about their house, and then he says, We we should shut out the lights because nothing really happens until the lights are out.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

Uh-huh.

Tasha 1:15:36

And so suddenly this super normal house gets super paranormal, and everything just kind of gets out of control. And so I have the police report translated into English.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:55

Did you do the translation or did you find it on a website?

Tasha 1:15:59

I got it from a website because I should not be asked to translate anything. I am not bilingual.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:10

You're not bilingual.

Tasha 1:16:11

No. That's why at work I have someone that I send things to to get translated into Spanish because no one wants me translating their stuff. Um yeah, no. So I have this and I'm going to read it just so everybody can hear what it says.

unknown 1:16:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:32

How many pages is it?

Tasha 1:16:33

It's just one page. It's very short.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:35

All right.

Tasha 1:16:37

Okay. Statement of facts. And I'm skipping all the stuff that says like who he is and what time they arrived, and blah, blah, blah. The responding officers aboard patrol vehicle K2. They proceeded to the aforementioned address following a radio dispatch from the emergency room. Upon arrival, the officers met with Mr. Maximo Gutierrez Lazaro and his family outside the building who were standing in the street in a state of extreme terror and panic. The family stated that, quote, strange and supernatural phenomena, unquote, were occurring inside their third floor apartment. Observations inside the residence. Number one, the officers, accompanied by the father of the family, entered the dark apartment. While sitting in the living room with the family, the officers heard a loud, violent thud coming from the adjacent terrace. Upon immediate inspection, nothing unusual was found that could have caused the noise. Number two, while the officers were standing in the main hallway, a door of a perfectly closed wooden closet opened in a sudden and totally unnatural way. This movement caused a distinct moment of alarm among the officers and the family. Number three, upon inspecting the bedroom of the deceased's daughter, Estefania, the officers observed a large wooden crucifix hanging on the wall. The figure of Jesus Christ attached to the cross had been violently ripped from it. Violently. I'd point that out. Distinct scratch marks were clearly visible on the wallpaper where the figure had previously been fixed. The figure itself was found on the floor. Number four, on a small nightstand next to the bed in the same room, the officers observed a mysterious viscous brown-colored liquid droplet formation. The origin and nature of the substance could not be determined by visual inspection. Number five, the officers noted a sudden, extreme, and bone-chilling drop in temperature upon entering the terrace area, which did not correlate with the temperature of the rest of the apartment. Conclusion, the responding officers state that they witnessed a situation of profound mystery and rarity. Given that the phenomena witnessed could not be rationally explained by standard means, and noting the extreme psychological distress and genuine terror of the family members, this report is submitted for official review. Signed Inspector Jose Pedro Negri, National Police Corps, Madrid District. So the police report is made. Things kind of slow down at the house. Yes. And the police reports kind of kept quiet for a while. Because that's made in November. Someday in November 1992. No one knows about the police report though until September 1996. That's four years later.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:05

Police don't usually like publicize their report.

Tasha 1:20:09

Correct. But consider things are starting to slow down in your house. You are the kids, right? Five years after, we're gonna we're gonna talk about this a little bit, but I'm gonna I'm gonna skip what I'm getting ready to say. I'm gonna come back to this. Later, I want you to remind me five years after her death, something happens, okay? September 1996. Pepe Navarro, if you all don't know who Pepe Navarro is, I just do not like this guy. Come at me, Pepe. Don't come at me. You have way more money than I do. Um he ran a late night show in Spain at the time called Tonight We Cross the Mississippi. I've also seen it translated to Crossing the Mississippi. It kind of depends on who has done the translation. Regardless, the Mississippi was like the heart of shock television in Spain at the time. Um, and he announces to Spain, hey guys, guess what? There is this police report and it exists. And once it gets out to the public, the media just has a freaking field day with it because there's an official police report. And so news editors gave it prominent placement and airtime because it lent the story authority and legitimacy for them, right? Yeah, so Ricardo says that at this time media just picks up, right? They're in the newspapers, they are on the TV, they're on the radio. People would stop them in the streets. Concepcion basically turns the house into a green room. She starts treating the press to the best tapas that she can get and drinks and vallekis. Meanwhile, the family goes without any sort of normalcy, and the family life just goes down the drain. She's cooking for the press, but not for her kids. Right. And you got to think like, has she ever cooked for her kids? Because before Estefania's death, she was too ill to cook for her kids, and Estefania did everything. Well, and they're a working family, they're not so she's using all of this money to feed the press so that they'll keep coming around. So she cooks for them, but not her kids. She's not cooking enough food for her kids. There are no meal times, there are no study times, there's just no like family timetables, right? I think about all of those like calendars that you see in like Barnes and Noble and things like that with the stickers for moms to get like hyper organized. Sports. Concepcion does not have a calendar like that, okay? Um, Maxie says it's exactly what Concepcion wants at this time. She wanted to please the people who came to the house, even at whatever cost it was to her children. He said she was a person who needed to go on television and she needed to be in the limelight, and that's what she got. And for a while, it's exactly what she got. Like, that's that's she was everywhere. Um, he calls her folkloric, which I thought was kind of amazing. I want to just start using that everywhere because folklore, like I've never thought to put an IC at the end of that. Folkloric.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:00

