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MAYHEM IN THE MORGUE | Ghost Stories · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:00
Speaker 1: Today's episode includes a graphic and horrific story about the
0:04
Speaker 1: death of an individual. If this sort of thing upsets you,
0:07
Speaker 1: this is definitely not the episode for you. Well to
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Speaker 1: Mayhem the More with your host, Doctor Kinder Crowns. Today's
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Speaker 1: episode ghost Stories. Happy Halloween for Mayhem and the Morgue.
0:28
Speaker 1: People think that something special happens at the Morgue on
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Speaker 1: this day, but sadly, nothing really ever does. The dead
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Speaker 1: don't rise up from their body bags, portals to Hell
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Speaker 1: don't open up in the bathrooms, and there are no
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Speaker 1: ghostly voices crying out from the cooler. All in all,
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Speaker 1: it's just like any other day. Nothing special. Maybe someone
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Speaker 1: dies in a costume, but beyond that, it's the same,
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Speaker 1: the same as it ever was. Today for Halloween, I'm
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Speaker 1: going to talk about a few ghostly encounters that I
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Speaker 1: have had and one gruesome Halloween story. I am not
1:03
Speaker 1: one for ghosts. I do enjoy haunted houses, though, but
1:07
Speaker 1: that's different because it's not real and they can't touch
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Speaker 1: you actually find the paranormals something that I stay away from.
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Speaker 1: My brother used to scare me as a child with
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Speaker 1: stories about the Amityville Horror and the Exorcist shows like
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Speaker 1: Ghost Hunters and Destination Fear will keep me up at night,
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Speaker 1: so I avoid them. I try not to get involved
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Speaker 1: in the debate about ghosts, whether they're real or not real,
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Speaker 1: but sometimes, no matter what I do, you just can't
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Speaker 1: skirt the issue. At the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office
1:40
Speaker 1: in Chicago, Illinois, the topic would occasionally come up and
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Speaker 1: we would get into a debate about the office being haunted.
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Speaker 1: I would always say that people don't die here, so
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Speaker 1: why would they haunt a morgue. The very element of
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Speaker 1: ghost stories is the person haunts the place they died at.
1:57
Speaker 1: I have stayed at haunted places like the Stanley Hotel
2:00
Speaker 1: in Boulder, Colorado, but those places at least someone had
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Speaker 1: been murdered there or died and that's why they were haunted.
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Speaker 1: But no one dies at the more. My coworkers would
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Speaker 1: always argue back, oh, no, there's ghost here, this place
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Speaker 1: is haunted, but they never had any proof. There's no
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Speaker 1: blood coming from the walls, lights flickering for no reason,
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Speaker 1: and no small children saying they are here. And again,
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Speaker 1: I never saw ghosts there, except this one time where
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Speaker 1: I had a very eerie experience early in the morning
2:34
Speaker 1: I used to have to take the train from the
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Speaker 1: suburbs where I lived into the city, and then I
2:39
Speaker 1: would walk from the train station to the L and
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Speaker 1: take the L to get close to where I worked.
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Speaker 1: My daily commute would start around four am. Sometimes when
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Speaker 1: I would get to the office, I would be exhausted,
2:52
Speaker 1: especially in the wintertime, and I would take a nap
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Speaker 1: by rolling up my jacket and laying down on the
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Speaker 1: floor and using the jacket as a pillow. One time,
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Speaker 1: when I was napping on the floor in this manner,
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Speaker 1: I started hearing this weird, echoey baby cry somewhere off
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Speaker 1: in the distance. I couldn't figure out where it was
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Speaker 1: coming from. My office was on the second floor of
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Speaker 1: the medical Examiner's office, and when I came down to
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Speaker 1: the morgue that day to start doing autopsies, I found
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Speaker 1: out there were three dead babies in the cooler waiting
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Speaker 1: to be autopsied. I told one of my coworkers, wow,
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Speaker 1: I heard a baby crying earlier when I was upstairs.
