HAUNTED: Surrey Ghost Car with And That's Why We Drink

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Speaker 10 When it comes to ghosts and hauntings, we've come across a lot of different theories on this show.

Speaker 10 One of my personal favorites is the idea that ghosts are residual energy trapped in space.

Speaker 10 Almost like how smoke will hover in a room with stagnant air, just waiting for for an open window to escape.

Speaker 10 But until it does, it sort of lingers there, existing in this stasis, like a snapshot of a moment that's already passed.

Speaker 8 Which got me wondering,

Speaker 10 is this what people are actually experiencing during a haunting? A push from a force they can't see? A shadow of a stranger sitting on a bed? The disembodied sound of laughter from another room?

Speaker 10 Is a haunting just a moment that happened once upon a time in that same space, replaying over and over again until it finds a way to escape?

Speaker 10 If you asked the people of Surrey, England back in 2002, they'd probably say we hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 10 Because that December, multiple people witnessed what was later referred to as a ghost crash on a local road. A maroon car swerving and losing control before driving into a ditch.

Speaker 10 Except when the police arrived, they found no sign of a collision from that day.

Speaker 10 They did, however, find evidence to suggest a maroon car had crashed there, claiming a life months before.

Speaker 10 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural with a Twist.

Speaker 10 Because today, Rasha and Yvette have a very special Halloween surprise for you.

Speaker 1 Welcome back, y'all.

Speaker 2 I'm Yvette Gentile.

Speaker 10 And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecaro.

Speaker 2 And today, you are getting double the trouble. As a spooky Halloween surprise, we have invited our friends, M Schultz and Christine Schieffer from Wood.

Speaker 2 And that's why we drink.

Speaker 1 Welcome, y'all.

Speaker 1 Thank you for having us. Thank you so much.
And immediately, a shiver went down my spine. Your speaking voices on podcasts, they're so powerful.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 As soon as you said welcome or whatever, I went, oh my God, there are so much fun. Yeah, when we started our podcast, people were like, Em, your laughter sounds like a dolphin or Elmo.

Speaker 1 And we were like, oh, that's rude.

Speaker 10 That's what's so funny because we started in True Crime with Root of Evil and then Facing Evil is also supernatural. So we've always been very like podcast voiced.

Speaker 1 I'm like, what do you mean you can't? I'm like, what do you mean you can't use sister voices giggling like your sisters giggle

Speaker 10 but well done you immediately um we're hooked yes so honored you're both here i'm already obsessed with you same likewise yay yay well i think we have the perfect topic for all of us to talk about today and tell the so supernatural listeners Because of course, I know we have all covered a lot of paranormal stories on both of our shows.

Speaker 10 And we thought today's case would be a great icebreaker for a discussion on a very niche corner of the haunting world and that's ghost cars and passengers oh very exciting

Speaker 2 okay so do you guys have any stories of your own about this I do.

Speaker 8 Yes, we do. Not on purpose, but I like to think I was named Christine after the haunted car.

Speaker 8 So I do sort of feel like a connection to that, even though my mom was really annoyed when she realized that that was like the connection. Oh, like

Speaker 8 the murder car, everybody said when I was born in the 90s.

Speaker 1 I don't know the story of the murder car, Christine.

Speaker 8 Oh, it's a Stephen King novel called Christine, and it's this car that kills people. And my mom, being a German immigrant, was like, this is a nice name.

Speaker 8 And then like apparently in the heyday of that book and the movie and people were just like, oh, I get it.

Speaker 1 Like the like the

Speaker 1 murder car.

Speaker 8 And my mom was like, really not that, though.

Speaker 1 Can we not? I can't believe so many people had the bravery to just say that.

Speaker 8 I have no idea, but I take it as now like a badge of honor, but I don't think my mother really appreciates that. So that's kind of where I come from on this.

Speaker 8 But I do actually have a personal experience I'll share at some point about

Speaker 1 like a ghost leak car experience. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Duties, duties. Well, it sounds like we have a lot to talk about today.
So let's just kick things off with one spine-tingling story that I just cannot get out of my head.

Speaker 2 And that is the case of the Surrey ghost car.

Speaker 10 Picture this. It's a cold December night, a little after 7 p.m., so the sun's already set.
You're driving southbound on a six-lane highway coming home from work.

Speaker 10 You live in a little English town in the county of Surrey, about 50 minutes south of London. There's nothing but cars and trees on either side of you, but you can see an off-ramp ahead.

Speaker 10 So you put on your turn signal and start to merge. When suddenly you hear tires screech right next to you.

Speaker 10 Out of nowhere, this small maroon car just zips right by you, just barely missing your passenger side mirror. It veers off the road, disappearing into a ditch.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 You slam your foot on the brakes in time to hear a brutal crash.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 10 You can't see the car anymore, but its taillights cast an eerie haze in the dark, cold fog.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, of course, your heart is literally pounding out of your chest.

Speaker 10 And that's when you call the police.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that is, and I'm glad that you walked me through all the steps because I'm like, that I think that's exactly what I would do. Except I'd also be crying and maybe calling my mom too.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Although our mom has passed away, so I'd be calling Yvette. Oh, no.
Okay, well, you can still call her ghost, though. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can call my mom. She's still dialing mom's number.
Help me.

Speaker 1 Yvette would be calling mom first.

Speaker 8 Yeah, no, but that, okay. I like, that's terrifying.
I know we're talking about ghostly stuff.

Speaker 8 So, but my thought is always like, if you see that or experience that and hear it and see it, like, that's so traumatizing. And then

Speaker 8 it being a, you know, paranormal event, not to spoil anything, but like that sucks then, because then afterward, you feel like, oh, well, now it looks like

Speaker 8 it was just a ghost. And everyone's like, ah, it was just a ghost.

Speaker 1 But like, you witnessed a car crash, like a really traumatic crash. A really bad one.
Like, you probably, you, I would be assuming, oh, I just watched someone not be here anymore.

Speaker 2 Let's get back into the story because this isn't just some role-playing exercise. This actually happened on Wednesday, December 11th, 2002, in that English county of Surrey.

Speaker 2 Local police received not just one, but several calls about a maroon car that ran off the road on the A3 highway. And first responders arrived on the scene at around 7.20 p.m.

Speaker 2 And a few witnesses supposedly they had hung around and pointed out to where the car had slid into the ditch. But when the patrol officers went to the edge of the road, guess what? They saw nothing.

Speaker 2 They saw no car, no taillights, not even a skid mark on the highway or a broken twig to mark the spot where it had plunged over the side oh like what right right so really if i were one of the cops i'd be like you put sent us to the wrong spot where is the actual car yeah exactly like as one of the witnesses like stop gaslighting me world i don't know like i just saw that i swear Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 So the police probably thought, okay, it's dark. Maybe we just missed something.
So they decided to do another search in the daylight that following morning.

Speaker 2 And that's when, about 20 yards away from where they started their search, they saw a little bit of painted metal poking through the bushes.

Speaker 2 They pulled back the branches and that's when they found a maroon Vaxal Astra, which is a pretty standard compact car, buried beneath layers of underbrush.

Speaker 2 But it's the car's condition that got the police's attention.

Speaker 2 Right away, it was clear this car hadn't swerved off the road the night before, like many of the callers reported seeing.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 2 this had been there for a long time, y'all. I'm talking months at least.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they could tell because the astral was now rusty and covered in plants. And not like the plants had fallen on top of the car.
These plants had literally grown over the car.

Speaker 2 The keys seemed to still be in the ignition.

Speaker 2 Because when the officers tried to turn the car on, the battery was dead.

Speaker 9 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 But the windshield was intact, but it had a giant spider web crack from the impact.

Speaker 2 And get this, get this.

