MFM Minisode 462

Speaker 1 This is exactly right.

Speaker 1 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 2 Claire Danes and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 2 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 1 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast and Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.

Speaker 1 The mini-sode.

Speaker 2 We're doing a themed episode this week, Creepy Neighbors. Some of you guys guys need to fucking move.
My God.

Speaker 1 These are not funny stories. There's a lot of people up on other people's porches for no reason.

Speaker 2 Yep. A lot of people leaving things for you that you did not ask for and do not want.

Speaker 1 Well, let's get into it. Let's.
You want to start? Sure.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 That was almost like re-rehearsed.

Speaker 2 I know. That was too smooth.
We're just, we're on the road and we're just killing it.

Speaker 1 We're just locked in.

Speaker 2 Okay, this one's called A Virgin and a Pear Tree.

Speaker 2 Hello, MFM ladies.

Speaker 2 I have been wanting to write this in for quite some time, but it's a long one with a lot of twists and turns, so it's taken me a moment to get my thoughts down in what I hope is a cohesive manner.

Speaker 2 When I was a sophomore in college in Alabama, I lived alone in a two-bedroom house thanks to my roommate transferring the week before school started. Hell yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 2 It wasn't in a bad neighborhood per se, but there were some creepy apartments next door that resembled an hourly motel. It's like everywhere in Los Angeles.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 In my backyard, my landlord had so lovingly planted a pear tree that would cover my car in such thick sap that I would have to hand wash my car in order to see out the windshield. Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 2 One afternoon while washing my car, a neighbor from the creepy apartments came outside to drink a beer. He started talking to me innocently enough in the beginning, but then shit got weird.

Speaker 2 He began to tell me he was a Vietnam War veteran and devoted himself to the service and therefore had never had a wife. His problem? He was saving himself for marriage, sir.

Speaker 1 That's your private business. Yes.
Take it to your pastor.

Speaker 2 Yes, this Lord knows how old man started talking to me about how he was a virgin and then starts commenting on my looks.

Speaker 2 I quickly created an excuse to get the fuck away from this conversation and locked myself in my house because fuck politeness.

Speaker 2 I wish I could say that's where it ends, but it gets weirder from then on.

Speaker 2 A flower pot full of cigarette butts would magically appear every time I walked out my front door as if someone were watching me go in and out of my house. Just fucking chain smoking and watching her.

Speaker 1 Like he was standing out there watching? I think so.

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 Weird notes would be left in my mailbox. And when I passed the virgin neighbor outside, he would ask if I had checked my mail lately and laugh uncontrollably.

Speaker 2 The worst was when my friend and I were sitting on my front porch eating boozed up Italian ice and a detective approached. At first, I thought I was about to get in trouble for my delicious treat.

Speaker 2 How did he know?

Speaker 2 But I quickly lost my buzz when he told me some girls down the street called 911 when they saw a weird man trying to break into my home earlier that day.

Speaker 2 Good for those.

Speaker 1 Yeah, for real.

Speaker 2 At the end of spring semester, on the day of my last final, I was sitting at my kitchen table eating breakfast.

Speaker 2 The window faced the creep apartments, and to my shock, they were quickly surrounded by SWAT teams and DEA officers.

Speaker 2 This perked me up quicker than any cup of coffee could, and my mouth hung open as they dragged my creepy neighbor out of his apartment in handcuffs.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, this man was running a full-blown meth lab in there.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure whatever happened to him because, needless to say, my mom was ready for me to get the the fuck out of there. I ended up transferring that summer and it was the best decision I ever made.

Speaker 2 Stay sexy and don't plant that pear tree, Aaron.

Speaker 1 So was he even a virgin?

Speaker 1 I mean, was he lying the whole time?

Speaker 2 Dang. We trusted him.

Speaker 1 We trusted that virgin.

Speaker 2 A meth lab. Like, that's so dangerous.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. In an apartment? Yeah.
Yeah, that's insane.