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Speaker 1: And they said, see, this place is haunted, and now
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Speaker 1: you've experienced it. There's no denying it. Now it's just
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Speaker 1: like a graveyard. And I again argued, I didn't know
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Speaker 1: exactly what I had heard, and I had been asleep,
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Speaker 1: so who knows. I thought it might be a baby crying,
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Speaker 1: but again, the baby didn't die here. I thought it
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Speaker 1: was ridiculous. I believe the story goes that ghosts haunt
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Speaker 1: graveyards because that's where their body is, and their spirit
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Speaker 1: stays close to their body, and so again, the medical
4:01
Speaker 1: examiner's office is just the way station to the afterlife
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Speaker 1: because their body is only there temporarily before its shipped
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Speaker 1: to the next place. I did not think the crying
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Speaker 1: baby was a ghost. I've thought about this over the years,
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Speaker 1: trying to explain what I heard, and my best theory
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Speaker 1: is is I had an infant son at the house
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Speaker 1: at that time. He didn't like to sleep through the night.
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Speaker 1: My wife and I were constantly tired from always being awake,
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Speaker 1: and maybe I was just so tired that I thought
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Speaker 1: I was hearing crying because that's all I ever heard
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Speaker 1: at night at home. And it wasn't anything at all.
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Speaker 1: It was just a dream because I was so sleepy.
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Speaker 1: Who knows, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a ghost.
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Speaker 1: People say ghosts haunt places for a number of reasons.
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Speaker 1: It may have been a place that they frequented or
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Speaker 1: had meaning to them. It may have been a place
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Speaker 1: where they spent most of their lives, or it might
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Speaker 1: have been a place where they died suddenly or unexpectedly.
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Speaker 1: One thing is a hospital can be one of those places,
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Speaker 1: and one of the hospitals I worked at was believed
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Speaker 1: to be haunted. When I began my third year medical school,
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Speaker 1: my first rotation was in surgery. I spent two months
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Speaker 1: being assigned patients that I would take care of, see
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Speaker 1: their surgeries and help them recover. The last patient I
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Speaker 1: was assigned before I finished my rotation was a patient
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Speaker 1: by the name of Linda Turner. She had been admitted
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Speaker 1: to the hospital for abdominal swelling over a short period
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Speaker 1: of time. When I came in to evaluate her, she
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Speaker 1: was a fifty four year old woman with short black
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Speaker 1: hair and brown eyes. She was incredibly nice, smiling and pleasant.
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Speaker 1: Her abdomen was markedly swollen, and she said it made
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Speaker 1: her look like she was pregnant, and she told me
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Speaker 1: that ain't a possibility for me anymore. And when I
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Speaker 1: looked at her abdomen, it was very swollen. She was
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Speaker 1: a thin woman, and it looked like she had swallowed
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Speaker 1: a small beach ball. The overlying skin was stretched tight
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Speaker 1: and when I palpated, her abdomen as hard as a rock,
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Speaker 1: which is a major red flag. I told the findings
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Speaker 1: to my surgery attending and he had me order some
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Speaker 1: tests and a CT scan, and he had missus Turner
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Speaker 1: admit it. It took a few days to get her
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Speaker 1: into the CT scanner, and every day I would come
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Speaker 1: by to see how she was doing. She would always
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Speaker 1: be awake in the morning and would want to talk
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Speaker 1: a little while. She was kind and funny. We would
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Speaker 1: talk about her travels, her daughters, game shows, and just
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Speaker 1: how bad the hospital food was. I would also come
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Speaker 1: by in the afternoon to check on her before I
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Speaker 1: went home for the day. She would be tired and
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Speaker 1: probably in pain, but she always had a smile and
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Speaker 1: always enjoyed talking. The abdominal swelling and pain that she
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Speaker 1: was experiencing was quite concerning because she had had pancreatic
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Speaker 1: cancer in the past, and they had taken out most
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Speaker 1: of her pancreas some part of her intestines. She had
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Speaker 1: had chemotherapy and radiation, and they thought she was in remission.
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Speaker 1: The celebration for having beaten the cancer, Linda decided to
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Speaker 1: do some traveling that she had always wanted to do,
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Speaker 1: but after several months, she noticed that her abdomen was
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Speaker 1: beginning to swell. She figured it was bad spent a
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Speaker 1: few more months doing what she wanted to do before
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Speaker 1: she came into the hospital. When we finally got the
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Speaker 1: CT scan, it did show there was a return of
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Speaker 1: her cancer in the mesenteric fat, which is a fat
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Speaker 1: around the intestines, but this was the nineties, so it
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Speaker 1: wasn't definitive. It was decided by the surgeon to do
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Speaker 1: an exploratory surgery and see how bad the cancer was.