Speaker 2 The driver's side door was caved in and jammed shut, but the passenger door was open, suggesting the driver might have crawled out after the crash this is so disturbing i know right a few feet away halfway up the embankment is where the police found the body of the driver oh no and was this body the body was skeletonized it had been out there so long oh no no so if it's skeletonized it means it's like really decomposed like really yeah yeah as if a car is rusting I mean, it's the same degree.

Speaker 1 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 And if weeds are growing up through the car, it has been out there possibly months. This is so creepy.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 10 And you've never heard of this before, right?

Speaker 2 That's right. You guys don't know about it, okay?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 10 Not like the Christine murder car.

Speaker 1 I mean, right, that's your named after.

Speaker 1 I got to say, one of my best friends grew up in Surrey, and I'm pretty offended. I've never been told.
I'm pretty offended on her behalf. Like, what the heck? We've had enough sleepovers.

Speaker 1 They had prime time to tell me a scary story from their hometown.

Speaker 10 Well, the police end up running the plates through vehicle registration, and they learn the car belongs to a 21-year-old named Christopher Chandler.

Speaker 10 Chandler, apparently, was already in the police database for being a suspect in a robbery.

Speaker 10 But that's not all. He was last seen drinking with a friend in West London in July of 2002.

Speaker 10 And we have to remember, everyone saw this car and they found this car, the decomposed body, skeleton, all the things in December of 2002.

Speaker 10 So when Christopher's brother hadn't heard from him, he reported his brother missing at that time in July.

Speaker 10 At the time, the police suspected he may have skipped town, maybe to escape prosecution for the burglary.

Speaker 10 But now they knew that wasn't the case. Christopher had clearly died in a car accident months ago.

Speaker 10 And of course, the police, their next step was to check Christopher's phone records to see if there was a way to tell exactly when the accident happened.

Speaker 1 Now, even though it was, you know, kind of archaic all the way back in 2002,

Speaker 10 even though I can't believe that was over 20 years ago,

Speaker 1 as they say that.

Speaker 1 Cell phones don't exist. They were a terrorist story on its own.

Speaker 10 Well, we do have record that he did make a single call that night, and it was to his brother on July 16th of 2002.

Speaker 10 The call lasted only a second, and his brother never even knew that he made the call.

Speaker 1 That's trauma all by itself.

Speaker 10 So you have to wonder: would anyone have even found Christopher if all those people hadn't reported seeing his exact car, that maroon car, skid off the road months after the accident happened?

Speaker 10 Had the universe somehow reenacted the accident?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 I mean, I believe the universe would do something like that.

Speaker 1 I do too.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I wonder if was it the anniversary of or something? Like, why is it happening on that day? Right.
I mean, yeah.

Speaker 10 I mean, they don't know exactly, but they knew that he made that last call in July. That's all they have, right?

Speaker 2 And you have that energy that is lingering, right? Of that pain of him trying to get that.

Speaker 1 Because more than one person saw that happen.

Speaker 10 And I should also mention: there hadn't been any other sightings of the phantom car before

Speaker 10 or after December 11th.

Speaker 8 Just that once.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh my gosh.
So, okay, that feels like it was an anniversary or someone on the road had some sort of something important. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I even have like, we call it chicken skin in Hawaii, but I have goosebumps all over my coffee.

Speaker 1 Even though I know this story, it's still chilling, dude.

Speaker 8 It's very chilling. Yeah.

Speaker 10 So what do we think? Was it a cry for help? Was he trying to be found? Like you're saying, Em, like, was it the anniversary of the crash? Or I'm curious to know what you think.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I mean, I think he was trying to get somebody to find him and like close that chapter somehow or just like answer a question that for some reason needed to be answered.

Speaker 8 And it makes you wonder like the timing of it, but it's like, maybe, yeah, like Em said, like, maybe somebody on the road that day was the one who needed to, I mean, I think there's probably something above my pay grade.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Quantum physics, why the heck it happened on a certain day? I don't know. That's just like so, because I was going to say, well, maybe it happened all the time.

Speaker 8 And this is just the time that like enough people called.

Speaker 1 Or yeah, for all we know, maybe like maybe his brother had just driven on the road or something and it kind of tapped into something. I don't know.

Speaker 1 That's a good way. Yeah.
It's or someone that would have.

Speaker 2 cared about him was nearby and he felt like this is the moment or yeah that's that is that i love that you said that because that is always my thought process is why these given people at that given time, right?

Speaker 2 Are they just themselves very intuitive human beings where they're put in that exact moment and they can sense it and why someone else, you know, didn't at all, right?

Speaker 1 Those are

Speaker 2 the questions that I have.

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Speaker 10 Your next obsession is waiting.

Speaker 10 Christine, I need to hear your story that you teased a little bit at the top of the episode.

Speaker 8 I'm so glad you asked because it's something I've never talked about. And it's not because it wasn't something I wanted to talk about.
It just was never relevant.

Speaker 8 And then I heard ghost cars and ghost passengers and I went, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 You're like, I've got a story for you.

Speaker 8 Finally, I get somebody to tell.

Speaker 10 It's not even like super interesting.

Speaker 8 It's really short story, but I was driving to school one day in high school. And I like there, I just suddenly was pulling up to this light.

Speaker 8 I drove this path every day through Cincinnati, and I pulled up to this light, and there was this police car to the right. And for some reason,

Speaker 8 I just felt this dread: like, don't pull up all the way to the window. Like, just, I mean, you know, and it was a police car, but I was also 15.
So, what did I know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm like, so I'm like,

Speaker 1 yeah, like, don't look

Speaker 1 like me, don't you? My registration sticker might be expired. I don't know.

Speaker 8 But it wasn't really that. It was just I had this like weird, ominous, like chilling feeling.
And as we started, as the light turned green, I was like waiting for him to go and he wouldn't go.

Speaker 8 And I was like,

Speaker 8 okay. So I was like, well, I have to go.
So I start driving. And as I'm trying to drive fast, I, of course, look over and I can see his face is just like trained on me.

Speaker 8 And like, he's already waiting for me to drive by. And he has this huge smile on his face, but he has no nose.
Oh. Like, it's just skin

Speaker 8 are you what his nose is like not there his eyes are like too far apart there's like this giant smile and he looks right at me and my whole i mean i still remember to this day i'm like sweating my whole like stomach bottomed down and i was like petrified i mean petrified that's not a human my brain went i knew it like i knew i wasn't supposed to look in that car and um oh my god i drove past and i was like oh i should look at the license of course and then i'm like kind of looking

Speaker 8 and of course he's gone. The car's gone.
I don't know. I mean, he might have turned away.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 But like, I was thankful he was gone because I was like, don't follow me, please.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 1 10 years of friendship. Not once.
No.

Speaker 1 You just

Speaker 1 tell Emma. Excuse me.

Speaker 8 Yeah, well, you know,

Speaker 8 your friend from Surrey and I have been waiting to tell you.

Speaker 1 Oh, touche.

Speaker 8 I think I was just in a place where I was 15 and I told my mom, she's like, okay, like he probably just like looked at you funny.

Speaker 8 Did your mom brush it off? Yes, completely.

Speaker 8 and like i so i just kind of brushed it aside and i thought like maybe i exaggerated it in my mind i don't know but there was something about where there was no no i mean it was like okay and when i was a kid i had this horrible nightmare that my i was in my mom's bed and she turned around and she had no face like it was just all skin

Speaker 1 okay and

Speaker 1 is freaking out over here m's like i just woke up why are you doing this

Speaker 8 it's always reminded me of that that event because it had a very similar like you know a safe person like a parent or like a

Speaker 1 police officer

Speaker 8 and it just was one of those moments where I went like hmm that's sad and I don't want to think about it anymore so that was my ghost car experience or alien I don't know what the heck it was I remember at the top of this when you were like it's not even like that big of a story well it doesn't feel like it in my head

Speaker 1 it sounds

Speaker 1 big right now sounds when I say it out loud oh my goodness

Speaker 2 oh my goodness well I don't even know how to top that story but I do have another one that I found okay it's not about a ghostly car, but an entire ghost train.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 2 it's around 2.30 a.m. on August 27th, 1891.