Speaker 2 Ooh.

Speaker 1 And also just that idea that then she's like, yay, I get this house to myself. Now I'm trapped in this house.

Speaker 2 Every time you walk out the door, there might be somebody. That's, I've, we've all done that.
It's just, it's like you're being held hostage.

Speaker 1 And just United Girls of the World calling the cops and, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 we're in it now. Yes, we are.
We're in it.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to read the subject line of this. It says, hi, MFM crew.
You asked for crazy neighbor stories, so I decided it was finally time to write in.

Speaker 1 My sister and I used to talk on the phone every week or so. She would mostly chat about her pets pets or her spouse, and then in parentheses it says in that order.

Speaker 1 But a couple of times she mentioned a particular neighbor who gave her hell along with a strong dose of both the heebies and the jeebies.

Speaker 1 Apparently it was not unusual for him to curse loudly or yell at passersby. So naturally he was pretty much outside in his garage or in the yard all the time.

Speaker 1 And then in parentheses it says, why can't creaky people stay indoors and yell at the TV like normal folks?

Speaker 1 What's so funny is it reminds me of we used to live out in the country. So it was like country roads and people would literally go 85 miles an hour as my sister and I are out there on our bikes.

Speaker 1 My father yelled at every car that sped.

Speaker 2 I was picturing your dad. Like there was something in your voice that was like, I'm familiar with this.
Yes.

Speaker 1 This is and it.

Speaker 2 Well, he wasn't wrong.

Speaker 1 He wasn't wrong, but I don't know how effective it was.

Speaker 1 I'm sure it was very soothing for him, though. So on several occasions, my sister and her dogs were the target of this yelling.

Speaker 1 This prickly grump would yell at her for her dogs doing a normal dog thing like walking in the grass or breathing too loudly.

Speaker 1 A few times she even saw him on the ground trimming the lawn with scissors and muttering to himself.

Speaker 1 Weird, but I guess if he's muttering to himself and not yelling at her, it's okay.

Speaker 1 I said something to the effect of, well, he sounds like a real delight, then suggested it might be a good idea to consider a different route for her dog walks, lest she get stabbed in the foot with his lawn scissors.

Speaker 1 We laughed and she agreed it would be best to avoid further confrontation and just let the crusty old-timer live out his life with his perfectly edged grass.

Speaker 1 My sister eventually moved to a different city with much nicer neighbors, none of whom used kitchen utensils on their lawns. And I never thought about the crosschety clipper again.

Speaker 2 I have a feeling I know what it is.

Speaker 1 I think you do. Oh my God, tell me.
That is until 2018 when a massive story broke and I heard the name of a familiar street on the news.

Speaker 1 Oh wow, someone has been arrested in my sister's old neighborhood. Wait, did they just say that the neighbors called him cantankerous?

Speaker 1 And he was known for swearing at people and crawling on the lawn to hand cut the edges. Holy ship, that grumpy bastard was Joseph D'Angelo.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I remember the scissor lawn scissor cutting.

Speaker 2 So wild.

Speaker 1 I scoured the articles until I found one with a photo showing the house number. And then in parentheses, it says, Don't dox folks, even serial killers.

Speaker 1 And then it says, and pulled up a map to compare my sister's old address with this one. It was less than 10 houses away.

Speaker 2 Holy shit.

Speaker 1 So she lived on the same block as this guy, it sounds like. The freaking golden state killer yelled at my sister.
Oh,

Speaker 2 oh, how fucking terrifying.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my sister was not a murderino and would probably have lost her mind if she knew she lived so close to an actual monster.

Speaker 1 But perhaps, fortunately, she died before genealogy caught up with her asshole of a neighbor.

Speaker 1 At least the world knows how intensely vile this man is, and I can only hope he gets everything he deserves. Stay sexy and avoid the creepy neighbor.
M.

Speaker 2 Oh my god.

