Our Dearest Fears with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Hi, you've reached the voice mailbox of American Hysteria and You're Wrong About.

This is Chelsea and this is Sarah.

And we have a very special episode for you today.

It's a two-parter.

You can find the other part on American Hysteria.

They're not linear parts.

They're

listen in whatever order you want parts.

In this episode, I tell Chelsea about about my fears, and in the American Hysteria episode, I tell Sarah all about my fears.

We love making both of these shows talking about the fears that we feel and the fears that society experiences.

And we had a lot of fun making these episodes for you and talking about our dearest fears.

Thank you for listening.

Here's our show.

Nailed it.

Yeah.

I have a little message welcoming you to this very special episode, but first, a little info for you.

This episode is a collaboration with our dear sibling podcast, American Hysteria, hosted by Chelsea Weber-Smith.

And we are also collaborating with them on a holiday show at Portland's Aladdin Theater on December 6th.

We are calling it a massive seance and we are trying to connect with the spirits of the past and the future, release our 2023, let it go, and prepare for the new year and do it all together.

We really hope we get to see you there.

We also have a bonus episode that I recorded with Kelsey talking about urban legends, the concept within sociology that Kelsey and I love so much, and also urban legend, the underrated late 90s slasher movie.

So, you really can't go wrong, and that will be available on Apple Plus subscriptions and on Patreon at the end of this month, which, as you can see, is coming right up.

Happy Halloween, my friends.

Hey, Sarah!

Hey, Kelsey.

Funny running into you at this abandoned mall.

Oh, I wish.

I wish we were recording in an abandoned mall.

We're here doing another part to our series about our fears.

I'm so excited.

I love telling you my fears, Sarah.

And now I'm so excited to hear all about yours.

And I can only freaking imagine.

I'm so excited to tell you my fears.

As someone whose job now is

looking at moral panics and hysterias and, you know, America's feelings getting ahead of our logical faculties, as I do so much in making you wrong about, like, it's also important for me to return and to emphasize when talking about this stuff that, like, I'm a very fearful person.

I'm not claiming to stand outside of the impulses that govern human behavior.

I think really I like to, you know, observe my own behaviors to try and understand what we're dealing with as people.

Absolutely.

Same here.

Yeah.

Yep.

So what do you got for us today, Sarah?

What are we talking about?

I have like an opening montage, which is just to tell you some smaller fears from childhood.

I remember as a kid, my paternal grandpa had like, I don't know, time-life-seeming books on like paranormal stuff.

And I remember him trying to give me a book on psychic surgery and me not wanting it because it creeped me out too much.

And then his feelings being hurt by that, and my dad being upset about it because he had a bad relationship with his dad.

Not that he would admit that at the time.

And so it was like I had to take the psychic surgery book to heal the whatever.

What is the psychic surgery book about?

Well, do you know about psychic surgery?

Because I feel like I, okay, I feel like this came up in my cable TV viewing.

And also, I'll say that as an an elementary school student, because I was born in 1988, so my elementary into early middle school years were like right in the golden era of like stupid cable TV programming.

I would often sometimes just literally be too anxious to like not be like extremely nauseated and therefore feel unable to go to school because I was afraid I would throw up in front of other people.

And so my mom was pretty permissive about that.

And I would just like get to stay home and watch America's Most Haunted Hotels.

Awesome.

Yeah, it was great.

And I learned so much.

And look at me now.

Look at me now.

I'm using it.

I'm using all that information.

And how much algebra do I do?

Thanks, nausea.

And so psychic surgery, this also comes up in Man on the Moon, the Andy Kaufman biopic with Jim Carrey.

I haven't seen it.

Well, it's this basically this idea promoted by charlatans where if you have cancer or something, you go in and they like kind of massage their hands on your body.

And the idea is that they draw the tumor up, like out through the skin, and then they show it to you.

And they're like, look, you're better now.

And you're like, gee, thanks.

And really what they have in their hand is like a piece of chicken meat or something.

I have heard about this.

I have heard about this.

Yeah.

Or like chicken organ, organ meat or something like that.

Jim Jones also did this.

Jim Jones loved a psychic surgery.

That is so dark.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So your dad wanted you to learn about psychic surgery.

My grandpa

and I was part of this like weird, you know, paternal toxic love triangle.

So the real fear there is like the troubled relationships men have with their own fathers, but then also psychic surgery.

Okay, God, it's a secondary thing.

But I was into creeping myself out.

I really liked Ripley's Believe It or Not.

And like, I can't remember the author, but if I asked my mom who it was, she would tell me what should I just, I'll just try and ask her right now.

I'm going to call her.

Do it.

Call your mom

okay you got screened oh well yeah damn it yeah

but there was this guy who was very popular mid-century and he had like a newspaper column and i think a radio show and i remember reading a compilation of those columns that was in like the sixth grade class library for some reason.

You know how you would get, you get like a weird book at school and be like, where did this book even come from?

And it was all facts like one night, and this is actually one I later saw in Unsolved Mysteries.

One night, a church choir of like 25 people, everyone for different reasons was late to church choir practice.

And on that night, the church exploded, but no one was hurt because they're all late for different reasons.

It makes you think.

And as an adult, I'm like, yeah, it makes me think about how in a country with hundreds of millions of people in it, you almost have the statistical equivalent of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, and like every possible thing is going to happen at least once.

That's true.

And also, could they have just lied?

Well, I mean, the church wasn't there the next day, so I don't know.

I feel like evangelical maybe the preacher was like, Let's just not have rehearsal tonight.

And then when the church blew up, he was like, No, everybody, we did have rehearsal.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's not unheard of for evangelical churches to create propaganda like that but you're also right statistically it's gonna happen once in a while yeah just like when the exorcist premiered and lightning struck that cross and it fell into the plaza i don't know

i've never seen proof that that really happened by the way but uh right statistically it gets repeated yeah I mean, this is the thing, right?