How do you describe that for a person? Like, what does that mean?

Tasha 1:24:04

Like, if you think about folklore and how it just continues on and on, and you've got this like legend that won't die, that's what she was.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:14

She's a legend that doesn't die.

Tasha 1:24:15

Folkloric. She just kept going. The documentary says that in 1996 she was the most well-known person in Baikis.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:26

Wow.

Tasha 1:24:27

Ricardo says that their story became a business for the TV stations, that they used their family's story to make money without thinking about who it affected. They just didn't care what it meant to the kids. In the 90s, the occult and mysticism was in high fashion for the media. It was the highest-rated programs on TV and on radio that carried these themes. So, on top of that, these programs to keep the ratings up, they had to keep like one up in each other. So it wasn't enough to like everybody have the story of Estefania. They had to like keep making the story of Estefania bigger and more elaborate.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:17

Yeah.

Tasha 1:25:18

So the Anchors would twist the truth for shock value. There was a man on one show who told the audience Estefania played with Ouija when she was 18 and went straight into crisis. She started talking in a man's voice, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she died with terrible spasms that night in November. So he got like every fact wrong. And he did not care because it was all for shock value. And it was just like, how do I get the ratings?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:56

How do I get to get clicks nowadays?

Tasha 1:25:59

Exactly. But he had like a live studio audience, and so it was like also, how do I get this audience to like ooh and awe? And you know, if I can get a a response from the studio audience, then that's gonna cause the audience at home to like have a bigger response. So, but not only was not only were the the anchors getting her story wrong, her mom was getting it wrong too, right? Because Concepcion started twisting her story, started taking the story of Estefania's death and twisting it so that it would keep the cameras on herself. So, in one of the earliest recordings, um, it was made by the Spanish Association for Parascientific Studies. They were the first group that came in February of 1992 and they made this recording. Concepcion is heard confirming that Estefania died from epileptic seizures. She flat out says, yes, her daughter died from epileptic seizures in that recording. But she quickly changed her story to her healthy daughter died of no known causes because that had a better clickbait.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:25

Yeah.

Tasha 1:27:26

Later, she told people that Estefania started experiencing altered states of consciousness after playing with the Ouija board that lasted until her death. So this altered state of consciousness was like her quote of like, this started as soon as the Ouija board happened and it lasted until it finally took her life. That before her death, she was already having paranormal experiences. She recounts one in which she says an iron turned on in Estefania's room after she turned it off. Shadow went into the bathroom and it closed the door. And Maximo couldn't get the door to open. He was like trying to force his way in, it would not open. And then suddenly the door just opened. But when it did, Estefania started freaking out. And she was claiming that she could see a being like hovering over the sink. And she kept asking her parents, don't you see it? Can't you see it? And they were like, No, we don't see anything. So that's a story that Concepcion said happened before Estefania died. She also said that when Estefania died, she was foaming at the mouth and the nose, and that she was speaking in unknown languages. And she claimed that Estefania levitated and growled like an animal. But all of that came as the ratings came, as her TV appearances came. When it first started, it was just my daughter died unexpectedly. Well, the first time it was my daughter died of epileptic seizures. And now we hear knocking. The haunting after her death goes from just some knocks and bangs on walls and doors to actual knocks on their own bodies. She says, We got knocked on our body. Things are now getting thrown across the home. They say that they're hearing Estefania from the beyond saying, Beware of grandpa. Lights are flickering. One of them says that the lights looked like they were melting. Photos are moving on their own through the house. They're um opening and closing doors and blinds, you know, of their own accord. Um, doors are locking and unlocking by themselves. Electrical appliances are turning on by themselves. The dog is just standing in the hallway barking at nothing. Um, shadows are seen moving in the house. And then the biggest claim is that this framed photo of Estefania catches on fire. The picture of Estefania catches fire, but there's no damage to the frame. The frame's frame is left unscathed. There's a group, um, a famous investigation team of like seven people called the the Grupa Hepta. They came to the house in um they so they come, they determined there's no ghosts. They're like, this is not a haunted house. There is no haunting here. Yeah, right. Um, they said, if anything, there's a poltergeist, and a poltergeist is attached to one person caused by their inner conflict and their state of stress, and we say this is all on Concepcion. And they say she is at the center of this. This this is a storm that's wrapped around her. And there's one woman of the group of Hepta that was interviewed in the documentary, and her name is Sol, and she says everything that happened in that house was a result of Concepcion. And I honestly think that for that statement alone works whether it's a poltergeist or just a crazy mama. Like you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:25