Speaker 2 Don't miss Netflix's new series, The Beast in Me.

Speaker 1 It's a riveting psychological thriller from the team that brought you homeland.

Speaker 2 The Beast in Me follows acclaimed author Aggie Wiggs, played by Claire Danes, who has withdrawn from public life after the tragic death of her young son.

Speaker 1 She's unable to write and is a ghost of her former self. But Aggie finds an unlikely subject for a new book when the house next door is bought by Niall Jarvis, played by Matthew Rees.

Speaker 2 Niall is a famed real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance.

Speaker 1 Horrified and fascinated by this man, Aggie finds herself compulsively hunting for the truth, chasing his demons while fleeing her own.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The beast and me now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Speaker 2 Okay, this is just called Creepy Neighbor. Hi, murder friends.

Speaker 2 I will be keeping my name out of this, but shout out to my sister who also loves this podcast and then says their sister's name and then like goes on to do a lot of like details that I think, I'm not going to say the sister's name, essentially, because it's like, if you want to be anonymous,

Speaker 1 this is not the way to do it.

Speaker 2 Your sister has a very unique name. Okay.
When I was in college working on my master's degree in architecture, I was employed at a restaurant that was walking distance from my apartment.

Speaker 2 I lived on a main road in a town on the water where there was commercial space below and apartments above.

Speaker 2 One day when I was on my way to my car to go to school, I saw a note had been left behind on my windshield. It said,

Speaker 2 Ever look into someone in the eyes and instantly feel there is much depth, the kind of depth that can stop you in your tracks? Most days I see short-sighted emptiness in people's eyes, but not you.

Speaker 2 Eyes are the windows to the soul and yours runs deep. Question mark?

Speaker 2 I find it very rare these days and I thought it was worth sharing. End quote.

Speaker 1 You're reading this note next to your car and then you're just looking around.

Speaker 1 Seriously.

Speaker 2 I immediately took a picture of it and sent it to my boyfriend and was like, look at this note with no name left on my car.

Speaker 2 My partner said, oh yeah, I found one on your car last week and threw it away so you wouldn't be scared.

Speaker 1 Sir, sir, get it together.

Speaker 2 Like, what the fuck? I, of course, was confused and the detective in me started to think about who it could possibly be. I had no idea.

Speaker 2 A few weeks later, I was walking down the stairs of my apartment and a man popped out of nowhere, blocking my exit and standing in the landing inside where only the tenants should be.

Speaker 2 It was the renter of one of the commercial spaces below my apartment who would come into the restaurant with his daughters. His business was not open to the public yet, and I didn't know him.

Speaker 2 Besides that, he did look to be almost 40 and I was 22 at the time.

Speaker 2 He asked me on the spot if quote, I ever wanted to hang out sometime. I have plenty of wine in my unit and you could just knock on the door.
I sleep there most nights.

Speaker 2 I said no thank you with an awkward smile and left without further incident. I was working that month and got assigned to his table and told the bartender to please take his table.

Speaker 2 I told them what happened and showed her the note and how I thought he sent it and felt very uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 She said he was a townie going through a divorce and she had known him her whole life and agreed it was creepy. Thank God.

Speaker 2 She went over to talk to him, and I'm not sure what she said, but he pretended I didn't exist after that. And I was fine with that.
Fucking tell the bartender when you're uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's very smart. Right advice.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Nonetheless, it is very scary to have a creeper who knows where you work, live, and what your car looks like.

Speaker 2 Thank you to all those strong, badass bartenders and others who can stand up for those who are not good with confrontation.

Speaker 2 Even in dangerous situations, I usually told myself, well, that was weird, but they didn't physically hurt me.

Speaker 2 Like that time when a kid held a knife up to my wrist and I did not tell my mom, but my friend who was nearby me at the time told her mom later crying and the police were involved.