That like The Exorcist, I can't remember if this happened with The Exorcist.

It definitely happened with The Omen, which is about the Antichrist.

That people died while that movie was in production, and we're supposed to take that as proof that it angered Satan.

But

two people who worked on Pretty and Pink died during or after, right after that movie coming out.

And that movie wasn't about Satan at all.

Not that we know of, yeah.

Unless Satan is James Spader.

Yeah, well.

He would be a good Satan in something.

James Spader in the 80s?

Are you kidding me?

That would be

a good Satan movie.

So yeah, I love just kind of creepy cable content.

CCC.

There was a story that haunted me for years that was also from a book I got from like an elementary school book nook that it was about if anyone knows what this book is like

comment on Instagram.

But it was this woman was in an asylum and she had a baby and she had been like meticulously pulling hair out of her head and making a giant braid that she was going to escape out the window with.

And then on this one fateful day where the story picks up, they come in, the orderlies or whoever, and they take away her baby and they throw her braid on the fire.

Yes.

Wow.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because that's the thing, because it's the thing of like, oh my God, like someone has spent.

you know, months over a year, the idea of like something being destroyed in an instant.

Yeah.

And that way, like that actually is a concept that really haunts me.

Yeah, especially if it's something where you're working to somehow become safe or to protect yourself from something and then just the

easy way that someone with more power can just like kick you right back down the hill again and you're back at the bottom.

And that is very, very scary.

That's really scary.

I think a great work of horror fiction is Jack London's To Build a Fire.

I didn't ever read it.

It's wild.

It's wild, man, because that story is like, it's a prospector in the Yukon.

He's alone with his dog, who he treats very badly.

So we, from the beginning, are not supposed to like him particularly.

And he's also traveling alone in 70 below Fahrenheit.

Wow.

And there's, you know, this whole thing reasonably enough about like only a complete idiot would be alone in 70 below because you have zero margin for error.

Yeah.

And so he goes about trying to build a fire and he he like has some kind of initial minor fuck-up that starts a chain reaction of fuck-ups.

And he's like very rapidly, I think he steps through shelf ice is the thing.

And shelf ice is like thin ice on top of water.

No.

So he steps into water.

He has to build a fire, but his body is like very quickly numbing up.

And like the horror that I feel as I read that story is unmatched by most experiences I've ever had with like any kind of, you know, horror movie or like over-the-top or supernatural horror fiction because it's like, this just happened to people.

Like, this exact scenario or something very similar to it has happened to so many people.

Like, freezing to death is very real.

Yeah.

And I get that that's why a lot of the horror we choose to consume is more allegorical than that.

But it's something that I find very compelling and grounding in terms of like,

we are people and we are on the earth and there are just certain physical realities that dictate what happens to us.

And that's kind of, as, you know, in the episodes that I've done with Blair Braverman on The Miracle in the Andes and on the Diatlov Pass incident, like, there is also comfort to be found in the idea that nature doesn't wish you harm.

It just doesn't wish you anything.

Yeah, The Indifferent Stars Above is that Donner Party book that is my favorite.

Same thing.

It's like, I mean, it's like, oh, I'm made of gas a million miles away.

I can't really do anything.

Which is so comforting and so terrifying.

There isn't an anime.

Well, we we don't know, I guess.

I'm an agnostic, but there may not be any animating force to the universe that wishes you well,

nor is there one that wishes you harm.

And that, that is, you know, it's both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't really waste time with simulation theory because I think it is a silly waste of time based on a 12-year-old's understanding of the world.

I get the viewpoint that when we're trying to conceive of God, right, and like if there is a rational mind at the center of all this, or if there is like a thinking mind at the center of all this, like

what is it like that, like a sadistic 14-year-old inbreeding their sims is kind of what comes to mind.

Locking him in a room with no door.

Like God just felt like torturing his Sims, you know?

Whereas I am terrified that we're living in a simulation.

I think

that waste time.

No, it's a waste of time.

Not to be insulting to your conspiracy theories.

No, no.

But yeah.

I don't want it to be true.

I just feel like as we get closer to AI, I'm like, is this just the cycle repeating itself

into infinity?

We got real big, real quick, with our fears straight to simulation theory.

Well, we did, and with good reason.

You know, we should be afraid of all this.

It's like Victorians being like, you know, all this sit in the air.

This could have ramifications.

And they were so right and these are scary things but to get to like an iconic scary thing Chelsea I have never truly watched the max headroom signal intrusion video and some of you just went and some of you were like what but this is a video that like for whatever reason I when I first found out about it and I'm sure it was from finding a list of creepy Wikipedia articles on like Jezebel or something and then trying to read all of them, I found it so unbearably creepy creepy that I watched it, but only with the sound off.

Wow.

And kind of like leaning away.

And I don't normally do that, but I find it so unsettling.

And I would love for you to, you know, I don't want to put you on the spot because I can, I'll bring in like, you know, dates and everything as we need them.

But like, what, what was this thing?

Yeah.

So from what I remember, this happened in like

the 80s, and it was a TV station that was essentially hijacked by

this group of people who I think were maybe never identified.

And yeah, we have no, we don't know who did this.

And it's been like 35 years or more.

It's just this creepy video of this guy wearing the Max Headroom mask, which was, you're going to have to explain to me what that actually was.

Max, I don't really understand

the lore of Max Headroom, but he was a character who I don't know his organs, but he was just like a popular kind of mascot guy in the 80s kind of like spuds mckenzie but like and he was an actor who was like kitted out in a way that made him look pretty uncanny yes and let's watch a max like an an actual max headroom ad one

two three

hi max headroom here with

this is my guest He like glitches.

I heard you were big time in the old pop is.