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Speaker 1: By the time the surgery was scheduled, it had been
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Speaker 1: about a week in total since she had been admitted,
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Speaker 1: and I had really gotten to know Linda and I
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Speaker 1: really liked her. On the day of her surgery, I
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Speaker 1: met with her beforehand, and as always, she was positive
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Speaker 1: and upbeat. She said to me, I beat it once
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Speaker 1: and I'll beat it again, and I agreed. I got
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Speaker 1: to be part of the surgery, but as a medical student,
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Speaker 1: my job was to reach track the incision with a
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Speaker 1: big curved blade retractor and stand there and watch. When
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Speaker 1: I walked into the operating room, Linda was draped and
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Speaker 1: had her eyes taped shut. She didn't actually look real
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Speaker 1: to me at that moment. The surgeon began the surgery
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Speaker 1: and made an incision through her abdomen and told me
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Speaker 1: to retract it open. I dutifully put my retractor into
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Speaker 1: the incision and pulled it open. And when I did that,
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Speaker 1: you could see it. The gray white nodules of cancer
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Speaker 1: were everywhere, infiltrating the soft tissue, the intestinal wall, the liver,
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Speaker 1: the limp notes. There was nothing that could be done.
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Speaker 1: The surgeon evaluated it and he said, there's nothing we
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Speaker 1: can do. It's too far. And they closed the incision
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Speaker 1: and she was sent to recovery. It was a little
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Speaker 1: late in the afternoon by this time, and I didn't
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Speaker 1: stay around until she woke up, which I regret still
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Speaker 1: to this day. I was sad that Linda, my friend,
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Speaker 1: could not be saved. The next morning, I came into
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Speaker 1: her hospital room to do my morning rounds. When Linda
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Speaker 1: saw me, she had a big smile on her face
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Speaker 1: and she said, hey, hey, hey, doctor k what did
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Speaker 1: they find? And I looked at her and I said,
9:15
Speaker 1: did no one discuss anything with you? And she said, nope.
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Speaker 1: By the time I woke up, everybody was gone except
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Speaker 1: the nurses, and nobody had any information for me. Probably
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Speaker 1: the reality of this is the surgeon had talked to her,
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Speaker 1: but she was probably still groggy and just didn't remember,
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Speaker 1: and her family members that were there were not in
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Speaker 1: the room at the present time. She continued on, saying,
9:39
Speaker 1: you're the first one i've seen, so what's going on?
9:42
Speaker 1: And I said to her, it's probably best if the
9:45
Speaker 1: doctor or one of the residents talk it over with you.
9:48
Speaker 1: And she said, now, come on, Kendall, we've known each
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Speaker 1: other for a little while. Now tell me what's going on.
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Speaker 1: It's bad, isn't it. At that moment, I started crying
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Speaker 1: because I didn't know what to say. I had never
10:01
Speaker 1: told anyone they were going to die. I said to her,
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Speaker 1: I'm just a student and it's not my place to
10:07
Speaker 1: talk about it. And I just sat there crying, and
10:10
Speaker 1: she said, you know, if you're crying, it's obviously really bad.
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Speaker 1: And I finally was able to say, well it is.
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Speaker 1: They couldn't do anything for you. Your cancer's too far.
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Speaker 1: Linda pushed a box of tissues over to me that
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Speaker 1: was on her bedside, table and said, Okay, get yourself
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Speaker 1: cleaned up, and then she said, I guess that's just
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Speaker 1: how it goes. We sat there for a few minutes
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Speaker 1: while I calmed down, and then Linda said to me,
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Speaker 1: very calmly and matter of factly, you know you're going
10:43
Speaker 1: to have to learn how to toughen up, because if
10:45
Speaker 1: you want to be a doctor, you can't get upset
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Speaker 1: just because someone's dying. That's just part of your job,
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Speaker 1: and you have to be able to tell them straight
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Speaker 1: without getting emotional about it. You have to figure out
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Speaker 1: how to lock it away. I always look back at
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Speaker 1: that moment and it's sad that this person with terminal
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Speaker 1: cancer was telling me to be tough. It should have
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Speaker 1: been the other way around. Linda never got to go home.
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Speaker 1: She continued to be my patient for the rest of
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Speaker 1: my surgery rotation and always continued to maintain her upbeat
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Speaker 1: attitude even though the inevitable was looming near at hand.
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Speaker 1: She was eventually moved to the fifth floor on the
11:25
Speaker 1: east side of the hospital, to a corner room where
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Speaker 1: they put cancer patients who were terminal but weren't problematic.