Speaker 2 That morning, a seven-car train leaves the station in Statesville, North Carolina with more than 50 people on board.

Speaker 2 It's pitch dark out, so the train's engineer is a guy named William West, and he can barely see the track in front of him.

Speaker 2 But just five minutes after leaving the station at 2:35 a.m., he feels this jolt. Then he hears this horrible screech like steel is being ripped in two.

Speaker 2 The entire train leaps off the tracks just as it's crossing over the Boston Bridge.

Speaker 2 All six cars and the engine fall 60 feet before hitting the creek below. Yeah, and 22 people died that night.

Speaker 2 But miraculously, nearly three dozen people survived. And those who were able to walked three miles back to town to get help.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. I mean, that is devastating.

Speaker 10 Oh, my gosh. But there's more.
So the Boston crash became one of North Carolina's most infamous train wrecks, as you can imagine. But it didn't become legendary until the year 1941.
And here's why.

Speaker 10 50 years to the day on the anniversary of the tragedy of that train wreck, two travelers named Pat and Larry Hayes are driving with their kids to a vacation somewhere in the mountains.

Speaker 10 It's right after midnight and their kids are fast asleep in the

Speaker 8 first mistake.

Speaker 1 All of that is the first mistake.

Speaker 8 Nothing good can come of this.

Speaker 10 They're on Buffalo Shoals Road, which runs parallel to the railway line, when suddenly Larry hears a big pop and he feels the car shake.

Speaker 2 It's a flat tire.

Speaker 10 So he pulls over to the side of the road where there's a clear view of the Boston Bridge.

Speaker 10 Careful not to wake the kids, of course, Larry hurries off on foot back to Statesville to get some help since we're assuming he doesn't have a spare tire.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 10 And meanwhile, Pat waits patiently with the kids back in the car. You know, she glances up occasionally at the darkened bridge several hundred feet away.

Speaker 10 And around 2.35 a.m., she sees a train speeding across the bridge.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Yeah, at first, of course, she thinks nothing of it. I mean, there are train tracks right there, right? Until she hears a terrible screeching sound and sees the train launch itself over the tracks.

Speaker 10 Then she hears the agonizing screams of the victims.

Speaker 8 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Pat leaps out of the car to get a better look, and she sees the crash locomotive, the actual train in the creek below her.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Just as she's about to freak out, a car pulls up and her husband Larry jumps out, you know, with someone to help him fix the tire.

Speaker 10 Pat grabs Larry and just points to the creek. She doesn't even say anything.
But now the train is gone.

Speaker 8 It's the gaslighting.

Speaker 1 I mean, come on. Total gaslighting.
So toxic. Someone else has is.

Speaker 1 So toxic.

Speaker 8 Someone else has to confirm this. The kids are asleep.

Speaker 1 I know the kids are asleep. I see the kids.
She's the only one. You don't even have the kids to fall back on here.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. Like, we need the two witnesses, right?

Speaker 10 Well, there's no wreckage. There's no screams.

Speaker 1 And just the sound of crickets and the peaceful trickle of the creek.

Speaker 10 Pat cannot explain what she's just seen. And since she's not from the area, she's never even heard of the Boston train crash and neither has Larry.

Speaker 10 It isn't until later when she speaks to someone at a local train station that she learns about the actual tragedy. Now, discuss.

Speaker 8 Imagine that moment where they're like, and it's the 50-year anniversary.

Speaker 1 And she's like, well, well, well.

Speaker 1 I have a therapist named Jordan and Jordan would immediately be getting a phone call. And

Speaker 1 Jordan.

Speaker 1 I would make this whole event my entire personality if I witnessed a whole train crash.

Speaker 1 I I mean, I would at least be up until three in the morning, Googling, like, has anyone else experienced this? Like, I would be deranged for at least 24 hours. I would, yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I went on a deep dive into this story. And as a matter of fact, when that happens, you know, when her husband and the guy show up and they don't, there's nothing there, she faints.

Speaker 1 She passes out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like in trauma, her body just breaks down.

Speaker 1 Shut up. Sure.

Speaker 2 You know, which rightfully so. I think I would be the same.
Like, oh,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 8 And also, I feel like your brain in these scenarios, like, especially when you see something paranormal or something, just even plain old traumatic, like it tries to write a narrative that makes sense.

Speaker 8 And I feel like in this case, it was sort of like, just unplug me, plug me back in. Like, I'm just going to faint and like start over.

Speaker 8 But it's like, I'm sure if we like do a quick reset. But, like, I would just feel so

Speaker 8 bit, like, resentful that like, I swear I saw this and I'm deeply traumatized. I heard people screaming in agony.
And now everyone's like, there's nothing there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I would be the same as you, Em. Like, I would, this would stay with me for the rest of my life, right?

Speaker 1 Everyone would know, yeah, for sure. I mean, for sure, but also, like, can you imagine what year was this? Did they have phones then? Did they 1941?

Speaker 1 Yeah, oh no, well, because my next thought was like, imagine knowing that you've got these kids in the car, so you can't leave them, but like, more

Speaker 1 thinking of like, do I run and save people and leave them

Speaker 1 stay with my kids and just watch these people die? And I could save, I mean, it would be such a, I would never recover. So

Speaker 8 yeah, I think we'd all faint, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it would would be like just fade. I'm a fan.
Just to check out of the situation, not just become unconscious.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, after that, the Boston Bridge becomes the stuff, obviously, of ghostly legends.

Speaker 2 Some people say that each year on August 27th at 2:35 a.m., you can catch a glimpse of the train plunging to its demise.

Speaker 2 Although some people took that story a little too seriously and they paid a deadly price.

Speaker 2 Listen to this. In 2010, on the 119th anniversary of the crash, a 29-year-old paranormal investigator named Charles Kaiser and two of his colleagues decided to investigate the Phantom Train.

Speaker 2 They walked onto the bridge on the evening of August 26th and waited for the signs of the apparition. And at some point during the night, they finally heard it, the roar of the locomotive.

Speaker 2 The ghost hunters peered anxiously down the tracks, but unfortunately, the train they saw wasn't a specter.

Speaker 1 Oh, it was a real train?

Speaker 2 It was a real train.

Speaker 2 Kaiser pushed one of his friends out of the way, but he wasn't fast enough to dodge the train himself. And he was struck and killed.
instantly.

Speaker 1 Oh my god.

Speaker 1 Lord.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is a horrific way to go.

Speaker 1 Do you guys know what it's like, Dory?

Speaker 8 I don't know this story. Do you, Em?

Speaker 1 No, don't. No.
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 8 I feel like with paranormal investigating, you think, like, oh, it's like a harmless hobby. And then, you know,

Speaker 8 even going into like abandoned buildings. And you think, like, ooh, spooky.
But it's like, they're actually like real life dangers, too.

Speaker 1 I mean, talking Christine about Bobby Mackey's. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 8 We went to Bobby Mackey's, and while we were there, well, on our way there, the person we were going to do, we were doing an overnight ghost hunt, and we got a call from our contact. contact.

Speaker 8 She said, actually, can you guys just hold off for like another 30 minutes? The police are here because someone broke in and we can't find them. And we were like,

Speaker 1 hey, I don't think so.