I'm going to take that as a no comment.

So,

time.

What I'm talking about, and you're not, is that more people prefer the new refreshing taste of Coke over Pepsi.

Sweating me?

So, like, very uncanny and like a mixture of like the uncanny valley and like the uncanniness of like technology.

So, Max Headream is played by Matt Frewer, who was the neighbor dad in Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

Okay, great.

And so, he's like canonically a computer-generated guy, but he's actually an actor in makeup and the kind of he he's meant to glitch as he's talking to you.

He's sort of uncanny.

I think this character was like very divisive from what I can tell.

And a lot of people were like, okay, that's enough, Max Headroom.

Okay.

He was in ads.

He had a TV show briefly.

He looks sort of like a computer simulated newscaster, I guess.

Yeah, like almost a Jay Leno.

So that's Max Headroom.

And then the signal hijacking incident was, yeah, a guy in a Max Headroom mask.

And I heard about this on Wikipedia one night and read about it and watched the video with no sound.

And I just found it so unsettling.

And Kelsey, I think today's the day

we should watch it.

Okay.

All right.

Are we going to do it?

And also, I think they burst in on an episode of Doctor Who, which is just disrespectful.

Oh, yeah, that's that must have been intentional.

Okay, you can count us down again.

Yeah.

One,

two,

three.

That is the only way to learn.

I'll get you a hot drink, mate.

Your love is fading.

Subtitles just say humming the tune to collect cargo.

My files.

Wow.

I gotta say, I find this a lot less scary than I used to.

And that was it.

Wow.

Yep.

I mean, it is creepy, but what I didn't realize is how much a part of it, the creepiness of the Max Headroom mask is.

All right.

Well, what did you experience?

Like,

what was going on while you were watching?

I mean, first of all, the incoherence of, well, okay, one of my first thoughts, and I knew that they did this, but I hadn't really been thinking about it, is that they have like these wavy lines behind him, which is clearly like a pretty spot-on imitation of the actual Max Headroom commercials, but it's someone like tilting what looks like a piece of corrugated metal back and forth.

And that actually from the beginning then made it not that scary to me because you're like, this is like a Max Headroom fan.

Yeah, yeah.

There's something very unsinister about being like, we have to do the background, though.

What this like kind of reminds me of for some reason is, are you familiar with like the numbers station?

Yes, yeah.

Tell us about that.

Well, I think that might still exist, but that there are certain like stations that you can find on the radio, and it's just a woman reading random numbers with like static in the background, like forever.

And it's like an automated thing, obviously.

And I don't really know, like, I don't think people really understood what they were for, why.

And there's like a lot of conspiracy theories about them, but you know, it's just this sort of like the creepiness of the unknown

reason that something like that would exist.

Like, what makes the Max Headroom thing creepy is just kind of like the why of it.

Yeah.

That's That's really strange and not understanding why, uh, like they didn't really seem to have a particular message.

Like, I guess this was just kind of like Edge Lord Chaos magic or something.

But,

but, yeah, I mean,

what did you find so scary about it before we actually heard the full audio?

Part of it maybe has to do with the fact that TV isn't a part of my life anymore, like it is, but it isn't, because like when I was growing up, you would turn on the TV and then whatever was on like was what was gonna happen and now we our relationship to media is actually I think completely different because we we choose a streaming service and then we choose a thing to stream and we're not all watching the same signal that can then be hijacked by some random max headroom enthusiast and I think the vulnerability of a signal hijacking is something that like I don't really feel anymore because it's not something that could happen.

Yeah, I think of the Oscars, right?

It's like one of the only, you know, the Oscars slap in the lineage of the Oscars streaker.

But yeah, I mean, the only thing I can like think of recently is the Love is Blind live stream finale that happened like a few months ago.

What happened with that?

I mean, Miranda and I are like big Love is Blind people, and it was just the experience of everyone coming to watch something live on Netflix, which was like not really anything that they'd done before.

Maybe they'd done it once before, but it was like a huge deal.

And like, Love is Blind is like a massive show.

And so it was like so many, many, many, many, many people coming to watch it.

And we're just sitting there, and it's just like,

this site is under construction, almost like vibe.

You know, it's like it just, we kept waiting and waiting, and there kept being like these tweets and announcements that it was eventually going to start.

And it was like two hours later that it started.

And then it was like really like Woodstock 2.

Exactly.

And then it was like

really

weird because the mics were picking up people in the control room.

So it was just like watching something that's supposed to be so shiny and so perfect kind of like falling apart at the seams.

And it was like, I mean, it was really exciting.

I wouldn't have had it any other way, you know, even though it was like, I've been here for two hours and everyone's so mad.

And I was just like thrilled that we were all having an experience together.

Yeah.

That's nice.

But you know, you just don't get like, you don't get that very often anymore where there is that vulnerability,

whether it be to just technological issues or something as weird as a pirate signal hijacker.

You know, like there are facts that I love that just like are from another time.

And one of them is that, like, I think when they aired the Miracle on Ice in the 1980 Olympics, the hockey game, it was broadcast in either the U.S.

or Canada before the other country.

So you had like,

from what I recall, like

people having to relay the information personally.

Oh,

okay, okay.

Yeah.

So the Miracle on Ice, the miraculous, extremely lucky American victory in the 1980 hockey game and the Olympics was broadcast live on Canadian TV, but held back for prime time on American TV.

So like you could learn what had happened, but only by talking to a Canadian.

Oh, scary.

Just kidding.

I was just in Canada.

It's so nice to be in Canada and not feel the immense crushing weight of the American landscape, but that's neither here nor there.

I assume there are plenty of Canadians who are like, hey, we're being crushed as well, you know.

And I know you are, babes.

I know.

I know.

So, okay, so I've like actually made a major fear less scary to me, and that's really exciting.