Speaker 2 Story for another time. My mom sent me to therapy to help me understand why I should have told somebody.
I was in it for the candy, I guess a therapy, and barely talked during my session.

Speaker 2 But now as an adult, I know that I was desensitized from the abuse I suffered from my father that blurred my lines. Sorry, this is a bit long.

Speaker 2 Love you guys and please ask for help, even if it makes you uncomfortable. I I believe now at the age of 27, I have the strength to fuck politeness.
Yes. Thank you for all that you guys do.

Speaker 2 SSDGM, Anonymous.

Speaker 1 Anonymous, I just want to say that for myself, saying stuff like fuck politeness is the kind of thing you develop when you're in your 40s and 50s. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like you get, you live through life and you live through those experiences. If you're in your 20s and that's not something that's familiar or comfortable for you, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 And that's great advice coming from you saying like get get someone else to help you.

Speaker 2 Totally. It's a hard thing to do.
Ask for help.

Speaker 1 But it also, the more you practice it, the more you realize a lot of times a creep like that or somebody that's like, they just have the wrong idea. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's just like, it's whether you set a boundary, which is everybody has hard times doing

Speaker 1 a hard time doing that sometimes. Or you find a bartender.

Speaker 2 Fuck yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Smart. Okay, look, we'll change the temperature a little bit right now.
Great.

Speaker 2 There's got to be some good neighbors, right?

Speaker 1 No, actually, that's not what's going to happen here.

Speaker 2 We asked for creepy.

Speaker 1 The subject line says, Karen asked for a hero senior dog. I give her a hero senior dog.

Speaker 1 Karen, exclamation part. Georgia, exclamation point.
The whole gang, exclamation point. Long time listener, first time caller.
Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 I've always lamented how I never really had a good hometown, but it turns out after listening to Minnie Said 318, I do. You asked for a hero senior dog story, and boy, do I have one.

Speaker 1 I was the youngest of my family, and my mom was a stay-at-home legend so me her and my sweet big newfoundland dog boo would spend a lot of time home alone together i'm going to show you this dog now oh my god please boo holy my god that is just like a ball of giant fur are you familiar with newfoundland dogs not really drool a lot of drool a lot of drool they're gigantic and they're big babies my parents took us to the san francisco dog show when i was like eight years old amazing and you get to walk through as they're like grooming the dogs and see every kind.

Speaker 1 And my sister and I got to the Newfoundland table and we were like, we begged our parents. We're like, it's good for the country and it could run around and see us.
It's like a sheepdog.

Speaker 1 Yes, but like a small horse.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they're from Newfoundland, Canada, and they swim in the ocean is what I heard.

Speaker 2 So they're. That's a kind face, too.
I know. They're so sweet.
They swim in the ocean. And they could like, you and your sister did all this research to present to your parents.

Speaker 1 We're like, we could bring her to the ocean and we could.

Speaker 1 So my sweet baby angel 10-year-old dog would never hurt a fly and was well known in our neighborhood as a gentle giant.

Speaker 1 We also had this old creepy neighbor who we used to joke about being involved in anything weirdly dark we could think of.

Speaker 1 One particularly dark winter night, creep neighbor had decided to, for reasons unknown, come over to our house while only me, I was 15 at the time, my mom, and Boo were home.

Speaker 1 He also, for some reason, decided to walk around the back of the house to our sliding glass door, even though our front door was much much closer.

Speaker 1 When my dog noticed someone at the back door, she perked up, and when she noticed it was him, she lost her goddamn mind. When I say I've never seen my dog flip her shit like this, I mean it.

Speaker 1 She hopped up from her deep slumber, teeth showing, hackles raised, near foaming at the mouth. She was barking so intensely, and her face was pressed up on the glass.

Speaker 1 Me and my mom were so shocked since we'd never even seen her chase a squirrel. So we just stood beside her and stared at him, not doing anything to make her stop.

Speaker 1 Needless to say, Creep neighbor turned and left in a fucking hurry.