Speaker 8 And we finally got there and they're like, well, we couldn't find them anywhere. So anyway, we could lock down.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we were like, for the rest of the night, we'd be like, oh my God, a ghost. And then we were like, or worse, could it be the intruder? Like, which is worse, you know?

Speaker 8 I mean, anyway, so there are, I guess, real dangers.

Speaker 8 And trains are one of those things I feel like that gets, it's like underrated how dangerous these things are, especially like if you're not used to being around train tracks.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's just, that's just horrible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like I would have at least checked before ghost hunting if it was an act of railway. I feel like.
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm surprised like no one thought, oh, other trains come here too, besides the ghost one, you know? Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Yeah.
When I started ghost hunting back in 2011 or 2012.

Speaker 10 So when you were 10.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I was in college. I was in college.
And

Speaker 1 I, but thank you so much, Mike. I skinned appreciates that.
Thank you. I've been ghosting since then.
And one of my first times that I was ghosting, I was also giving a tour at the same location.

Speaker 1 And usually the town knew what we were doing and they were supposed to, but I guess the park ranger on site wasn't aware of what was going on

Speaker 1 and called the police and ended up detaining me in front of my entire tour group. It was so embarrassing.

Speaker 1 So embarrassing.

Speaker 8 Embarrassing or just like super cool?

Speaker 1 In eyesight, since nothing happened, super cool. But in the moment, I was like, why am I in a cop car right now? I was like, for ghost hunting and we have every right to be here.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not only can it be dangerous, you might just run into like some dumb people. So look out, you know, you might get detained.
I don't know.

Speaker 8 At least your cop had a face.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Actually, I did.

Speaker 8 Perhaps he did not.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure. He had his nose and eyes.
Yeah. That's good.

Speaker 8 That's a good start. That's a good start.

Speaker 10 I do have a question for you, though. And circling back to ghost hunting since 2011.

Speaker 10 So messing with the supernatural, obviously, like that can be a scary thing. Like it can be deadly at times.
Were you always drawn to it? Do you do any like ritual before

Speaker 10 protection? Or are you just like all the way in?

Speaker 1 I've been into it. I've wanted to be a ghost hunter since I was seven when I saw my first ghost,

Speaker 1 which was my grandpa.

Speaker 1 As for rituals, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I always kind of had some like blind confidence that I'd be fine because my stepmom is a second generation witch she's been practicing her whole life and so in my mind if i if something ever happened i would just call her and it would just get handled i don't know how true or safe hey i need her phone number too

Speaker 8 i like i'm like i have a lot of people on your roster your rolodex i need to be called jordan

Speaker 1 just call my step grandparents who taught her yeah so i've it's it's very nice to have her on call if i need something but usually this is probably very irresponsible if you're talking to someone who practices much more than i do.

Speaker 1 But my only ritual, which Christine likes to poke fun at sometimes, is that as I'm leaving any haunted place, I just say goodbye like a bajillion times. I just go, Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Speaker 1 You can't come home, goodbye. Please don't follow me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just kind of am just so clear and like, do not follow me home. And so far, it has worked, not gotten everything, but yeah, seriously.

Speaker 10 Manifestation of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 You just set a boundary, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, right, right.
Counter your own clear boundary. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Well, there is no question that hunting the supernatural comes with risks.

Speaker 10 The reason I asked you that question, Em, is because the way Yvette and I were raised in Hawaii, like we were always taught 100% to respect the supernatural, especially by our mom.

Speaker 10 So we always ask for protection.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know,

Speaker 10 or do a call my own prayer or something, something.

Speaker 1 Christina and I, we've only ever been like super respectful. And we're just like, I'm not about that.
And especially if I don't want you to follow me home, why would I give you a respect? Right.

Speaker 8 So, you know, yeah, let's all be cool and chill, you know? Like, why would I scream at you and punch the wall of your own house?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just because you're dead.
That feels like unfair, but yeah.

Speaker 10 Oh, we couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 2 Yeah. For us, it's like you just, you don't play around with stuff like that.
You know, you do it in the most respectful way possible. Right.
100%. Same with us.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 And we have to say, too, sometimes it's hard to exactly say what's doing the haunting, what type of entity you are coming across.

Speaker 10 Are we the ones searching for answers or is the supernatural searching for us?

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Treat yourself before it's gone.

Speaker 6 All right, well, we're joined today by M.

Speaker 2 Schultz and Christine Schieffer from And That's Why We Drink. And so far, you have heard a couple of really cool stories about phantom vehicles that seem to replay their final moments.

Speaker 2 But I want to branch out from there because it's not just the cars and the trains that appear to be haunted or cursed. It seems like it's the people who died in them,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 2 These apparitions that keep showing up long after the events have passed.

Speaker 2 Meaning, maybe it's more about the passengers and their tragic deaths, right? That this keeps occurring.

Speaker 8 I mean, that makes sense, especially with the like very dramatic ones, you know, that are actually historically like accurate.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's good evidence.

Speaker 10 Well, I have one that I believe is historically accurate.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 10 So this particular story comes from Japan.

Speaker 10 But before we get there, I think it's important to have a little bit of cultural context for this one. So

Speaker 1 I only speak a little Japanese.

Speaker 10 But I will say, even though we only speak a little bit, my sister and I understand the Japanese culture. It's very prevalent in Hawaii.
Cool. I'm way into this one.

Speaker 10 So in Japan, the oldest indigenous religion is called Shinto, which translates in English to the way of the gods.

Speaker 10 Now, there's a belief in Shintoism that when you die, your soul travels to the underworld, which is a mythical place called Yomi no Kuni.

Speaker 10 However, it's said that some people get stuck on their way there and forever remain trapped on our earthly plane.

Speaker 10 So those are usually people who have died violently, unnaturally, or left unresolved business behind on earth. Souls that either can't move on or won't.

Speaker 10 When that happens, they become a very specific kind of Japanese spirit called a yudei. These angry spirits can still interact with our world and often take revenge upon the living.
Oh boy.

Speaker 10 Yeah, they can cause accidents, disease, madness, even death.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 let's just say it's bad luck to meet one.

Speaker 8 Yeah, also.

Speaker 10 Typically, they like to haunt cemeteries or places that they died. But sometimes they get lost, like literally lost.

Speaker 10 In fact, a lot of these strange travelers were seen after the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, one of the worst natural disasters in Japanese history.

Speaker 1 Oh boy.

Speaker 8 Lost spirits. Oh boy.

Speaker 1 Okay. That's

Speaker 8 scary ants all at once.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And we actually had family members that lived in Japan during this time.
So really were watching the news and calling relatives non-stop. It was a 9.0 magnitude.

Speaker 1 I can't even, I can't can't even possibly comprehend it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
And it happened on March 11th at 2.46 p.m.

Speaker 2 It created a massive 33-foot tsunami, which slammed into the eastern shore of Japan, affecting hundreds of miles of coastline. And in some places, the tidal wave reached six miles inland.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is

Speaker 2 crazy. Right?

Speaker 1 Again, can't comprehend. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It killed almost 20,000 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and triggered a partial meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Speaker 2 So when I say disaster, that is an understatement. And in the aftermath of this horrible, horrible tragedy, people struggled to rebuild.
You got to think about it.

Speaker 2 Many people lost their homes, they lost their jobs, and most importantly, they lost their loved ones.

Speaker 2 The thing is, some of those family members were said to make a shocking reappearance time and time again.

Speaker 10 Journalist Richard Lloyd Perry documented some of these reappearances in his book called Ghosts of the Tsunami. Many of these stories were reported to him by a priest named Reverend Kaneda.

Speaker 10 Kaneda lived and worked at a Zen Buddhist temple in Kurihara, and that is in the northeastern part of the country.

Speaker 10 He and a group of priests traveled the coast after the tsunami, you know, to comfort survivors.