That makes sense.

Tasha 1:31:27

Everything in that house was a result of Concepcion.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:31

Well, because even her husband followed after her.

Tasha 1:31:34

Yes, he just kind of did what what she did or what she said. She went on numerous shows. Sometimes she took him with her, a lot of times she didn't. Sometimes she took Kirabina, sometimes she took Maximo or Ricardo or Maxier uh Ricardo.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:57

She would do the bulk of the talking.

Tasha 1:31:59

Yep. Um one time she and Kirabina even got into like a Jerry Springer-ish style beatdown with one of the paranormal investigators that had come to the house on Pepe Navarro's show.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:19

Pepe, yeah, yeah, Pepe.

Tasha 1:32:22

Because everything always needed to get bigger, and she always needed more attention, like this was just her thing. So November 1st, 1996, it's it's five years after Estefania has died, right? It's all Sandstain. Yes, it is. It's all Saints Day, and this is the day that Concepcion claims the photo caught fire. And Ricardo, Ricardo recounts this day, and he says that when they woke up, everybody had soot on their noses. And oh really, yeah. He says that in the documentary, and I was like, oh yeah, Concepcion was all over that. She was like, nose, nose. Um, but so the the photo of a Stefania is has is burned through. Um the family gets up and they get dressed and they go to the cemetery in honor of All Saints Day, but also that day they had exhumed her body.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:35

That same day, yes.

Tasha 1:33:37

Um because they did not previously honor her wishes of being buried with red roses and a photo of the family. And so they've decided on this day they're gonna do that. So they've exhumed her so that they can bury her again the way that she has requested. So they bury her that way, and after this, they claim that things go quiet in the house, they stop. And soul from the group of hepta says that this is proof that it was all Concepcion's poltergeist, that she was experiencing stress and guilt for not having previously honored Estefania's only request of her. And that once she finally did, everything resolved in the home. That everything was better. And that's the five years thing that I was talking about. Like, you know, that was I gotta look at my timetable here. That was November 1st, 1996, which was about five years later. So that's five years after she dies.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:57

Five and a half.

Tasha 1:34:58

Pepe brought the police report on in September of '96. So we're talking just a couple months after they go on Pepe. And then things like slow down in the house. I mean, it was already chaos, and I don't it's a big thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:21

Well, but it died down a little bit, and then he brought it back up.

Tasha 1:35:25

Well, I'm saying that no, so so Pepe brought the police report out in September. They exhumed her body in November. So there was chaos. I think she still continued to go on all the media stuff. I think the exhumation was a let's show that we've done this thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:50

Yeah. Gotcha.

Tasha 1:35:51

I think it was for show. If I had to guesstimate. Uh, but that's just me guesstimating. I allege what do I need to do to make sure I don't get sued? Whatever it is, this is me just guessing. Speculating. Um spec I speculate, not proven. So they say that everything resolved in the home in terms of any poltergeist haunted house activity. But the kids say, sure, but it didn't resolve anything for us. Because after the Pepe Navarro appearances, they were incredibly teased and bullied at school and in the neighborhood. Um, and the kids say that Maxie took the brunt of it out of all of the kids. Um, but the siblings kind of banded together, they tried to look out for each other, but even in the building, people would not even get in the elevator with them. Like they they just kept their distance. And they said that people that at one point had kind of stood with them and supported them early on when Estefania died, they now, you know, kind of just treated them like pariahs. They wouldn't have anything to do with them. Um, and then even though Concepcion was, you know, too sick to take care of the kids when Estefania was alive, she was not too sick to abuse them after Estefania passed. Um, Ricardo in the documentary depicts the kids getting locked up in the bathroom, the same bathroom that Concepcion claimed dark shadows taunted Estefania from. Um, they would be locked up in the bathroom all day and night with the lights off, and they would only be let out to get a drink of water or to eat dinner. And then they'd be sent back into the bathroom. And Maxie said that Concepcion would send the other kids to the door to scratch at it and make noises to scare whichever kid was locked in it. The the boys said that they were always more afraid of coming home late and getting locked in the bathroom than they were of ghosts in the house because they knew what really waited for them behind the door of their house.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:23

That's tragic.