Speaker 1 My dad went over that night after work and berated him for coming to our back door in the pitch black and for alarming me and my mom, as well as our sweet old dog.

Speaker 1 After that episode, my dog would bark incessantly at his car every time it drove by or at him if he got too close to the property.

Speaker 2 Wait, is this the Golden State Killer again? Oh no.

Speaker 1 This dog caught Joseph DeAngelo.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 She said, not today or any day, Creep. Years later, my parents moved into the city, but did hear some interesting news.

Speaker 1 It turns out that Creep was involved in some gross, creepy church activities, including some abuse claims, as well as general thievery.

Speaker 1 It just goes to show, always trust your gut and more importantly, trust your sweet old dog's intuition. SSDGM, Belle.
And then it says, P.S., I've attached a photo of my sweet guardian angel dog.

Speaker 1 She passed away almost nine years ago, and I think of her every time I choose to say fuck that to something that gives me that hell fucking no gut feeling.

Speaker 1 She was just really cute, and I wanted to share that with you and the MFM team. Isn't that cute?

Speaker 2 That's so sweet. Honestly, like, nothing has ever made me feel more safe than having a dog with me at home.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, you know, cookie's not going to fucking attack anyone, but she's going to bark her fucking head off.

Speaker 1 She knows what's going on. She lets me know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's priceless. Like, you can't ask.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 We accidentally cursed the neighbor. This one's long, but it's funny.
Yeah. Hello, MFM crew.
I thought you might like this story from my college days way back during the first Bush administration.

Speaker 2 When? What?

Speaker 2 My friend and I lived together in an off-campus apartment in a complex that was almost entirely college students.

Speaker 2 We all kind of hung out together, and my roommate had a fling with one of the neighbors. We'll call him Josh.
Things ended really, all caps, badly.

Speaker 2 I don't remember exactly what happened now, but she was very mad and upset, as 20-year-olds are, and we never hung out with him again.

Speaker 2 A day or two after they split up, I was at Barnes Noble, and in the Tchotchki section, where they had all the mini kits, Mini Zen Rock Garden, Mini Fashion Emergency Kit, et cetera. Remember those?

Speaker 2 I found the Mini Love Voodoo doll kit. Remember those? Oh, yeah.
Mini Love Voodoo Doll kit. I thought it would be hilarious to give it to my roommate.
And indeed, she thought it was hilarious.

Speaker 2 Let's pour some seven and seven and use it because what harm can a mini love voodoo doll really do? We were to find out. Ooh.

Speaker 2 I think we had a note he had written that she folded up and stabbed the doll with some pins, then put it in a mold of her teeth she had from some dental work. So teeth were biting the doll's neck.

Speaker 2 We had a good laugh and promptly forgot about it. Uh-oh.
Josh avoided us until he moved out a few weeks later.

Speaker 2 I heard through mutual friends that his Army Reserve Unit was called up to active duty not long after that, but never really heard much else about him.

Speaker 2 One day, almost a year later, I was homesick and he he signed on to AOL Instant Messenger, which he hadn't been on in a long time. Remember, first Bush administration.

Speaker 2 This seemed weird because last I had heard, he was deployed in Iraq. This was not long after the Iraq war started.
And in 2003-4, having access to AIM while deployed seemed insane.

Speaker 2 I messaged him because, well, why not? It had been almost a year and I was curious how he was doing. Josh responded and told me quite the tale.

Speaker 2 Apparently, right after he ended things with my roommate, he met a girl and they started dating and then got engaged, but she cheated on him and dumped him and he was completely heartbroken.

Speaker 2 He had been the victim of some sort of outrageous identity theft where he lost $6,000. I want to guess they put how much into his money which I was like, oh, yes.
$6,000 in $2000.

Speaker 1 In the early 2000s,

Speaker 1 $6,000,

Speaker 1 would it be like close to $9,000?