Speaker 10 So as people described their terror and their grief, they also reported supernatural run-ins with the souls of those lost in the waves. And he found an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence.

Speaker 1 Oh boy.

Speaker 10 For example, A cab driver in Sendai, a city north of Fukushima, said he picked up a man one day not long after the tsunami.

Speaker 10 The man gave the taxi driver an address near the coast, but about halfway through the drive, the cabby glanced at his rearview mirror and noticed the passenger. He gone.
Really? He was gone.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Oh my God. He had literally vanished mid-drive, even though they'd never stopped.

Speaker 10 So, of course, the cab driver was morbidly curious, so he kept going to the address that the man originally gave him.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. Oh my God.
Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Guess where he pulled up?

Speaker 1 Where?

Speaker 10 He pulled up to a house that was completely leveled by the tsunami and left in ruins.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. He just wanted to go home.
Oh my God. He just wanted to go home.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 10 Five years after the disaster, a 22-year-old sociology student named Yuka Kudo heard rumors about these phantom passengers and decided to make it the subject of her senior thesis project.

Speaker 10 Yuka went out on the streets to interview about 100 taxi drivers or so. She went all over Ishinomaki, a coastal city about five hours north of Tokyo.

Speaker 10 Every time she asked the same question, did you have any unusual experiences after the tsunami?

Speaker 10 Out of the 100 taxicab drivers, seven of them had supernatural stories to share.

Speaker 10 One driver in his 50s said a woman got into his car near the train station and asked to be taken to an area he absolutely knew was decimated by the flood.

Speaker 10 When he told her that, she asked in a trembling voice, quote,

Speaker 10 am I dead?

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Turned around to get a better look at her, but the woman had simply vanished.

Speaker 1 Oh my god.

Speaker 10 I know. I wish you all could see Em right now.
All of our listeners.

Speaker 1 I know, I know. What?

Speaker 8 It's a delightful vision.

Speaker 1 Eyes closed, hand above their head. Like, what?

Speaker 8 He's like about to faint, like that lady

Speaker 8 at the roadside.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. That's, I, I was, and also, even if she was alive and asked that question, I mean, with enough tragedy going on, you, I would imagine there's some like freak out.

Speaker 1 There's, there's no right word for this, but like a mob. mob mentality of like, where do I stand? What do I, like, I could see people? Like, your whole life's been shattered right now.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I just, I, I, my, my hope for that is like hopefully that when she had that realization like am i dead that it maybe she was able to oh

Speaker 8 you know what i mean like she was like great and it like almost brought her to the i mean that's my hope i don't know yeah great point right

Speaker 8 ever the optimist i am

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 10 The other six drivers had similar stories about picking up clients who disappeared mid-route.

Speaker 10 It seemed like these ghosts, you know, Christine, like you were saying, they were trying to find their way home

Speaker 8 you know even though their home didn't exist anymore and maybe find peace and move on right yeah yeah yeah you know that's really interesting because i feel like so many different cultures have a similar understanding of tragic incidents resulting in ghosts i mean you even go to like M's part of the M's hometown area, like that colonial, oh, I don't know, what's over there?

Speaker 1 Where are you from, M?

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm from, I'm from Virginia.

Speaker 8 Just like, you know, you got a battlefield, you got all the haunted places that I've got.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of soldiers, a lot of girls. You got a lot of energy.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Like trauma and death and like despair.

Speaker 8 And it's like, I, I can, it's fascinating that like different cultures have developed like their, you know, different ways of speaking basically about the same concept.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, we go back to that thing again, right? And it's that, it's that residual energy that keeps showing up after certain traumas, right?

Speaker 10 Because like replays. It like

Speaker 2 it's on a loop.

Speaker 1 In some ways, I'm, I want to be grateful that at least they don't realize that they passed. So maybe they didn't have to suffer on their way out.

Speaker 1 But then the other part is like, oh, well, now they're stuck here because they don't know that if they're alive or not. So

Speaker 2 kind of a catch-22.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, another version of these spectral passengers that I've heard about even beyond Japan is the ghostly. hitchhiker.

Speaker 2 I have, I have these, I get really nervous when I talk about hitchhikers because I am not the one to ever hitchhike or even pick up a hitchhiker. I'm just saying.

Speaker 10 Unless it's Madame Pele in Hawaii, you have to pick her up.

Speaker 1 Oh, I've heard that story. Thank you for telling me.
You're a welcome man. We got you.
We got you. Okay.

Speaker 2 So I know of one story, though I'm not sure when it's from. It's about a man who was driving along Arkansas's rural highway 365.

Speaker 2 He reportedly picked up a young woman in a light colored dress one night. She was standing on the side of the road in the pouring rain.
She gave him her home address and he drove her there.

Speaker 2 But when he arrived, the young woman had vanished from his back seat.

Speaker 2 And oddly enough, the driver's coat was missing too.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so he decided to go knock on the door to the house anyway, and an elderly woman answered. When he shared what happened, she told him the girl sounded a lot like her daughter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, only she had died in a car accident many years earlier. She said there were others before him who claimed to have given her a ride with the same result.

Speaker 2 So the driver went to visit the girl's grave after that. And that's when he found his missing jacket draped over her tombstone.

Speaker 1 You've got to be kidding me. My God.

Speaker 2 So it sounds like it's similar to what the taxi drivers experienced in Japan, right? A lost soul just trying to get back to their loved ones, trying to get back home.

Speaker 1 That's so sad.

Speaker 8 And then like to think with the jacket, like my, at least in my mind, it's like the driver said, oh, you're freezing. You're all wet.
Like, here's my coat. Right.

Speaker 8 You know, that's at least as in my head. Like, she took the coat because she's out in the rain and then.

Speaker 8 says like a thank you, like puts it back. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's just so sweet and tragic.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, it's like, I'm really here. It's proof, right?

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, right too. Yeah, yeah, wow.

Speaker 1 That always blows my mind when there's um

Speaker 1 a true interaction where, like, it's one thing to see a ghost, but neither of you interact. But when there's actual conversation, it's like, how are both of you intelligently having this experience?

Speaker 1 And what way are you perceiving this ghost? Like, which are you, do you know you're dead, or do you think we're just two people talking amongst each other? Or it's right, so it's mind-boggling.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's never ending. And I was telling Rasha, like,

Speaker 2 who are the real ghosts and who are the aliens sometimes? Like, are we the aliens? Are we the ghost? Or and they are the real people?

Speaker 1 Which is

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 8 Talk about above my pay grade. Right.

Speaker 1 I don't know, Eva. I think that's what quantum physics expressed.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Who are the real ghosts? Oh, God. I'm not going to sing.
I'm just saying. I know.

Speaker 2 Okay. So let's just say home isn't always the destination.
Just take this story out of India. This is in 2007.

Speaker 2 Two friends named Sanju and Anad were traveling from Mumbai to a seaside resort called Murud.

Speaker 2 Around 11.30 p.m., they were nearing their destination, but they were the only car on the road.

Speaker 2 Which is why they pulled over to help two strangers who looked stranded, and it just so happened to be a man and a woman.

Speaker 2 The exhausted couple said their names were Ravi and Sunita, and they were newlyweds on their honeymoon, and they had had, I guess, a rough evening.

Speaker 2 They said they had rented a tandem bike for the day, but it had gotten a flat tire. Their resort was five miles away, and they didn't want to walk in the dark, which, hello, I can't blame them either.

Speaker 8 I don't want to bike in the dark, let alone.

Speaker 1 When it's a tandem bike, both your bikes are broken.

Speaker 8 You're also about to get divorced on your honeymoon if if you're on a tandem bike, lost in

Speaker 8 like, please, that's not going to be, that's not going to end well.

Speaker 1 Bad memory. I agree.
You've never been with my wife on a tandem bike.