Tasha 1:38:24

Yes. Eventually, Maxie left home. He literally chose homelessness over having to live with his mother. Um, and Maximo, their father, ended up dying of cancer in 2017. And after that, Maxi and Ricardo, the following year, they did an interview with David Cuevas. Uh, he had been one of the most ardent supporters of the Vayekis case. He had, you know, really loudly like banged the gong for this is a real life paranormal event. But they sat down with him and told him that now that their father was dead, they had no one else to protect. They had no reason to stay quiet, and it was time to do the right thing and set the image of their sister right, even at the risk of destroying their own reputations. So I do want to call out that while there is a lot of talk online about Concepcion making money for her appearances on all of the different television shows and in the newspapers and things like that, Maxi and Ricardo did not accept any money for their interviews, either with David Cuevas for the documentary or anything related to Veronica or anything else that has happened. They've never accepted money. And so I think that that is very notable, and I think that it says a lot when you're looking at which party may be skewed.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:21

Yeah.

Tasha 1:40:25

Yeah. Also notable, I just want to call this out, is that Kiribina does still side with her mom on the supernatural happening. She says that this variation of the story that the boys tell David Cuevas in 2018 is not true. She stands by The House was haunted, that this was a direct relationship to the Ouija board. And um, and then, of course, as I mentioned earlier, their other sister, after her book went out of publication, um, everything that I saw, she's just kind of gone quiet. She's not really spoken out about anything, and she was not in the documentary. But in this interview from 2018, her two brothers, um, the two older ones say that it wasn't odd for Estefania to be playing with the Ouija board because everyone their age was doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:28

Yeah.

Tasha 1:41:30

Um, Maxie was consulted on the Veronica script and gave his approval for part of it. The parts that kind of tied back to Estefania's story, he approved. Um, and that is significant because in Spain, some of the siblings came, some of the other siblings came forward and said that they were going to like take on the production studio, that no one consulted the family, that that it was just this like wrongdoing against Estefania and the family and this whole thing. And he was like, No, that's you know, that's not true. They actually talked to me. I approved it. This is, you know, this is this was fine. They're blowing it up for no reason. They're just yeah. Um, they say that the story of her death by Ouija board was spread by their mom. And they said very clearly the autopsy states she died of pulmonary asphyxia. She had evidence of epileptic seizures of absence, and there was a family history of this disorder. In fact, Concepcion herself was at the time and is still treated for epilepsy, and other family members have since been diagnosed with it. Their behaviors mirror Estefania's. Estephania was being medically treated for it, but she died before the medical verdict was returned. Um they say Estefania never levitated. She never spoke in unknown tongues. They say everything that happened in the house was psychological suggestion by Concepcion and the alleged parapsychologist she brought into the house. Uh, they also say that the police report was on November 19th.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:24

Okay, that clears that up.

Tasha 1:43:27

And that their parents told them to go down to the street to receive the police. So I was like, okay, well, Ricardo, you're saying in this one that your parents told you to go down to the street to receive the police, but then in the documentary, you say that you were in the living room when the police arrived. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:48

Again, I think it goes back to like the memory is arrived, and then they send them down to go bring them up.

Tasha 1:43:55

Maybe that that could be. Um, when they arrived and in the elevator, the boys say that the police were predisposed to the quote strange phenomena they had suffered, which freaked them out before they even got inside. Um, they said the police then reported what they were told as excuses for what they saw in the report, not what they actually witnessed happen. Um they said the door had been slammed, which caused the crucifix to fall and broke the crucifix before the police even arrived. Yeah. The poster, the poster had been torn because it was old and worn out, not because some malevolent force had scratched it with its freaky fingernails. The uh slimer ectoplasm on the table was baby food their little brother had had hours before. What?

