Fright Court

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bill of Jesse Thorne.

This week, fright court.

Jesse files suit against her husband, Carter.

Carter says he grew up in a haunted house, but Jesse doesn't believe him.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

Are there ghosts,

Or

aren't there ghosts?

Wouldn't you really like to know?

I saw a ghost once, or I think I did, and it frightened me so much as it approached my bedside that when I screamed, no sound came out of my mouth.

Mysteries have always intrigued me to the point where I am determined to solve them.

So,

like Don Quixote, I set out on a quest

in New England to see if I could unravel the mystery of the hauntings.

Accompanying me on most of these sojourns was Brian the Monk,

a lay Franciscan who did a remarkable job of capturing some of these elusive spirits on film,

but our Odyssey wasn't as much frightening as it was fascinating.

We did, however, have a few creepy experiences as well as a few laughs, and we listened to many podcasts.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever.

I do.

Whatever.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that the show is now over?

He spent the entire time doing that obscure cultural reference.

Yes.

I could go on.

I could go on.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed in your normal voice, please.

Carter and Jesse, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you name the piece of

culture that I was direct quoting from until the very end when I made a reference to podcasts, which is non-contemporaneous with this piece of culture.

Jesse, not Jesse Thorne, Jesse

litigant.

Jesse with an I.

You can hear me pronounce it differently, right?

Jesse versus Jesse.

Obviously, I'm talking to you, Jesse.

Why don't you guess first?

I'm going to guess the haunted mansion at Disneyland.

The haunted mansion at Disneyland.

Where you're waiting in the line, Josh.

Oh, of course, yeah.

It's always my way out.

The stretching room, they call it.

I like that guess.

It's a good guess.

I'm putting in the book.

It's a dusty old cobwebby book because Halloween is approaching.

All right, Carter, what's your guess?

Based on the region that we're talking about in this podcast and some of the spooky nature of that area, Providence in general.

Right,

we're talking about New England.

New England.

Rhode Island specifically, by the way, Carter, which is where you're from.

Thank you for representing Lil Rhodie.

Finally, small state, big heart.

What'd you say?

Small state, big heart.

Small state, big heart.

Wow, is that a motto that I don't know?

Excellent.

It's not really.

All right, Carter's here pitching Rhode Island mottos.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course.

I don't know if you guys have heard about some of their marketing tactics, but I think they could use that.

You remember this little tune?

The biggest little state in the union, Rhode Island, Rhode Island, come and see.

That was on television a lot when I was growing up.

Yeah, that's classic.

I was like, no, I'm not going down there.

So you can't get me to go down there.

You're missing out, I think.

Exactly.

No, I'm going to say maybe Edgar Allan Poe, but I mean, or because he spent some time in Providence, or there's the...

I don't think Edgar Allan Poe drove around with a lay friend's father.

Oh, was there driving that

photos?

Guys, let's talk this through more.

All right.

I'm going to say H.G.

Lovecraft, the horror writer who wrote out of Providence.

It's definitely not H.G.

Lovecraft.

You might be thinking of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, H.P.

Lovecraft,

the famous Providentian horror writer

and racist.

No, this was

a book, and I'm going to show it to you here on our teleconference called Haunted Happenings

by Robert Ellis Cahill, one of

a whole series of slender little books that are sold up there in Maine at Perry's Nut House, including Witchs and Wizards, Ghostly Haunts, Marvelous Monsters, Mad Mysterious Men, Strange Sea Sagas, Finding New England Shipwrecks, Visitors from Outer Space,

and Naughty Navy.

That one, I think, probably is not for kids.

It's just a piece of junky old book that I got, Robert Ellis Cahill, and it features new photos of old coasts.

The person I was impersonating, of course, is the great New York City storyteller famous on the moth and a downtown fixture of New York theater and storytelling, Edgar Oliver.

Check him out.

Go check out Edgar Oliver on your YouTube, and you will see that he is a different kind of person.

But here we are now to hear this case.

Who seeks justice in this court?

Is it you, Jesse, with an eye?

Yes, it is me.

What is the nature of your dispute?

Carter has long contended that he grew up in a haunted house,

and I have two problems.

One, the evidence is sketchy at best.

And two, he doesn't believe in an afterlife.

So how can you believe in hauntings?

Right.

He just doesn't jive.

This is very exciting so far.

Carter, Jesse feels that there isn't strong evidence that the house you grew up in is haunted, unlike all those other

case-closed, obviously haunted houses with

absolutely no subjective interpretation possible.

They're definitely haunted.