Speaker 8 It's don't do it. I mean, I haven't either.
I just can assume it's probably. My parents did one time and they're divorced.
So I feel like that's

Speaker 1 for all of us. Christine.

Speaker 8 I don't think that's what did it, to be clear, but

Speaker 1 it can't be worse than that. That's hysterical.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Just saying, right?

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 1 Just saying. Amen.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, anyhow, nothing seemed unusual.

Speaker 2 There was even a broken tandem bike laying by the side of the road, right? So Sanji told them, just hop in, right?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And on the way, they chatted a bit, and Sanju thought the couple had, you know, a pretty good sense of humor. And they had bonded over the fact that Ravi and Sunita were also from Mumbai.

Speaker 2 And after a few minutes, the conversation died down. But Sanju could still hear them whispering to each other in the back seat.

Speaker 2 And he didn't remember exactly when, but at some point he checked his rearview mirror and the couple had vanished both both of them they're gone they're gone but get this he and anad could still hear them whispering no

Speaker 1 yes

Speaker 2 yes yes what the heck so you can imagine right sanju slammed on the brakes and the two men leapt out of there terrified like rightfully so because i would be doing the same thing yeah get me the hell out of here And as they started running, they heard laughter and a scream coming from the car.

Speaker 2 They kept running until they actually reached the police station.

Speaker 2 And there,

Speaker 2 the cops on duty told them that Ravi and Sunita were honeymooners who had hitched hike a ride with the wrong person. many, many years ago

Speaker 2 and had been found brutally murdered.

Speaker 2 This is why I don't hitchhike.

Speaker 8 I'm just saying. I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 This is exactly why.

Speaker 2 And since then, other people reportedly encountered the couple on the road as well.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Who may have been taking that same doomed ride over and over for eternity?

Speaker 1 Oh my God. That's so tragic.
Like, what? Can you imagine?

Speaker 8 I mean, to be having to like relive this over and over and over.

Speaker 8 And then the whispering and you wonder, like, is that what happened in the car when yeah were they did they realize that they made a mistake and they're whispering about

Speaker 8 that's so dark

Speaker 1 i know that's like messed up but i can't imagine them whispering about anything happy i think they were like no right because of the circumstances but yeah that's oh man

Speaker 11 so

Speaker 10 Do not hitchhike, y'all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, please just never,

Speaker 1 you never hear about vanishing ghosts where there's like two of them. It's like, oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 It's a good one, it's just yeah, I guess they're together.

Speaker 8 I was gonna say, I mean, I hope they, I hope that means like they have a better chance of maybe finding their way out of that, yeah, loop or what have you.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I know, and it sounds like I mean, with all the laughing, right, and screaming that was going on, I'm like, well, maybe now they're just having fun with it because they know they're not showing anywhere else pranking people now, right?

Speaker 8 Maybe they're like, We'll do the old tandem bike routine, you know?

Speaker 1 And like, come on, babe, let's go.

Speaker 8 Oh, one can only hope, man.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, make it a little lighter. Yeah.
We try.

Speaker 10 We try, right?

Speaker 1 We try so hard.

Speaker 1 So I grew up in Virginia and we had a haunted,

Speaker 1 a haunted bridge

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 it was called the Bunny Man Bridge.

Speaker 1 And the Bunny Man is our cryptid.

Speaker 10 Oh, you have a cryptid in Virginia? How did we not know that?

Speaker 1 He's under the radar. Actually,

Speaker 1 I covered, I think I did a two-parter on him on our show. If you

Speaker 10 will go back and listen to it.

Speaker 1 It's In depth on the bunny man. Hey, if you need a rabbit hole, get it.
Stop it.

Speaker 8 Yvette loves rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 That ain't so nourished. Not a boom.

Speaker 1 Well, so the county over for me is it's Fairfax County, and that's where the Bunny Man Bridge is.

Speaker 1 And the story that I always grew up with was that in the 70s, there was this man who was being transferred from one mental health hospital to another.

Speaker 1 At the time, they did not say mental health hospital. They were much more nasty.
Not DC. Yes.

Speaker 1 He was like some horrible man and, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 Anyway, during the transfer between the facilities, the bus crashed. And so the door accidentally got open and all of the patients that were being transferred to a different facility escaped.

Speaker 1 And only one of them was never

Speaker 1 captured. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Brought back.
Right, right, right. So anyway, he went missing.

Speaker 1 And the story was always that he just lived in the woods underneath the bridge and he survived on the wildlife in the area to be able to eat.

Speaker 1 And during the winter, he was known, I guess that area was high in rabbits. And so the thought is that he would eat the bunnies and use their fur to stay warm.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 eventually he

Speaker 1 had.

Speaker 1 killed so many rabbits for survival and stitched them all together to make a fur suit, which essentially was a bunny suit.

Speaker 1 And a lot of people claimed that a human-sized bunny was walking around in the woods under the bridge.

Speaker 1 Growing up in the area, the big dare amongst teenagers, first of all, was, oh, have you driven under the Bunny Man Bridge?

Speaker 1 But really, it was, have you driven under it at exactly midnight on Halloween? Oh, stop. Because if that happened.

Speaker 1 I never did, but the lore is that if you drove under the bridge at exactly midnight, if you looked out the rearview window, you would see the bunny man standing there and shadows of bunnies hanging over the overpass.

Speaker 1 Oh. dead bunnies.

Speaker 8 Did you ever have anyone who claimed to have seen that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it was always some

Speaker 1 guy at the party. He's like, right, okay.

Speaker 8 So it's not like a trusted source trying to show off.

Speaker 1 I had one friend who said that he partied with the bunny man, and I'm like, okay, I don't believe that.

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe he did.

Speaker 8 Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1 I don't know. He's

Speaker 1 in his head.

Speaker 1 So, no, I have been to the bridge. It is a shockingly, you already think it's probably, you know, not all that interesting of a bridge.
It's actually an even less interesting bridge.

Speaker 8 It's more boring than the average bridge.

Speaker 1 I had to tried an hour to see this bridge, and I was like, this is it.

Speaker 10 Yeah, for nothing creepy about it.

Speaker 1 Not even a little bit. Not even a little bit.
And at the end of the bridge is a dead end, so then you have to awkwardly like back up. Back up and turn your brown.

Speaker 8 Okay, but to be fair, that does make it a little creepy because it's like at midnight if you're like, if one of your friends is like, what's that over there?

Speaker 8 And then you have to like try and back up out of it. Like that has its own.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But

Speaker 1 that's how I know the Bunny Man isn't real. Because wouldn't the story be once you drive through it, he's waiting for you at the dead end.

Speaker 10 And then you can't. Right, not just looking at you.

Speaker 8 I think what he is, he's you get to the dead end. Let's rewrite this.
You get to the dead end, workshopping it, and then you're like, okay, nothing here.

Speaker 8 And you go to reverse, and he's standing behind.

Speaker 1 Let's workshop this. I'm obsessed with both of these.
Revisionist history. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you know what? It's already probably a fake story. We can, we can juzh it up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got a feeling which you want me like to do with a fake story. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 I I'll go there with you

Speaker 8 at midnight if you want.

Speaker 1 I would go at midnight just to say that I did it, but I will tell you, it's no, when I was 16, I was actually too scared to go.

Speaker 10 And now, now that I'm because you knew ghosts really existed, right?

Speaker 1 That's true. You knew the ghosts.

Speaker 1 You're right. That's because by this point,

Speaker 10 if he was in the 70s, he might still actually be alive. So, right.

Speaker 1 That's. Yeah, I guess he was always assumed to be the ghost of the bunny man, but really, it sounds more like a true crime story I just told.
Now that I'm thinking about it, you know,

Speaker 1 urban legends. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think it's a little bit of both combined.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best stories are.