Another thing I find very scary consistently and this is used to great effect in

signs and the Blair Witch Project.

I wonder if you can, you know what I'm talking about.

Signs and the Blair Witch.

I just watched Signs recently and it scared the shit out of me.

I hadn't watched it in a long time and Miranda had already fallen asleep and I continued to watch it and it was really

upsetting to me.

I've never even seen the whole thing, but I have seen the part where they're watching a video of a child's birthday party

where one of the aliens that they're looking for like walks very quickly across the frame.

Yes, very scary.

And that absolutely scares the shit out of me.

And I think he kind of looks over while he's walking, maybe.

Okay, so I want to say, and this is a show we've talked about.

I loved and love the Disney Channel show So Weird.

It's an amazing show.

It's about a girl who is traveling around America with her mother, Mackenzie Phillips, on their band's bus, along with her brother and I think the like tour manager's son, Clue,

played by Eric von Detten.

I'm pretty sure.

And in every episode, they're in a new part of America that looks like Vancouver, BC,

and

they have to solve a regional paranormal thing.

And it's very based on the X-Files.

Fee is trying to connect with the ghost of her dead dad that's his Samantha Mulder but it's also just like a fun monster of the week show but I'm I think that when I was a kid I loved it but genuinely scared me a lot of the time and there was also in the opening sequence there was like a little clip or just an image of the Patterson Gimlin Bigfoot film and I like could not watch it I would like cover I would like look away

wow okay okay

and for people who don't know a lot of people are going to realize they do know what it is when you describe it, but like, what is this piece of Bigfoot media?

I mean, all it really is is like Bigfoot walking kind of in the distance, or what we are supposed to believe is Bigfoot.

And he's kind of just got like this long stride with his arms up, like walking like if he was like fast walking in my this is my memory.

He's like a fast walking mom from the 80s.

And right at the moment, or like right at the moment that he's kind of like dead center in the clip, he turns and looks at the person with the camera.

And that's basically my, is that your general memory of it?

It's been a while.

Yes.

Okay.

And then it's kind of a casual lope.

And there's like a lot of mysteries about this film, I think, still.

Like, I think at least one of the guys who made it said later that he had made it.

But I think there are things we don't know.

Like, I think there's maybe some degree of disagreement about who's actually in the suit

and stuff like that.

I'm not sure.

But, you know, it's like information gets lost to time and then you can use that to support your theory that like, Noah really is Bigfoot.

But that video was so terrifying to me as a kid.

And I think, again, this is something that like seems pretty benign, really, but I think was became such a part of the American consciousness because there is something very creepy about it.

Yeah.

There is, and found footage horror movies really rely on this, something

that happens to you when you know you're watching for something scary, but what you're watching is very boring.

Like you're you're in some kind of a heightened state where like, it's like adding salt.

You know, food tastes better.

Scares scare scarier.

It's like what we were talking about in the other episode where you like context actually can like twist the way that you're perceiving like your own vision.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like you do see the Bigfoot look over, and that is the scariest part.

It is.

And then the Blair Witch thing is like,

and I guess I love this part so much.

I wouldn't change anything about it where they run out of the tent.

This is kind of like a part where things are really coming to a head.

Like the Blair Witch is like beating their tent with sticks, really, you know, the director's friends.

And they run out of their tent.

And Heather's got the camera and she like whips around and she's like, what the fuck is that?

What the fuck is that?

And you can't see a goddamn thing in the movie.

And I don't think, and you were supposed to be able to, but I like that it didn't work out.

Yeah, because it was actually someone dressed in like all white, I think, covered in like a white stocking and was just like sprinting.

So that's like real fear in Heather's voice, as we've talked about many times.

But yes, it is.

It's the monster problem, I guess, in a way, where it's like, if you don't see the monster, the thing you're imagining is always going to be.

much scarier.

And you're right.

Bigfoot in this video is doing the walk that like

people do when they have to get go into Target for just one item.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very human.

It's a very human walk.

Yeah.

Because I will say when I was a kid, Bigfoot was one of my major fears.

Like if you'd asked me when I was 10 years old, like,

Sarah, what are you most afraid of?

There's a good chance I would have said Bigfoot.

Wow.

And we lived in Hawaii.

So.

That didn't really make sense.

So why do you think you were scared of Bigfoot?

I think there is really an element in a lot of what we're talking about to like humans seek to know so much, and for anything to evade our understanding is kind of upsetting to us.

And I think that was part of it.

That makes sense.

And also, I guess the idea of like, and it's funny because I always remember the story I read once about like

a kind of friendly Bigfoot encounter.

And I wanted to believe that Bigfoot was friendly, but for some reason, I just felt sure that he wasn't.

Well, that's fair.

You know, I actually

got to

go as part of working for the podcast Euphomet

with my friend Jim Perry.

And we went and kind of shadowed a Bigfoot hunter named Brian, who was really wonderful.

And we like went up into the woods of Vancouver, BC, and he

showed us like all the trails and the places that he had heard Bigfoot.

And he was really into the fact that Bigfoot like communicated using like these runic symbols that you know he could find in stick shapes on the ground

which of course like for me, I would call that confirmation bias.

Like he, he didn't because there's always going to be sticks on the ground and there's always going to be symbols that you can interpret.

But he'd created like this entire alphabet.

Wow.

And it was really, really meaningful to him.

And I have to say.

It's like that seagull that fell in love with a statue of a seagull.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, it was like so meaningful to him.

And it like clearly was like a big source of comfort.

Like he was not scared of Bigfoot.

Like Bigfoot was his nice, his friend and his like spiritual

cohort, you know, and like, but what I will say about it is like, skepticism aside, he like was very much to me and Jim, he was very much like, you kind of have to get in the spirit of it, right?

Like, you know, and we were working as part of a paranormal podcast, so we were already in the spirit of it.