The proof is there.

You grew up in Rhode Island.

Yes.

Tell me about your haunted house.

So I grew up on Halsey Street, which is right off of Benefit Street on the east side of Providence.

Okay.

And it was actually two homes that shared a wall and the front was at

the

duplex.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about, though.

Not exactly a row home because the houses are butt-to-but.

Kind of.

The famous butt-to-butt homes of Providence.

Hip-to-butt, I would say, would be, and I lived on the hip side.

But because the, because it was on a corner.

So you have the front of the house, which is 25 Benefit Street.

And then you have just up on the corner there, you have 7 Halsey Street, where I lived.

And, you know, I would say there was definitely some very haunting aspects of the home.

If you guys have ever folks have ever been into a situation where you kind of feel something, that hair on the back of your neck can rise up,

there were multiple.

How did you know I had only one hair on the back of my neck?

Well, I can give you a few if you want to borrow a couple.

You can.

Yeah, but so that feeling permeated the house in a lot of ways,

especially in the basement, but and especially at certain times of year,

you would kind of feel this spookiness, that hauntingness, especially when you were on your own, if there weren't other people around.

Right.

And so, you know, related to that, so this was, you know, the reason I talked about the front of the house is because it was at one point, you know, owned by the Unitarian Church and was a house of worship, but also education for some of the underserved of the community

before they renovated it into two different homes, uh, as it is today, and they and they stopped the church decided to want to own it after the grizzly murders, yeah.

Yeah, what what could this is the most unusual part of the argument?

The hair on the back of the neck, that is a classic haunting symptom, right?

I would not argue that the Unitarians are the spookiest of

people who denominations previously owned the house.

Well, if you said it was an abattoir before or something, you're like,

no, people were meeting together and embracing the good news about all faiths.

Hey, Jesse, you know, do you know

about a Unitarian exorcism?

Do you know how that goes?

How does it go, John?

If there's a young person possessed by the devil, you just go into the room and you read the New York Times.

Read the op-ed section of the New York Times quietly to yourself.

I'm looking at your home

not using my mental psychic powers.

I am actually looking at your own.

Yeah,

I'll tell you this story later.

Maybe I won't.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne without an eye.

Remind me about my psychic powers later, okay?

I'll try.

Okay, just send me a, send, you know, but don't say anything about it.

Just send me a message psychically.

Thank you.

This is a spooky looking home.

Did it have a purple door when you were growing up?

It did, actually.

My mother picked that

and that's maintained.

So, I mean, we left there

in the mid-90s.

Fantastic.

And now it is going to become a shrine and point of pilgrimage for Judge John Hodgman fans all around the region.

No, seriously, this is a private home now owned by someone else.

Yeah, go focus on that one Wendy's that John likes.

You just, you know, make a day of it.

You can go to the, you could probably probably go, hang on, let me see how far this is away.

You open this door.

This purple door.

You open this purple door

to the Wendy's in starred.

It's only a 53-minute drive.

You could do this whole thing in an afternoon.

All the important points of New England.

From Wendy's on Turnpike Road in Southborough, Massachusetts, 7 Halsey Street, Providence, Rhode Island.

I'll see you there.

Okay.

It is a classic New England home that, like many, looks like it could be haunted.

You describe a weird feeling.

Were you the only one in your family who felt this way about it, or were there others?

No, no, no, no.

So I live there with my mother and brother.

And they can also corroborate the spooky nature of the home.

My mother talks about how the ghost, as she called it, arrived generally around Christmas time.

I'm sorry.

What did she call the ghost?

She calls it a friendly ghost, actually.

Oh, okay.

You know, I was loving your mom for just calling it the ghost, but now,

so, okay, it's not, that's good, it's better than vengeful ghost.

She has a name for the friendly ghost.

His name is Clarence, which is an homage to It's a Wonderful Life, because he arrives around Christmas time.

And I mean, Clarence, the guardian angel, and it's a wonderful life.

Yep.

And I think she did that because we were, I mean, we were very small.

We moved in when we were like four and probably out when we were, you know, I think I was like 12 or 13.

Right.

And she was like, oh, you know, don't worry, it's Clarence.

It's Clarence, the friendly ghost.

And that Japanese girl who lives in the attic, whose neck is broken and comes down the stairs like a spider, that's

Zuzu with her little petals in her pocket.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So the way that I remember the ghost is it would arrive around Christmas time with, you know, like appliances turning on and off.

We had, you know, we had Christmas lights that would turn on and off.