Speaker 1 Wow. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe there is something about certain locations that keeps these souls trapped in one place, like we've been talking about, unable to escape no matter how hard they actually try.

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Speaker 12 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 11 New Dove holiday treats are now available at Target.

Speaker 11 This limited edition collection of body wash, deodorants, scrubs, bar soaps, and body mist are made with Dove 24-hour renewing micro-moisture and come in delicious scents like frosted plumberry, gingerbread delight, hot cocoa swirl, and sugar cookie sprinkle.

Speaker 11 Buy four items and get a $5 Target gift card when you shop November 16th through 22nd. Shop Dove Holiday Treats at Target, in-store or online.
Treat yourself before it's gone.

Speaker 2 all righty we are back with m schultz and christine chiefer from and that's why we drink i don't i love saying that so much she's obsessed i know it's catchy huh it is catchy it really is well done

Speaker 2 okay we have been covering stories about phantom vehicles passengers and hitchhikers from all around the world But maybe it's not the passengers or the drivers we should be focusing on.

Speaker 2 Maybe there's something about certain locations that keep souls trapped in one place, doomed to repeat their journeys time and time again.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 2 And we can't explore this theory without talking about one of the creepiest roads in America, Clinton Road in West Milford, New Jersey. Have you guys heard of this place?

Speaker 1 I have.

Speaker 1 I have as well.

Speaker 8 Well, but I don't know much about it. I've heard of it, but Em probably knows much more than I do.

Speaker 1 Well, actually,

Speaker 1 I am

Speaker 1 going to New Jersey soon. So I know I might just add this on my list of places to visit.
I've never been before to this area, so I'll tack it on.

Speaker 1 But the only thing I've heard about is just like some of the weird encounters that people have experienced.

Speaker 1 I know there's like a truck that follows people too closely and like flashes their lights and then

Speaker 1 the lights kind of the truck vanishes even though it's never turned away.

Speaker 8 it's never right turned left or right

Speaker 1 there's a wolf with red eyes there's park rangers that will help you out when you're lost and then you realize that they were wearing uniforms from like the 30s oh my gosh

Speaker 1 and then there's a haunted cadillac camaro starts with a hard c but there's uh there's a car that I guess someone crashed in the 70s and died and that car is still seen driving up and down the road.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a lot.

Speaker 1 That's a whole lot. We had even more to add.
I was going to say, I think think you're about to tell us more. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 We have even more. And like everything you've told us, like, I guess we could be talking.
We should have done just a whole episode on the legend of the road.

Speaker 1 We totally could.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 10 So, for those of you who don't know, this winding 10-mile stretch of road has been labeled one of the most haunted roads in the entire United States.

Speaker 10 And along with all those stories that Em has shared with us, some say that even the Indigenous Americans and early settlers believed the land itself was cursed, though we haven't been able to find any actual evidence of that or exactly why they thought that.

Speaker 10 But in 1905, an author and historian named Joseph Crane had a theory. He claimed the woods near the road were infested with witches.

Speaker 1 Infested!

Speaker 1 I said, Mom, wait a minute. I know, we knew it.
Infestation is a little strong, but okay.

Speaker 10 So Joseph said the witches gathered nightly to hold ritual dances where they morphed into these terrifying forms.

Speaker 10 He didn't say specifically what those forms were, only that they scared the daylights out of any people or animals who encountered them.

Speaker 6 Because they were so beautiful.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 1 They were scared by their beauty. Yeah.

Speaker 10 So over the years, urban legends arose about different spots along Clinton Road, like what you've been sharing, Em.

Speaker 10 And one of the most famous is a bridge that crosses a tight corner called Dead Man's Curve.

Speaker 10 So there are a few versions of how this particular bridge became haunted. One is that a young boy drowned in the creek below.

Speaker 10 Another is that this boy's friends challenged him to stand on the bridge as some kind of prank

Speaker 10 and ended up leaving him there for hours. And when they came back, they saw that he was dead.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 10 people also say to this day if you toss a coin into the water he'll toss it back oh yeah now that's cool oh yeah right hell no that is i would absolutely try to do that when i'm that's one that i'll do yeah i would too and one witness said that she tossed a quarter in and exactly a minute later heard a second splash as if someone had dropped another coin and she was there by herself and when she looked into the creek she saw the reflection of a boy no

Speaker 10 staring back at her in the water bye see

Speaker 2 yeah what see i'm 13 i would do it and then the second that i see him i go why did i do this right i'm gonna regret this yeah yes yeah yeah and this is so you kind of tapped into this earlier mm the bridge isn't the only haunted spot people have claimed that the whole 10 mile stretch of clinton road is full of weird supernatural energy.

Speaker 2 And plenty of eyewitnesses say they were driving there at night and noticed the headlights from a black pickup truck trailing close behind look at me go and yeah and then all of a sudden the lights just disappeared even though there was no intersection or pull-off in sight and there are also tales of the weather suddenly changing like snow falling in the middle of summer but only on the road itself get out that's wild like That would freak me out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That would be cool, though, to be in that.

Speaker 1 It'd be super cool, and no one would ever believe me, even if I had

Speaker 1 it'd be like, that's a guy.

Speaker 8 That's when you do live.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right, right. Exactly.

Speaker 1 That is going to capture it. Right.

Speaker 2 Okay, so there's also whispers about UFOs, satanic rituals, and the secret KKK meetings

Speaker 2 at a burnt out castle near the road, which I would definitely steer clear of.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm like, you were going to say, I'm definitely checking that out.
And I was like, yeah,

Speaker 1 what the heck?

Speaker 1 No, thank you. Okay.

Speaker 2 The three-story stone building was built in 1907 by a guy named Richard Cross and was used as his country estate. It featured 365 acres of farmland, woods, and a pond.

Speaker 2 However, Cross died in 1917 and the castle was sold to the city of Newark two years later. The uninhabited property began to deteriorate and was stripped bare of anything that could be sold.

Speaker 2 And eventually, of course, it became a hangout for kids looking just to party in secret.

Speaker 8 I mean, an old castle. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right? Right. I would.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then in 1988, the city of Newark demolished what was left because it was considered a safety hazard.

Speaker 2 And not long after after that, one group of friends decided to investigate the castle ruins for fun. They lit a bonfire and cracked open a few beers, as you would.

Speaker 2 And half an hour later, they heard ominous chanting coming from somewhere nearby and the rattle of chains.

Speaker 8 What?

Speaker 2 It was then that one of them suddenly had a seizure.

Speaker 2 Allegedly, she became so incredibly heavy that none of her friends could actually lift her or even move her. Oh, as soon as the chanting stopped, that is when she supposedly regained consciousness.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 That chanting feels not good to me. Even if nothing paranormal was happening.
Talk about the worst time ever to have a seizure. You know, I feel so bad for that person.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Well, let's jump into another story.

Speaker 10 This time, it's on a road in southern scotland called the a75 that passes through a town called dumfreys the area is said to be the most haunted highway in the entire country of scotland apparently there are a lot of paranormal sightings associated with this particular four mile stretch of road

Speaker 10 but there's one story i have to share with you It's about a pair of truck driving brothers named Derek and Norman Ferguson.

Speaker 10 Back in 1962, they were driving late at night when a chicken flew straight at their windshield, only to disappear a split second before any impact happened.

Speaker 1 That's what?

Speaker 1 Been doing this a long time.

Speaker 8 That's first. That's a first.

Speaker 10 And as if that wasn't terrifying enough, like they thought they were going to kill this chicken,

Speaker 10 as they kept driving, they encountered more spectral creatures in the road. We're talking huge wild cats, dogs, and goats.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 10 Yeah, and each time their truck got close to one of the animals, it completely vanished.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, the adrenaline spikes every time you think you're going to hit a dog. I know, I know.
You're like, what is happening right now?