11:33
Speaker 1: It had large windows that looked out into the parking
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Speaker 1: lot that I was very familiar with because a few
11:38
Speaker 1: years earlier I had pushed a dead body across it,
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Speaker 1: and I could see the morgue where I worked when
11:43
Speaker 1: I was an autopsy technician before medical school. I would
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Speaker 1: sit and talk to Linda, staring out this window and
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Speaker 1: staring at that morgue, trying not to think about her dying.
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Speaker 1: One morning, I walked into the room. It was my
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Speaker 1: last day of my surgery rotation, and I was not
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Speaker 1: dressed in scrub on that day, but I was dressed
12:01
Speaker 1: in dress clothes and a tie. When Linda saw me,
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Speaker 1: she said to me, my, mo, My, aren't you fancy
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Speaker 1: to day? Doctor? K what's the occasion? I know you
12:11
Speaker 1: didn't get dressed up just for little old me. I
12:14
Speaker 1: told her that I had oral exams that afternoon and
12:17
Speaker 1: today was my last day at my surgery rotation, and
12:20
Speaker 1: she would no longer be my patient, but I would
12:23
Speaker 1: still come by and see her. Her response to this was, well,
12:27
Speaker 1: I hope you do well on your examinations, and I'm
12:30
Speaker 1: glad you're going to still come back by and see me,
12:32
Speaker 1: but I will miss you as being my doctor. And
12:36
Speaker 1: then she said, but I've got something to tell you, Kendall.
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Speaker 1: It was this weird, fancy woman wearing a red silk bathrobe,
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Speaker 1: red shoes, and a red bow in her hair. She
12:47
Speaker 1: walked through my room, stood at the foot of my
12:49
Speaker 1: bed and looked at me and said something. And then
12:53
Speaker 1: she went into the bathroom and she never came out.
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Speaker 1: And she said while the woman in red was in
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Speaker 1: her room, the room got cold. I said to Linda,
13:02
Speaker 1: that's really strange. And then Linda said, yes, I think
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Speaker 1: she's still in there. Can you check? And I thought
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Speaker 1: to myself, well, this is incredibly odd. I went into
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Speaker 1: the bathroom and I looked. There was no one in there.
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Speaker 1: And Linda said, did you check the shower. I bet
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Speaker 1: she's in the shower. And I looked in the shower
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Speaker 1: and again nobody was to be found. Linda said, that's
13:25
Speaker 1: so strange. I never saw her leave. We talked a
13:28
Speaker 1: little bit longer, we said our usual goodbyes, and I
13:31
Speaker 1: headed to the nurses station to do my charting. I
13:34
Speaker 1: said to the nurses, you know, it's bizarre. But Linda
13:37
Speaker 1: saw some woman in red walked through her room, stopped
13:40
Speaker 1: at the foot of her bed, and went into the bathroom.
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Speaker 1: But there's no one there. Did she have visitors last night?
13:46
Speaker 1: The nurses looked at each other and one of them said, oh,
13:50
Speaker 1: she seen the lady in red. And I said, well,
13:53
Speaker 1: who's the lady in red? And the other nurse said,
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Speaker 1: she's the harbinger of death. She haunts this floora hospital,
14:00
Speaker 1: and every patient who sees her will die shortly thereafter.
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Speaker 1: It's only a matter of time now for her. Wow.
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Speaker 1: I finished filling out my chart and found my attending.