We weren't coming in as skeptics, like that's not Jim's show at all.

And it was like we were

totally stricken as we're driving up into the woods.

Him and I are looking at each other like, I feel something, you know, like I feel

different.

I feel a change come over me.

And I think that that right there is kind of the...

the special sauce with all the fears we're talking about is like when you can get it it's like you get into that space where you can accept things as creepy and you like suspend that disbelief and you do have experiences you have like embodied physical experiences No place more embodied than a freaking forest, I would argue.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And in a way, it feels like Bigfoot is like the spirit of the forest.

And actually, I just did a corn maze where one of, and you know how, like, in corn mazes, sometimes you can like answer questions and it'll tell you which way to go if you get like a trivia thing right.

Oh my God, I've never seen that in a corn maze, but that's really fun.

Yeah, I really like it because I know a lot of trivia and I really have terrible spatial reasoning.

It's your only hope.

Yeah, it's like, oh my God, thank God.

There's like something I know how to do.

And so one of them was like, when did Bigfoot, you know, start showing up in the news or start showing up as a figure a lot?

And I was like, I know the answer.

It's shockingly late.

It's like 1958.

Because wasn't this like it was on commercial logging sites that people started theorizing Bigfoot?

Wow.

Or like, you know, that there had been Bigfoot-like figures, you know, in all kinds of folklore, you know, historically, but that that was when 20th century white Americans came up with our vision of Bigfoot.

Like he was some kind of like protector of the forest.

This is from the History Channel website, which I trust Medium.

And this is by Becky Little.

Thank you, Becky.

What exactly are the origins of the Bigfoot or Sasquatch legend?

In 1958, journalist Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times highlighted a fun, if dubious, letter from a reader about loggers in Northern California who'd discovered mysteriously large footprints.

Maybe we have a relative of the abominable snowman of the Himalayas, Genzoli jokingly wrote in his September 21st column alongside the letter.

Later, Genzoli said he'd simply thought the mysterious footprints, quote, made a good Sunday morning story, but to his surprise, it fascinated readers.

In response, Genzoli and fellow Humboldt Times journalist Betty Allen published follow-up articles about the footprints, reporting the name loggers had given to the so-called creature who left the tracks, Bigfoot.

And so a legend was born.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, that is, I mean, I don't know.

It makes sense in like a folklore sense for sure, where it's like the manifestation of

the forest's, you know, retaliation or it's like

attempt at creating a being that will stop human destruction.

It's like very, yeah.

I love it.

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

Isn't that great?

Yeah.

And they apparently, quote, loggers blamed acts of vandalism on Bigfoot.

Convenient.

And he just, you know, kind of passed into public consciousness and in the way we now see him.

And yeah, it's kind of like gremlins in World War II, it seems like, where, like, if you're working with machinery, like stuff is going to go wrong, either because someone is, you know, fucking with you or not maintaining it properly, or just because these things

happen.

And it's like you need a person, we need personifications of the forces in our lives, I think.

Yeah.

I mean, I would like to know what being is tangling my cords.

Please, who's taking my socks?

Who is it?

And then my third thing I wanted to talk about for things that scare me as we dive down into what causes our fears.

Also say speaking of the forest of the Pacific Northwest, to paraphrase Stephen Fry, there's nothing better than waking up in the forest and there's nothing worse than going to sleep in the forest.

Yeah.

I like both.

I know.

It is like candy for my anxiety.

If I get into a certain frame, every time you hear like a crick or a crack or like a twig break,

You your brain can easily interpret that as something scary headed towards you.

And the thing about being in the woods is that they're made out of wood, famously, and twigs are going to break all the time, all night long.

All night long.

Yeah, and like just little tiny sounds that you can grow entire monsters out of, which is a metaphor.

Yeah, I love stories on like camping subreddits and stuff that people tell about like something basically like, I heard someone walking around my tent all night long and it turned out to be like a gopher eating under my head.

Oh, I got it.

Do you you want a story?

Yes.

Okay.

This feels relevant.

So, okay, I'm like

10 or 11.

Maybe, yeah, I'm like 11 and

I'm camping with my dad, my stepmom, my,

basically my brother, Johnny.

And

we are like drifting off to sleep.

And basically, we have pulled off the high, like a highway or forest service road, just down down a dirt road because, you know, he didn't want to pay for camping.

So we just kind of like, you know, parked in a random place.

And all night, teenagers were like partying around us and like getting stuck in the mud in their cars and like screaming and drinking.

And it was like, you know, unnerving, but it was okay.

And then at some point, as we're drifting off to sleep, we start hearing footsteps coming up to the tent.

And my dad is asleep and so is my stepmom.

And And I'm like, dad, dad, dad.

You know how a dad sleeps.

So he won't wake up.

Oh, my God.

And finally, I'm like, dad.

And then he's just like, what?

And then I was like, listen.

And then we like all were quiet and we could hear the footsteps like walking around the tent.

And I am, this is like

one of those times where my knees are shaking.

Like, that's when I know that I'm really, really, really scared as I'm like a little like Italian puppet and my knees like shake and clatter together.

And, um,

and yeah, he like, we just heard this happen.

And then my dad was like, Okay.

And then out of nowhere, pulls a pistol and

bursts out the front of the tent.

And we're like, oh my God.

And then he's just gone for a hot minute and then comes back and he's like, there's nothing out there.

And then we go back to, you know, we start to go back to sleep and it happens again.

And it happened like multiple times.

And he went out there and we just never, uh, never figured out what it was.

And, you know, I mean, that's the memory as it stands in my 11-year-old head.

And

I will keep it that way.

Maybe I'm exaggerating.

I don't know.

But it was definitely like, I will tell you, my knees were knocking together.

And it was definitely a pistol.

Yeah.

And do you think there was someone walking around or could it have been like something that sounded like that?