And I know that's fairly typical with Christmas lights and old electrical outages and stuff right we also had old houses yeah old houses but we also had a tv that would come on and off uh and we also even had a radio that would in the basement which was the epicenter of the the hauntedness obviously for us uh that would come on and off and uh you know that radio had had no batteries in it right and i swear it was also not plugged in um when it when it was happening that's my recollections which is extremely spooky right yeah no i'm i'm feeling that for sure.

First of all,

tell me about the basement.

Is there a rec room down there, finished basement?

So we, yeah, we had this little, yeah, like basically rec playroom down there for like skateboarding and rollerblading and stuff like that.

And

we would, me and my brother would go down there a lot.

And that's where you would, if you were down there, even with somebody else, you would feel like there was somebody, something, you were being watched or something.

Right.

The ghost was watching you do all your sweet skateboard tricks.

Yes, exactly.

Jesse, you don't know this, but in

not a lot of New England homes, especially the older ones, have basements, but when they do, they're mostly half-pipes.

Got it.

Yeah, I'm surprised.

So the radio would come

on and off.

The radio would come on and off.

The TV would come on and off on the first floor.

The Christmas lights would come on and first floor.

Why am I saying come on and off?

Is that a Rhode Island thing that I'm picking up off of you?

I don't think so.

It's probably just me.

Turn off and on.

Turn off and off.

Yeah, they would turn off and on yeah look i grew up in brookline okay i got brains like andy kaufman i'm from brookline

turn off and on come on and off though i like that maybe that's a regionalism i like it yeah i don't know if it is i but yeah it could be um the the other side of that the the hauntingness was uh on a couple of occasions where my brother and i are roughhousing or fighting and my mother is trying to like rein us in right and when she would do that she would be be like, you know, like, come on, you know, break it up or yelling at us to lay off.

And then the house was also full of pictures of our family.

My mom comes from a big family.

They're, you know, then they've been in Rhode Island for ages.

And

the second floor of the house had a hallway with a bunch of pictures.

And pictures would fall off the wall, but only pictures of me and my brother.

And so we'd be roughhousing downstairs.

Mom would be yelling, trying to gain some control, and then our pictures would fall off the wall.

Yeah, but Carter, you were roughhousing.

It's right there in the name.

You were being rough on the house.

Rough.

You were shaking the house from the foundations, you two Rhode Island kids going at each other, roughhousing.

But the fact that it's only your photos falling off the wall.

Yeah,

why were the other photos not falling?

I have to say something.

Jesse, with an eye, you've been admirably restrained.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

But it is time to turn to you for your take on all of this.

What do you have to say?

Well, one point I would make about the pictures falling off is that his mom tends to just have a lot of pictures of her sons everywhere.

Like almost exclusively her sons.

We went.

She calls them her perfect sons, which they are.

They're wonderful.

But like we went to a small little beach cottage and she brought framed pictures from her house to the beach, like vacation cottage.

So to say that only their pictures fell off would just be to say that pictures fell off.

Right.

It's only their pictures.

There were other pictures on that wall.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about this week's Judge John Hodgman sponsor.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Jesse,

have you ever been in this house?

No, I've only been driven by this house, but

I wasn't around when Carter was 10.

Do you believe in haunted houses?

No.

I believe in the fun of a staged haunted house, which is part of why I'm here.

But no, I don't believe in real hauntings.

Okay, you don't believe in googo googo ghosts?

No, I don't.

All right.

Carter, did you ever consider, or Jesse, did you ever consider that Clarence the friendly ghost might be something your mom made up to entertain you yes thank you jesse carter did you ever entertain that thought yes i did on my side of that is that it was incredibly spooky in that house so you you know that that wouldn't be a good form of entertainment it would be a confirming your worst fears yeah it's spooked the heck out of me uh for for a really long time and so you would feel that and that doesn't seem like that's not the way my mom operates or i think she the way she would want the friendly ghost to operate carter did you have any reason to ascribe this spookiness that you felt to any particular thing other than the past presence of unitarians so i want to be clear like i'm i'm i was trying to set a picture of the the history of the home right it was built you know 150 years 1835 or something you know like obviously it's an old new england home and you know there's just a lot of life that's happened in homes like that right i'm not i'm not blaming the unitarians whatsoever because i think they're lovely.

But I, you know, I was saying that more is like, I mean, it's an old church, right?

Like, there's got to be some spooky factor in that, right?

We're just going to leave that on the floor or should we consider it?

So you're thinking maybe the ghost of Jesus?