SPEAKER_04 1:44:56

The baby rolled on a table.

Tasha 1:45:00

But also noted nobody from the police force took any samples of the supposed ectoplasm to test at the police station, by the way. Um, they say the door opened because photo albums fell against it and the magnet wasn't very secure or strong. Um, they said it was cold on the terrace because guess what? It was November in Spain.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:29

I mean, the terrace is outside, right? Uh-huh. Okay.

Tasha 1:45:32

And their terrace was unheated and not insulated. Yeah. And that's why it was cold. Um, and the sound on the terrace was a rock that Ricardo threw on the terrace. He said that his mom told him to throw something on the terrace, and he pulled a rock out of a plant in the living room. He said that um their father did not even know it was something that like they just kind of worked out in the moment. So it did surprise his like his father's reaction was legit because he didn't know it was coming. He wasn't let in on the trick beforehand.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:16

So when I heard about that, I was kind of surprised because I was like, wouldn't this police see him doing something? Then you mentioned earlier about it being dark, yeah, and so all the lights were off, and so they couldn't see him do anything.

Tasha 1:46:33

Yeah, yep. So they also said that in interviews they told things that didn't happen because they were told by Concepcion and her parapsychologists to report these things. Um, they were forced to lie on air about things by the studios so that their mother would get paid. Like the studios would say, if you want to get paid, you'll say this happened, like to up the ratings. And in the interview, new studios do that. I know, it's so crazy and twisty.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:18

Foxy people.

Tasha 1:47:20

So foxy. Almost like, I mean, it's almost like you'd expect them to be so creepy that they would like put on a mask and pretend to be somebody.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:32

Yeah.

Tasha 1:47:33

I mean, that's like something foxy enough that I could see them doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:38

Yeah.

Tasha 1:47:38

You know, to report back like that. Um no one today would ever do that in America. Um they they also David asked them, he was like, Can you tell me who did that? And he was like, for legal purposes, I can't divulge who did that. He was like, I'm sorry. You know, he's like, I don't want to get sued. Um they mentioned this study that was done on Concepcion by one of the groups that came into the house. That was the icemaker. It's okay. The noises in the room. I said goodbye earlier. Um, they mentioned a study that was done on Concepcion by one of the by one of the groups that came in to investigate the house. And I got my hands on the study, and they called this out as like, if you want real proof that like how long is this does study? I'm not gonna read the study, I'm just gonna call out some things.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:46

Okay.

Tasha 1:48:48

But they they use this as proof of like their mom's con. Okay. And they say, first, she herself suffers from epilepsy and had been taking medicine for it. Second, she has a considerable imaginative capacity and can suffer from a deviation in her perception of reality. She has a slight emotional imbalance, is neurotic, immature with childlike traits. It says that she is contradictory in her emotions and needs to attract attention to herself. At one point in the report, it even says that she has delusion with ideas of grandeur or megalomania.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:35

So it's a little bit on her dad for some of that because if he was cruel uh to her as a child, she probably had to like find ways to escape that.

Tasha 1:49:53

Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:54

Maybe that helped develop some of that.

Tasha 1:49:56

Yeah. Well I want to talk about the Ouija board for a second because scientists studied what is known as the idio effect for years as the cause of the Ouija board phenomena, which is um muscular movements that occur with the without the conscious like will or volition of the person who's playing. And it causes the impression that someone or something else is creating the movement of the planchette, or in this case, the glass on the board. When actually it is the influence of the whole group the whole time. And because they're working as a group, they're like, I didn't do it. It wasn't me. And we see that in Veronica, right? They're like, Veronica, did you do this? Did you move this? And they're like, mm-mm. So it has to be someone or something else, right? The idiomotor effect depends on accessing knowledge resting in your non-conscious mind. The things you don't know you know. So, like Veronica said, it was me, but was it Estefania?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:08

Right.

Tasha 1:51:09

Right. So in the documentary, we learn that Maxie sent Estefania's autopsy report on to six other doctors for review. And they all noted that she had a drug common for treating epilepsy in her system at the time of death. So additionally, she suffered from obesity and endocrine problems, which with the epileptic syndrome would have exacerbated the risk of cardiac arrest leading to death, which her autopsy report indicated. It just didn't have that one missing piece to make the final conclusion. The official autopsy report, like, couldn't it the official epilepsy diagnosis was missing because it hadn't been delivered by the doctors yet. So I just want to like go through these things. So we've got we've got the autopsy report that says that people are like, well, it says it was this unknown cause of death. But they've proven no it was something. It was something. We just didn't have that final piece to like click in. The police report, well, if we look at the language that was used, we have to agree with Maxi and Ricardo because the police and Veronica, they arrived, they saw the like the end of the showdown, right? But the police that arrive at the Gutierrez Lazaro house, they saw nothing. They arrive after a supposed alleged event. The report relies heavily on observation. The police found the crucifix on the floor, they found the brown liquid on the table, they heard a noise on the terrace, but they didn't observe anything making the noise.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:14

When the lights were off.