I mean,

I think.

Also, by the way, this was all compounded by the fact that when we first pulled into this like uh dirt road, we went far down the dirt road until we got to the end where, again, in my memory, there was an old house with a man standing there looking at us holding a pitchfork.

And we were like,

We'll just like flip a you, and then we went like halfway back and camped.

So it's like there were like many things happening that could have set this mood, but it's like it had to have just been an animal.

You know, I've we always were like, it was ghosts, that's what we settled on but like why were they haunting

my tent

I don't know but uh anyway I love camping I also think there's something really nightmare fuel about it because it's like you have the illusion of security you have protection from like the elements kind of and from rain and stuff but like nothing protects you from the rest of the world but a thin layer of nylon.

It's such a joke.

It's nuts.

And so you have this like, and it's kind of weird.

It feels like tents are kind of like, that we don't know how to process them because we have this feeling of containment and security and like this cozy little home and we're warm and dry or at least kind of dry in there while it's like soppy outside.

So like we feel protected, but like if anyone violent came along, you know, be it like a scary person or a bear or whatever, then like the tent is nothing.

No.

What is the tent?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm like like pretty anti-tent.

I'm either like under the stars or in my car or truck with my mattress.

And I don't know.

There's something about a tent that, I mean, A, you wake up, you're sweaty, it's hot, it's gross.

Although I will say I have a tent that has a mesh, that's mesh, and I love that because it's like, I want to see, I want to be able to see

while I'm inside of the thing.

Like, I feel like not being able to see is not smart.

That also contributes to the feeling of vulnerability.

Right.

Because the reason you don't know who's walking around outside your tent is because you can't see outside your tent.

Exactly.

But if I had a mesh tent, I would see and maybe that would be better.

Maybe it would be worse.

But at least I would know.

My mom has one of those for her cats so they can still enjoy the outdoors.

Yeah, I wouldn't be wondering two decades later what the hell that was, you know?

That is a scary story to me because it is like, it's kind of the Schrödinger's cat thing in a way for if I can, you know, feel free to misunderstand math for a second here.

Where like, if you don't know who or what is out there, if anything, then like it could be an axe murderer and it could be a terrier and you just, and it's always all things that it could be until you see it.

Yeah, it's, but it's always either an axe murderer or a terrier.

Or a terrier with a tiny little axe.

Yeah.

Little paw.

Why not both?

But yeah, I mean, that's like a bigger, it's obviously like a bigger metaphor for so many things that we cover too.

It's like, it's either an axe murderer or a terrier.

You know, it's either like the most frightening thing that you could ever imagine or more likely, it's nothing at all.

And

also I think what both of our shows is about is like how we can at least within all this try and get more information from analyzing the American tendency to confuse axe murderers with terriers.

Yeah.

And vice versa.

Because we're like, so it's 1982.

We are prosecuting lesbians for daring to work in daycare centers.

But go right ahead, father.

You seem fine.

Yeah, exactly.

So camping.

Camping is scary.

I'm with you.

I think it's nice to have a, to sleep in,

we went camping recently and I slept in my car and had the hatch back open.

And it's like, you, it's, it's very, that's a feeling of security.

Absolutely.

It really is.

And like, I don't, I never sleep better than when I'm like in my car with the hatchback open.

It's like, yeah, I don't know.

I just, I sleep great.

Because you're like, you know, you're, you've opened yourself to nature, but you have an exoskeleton.

Yeah, definitely.

And that's one of the things humans really lack.

I think that's why we love our cars so much, Partley.

We like to have an exoskeleton.

Wow, that's really smart.

Right?

That's really smart.

I never thought of that, but like, that's, I, yeah, it feels great.

We also act more like insects when we're in our car, we're just like reactive and have no real empathy or soul.

Yeah,

and we swarm, you know, swarm around.

Oh, yeah, we sure do.

One thing that really creeps me out is a really big frog.

Of course.

How could I forget?

They just, I find it upsetting.

Have you seen a big frog?

No.

Okay.

So this is like, is there a big frog in some media or like, what are you doing?

Well, there will be like the Daily Mail, you know, how they have to like print every upsetting thing they can think of every day.

So they print a lot of stuff that definitely isn't news.

And

there was, you know, every so often I feel like the Daily Mail will be like, here's a picture of a Chinese toddler holding up a gigantic frog that they found.

And they're like the same size and I just find there to be something incredibly menacing about frogs above a certain really I think a frog if it's bigger than a coin purse I don't want it anywhere near me I just don't I don't blame this but like

I did grow up with family in Australia and so you then hear about cane toads which actually do sound very dangerous.

Cane toads, I think like if a dog eats a cane toad, they can die.

Like they're poisonous.

Oh, okay.

And they were brought over, I think, as some kind of like colonialist folly and then took over.

And I think it's like, at least in the past, it was a thing,

especially if you grew up on a farm that you would like, you know, just like kill a bunch of cane toads for your chores.

Yeah, okay.

Well, yeah, they are big boys.

They're big boys.

Yeah, I gotta say, Sarah, this doesn't scare me.

This doesn't scare these frogs.

But that's so interesting.

I mean, and it's interesting because I know that you and I have had this like running joke about how, like, where did all the tiny tree frogs of our childhood go?

Because, like, I feel like every day I found a tiny frog.

There were just tiny frogs everywhere.

And I don't see them anymore.

Sorry, I just looked up really big frog and I'm going to send you the results.

It's really horrifying.

I know.

And every time I see a little frog, I send you a video of it.

Yeah.

I just want to emphasize a little frog, there is nothing better than a little frog.

She just wants to say hashtag not all frogs.

Or like, you know what else I feel uncomfortable with is

koi.

Koi?

Yeah.

Like the fish?

Yes.

You know, I kind of get that.

Look at the search results for really big frog.