Please excuse the blasphemy of my bailiff

because

Jesse comes in here, Jesse with an eye comes in here saying,

you don't believe in an afterlife.

Is that correct, Carter?

I have a hard hard time

proving that there is an afterlife to myself.

Yes.

Right.

Hey, guess what?

Join the club.

Would you describe yourself

as an agnostic?

I try not to sit on too many fences.

So no, I would not consider myself an agnostic.

All right.

Would you consider yourself an atheist?

I guess, I mean, I'm more closely aligned with atheism probably than any of those other, you know,

isms or sets of beliefs.

His primary belief is not to sit on fences.

Which is also just not accurate.

Oh, go on.

This is part of what I contend.

So

Carter went to a small liberal arts college in Patrick Dempsey's hometown.

You may have heard of it.

Lewiston, Maine.

Go Bob Cowboy, yes.

Bates College.

Bates College.

Yeah.

And Carter's a rhetoric and philosophy major.

And so like he lives his life on fences.

Like he lives to argue every point in the world.

That's his fun.

That's his pastime.

It's part of why I think he likes telling this story, which is like, hey, I don't believe in ghosts, but also I grew up in a haunted house.

Let's debate.

So let's debate, Carter.

You know, I don't mean to pin you down exactly on what ism you are.

Just one more, I have to ask.

Satanism?

You're into Satan, right?

Big time.

Okay.

Big time.

Hail Satan.

But you don't believe in ghosts, ghosts, and yet you claim to grow up in a haunted house.

You present your argument for how that could be.

Yeah, so I don't necessarily think the belief in an afterlife

has to be tied to the belief in a haunted house, right?

You know, there are a million different scenarios or situations where there could be an unexplainable event or thing or experience within this space, this home that I lived in, that are not is not necessarily tied to, you know, what happens to my consciousness or whatever after I bite the dust.

It could be anything.

And haunting does not necessarily mean afterlife.

And it doesn't necessarily mean

that I have to believe in any sort of ism.

It just means that I was in this place.

There was this really spooky factor.

There were these events that occurred.

And there was this feeling that I think most people understand.

It aligns as closely as anything as I can with a haunting.

Sure.

If I may interrupt you just for a moment to quote from Haunted Happenings by Robert Ellis Cahill.

Possibly, what are thought to be hauntings are merely the residue of intense emotions

placed in a spot or specific place many years before.

Even Einstein convinced other scientists that energy cannot die, and you and I, Carter, Carter, are energy.

Does that sum up basically the argument?

Ah, yeah.

I mean, it's not too far away from me.

Well, no, I mean, it just goes to show this was published in 1992, 1992.

Carter, you're saying that the house was haunted, but not by ghosts?

Ghosts, I'm looking at the dictionary.

Ghosts are defined as spooky spirits who used to be alive, but now they're dead.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ghosts as spooky spirits who used to be alive that are also sandwiches.

What is haunting if it's not ghosts?

That's what ghosts do and that's what haunting is.

I mean, well, as Judge John Hodgman was just talking about, it's energy.

Yeah.

Right?

It could be energy of a different reality touching our reality.

It could be a dimensional traveler.

Yeah, exactly.

Maybe we're talking about, you know, some sort of, you know, like interstellar.

Mr.

Mitzopitalik.

Well, well pronounced, Jesse Thorne.

That was incredible.

It's taken me 50 years to get that down.

I still only get it 50% of the time.

He's a trickster bad guy from Superman that lives in another dimension.

Yeah, he comes around and he causes all kinds of shenanigans and Superman has to get him to say his name backwards to go back to his other dimension.

It could be a mitzopidalik.

He's probably a Unitarian.

Jesse, these all seem like very compelling arguments for why Carter might have gotten spooked out in his basement half-pipe when the radio came on.

I feel like we weren't listening to the same step.

Like, it just doesn't seem that compelling to me.

Well, just to say that it just, I think that his argument that what we term as hauntings might be some phenomenon that is beyond our understanding or perception, but is not necessarily dead people.

Sure.

My theory of ghosts, of course, are time travelers from the distant future who are coming back to observe us, but they get the wardrobe wrong because they feel like everyone dresses like gangsters or whatever, or like cowboys.

Yeah.

I like that one.

Yeah, it's pretty good, right?

Yeah, I mean, I would say this is the first time that I've heard this argument.

So, this all started when we first started dating, and he told me this story.

And I said, Oh, do you believe in God?

And he said, No.

And I said, Do you believe in an afterlife?

And he said, No.

And I said, So these are ghosts.

And he said, Yes.