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Speaker 1: I told him how Linda was doing, and then I said, oh,
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Speaker 1: and by the way, she said she saw some lady
14:20
Speaker 1: in red last night. The surgery attending said, oh, she's
14:24
Speaker 1: seen the lady in red. Well, we're not going to
14:26
Speaker 1: have to worry about her much longer. And at that
14:29
Speaker 1: point I tried to get information about who the lady
14:32
Speaker 1: in red was and why she was a harbinger of
14:35
Speaker 1: death for this floor of the hospital. I asked several people, nurses, doctors, janitors, librarians,
14:44
Speaker 1: even the nuns, but no one really knew the origin
14:48
Speaker 1: of her story. It's just she always was on that
14:51
Speaker 1: floor as long as anyone could remember, haunting it, haunting
14:55
Speaker 1: the patients that were near death. I found out that
14:59
Speaker 1: the hospital had been built in eighteen eighty nine, and
15:02
Speaker 1: there was no deaths associated with the hospital's construction, nor
15:05
Speaker 1: had there been any mysterious deaths or murders that occurred
15:09
Speaker 1: in the hospital. And in all the time that people
15:11
Speaker 1: could remember, the story of the Lady in Red had
15:14
Speaker 1: just been lost to time, and there was no explanation
15:17
Speaker 1: of why she haunted that particular floor or chose the
15:20
Speaker 1: patients that she would appear to. The next day, I
15:24
Speaker 1: started my dreaded obstetric's rotation, and on my first day,
15:28
Speaker 1: I was put on twenty four hour call. I had
15:31
Speaker 1: to be part of a very eventful berth that I'll
15:33
Speaker 1: talk about in another episode. But later on in that day,
15:37
Speaker 1: I had a free moment and I wandered over to
15:39
Speaker 1: the surgery floor to go see Linda and to check
15:42
Speaker 1: up on her. She wasn't my patient anymore, but that
15:46
Speaker 1: didn't matter. She was my friend and I wanted to
15:48
Speaker 1: see how she was doing. When I got to her room,
15:51
Speaker 1: she was on a ventilator and unresponsive. This was incredibly
15:55
Speaker 1: upsetting to me. I went to the nurses station and
15:57
Speaker 1: I asked what had happened. Versus said that at around
16:01
Speaker 1: midnight she had gone into a coma and had to
16:04
Speaker 1: be intubated. When the doctors had reached out to family
16:08
Speaker 1: to get a final opinion on what to do, but
16:10
Speaker 1: the nurses said, no matter what happens, it's only a
16:13
Speaker 1: matter of time now. The next day I went by
16:16
Speaker 1: to check up on her, and when I was walking
16:19
Speaker 1: by the nurses station, they stopped me and they told
16:21
Speaker 1: me that Linda had died the evening before. Once again,
16:26
Speaker 1: the woman in red had claimed another victim. And that's
16:29
Speaker 1: the end of that story. Except one thing was I
16:33
Speaker 1: always kept my patient's information on little note cards that
16:36
Speaker 1: I kept in the breast pocket of my white coat.
16:39
Speaker 1: I carried Linda's card with me throughout the rest of
16:42
Speaker 1: medical school and then throughout all of residency. And when
16:46
Speaker 1: I got done, I took that white coat off and
16:49
Speaker 1: never put it on again. I packed it up and
16:52
Speaker 1: it's somewhere in the attic still, probably with Linda's card
16:55
Speaker 1: in it. I've never forgotten her. She was one of
16:58
Speaker 1: my most favorite patients and still brings me great sadness
17:02
Speaker 1: to think about her. But I took her advice to heart,
17:05
Speaker 1: and I have always tried to keep my emotions out
17:08
Speaker 1: of my work. But let's move on. This is Halloween,
17:12
Speaker 1: after all, we need something less sad but far more creepy.
17:16
Speaker 1: Every forensic pathologist has their favorite story to tell, and some,
17:20
Speaker 1: like myself, have favorites from different categories, including holidays. So
17:25
Speaker 1: with Halloween looming on the horizon, well in the show
17:28
Speaker 1: with a far more Halloween centered creepy story. This story
17:34
Speaker 1: is a mine, though it's from one of my long
17:36
Speaker 1: since dead mentors. He shared this story with me because
17:40
Speaker 1: he was excited about a case that I had had.
17:43
Speaker 1: He had had something very similar, almost exactly the same,
17:46
Speaker 1: but his case had occurred on Halloween. My actual most
17:51
Speaker 1: creepy story is far too upsetting for any media. It's
17:54
Speaker 1: something that I'll probably never be able to share because
17:58
Speaker 1: it's just too out there to be believed. Maybe one
18:01
Speaker 1: day I'll put it in a book or something, But
18:04
Speaker 1: for now, we're going to discuss this case, which occurred
18:07
Speaker 1: in a suburb of a large southern city. It was
18:10
Speaker 1: Halloween and the neighborhood was in full spooky moat. Pumpkins, monsters,
18:15
Speaker 1: and skeletons were on full display. This was in the eighties,
18:18
Speaker 1: so there was less hyper realistic gore available to decorate
18:22
Speaker 1: with no zombie babies or glowing red eyed animatronics, but
18:27
Speaker 1: some people still made an attempt to make it scary.