Speaker 10 After a few of these near misses, the brothers pulled over to simply catch their breath. And that's when their entire vehicle got incredibly cold inside, as if they had just walked into a freezer.

Speaker 10 Then the truck itself shook wildly like something outside was trying to tip them over.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 10 One of them got up the courage to leave the truck to see what it was.

Speaker 10 But as soon as he stepped out, the shaking stopped. So, of course, they cranked that engine back up and sped off.

Speaker 1 But wait, there's more. Wait for it.

Speaker 10 A little further down the road, they spotted an elderly couple with long white hair.

Speaker 10 And as they passed them, these old people chased after the truck, but then disappeared just like the animals did.

Speaker 1 What is going on?

Speaker 10 Others in the area have reported seeing that exact same couple. One woman was driving down that same stretch of road when an elderly man leapt in front of her car.

Speaker 10 She slammed on the brakes, but she knew she couldn't slow down in time. Except just before impact, the old man disappeared.

Speaker 10 A man named Bob Sturgeon owned a roadside snack van off the A75 for years and years, and he had heard plenty of stories about unusual encounters almost weekly.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 10 Yeah. He said these tales mostly came from long-distance truck drivers who had nothing to gain by telling him these stories, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 10 And some of them were so traumatized by what they saw.

Speaker 10 And one of his regular customers was so traumatized and so shaken up after a particular encounter, that particular man gave up truck driving for good.

Speaker 1 He said, see you.

Speaker 8 So he left his whole career path. He's like, actually, he's like, that's enough.

Speaker 1 It's enough for me. Yeah.
Yeah. My gosh.
Jeez.

Speaker 2 I mean, that would freak me out.

Speaker 2 Rasher, do you remember we were taking a drive to LA one time and all of a sudden all of these bugs like I swear to God hundreds of thousands of bugs just like boom boom boom boom hitting the windshield and we were just freaking the yeah it was not okay and they didn't disappear i imagine upon impact they just hit your nose nose.

Speaker 2 No, they just kept, no, they just kept coming. And it was like blacking out our witch.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it was really good. It was freaking good.

Speaker 10 So here's my, my humble opinion. My humble opinion is that the couple, all the animals, I think that something happened to them there and that was their last resting place.

Speaker 10 And they're just making themselves known.

Speaker 1 That's nicer than them being just like murderous animals. Right.

Speaker 1 I don't want to believe in murderous animals.

Speaker 10 I mean, I I just got a brand new kitten and I think he might be because I'm not a cat person, but that's a whole other story.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I mean, I can probably confirm that for you as a cat owner.

Speaker 8 But I mean, a little demon in a best way, like in a cat way, because they're all a little bit demonic, but like we love them for that, you know?

Speaker 1 Okay, exactly. Exactly.
That's what sets them apart.

Speaker 1 So you love him. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. You will.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, what is interesting about all of these stories is it's not just one person who saw something.

Speaker 2 Many claim to have seen the same or similar events repeated.

Speaker 2 Like if we go back to the Surrey ghost car with multiple callers reporting the crash, or the case of the hitchhiking daughter who had been killed and lured several drivers back to her parents' home after she died, or the train over the Boston Bridge, you almost get a sense of history repeating itself.

Speaker 2 Like I say this all the time. Is there a time loop that is repetitively on play at that exact certain time and moment, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, which is why I want to bring up an ancient theory that was made popular again by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. And he spoke about a concept called eternal recurrence.

Speaker 2 Basically, the idea is that time repeats in an infinite loop with exactly the same events occurring over and again for eternity.

Speaker 2 Nietzsche used this concept as a thought experiment, a way to challenge people to live life in a way that they, you know, wouldn't regret.

Speaker 2 And it was supposed to make you think about how you'd make different choices if you knew you'd have to live them again and again and again.

Speaker 2 But maybe, just maybe he was on to something bigger. What if the universe does repeat itself?

Speaker 2 And all of these apparitions aren't actually the dead coming back to haunt us but echoes of the world that came before

Speaker 2 what do y'all think about that uh i

Speaker 1 i think a lot of times that our ghosts are our future selves looking out for us oh i like that um and so that's why when you get a gut feeling it's because it's yourself being like get out of here like i i know what's coming get out like your higher self like kind of being like yeah

Speaker 1 yeah i'm also i'm i'm a big time travel nerd.

Speaker 1 And so in my mind, I'm like, however, I can make that possible is how instead of it being, if it's, if it's on loop, that would mean that the events are in the past, but also in the future, which means

Speaker 1 it's coming. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So in my mind,

Speaker 1 I can get with Nietzsche on this for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Well, also, if you think about, I mean, just not to say quantum physics again, geez, we just got started.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. Physics is above my pay grade.
It's above all our pay let's be clear.

Speaker 8 But like the concept that, you know, time being, you know, not as tangible as we think or not, you know, what did Einstein said, reality is an illusion, but a persistent one.

Speaker 8 Like the idea that times are all happening at once, but for our human brains to comprehend, we have to understand like past, present, future, like in a narrative sense.

Speaker 8 And sometimes we get glimpses into,

Speaker 8 you know, times that are almost like a glitch, I guess, but like crossovers of these timelines. So I don't know.

Speaker 8 I mean, I think there's clearly something to all of that in the fact that, I don't know, so many people and now M signing on with Nietzsche and maybe there's something to it.

Speaker 10 Well, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to actually prove whether eternal recurrence is real or if spectral phenomena is a blip in the space-time continuum.

Speaker 10 But I think there's some mysteries to life that we aren't meant to solve. And that's okay, because it's these things that give us hope.

Speaker 10 It's these mysteries that keep us going, these unsolvable puzzles that get us to ask bigger philosophical questions about the meaning of life.

Speaker 10 And because of that, I'm happy to keep guessing, to keep on doing the deep diving, and to keep learning.

Speaker 10 Because what kind of world are we living in if there are no more questions left for us to answer? The supernatural, I think that is what keeps all of us going, right?

Speaker 2 And that's why we drink.

Speaker 1 Freaking loosely. That is why we drink.
Amen.

Speaker 10 I mean, mic dropped.

Speaker 1 I'll put it. Yeah, that's what Roger said.

Speaker 8 Agreed.

Speaker 8 That was so much more poignant than I could have put it. But yes, I agree with you.

Speaker 8 The questions, I'm always like, I want an answer now. But I think

Speaker 8 deep down, I know that that's part of the fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 And time is so precious and it reveals itself always at the right place and moment.

Speaker 1 You're right.

Speaker 2 We just have to be patient.

Speaker 2 Oh, my gosh. I don't want this to end, you guys.
I just want to thank you so much, M, Christine, for joining us here on So Supernatural. You guys are just...
So much fun, pure joy.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's been so great to get your take on all of this stuff. And especially, of course, for spooky season and Halloween.

Speaker 8 Thank you so much for having us. This has been an honor.
We don't really often have the time to just like

Speaker 8 just kind of do a roundtable discussion of like, what on earth is going on with these ghosts, you know? So this was very, very enlightening. And you two are so much fun.
So it's an honor.

Speaker 8 Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Yes, really. Mahalo Nui Loa to both of you.
You are just a breath of fresh air, truly.

Speaker 1 Wow. Thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 2 And if you want to hear more from them, check out their show. And that's why we drink on YouTube and wherever else you get your podcasts we'll see you back here next week for another episode

Speaker 2 this is so supernatural an audio chuck original produced by crime house you can connect with us on instagram at so supernatural pod and visit our website at so supernaturalpodcast.com join rash and me next friday for an all-new episode episode.

Speaker 2 I think Chuck would approve.

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