And I said, Well, how do you believe in an afterlife and not, or not believe in an afterlife and believe in ghosts?

And so so this is new.

He has evolved his belief in what this could be.

This was when you first started dating?

Yeah.

Did he break out the haunted house on the first date?

I don't think it was the first date.

Jesse likes scary stuff, and I don't like scary stuff, so I had to break it out pretty early to avoid the haunted houses going to or the scary movies.

I got you.

Now, the second question I have is, this is the first date, or early dating.

Now you're married.

How long have you been together since that first dating?

Nine years.

Nine years.

And this is the first time you've heard the interdimensional traveler thesis.

Yes.

Carter, you got to do better.

That's not true.

Well,

Jesse,

you like scary stuff.

You said so yourself.

What's your favorite scary movie?

I really like Scream.

Yeah, it's a great one.

Because it's like great camp.

And yeah, it's super fun.

I love all the Scream movies.

In fact, I think that's probably my favorite.

Do you like ghost movies?

I like anything scary,

which is part of the problem is that Carter won't watch scary movies.

It's almost Halloween, and we have all of these really great haunted houses and outdoor haunted trails, and we can't go to them because he's scared.

Why?

Because of the trauma of growing up on the Halsey Road?

Apparently.

I do use that as

one of my many reasons.

I do not like ghost movies whatsoever.

And like, and haunted houses, that amount of adrenaline or whatever it is, the feeling from that just drives drives high anxiety.

Not good times for me.

But he'll watch Interstellar.

He's not like scared of interdimensional travel.

I never saw Interstellar.

Oh, sorry.

Spoiler alert, I guess.

I didn't really watch the end.

I fell asleep.

He told me about it.

I did.

But

from what I've heard about that movie, it's not a real adrenaline pumper.

No, no, I would not say so.

No, but like, so so he's not scared of that, but he is scared of ghosts.

You are demanding a certain emotional consistency from your partner.

Yes.

That I think by having been with him for nine years, you should know is never going to happen.

Jesse, do you think that Carter tells this story to impress people,

to pretend to be someone perhaps braver than he is?

I have a couple of theories.

One is

that I'm going to get in trouble.

People of New England, 30% of their personality is talking about the weather or complaining about the weather.

And so when they move out to San Diego, where it's beautiful and sunny all the time, they have to fill that 30%.

And so a lot of them just fall back to like talking about the funny nuances of New England.

Not that why would you ever do what?

I've never heard

such a thing.

Is that a thing that happened?

Jesse Thorne, back me up.

That's never happened on this podcast, at least.

I wasn't paying attention.

I was thinking about burritos.

Oh, I like this theory, though, Jesse.

He's trying to bring a little New England into San Diego.

Jesse, where did you grow up?

I grew up here in San Diego.

San Diego.

Interesting.

Yeah, nothing's older than like the 70s.

Right.

Which is why the ghost story is interesting because you have, you know, like the fact that there are actually homes built in the 1800s that are not, you know, missions.

Well, wait a minute.

You're talking about ghost stories are interesting intrinsically or your specific ghost story?

I think ghost stories in general are interesting.

Yeah, Yeah, because yours is pretty boring.

Sorry.

Sorry, Carl.

No, no, it's not the most exciting.

A scary feeling in the basement.

The people

from New England, I know what you're talking about.

It's an intense feeling to be in a basement and be scared for sure.

It happens.

So, Jesse, what are your damages here that you're claiming?

Why does this bother you?

What does it mean to you that he keeps bringing this up, that you would bring him to court or fake court?

Okay.

Or ghost court.

Well, one, it does, yeah, ghost court.

It doesn't make any sense to me, so that's

annoying.

And I can't go to haunted houses with somebody that I really like hanging out with.

I can't enjoy one of my favorite seasonal pastimes because he's scared for a reason that I think is silly and not true.

Yeah, but even Carter admits that

his haunted house family stories

is just a part of

the problem of him just getting scared from things.

Right, Carter?

You're not out here claiming that Clarence the friendly ghost is the one who put you off of watching Saw or whatever.

No, no.

And I will say, like, I'm willing to watch most of the scary movies.

I focus on the spooky, like the exorcism.

Those scary movies are much more my, you know, like off-limits area.

What about the shining?

Like the shiny movie?

No, no, not at all.

Not at all.

Yeah, that's a very scary one.

All right.

Yeah.

I should never have watched it all the way through.

And you watched all of Interstellar?

Wow.

Carter, when you were a kid, were you comforted by the stories of Clarence the friendly ghost?