Speaker 2 10, 10, 12, 0.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And had to sue his bank. Then he got deployed to Iraq where he contracted meningitis and had to spend his 21st birthday in a field hospital.

Speaker 2 He was actually still in the hospital recovering, which is how he had internet access and was talking to me. Oh, whoa.

Speaker 2 My roommate came home while I was talking to him and I called her into my room to hear the tale of what happened to Josh.

Speaker 2 She arrived right when he wrote, quote, it all started when I ended things with roommate and I feel like maybe it was punishment for being such a jerk to her. Oh, he knew.

Speaker 2 God, that feels so good, right? I'm like, I was an asshole.

Speaker 1 It so rarely happens.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We looked at each other in horror as we both remembered the voodoo doll it was still where we had left it all those months before in the teeth we ran out of the room to grab it remove the pins and get rid of it how did the voodoo doll have such power we had just thought of it as a funny thing that was a little cathartic for my scorned roommate but not that it could actually curse anyone but do you think we could curse josh even accidentally without having it come back to us No, we could not.

Speaker 2 As it happened, this was shortly before Valentine's Day, and both my roommate and I got dumped by the guys we were dating out of nowhere just a few days later.

Speaker 2 Since then, we have both avoided any curses, voodoo dolls, or sending bad vibes to anyone. It's not worth the karmic backlash.

Speaker 2 I heard Josh got married a few years later, but we have lost touch with him and most of the friends we had back then.

Speaker 2 I talked to my friend/slash ex-roommate before sending this email, and we both hope he is doing well and send him good vibes now.

Speaker 2 Stay sagacity and don't curse anyone, even accidentally, Jay.

Speaker 1 Wow. It's like if you had taken out the voodoo doll part, would those things have happened anyway? Right.

Speaker 1 And then it's just kind of the focus of life or just like, but it does make sense where it's like, putting bad vibes in the world isn't a good idea.

Speaker 2 No, just try to avoid it. But when you're 20, that's all you do is like selling bad vibes to people.

Speaker 1 You just, you have experiences, then you feel so wronged, and then you want to change it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Whatever. All right.

Speaker 1 Here's my last one. The subject line is child of the 80s, 9-11, trash parents, creepy neighbor.
This story has everything.

Speaker 1 And it says, hello all, you're the best. Let's do this.
I grew up in a St. Louis suburb that was generally safe and quiet, but we had a neighbor across the street that creeped out all the kids.

Speaker 1 His house was run down, his yard was overgrown, and he had a giant bush with bats living in it.

Speaker 2 Okay, Dracula.

Speaker 1 There were rumors among the kids on the street that he had a giant dog living in his basement that was trained to attack anyone that walked into his yard.

Speaker 1 As a child of the the 80s, I babysat my younger siblings often, usually just while my mom ran to the store.

Speaker 1 My parents decided that at 11 years old, I was seasoned enough to babysit my two younger brothers, aged four and seven, for the evening as they went out.

Speaker 1 Around 9 p.m., I made sure all the doors to the house were locked. An 11-year-old.

Speaker 2 I don't know, though. I feel okay about it.

Speaker 1 You do?

Speaker 2 Maybe not. Yeah.
No.

Speaker 1 Sixth grade?

Speaker 2 Let's see. My nephew's 10 and my other one's like five.
No.

Speaker 2 Girls, though.

Speaker 1 Girls, maybe, but then I think about like Nora back then or just like I would just, and I'm sure my sister was like this, where it's like, you could go out to dinner all you want, but you're just like, ugh, what's going to happen?

Speaker 2 You don't know. I've got that weird like between,

Speaker 2 is it okay and is it not okay vibe? Like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think you need to be at least a freshman in high school.

Speaker 2 Okay. 13.
Let's go 13.

Speaker 1 13, 14. Yeah, because I think you have to make, well, you'll see.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Sorry. Around 9 p.m., I made sure all the doors to the house were locked.
And just that alone was so scary. And we piled into my parents' bed.