I sent you a link.

There's a New York Post headline that says giant frog as big as quote human baby.

And I'm just going to let you look at this because I literally can't look at the frogs any longer.

Like the image is the child holding the frog like under its armpits, essentially.

And when you see this frog stretched out, you really start to see the resemblance to the human form.

That creeps out.

You really do.

And that's creepy.

I also, just to speak to how my brain works, I'm drinking out of a big thermos and I just went to take a sip and my brain went, what if there was a frog in here?

Ew.

And it put me off my water.

No, I mean, that makes me feel like my water is going to be like slimy, and I don't like that at all.

Are you looking at giant frog eats tiny rodent?

Um,

yeah,

yeah, yeah, this is how it started with me in frogs.

I remember reading like something in a National Geographic when I was a kid about it, like a frog that eats bats or like frogs that eat birds.

And I was like, No,

that is not okay.

And I was interested, even at the time, about why to me there was something so clearly monstrous about a frog eating like

outside of its place in the food chain, which I realize is kind of a construct, but like I did not like it.

Frogs eat bugs.

Were you scared of their like tongues that are like those 25 cent sticky hands?

I'm actually not afraid of the tongues, but I just feel like if frogs get any bigger, they're going to come eat the humans.

That's interesting.

Do you think it could have anything to do with like that idea that we're like creeped out?

And I mean, I talked about spiders in our other episode.

And I think this stands for them too is like how they share very few traits in common with humans.

So like they are by nature, like very foreign to us, which would make them, you know, more unnerving.

Yes.

And with frogs, maybe there is an uncanniness because you can see more of a human resemblance.

You can.

And also, they start off as fish.

What the fuck is that?

That is weird.

Well, not only that, Sarah, but they start out as like a slimy

cloud of eggs.

Yeah.

Well, you know, we probably basically, you know.

Yeah, it's not fair.

We do too.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's just, I don't know, there's something about frogs.

I can't handle it.

Never bring me a big frog.

That's all I'm going to say.

Don't do it.

Don't bring her a big frog.

But I love a lot of animals that people generally don't like.

And an animal I love is the possum.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm not saying get me a possum because I'm not responsible enough.

But like possums, can't go wrong with, I don't care how big that possum is.

They will always be cute.

A giant possum, still cute.

Which is really funny because I was scared of possums as a kid because one time my dog was going absolutely.

freaking nuts barking at like this little area under our house and my stepdad was like got a light and shined it under there.

And I was with him, and it was just like you know, the possum's face, which is like very human.

That is scary, it's very human.

And I just remember he got a broom to try to get it out from under the house, and I can still see it.

He was like poking at it, and it was just like barely hitting it in the mouth, and it wasn't going anywhere.

So it was just like it's like lips were just kind of like

being like poked by this broomstick.

That's all I I remember.

She's like, come get me, old man.

Yeah, he's like, I don't think so.

Oh, my God.

See, that's just, I like that.

Yeah, it's not scary in retrospect.

Sarah, do you want to tell me about your final fear?

I would love nothing more.

And I will preface this by saying this is from the Jezebel Scary Stories Contest,

which is one of my favorite things.

Do you read this contest?

No.

Okay.

So I'm pretty sure they're still doing it, but for at least many years, Jezebel had an annual reader-submitted scary story contest, and the rules were that they had to be true.

And some of them are paranormal and some are not.

And I really enjoy reading them every year.

And I also enjoy being a big stickler about what I will like

admit to being scared by.

Because, for example, I've noticed that a lot of people who post ghostly encounter stories, it's like, I fell asleep and I woke up and I saw a ghost and I went back to sleep.

When you're you're like sleep paralysis, yes,

or something, you know, and I'm not saying that you didn't see a ghost, but I'm just saying, like, for me personally to take that ghost story seriously, I need you to be wide awake when that ghost shows up.

Yeah.

But there are some that have really creeped me out and stuck with me to this day.

And the one that has the most is called A Little Hole in the Wall by someone whose username is 4,000 of them.

And it's about someone who is working in news, moved to Cincinnati, rents a first-floor apartment, has a big dog, is kind of settling into life there.

And then one day comes home from shopping and the toilet seat is up.

And she's like, well, the guy I've been hanging out with probably did that.

So that's probably not anything.

And then, you know, other little things start happening along those lines.

And then she comes back from a trip and everything is covered in dust.

And she's like, that's incredibly weird, but I have no idea what that's about.

So I guess I'll just clean it up and deal with it.

And she's also moved in a bunch of furniture, including, quote, a huge yellow hutch,

which it took me a while to figure out what that was.

But I think it's like, you know, one of the pieces of furniture that we have like 50 different words for.

So like a sideboard, a buffet, like an armoire.

It's like a big cabinet that you would like put like china plates in.

So she cleans up the dust and things again like calm down for a while.

Pictures are arranged on a table.

She comes back from a trip and all her food is gone.

Just like all kinds of creepy stuff for a really long time.

Mail disappears.

More food.

Alcohol disappears.

Just like stuff keeps disappearing that she brings into the house.

And so

the story reads, other stuff disappears over time.

A collection of coins my dad has given me from the places he's visited, more food, any drop of alcohol I buy.

But nothing ever happens to me.

No one breaks in when I'm home.

There are no menacing figures at the window, no creepy feelings at night.

The longer things are normal, the more it fades.

I barely sleep.

It makes everything feel even dreamier.

And then one night, I'm getting dressed cute to go out.

I use the blackness of the long windows to check my reflection.

I put on my shoes and one turns white.

It's dust again.

It's not all over like before.

It's concentrated around my huge hutch.

I get get out the vacuum and get to work, teetering in heels, but it's piled around the side of the hutch, which is hard to move.

I turn off the vacuum, brace my legs against the couch, and push the hutch out toward the center of the room.