I think my mom did a great job of

making sure we knew that the ghost was not there to harm us.

See, the guy said ghost again.

That's okay.

Ghost is a common word that we can use.

We understand that you're talking about an international travel or a spooky spirit that used to be alive and now it's dead.

So if I were to order in your favor, Jesse, what would you have me order?

I would request that Carter either firmly acknowledge the existence of an afterlife.

Because again,

this whole like multi-dimensional aspect of it is new, and it's not how he traditionally presents it to people when he tells this story.

Let me give you a little history lesson.

The multiverse has been around for a long time.

In the context of this very specific story,

it's new.

And so Carter should either have to acknowledge that he does believe in some sort of afterlife or carrying on of energy and just get clear on that, or

he has to stop telling this story because it's not true.

I didn't ask if you believe in an afterlife, Jesse.

I do not.

Yeah, and you're not, there's no adorable Rhode Island hemming or hawing in that one.

It's like, no.

No.

You appreciate precision in your life.

I do.

Yes.

That might be my fault.

Right.

I don't know what your careers are, but Jesse, I think you're a scientist who also is a surfer.

And Carter,

you're a creepy gravedigger who does some errands for local Providence mafiosi from time to time.

Remarkably close on both fronts.

Yeah.

How close did I get, if you don't mind my asking?

I'm in sales and marketing in the cannabis industry.

Wow.

And I work in software.

I'm the general manager of a software development agency.

You know what's going to happen is, you know, Jesse, you're part of the biggest economic sector in the United States right now.

You're the new, new, new money.

You're going to go to Newport, Rhode Island, and buy a mansion.

I'm a big fan of Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Hey, I was there.

Hey, we were just there too.

Well, I mean, I was there as a child.

Oh.

Yeah, I was there as a child with Timmy McGonagall and his mom.

And then I was, I guess it must have been like nine or ten and I drowned.

Are you a ghost?

Yeah.

You didn't know that?

Shoot.

Oh, there goes my argument.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He used to be alive.

Now he's dead.

Yeah.

Dictionary definition of a ghost.

Carter's going to leave now.

No, see, I'm a friendly ghost, Carter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know a guy named Clarence?

That jerk.

He's constantly talking about being friends with Bruce Springstone.

Carter, what would you have me order if I were to rule in your favor?

So I would like Jesse to have to admit that these things can exist

even in contradiction to one another, and that I'm allowed to hold on to all my beliefs.

Here's one other thing that I've been trying to figure out, but I want Jesse to endeavor to explore the otherness or the unexplained in some sort of way so she could potentially take some of this contradiction that I have and apply it to her life as well.

Would you say that you reject the paranormal, Jesse?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're a realist.

What you see is what you get.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're like an oh, no, Ross and Carrie listener.

Oh, that's a great show.

I love that show.

It's a terrific show.

Carter, when you want Jesse to embrace the other side, obviously you want her to join you in the Church of Satan, which is an atheist organization that does not believe in the devil, by the way.

But what are you talking about?

You want to go on like Bigfoot hunts together?

You want to go to Area 51 and look for UFOs?

Yeah,

you know, I would say

like

either of those would work, but you know, there's,

you know,

the difficult thing with that is it's like, I don't think like a haunted house tour would do it.

Why not?

I mean, Shia wants to go to a haunted house.

Well, okay, so I think Carter wants to argue.

That's like his, it's his favorite thing.

He's like a rhetoric major.

He's like, he like loves the debate.

Your premise is he loves to argue because he went to, he's a rhetoric major from Bates College.

He loves to argue because he's from Rhode Island.

It's a New England affectation.

I understand.

Okay.

But I think that's part of it.

Like he just, he loves a debate, and I just refuse to debate this.

And I think it really bugs him.

But I also would love to get you over to my side.

So, and you can't, obviously, you can't go experience what I experienced at this house, house, you know, years and years ago, but you could try to experience something, you know, similar or different that could help you, you know, kind of grasp the unexplainable.

I do have a relatively recent story that leads me to believe that what Carter is asking would not actually happen.

We were in Little Compton, and that house is like 120 years old or something crazy.

The house that you were staying in in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Yes, it was like a chicken coop that they just kept adding to.

Right.

It was like something crazy.

And I was upstairs.

We had just put our kids down to sleep.

And there was a door that was like opening and closing and opening and closing.

And Carter was downstairs.

And I text him.

And I was like, I think there's ghosts up here.

And I was like, hey, can you come help me figure out which of these doors, like what's happening?

And he's like, no.

He literally texted me back, no.