Tasha 1:53:15

Yes. And the language used is very emotional for a police report, which contributed to the media's ability to like run wild with it. Um, and we like we already stated it was the wild west of television in Spain. Shows like the Mississippi turned grief into spectacle, and they blurred the lines between journalism and sensationalism. Like you could turn on a show and they would be like with Estefania, they would be taking a real police report, and the psychic setting in on the couch would be claiming that they could channel Estefania's spirit on air.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:55

And they look like legitimate anchors.

Tasha 1:53:58

Yes. Yes. Ratings were guaranteed that way, and more ratings meant more money. So it just seems like in the story of Estefania, every time there's been a chance to get her story right, like with the medical report or with the police report or anything like that, there's been someone more interested in ratings, someone more interested in money. Even recently, while I was doing research, I watched an interview with one of the creators of the documentary. Um, and it was on a popular Spanish news program. I'm gonna use the word news in quotes here because I still I was so frustrated with the show. None of the reporters who knew that this woman was coming on had actually watched any of the episodes, and two of the three episodes of the documentary had already aired. So they they could have watched. Like, shouldn't that just be shouldn't you watch those things if you're gonna be interviewing the person who made like that? Just seems like a no-brainer to me. But then during the interview, first of all, they sent someone out to like try and get into the apartment, and he was like on site reporting about this spooky place that's been haunted, and then they kept spouting these old urban legends about the case while this documentary is out there trying to get a lot of the falsities of the story corrected, and I just felt so bad for this woman who was being interviewed because she could not catch a break. You know, she would say something about how the media had twisted it and and gotten the story wrong, and the people interviewing her were not even listening to what what she said, and they'd be like, but tell us what about the levitation? You know, it was like you're not listening to a damn word she's saying, and then they brought on a Catholic priest to drive home the danger of messing with Ouija boards. I mean, it was just like I I I could not, and then every time the case gets reintroduced to the media, Concepcion steps forward because she's still using the tragedy of her daughter's death to turn the cameras her way. She's like Norma Desmond, she is always ready for her close-up, Mr. DeMille. If you don't know that reference, you need to look it up. And unfortunately, and extremely sadly, that is the story of Estefania. Her life was cut very short and then twisted. And then twisted. And her story was not, it was less possession of a demon and more possession of the media and people who can make a buck. And I just I hope that she's been able to find like real rest, that her soul has been able to find real rest despite her legacy and her name being twisted just that people can make like a penny off of her, or her story being sold to the highest bidder. Like it's just it's really sad. But she was a real person, she was a real teenage girl who had real things that she loved, and she didn't deserve to be remembered for a fake story that never even happened. She should have been remembered for the way that she loved her brothers and sisters, the way that she took care of others, the way that she celebrated others, the things that she loved to do, that she loved to sew, that she was creative, that she was compassionate, that you know, those are the things that she should be remembered for, and that's unfortunately not the story that gets told about her.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:15

So she loved to sing. I don't know if you said yes.

Tasha 1:58:18

We talked about that in the first episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:25

And they brought on like this famous singer in Spain, and they sang the exact song with her parents on the stage.

Tasha 1:58:32

Yeah, and her dad was just crying.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:34

Oh, yeah, her dad was broken.

Tasha 1:58:35

Ugh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:38

That's I hope he's at rest. Yes, because I feel like he really loved her a lot.

Tasha 1:58:44

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we hope that you'll join us next time. Um, we're gonna be diving into the real twisty story behind a nightmare on Elm Street.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:02

Ooh. There's a real story behind that.

Tasha 1:59:06

There's a real story. Until then, like, subscribe, share. Look at me. I remembered to do it, but because I made a note for myself to do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:17

These and five-star reviews.

Tasha 1:59:19

Please and thank you. And from Matt, our brilliant editor, David, and me, thanks for giving Real Twisty a listen. We hope to catch up with you next week!