In the wall is a hole the size of a man.

The dust, of course, had been from the sawing.

I have chills as I'm reading this.

My company put me up in a hotel after that until I could move.

My landlord let me break the lease.

Later, during the process of getting a felony conviction, I learned that two men did all that stuff specifically to scare me, that they sat peeping through the gap at the back of the hutch for months.

One lived in the apartment next door.

The wall opened into a little pocket between the apartment stairwell and the basement.

They hid it with plywood.

My neighbor described it all for me in court, smiling at me.

They watched me check myself out in the full-length mirror, cook meals, watch sad movies, flirt with guys on the phone, do sit-ups, talk to my dog, have the occasional cry, go to the bathroom, everything.

They kept a hoard of snacks from my kitchen in in the wall to enjoy while they passed the time.

My long kitchen knife was found in the wall, plus a boning knife I didn't recognize, but they didn't want to come in while my dog was home, and I was never without her.

Every morning on the way to work for six months, I'd driven past a wanted billboard featuring one of their faces.

I have never lived alone again.

Ooh, yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Miranda and I have been watching frogging, P-H-R-O-G-G-I-N-G, which brings us back to frogs as well for you, which is like double the film.

The real theme is emerging.

That's the phenomenon of someone, the reason it's frogging is like someone who hops from house to house, living in the house without the person knowing.

So it's like a real phenomenon.

There's a whole true crime show about it.

And so sorry not to make your fears come to life, but generally it's not quite so sensational as someone just enjoying watching you through the wall.

That's like very urban legend, like

babysitter in in the man upstairs type of stuff, it feels like.

There's something very primal about it.

And I think we also talked in that bonus about like the home as a place where it feels eerier than in other places to be, you know, to be in danger because our home is where we have to try and trust that we'll be safe.

We have to have a space where we can do that.

And also with the story, you know, naturally, I have like tried to find news about it because this is described as happening in Cincinnati and couldn't find anything.

And I feel like that, I don't know, that doesn't really

make the story more or less real because that is the kind of like I can see

very easily two guys doing that and also that being considered like not terribly newsworthy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's it's totally possible.

And I mean, was it presented as a real story, even though it's firmly?

Yeah, the rule is that you have to submit real stories, although, you know, God knows people have tried to circumvent that.

Ugh, but I mean, that is, it's, it, it's entirely possible that that happened.

It's not something that will probably happen more than once a decade, you know, but I don't know.

It's it's terrifying.

It is terrifying to me to think about, I think, because, and there's also this idea of like, you know, that women living alone are like, by definition, doing something either dangerous to society or to themselves or probably just both.

And the idea that like any freedom you have is highly conditional, where crimes like that kind of feel like,

you know,

part of the creepiness is kind of the implicit message of like, you were never really free.

You were never really self-reliant.

You're always subject to my whims.

Yeah, I was always here.

So I guess my greatest fear

is a giant frog glancing over casually at me as it hops by.

And then I go to try to fall asleep in the forest.

And I wake up and the giant frog has been in my tent the entire time and I didn't realize.

And then the broadcast of your camping trip is interrupted

by an 80s newsman mask.

One of the themes that I can see here is like

not realizing that you're in danger when you are.

Yeah,

that's really, really, really scary, which is weird because that's like, it's an unconscious fear.

So it's like you're, by definition, you're saying like you don't know

that you're afraid of the thing that's happening.

So it's like a really weird phenomenon.

I have to move my bed because I have like windows like where my head goes when I sleep.

And like, I think I would sleep much better if I did not have my head near windows where I have this kind of subconscious fear of like somebody who I can't see but can see me.

But also my bed is too big and I don't know where else to fit it.

Well,

I don't know.

I wish you'd move it, but you know, if you don't know where to put it, I think, you know, you've talked too about like your fear of

people under the bed.

Yeah, someone under my bed, someone grabbing my feet, just anybody under there was clearly bad news.

And I was also very freaked out by, I watched it the other day, and it is like so campy, and I'm amazed that it scared me so much as a kid.

But the episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, where this family moves in next door to these kids and they decide that it's vampires.

And there's like a nightmare the girl has where like she's sleeping with her neck exposed and a vampire is like leaning down to bite her neck.

And as a consequence of that, I like made sure to cover my neck with blankets extremely thoroughly until I was like 12.

It's Tale of the Nightly Neighbors.

I know it well.

Yes.

When I was reading about like why kids are scared of the dark, you know, and why we would be scared of something under our bed, it was very much like just the primal fear that every child has of like dangerous predators lurking in the dark.

And so it has nothing to do with

like anything about your child other than like this biological necessity that they are possessing to be like, I don't have protection right now.

I don't understand.

My primitive brain doesn't understand that I'm safe in a house.

My primitive brain thinks I'm in a cave and my protectors are not here, you know?

And so it's like, it makes sense.

And I think that that just spreads to all kinds of different things, even as you're an adult, because like you're saying, it's like, you're afraid of the thing you can't see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we haven't even talked about your historical fear of alien abduction, but that feels in line with all this.

Yeah.

I'm terrified of aliens and we'll have to save that for another time, I guess.

It's just amazing how, as a kid, you can watch something that is like made very poorly and hastily by some guy who like

never wanted to be making like stupid alien paranormal cable TV segments, but it can like be more influential to you than the greatest art.

So true.

So true.

And then it makes you wonder: what really is great art?

And that is our episode, and those are my fears.

Thank you so much to Kelsey Webber Smith, who is such a fun and generous conversation partner in all things.

And

I hope we got to the bottom of some stuff.

I hope that next year I touch a frog.

Thank you so much to Carolyn Kendrick for producing this show, for putting this episode together, for making me a less fearful person all the time.

And thank you to Louise Bicon for editing.

That's our episode.

See you all in two weeks.