Because he was too scared.

Yeah, because he was scared.

So I had to walk around and like figure out there was a window open.

But so I'm not going to be, I've already gone through my haunting.

So this, I'm not saying we do this this together you just want to send your wife into a haunted situation full of spooky ghosts to teach her a lesson about how creepy real ghosts are

um i i don't necessarily first of all they could be friendly ghosts uh second of all i'm not saying it necessarily

your mommy was lying to you clarence is not friendly

He's friendly with Bruce Springsteen.

Yeah, that's true.

But everyone loves the boss.

Yeah.

All right, I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I am going to go into the mysterious red room underneath the basement stairs that weren't on the original blueprints of this house.

I'll give it some thought.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Jesse, how do you feel about your chances in the case?

I feel okay.

There's like the New England thing I have to contend with.

I think that that put me at a disadvantage from the beginning.

You think Hodgman's in the bag for the New England litigant here?

I mean, isn't he?

I mean, Carter didn't bring up any special New England secret code words as far as we know.

Carter, how do you feel about your chances?

I think my ask for Jesse to have to endeavor to experience that like otherness is a pretty tall order, and I don't think that will be given to me.

So,

yeah, from that perspective, I don't think it's very good.

Well, we'll see what what Judge John Hodgman's verdict is when we return in just a moment.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Please rise as Judge Sean Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

First of all, Jesse Thorne, thank you for that psychic message reminding me to tell my story about psychic powers.

I think I've told this story on the podcast before, so forgive me if you've heard it, but Jesse and Jesse and Carter, you've listened to the podcast, so maybe you you have.

But

my

book editor, Brian Tart, I have two book editors, Brian Tart and Sean McDonald.

Brian are both great friends, both great editors.

Brian bought an old, old home in upstate New York,

and he was concerned about it being haunted.

And I said,

wow, really?

Because I'm not afraid of no ghosts

and I'm not happy about it.

I would love to believe in go-go-go-ga-ghosts as the original Merriam-Webster dictionary definition defines them as dead people who are floating around with unfinished business on this world.

Because if I could believe in ghosts,

then I would be forced to consistently believe in an afterlife of some kind.

And what is one of the great sadnesses of my growing old is my growing certainty that probably there is nothing after we die.

I guess I'll find out one way or the other.

That's called agnosticism.

And I was sort of, I was like, okay, Brian, that's funny.

I didn't know that you believed in ghosts.

He said, yeah.

And I'm like, well, what are you going to do about it?

He said, well, it's okay.

One of my authors is a very prominent psychic.

And I called her and I said,

I don't remember the name of the person, but we'll just say it's Barbara.

Barbara,

I bought this very old house and I'm concerned that there might be ghosts in it.

Would you evaluate it and take a reading?

And she said, sure, I will.

What's the address?

And he gave it to her.

And she finished writing down the address.

And there was this pause on the line.

She goes, no, it's fine.

There are no ghosts there.

And Brian said,

Aren't you going to come go to the house?

She's like, why?

I'm psychic.

That's how it works.

But even though I am a non-ghost believer in the traditional sense of ghosts, I get why Brian could be scared because houses in the Northeast are older and they're scarier than houses in San Diego.

I find it really interesting that the Southern Californians,

my friends who really get into Halloween in Los Angeles and elsewhere, have this fascination

with

the sort of

idea of a New England autumnal

Halloween in leafy suburbs with those kinds of old houses in them and kids going door to door and everything else, because you don't have it.

But I've had it and it's genuinely scary.

It's really scary.

And the other thing that I have to say is about ghosts is even though I feel pretty confident in my belief that ghosts are not dead people who are floating around with unfinished business, part of being an agnostic to me and part of being someone who believes in science is that you have to accept that there may be things beyond the limits of your perception that you don't know about yet.

I mean, that's what germ theory.

was and and is, right?

We couldn't see the germs until

Paul Rudd learned how to shrink down real small, and then he could see the germs.

That's how they proved it.

Yep.

Right.

Yep.

So I think probably there is nothing really going on

at Seven Halsey.

Road or street?

Street.

Seven Halsey Street in Rhode Island.

I feel like there are a lot of explanations that are not paranormal at all.

Right?

Which are just like two

young boys roughhousing in body and mind, getting themselves worked up over stuff and getting confirmation bias anytime there was a power surge in the house.

Like, oh my gosh, I knocked this photo of myself off the wall.

Am I doomed for death?

Or am I just clumsy because I was carrying a big tray of stuffies from the kitchen?