Speaker 1 My little brothers quickly fell asleep, but I lay awake with the TV on, nervous to be the official adult of the house.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're right. It's too fucking young.
Because something could happen. That's the thing I'm not thinking of.
Right? It's just like. It's something happened.

Speaker 1 For the hang, it's great. Yeah, absolutely.
But then if like, oh, a small fire starts over there.

Speaker 2 Now, what are we doing?

Speaker 1 Totally. So around 10 o'clock, I heard banging on the front door.
No. Right.
This was not normal knocking. It was pounding and banging.

Speaker 1 The banging started at the front of the house, and then it was moving closer to the back of the house where we were.

Speaker 1 As it was getting louder and louder in my heart, I just knew it was my creepy neighbor trying to get in to murder us all. The phone in my parents' room was a rotary phone.

Speaker 1 Remember rotary phones where you had to spin for each number?

Speaker 1 Let's hold on to that magic for a moment. I misdaled my neighbor's number at least three times, then I just went for 911.
The 911 operator could hear the banging over the phone.

Speaker 1 That's how loud it was. She stayed on on the line with me as I waited for the police to come to save us from my creepy, murderous neighbor.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 By this point, my brothers had woken up and they were also terrified.

Speaker 1 After what felt like an eternity, but was probably five minutes, the dispatcher told me that the police have arrived in front of my house, that they were shining a spotlight, and it was my parents.

Speaker 1 I had locked the front screen door, which had no key, and chain locked the back door so my parents couldn't get in.

Speaker 1 The police found my very pregnant mother sitting on our front porch reading a newspaper while my dad was banging on the door and all of our bedroom windows, thinking we were asleep and that he just needed to wake us up because waking up your young children by pounding on all their windows is a super great idea.

Speaker 2 Yell their names. It's dad.
Yeah. Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, guys. Hey.
It's your friendly neighborhood, dad.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. I was so embarrassed that I made my seven-year-old brother go unlock the door to let my parents in.

Speaker 1 They They thought this was hilarious and told me that I did the right thing by calling 911.

Speaker 2 Because if she got in trouble, I was going to be fucking furious.

Speaker 1 I know. It's like, you did this.

Speaker 1 This event did not stop my parents from using me as their free babysitter for many years to come. Stay sexy and don't call 911 on your parents when you're the one who locked them out, Natalie.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 I want people to email us

Speaker 2 about. how old is okay to babysit.
Yes. And I want parents of young kids now to tell me why they would never leave their fucking child alone to babysit.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Talk to us about how you're breaking the generational curse of you babysitting your three-year-old brother when you were nine by now not letting your 17-year-old leave the house without location service.

Speaker 2 I babysat an infant with my friend, a neighbor, when I was like 11. Yeah.
An infant. Yes.

Speaker 1 I babysat an infant and fell asleep on the couch because I had to get up at like seven in the morning to go. It was like a summer job.

Speaker 1 And it was like a two-year-old that was just sitting there playing with stuff. And I was watching it, and then I just went like that, and then like woke up.
Yeah, so like

Speaker 1 high pressure, but at the same time, you just don't get what the

Speaker 1 consequences are.

Speaker 2 Totally. I want to hear about floods, I want to hear about fires.
Why did you never get to babysit again? Oh, yes, we'll still cover these, it's not too late.

Speaker 1 No, we have to creepy neighbors, can go on forever for sure and stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Speaker 2 Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 Our senior producer is Molly Smith, and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

Speaker 1 Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi.

Speaker 1 Email your hometowns to myfavorate murder at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 Follow the show on Instagram at MyFavorite Murder.

Speaker 1 Listen to MyFavorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Or watch us on YouTube, search for MyFavorite Murder, and then like and subscribe. Goodbye.

Speaker 1 No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 2 Claire Daines and Matthew Rees find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 2 Reese plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 1 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this. Goodbye.
Goodbye.