It's a Rhode Island thing.

Stuffed clams.

Yeah, boy, boy.

Yeah.

One of the things about Judge John Hodgman that has settled law, of course, is that people like what they like.

And unfortunately, you are both making a request that violates that law.

You're both asking for someone to like something that they don't like or unlike something that they do like.

And not just about movies and ghost stories, but also about very core belief systems about

what is real and what is not real.

It's not fair, Jesse, for you to ask Carter to admit to an afterlife that he doesn't believe in.

It's not fair, Carter, for you to throw Jesse Jesse some tennis balls tied to a rope and try to drag her to the other side.

A paranormal belief.

But we can't just leave it as a stalemate.

You both have to be punished.

So, what am I going to do?

We have unfinished business.

This is why ghosts hang around on this earth.

They have unfinished business.

And we have to cleanse the house of your marriage.

And there is an obvious way to do it.

You have to go to the house.

This is what you do in every horror movie.

You have to go to the house and cleanse the spirit, by which I mean knock on the door or call ahead

and say, I used to live in this house.

I would like to go in it again.

Now, if the current owners say, I'm so sick of you and people from Judge John Hodgman knocking on my door,

no.

Then back away.

But Jesse, you want to go to a haunted house.

This is the one you're going to go to.

Great.

This is the one that Carter needs to go to.

You're going to go into that basement and you're both going to see if you feel anything there.

And then drive 53 minutes north to the Good Wendy's in Southborough.

Enjoy civilized Massachusetts.

And if your feelings have not changed, then you bury this thing.

And if one of you does change your mind about whether or not this house is haunted, then you're in alignment.

And then, of course, if you're both killed down there by the ghost, I have no liability.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Jesse, you sound like you're prepared to visit this haunted house.

Yes, I would love to.

I mean, like I said, I love New England.

I think it's great.

I'm fascinated by Carter's upbringing.

I just think it's like the cutest that he grew up in like downtown Providence, and I just imagined him as a little kid there.

I love going back there.

I mean, I can understand your perspective on this, Jesse, especially since there's no Elvira show at Knott's Berry Farm anymore.

You got to find something to do in October.

That's exactly right.

Carter, how are you feeling?

I feel good.

I'm also very excited to go back to this house and knock on the door.

I think that's a really good idea.

And I'm a little, I mean, I'll even say, like, you know, you know, walking down into that basement, there's going to be, you know, there's still a little spook to that for sure.

Jesse, Carter, thanks for joining us on the Judge John John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

In just a moment, we'll have Swift Justice.

John, did you know that they do, you're from New England, I'm from Southern California, they do have ghosts in San Diego.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they're called California ghosts.

It's just a regular ghost with french fries in it.

Okay.

I don't even know.

I don't even know what that refers to.

There's a California burrito.

It's just a burrito with french fries in it.

They put french fries in there.

It's a San Diego food.

Yeah.

It's like the stuffies of San Diego.

The Stuffies of San Diego.

We want to thank Steve Chiabatone for naming this week's episode Fright Court.

If you want to name a future episode, follow us on Twitter for naming opportunities at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

While you're there, you can also hashtag your Judge John Hodgman-related tweets, hashtag JJ JJHO.

So, Jesse, may I say?

You can hashtag all of your tweets, hashtag JJHO.

It doesn't have to be related to Judge John Hodgman.

All your hot takes, hashtag them.

Let's get JJHO trending.

Just, just hot takes.

Exactly.

You can also join the conversation over at the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Or, you know what?

Talk about marbles, marbles.reddit.com.

I joined that Reddit recently.

Having a lot of fun hearing different marbles words.

Evidence from today's episode posted on our Instagram account at instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to follow us there.

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, now Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with quick judgment.

Dyson says, how long can I keep spaghetti leftovers in the fridge?

My partner wants to toss anything older than five days.

I feel I have closer to a fortnight, if not more.

Wow.

Well, the use of fortnight suggests that Dyson may be in the UK,

and I'm not sure what spaghetti is there.

I will say this, a fortnight

is too long to keep any food in your refrigerator.

I think it gets a little rank after a while.

Five days is a pretty good cutoff, I would say, for spaghetti and most

prepared entrees, but

you know,

when you cook pasta, or pasta, as you might call it in the UK, it freezes pretty good.

Freezes pretty good.

But just eat your spaghetti.

Yeah, just eat your spaghetti.

Just eat your spaghetti already.

Don't wait for two weeks, Fortnite.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfun.org/slash JJ HO or email them to us at hodgman at maximumfun.org.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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