18:31
Speaker 1: It was nighttime and the street lights had turned on.
18:34
Speaker 1: Kids were out trigg or treating, dressed in costumes of monsters,
18:37
Speaker 1: movie stars, and other assorted characters. Homes handing out candy
18:41
Speaker 1: were lit with porch lights and cheerful, glowing pumpkins sitting
18:45
Speaker 1: on hay bales, And of course there is always one
18:49
Speaker 1: house with a take one candy bull that is emptied
18:51
Speaker 1: by the first marauding trick or treat probably dressed as
18:54
Speaker 1: a pirate. Some of the homeowners sat on the porch
18:57
Speaker 1: or in their driveway, hanging out with neighbors or sitting
19:00
Speaker 1: with their spouses greeting trick or treaters with a jovial,
19:03
Speaker 1: happy Halloween. The neighborhood was alive with festive Halloween spirit
19:08
Speaker 1: and fun. But there was one house at the end
19:10
Speaker 1: of the street that was a little different. It was
19:13
Speaker 1: not as well maintained as the other homes in the neighborhood.
19:16
Speaker 1: The flower beds had weeds, and the yard had patchy,
19:20
Speaker 1: dry areas of grass and dead spots with dirt. The
19:23
Speaker 1: only porch light flickered in the darkness, creating a slight
19:26
Speaker 1: strobing effect. The owner of the home was an elderly
19:30
Speaker 1: woman who had lived in the neighborhood for decades and
19:33
Speaker 1: was well known and well liked by her neighbors. She
19:37
Speaker 1: was a widow, with her husband having died years ago.
19:40
Speaker 1: Her middle aged son still lived with her. He had
19:42
Speaker 1: lived there his entire life. To anyone's recollection, he had
19:47
Speaker 1: never left the area. He didn't drive. They knew he
19:50
Speaker 1: worked somewhere around town, but they weren't sure. He was
19:53
Speaker 1: a little odd, but pleasant. There was never any trouble
19:56
Speaker 1: with him. He always was benign and kept to himself.
20:00
Speaker 1: On this Halloween night, he sat in the strobing light
20:03
Speaker 1: of the porch in his grandmother's old wood rocking chair.
20:07
Speaker 1: He was a big guy. He was six foot two,
20:10
Speaker 1: about three hundred pounds, with a tight, flat top hair cut.
20:14
Speaker 1: He stared out intensely into the night, rocking slowly back
20:18
Speaker 1: and forth, waiting for trick or treaters. He had two
20:21
Speaker 1: small tables on either side of him. One had a
20:24
Speaker 1: ceramic bowl full of Candy Reese's peanut butter cups, baby roosts,
20:29
Speaker 1: and blow pops. The other table had a prominent Halloween
20:32
Speaker 1: decoration on it. The star of the show, so to say.
20:36
Speaker 1: Most kids were too spooked to go up to get candy,
20:39
Speaker 1: but the braver kids would walk up. They would excitedly
20:42
Speaker 1: say trick or treat and he would reach into the
20:44
Speaker 1: bowl and hand out candy, saying Happy Halloween. The kids
20:48
Speaker 1: and adults would compliment him on his minimal list but
20:51
Speaker 1: still creepy costume and decorations, and when they asked who
20:56
Speaker 1: he was dressed ass, he would respond slightly confused and
21:00
Speaker 1: say me. His costume consisted of a rumpled white T shirt,
21:05
Speaker 1: blue denim pants, and black boots. The shirt had wide
21:09
Speaker 1: bloodstains across the abdomen, and the pants and boots had
21:12
Speaker 1: blood spatters all over them. He had blood on the
21:16
Speaker 1: side of his face, extending from his forehead across the
21:19
Speaker 1: side of his cheek. He also had blood on his
21:21
Speaker 1: forearms and kaking his hands. There were bloody footprints leading
21:26
Speaker 1: from the house to where he sat. He really put
21:28
Speaker 1: effort into making it look creepy and it was quite
21:32
Speaker 1: gory and very realistic. His white candy bowl had bloody
21:36
Speaker 1: fingerprints on it, and the candy wrappers were also stained
21:39
Speaker 1: with droplets of blood. One adult said, you've really gone
21:43
Speaker 1: all out with that fake blood. Don't leave it on
21:45
Speaker 1: too long, though, because he might get a rash. His
21:48
Speaker 1: response was just a creepy smile. People also complimented him
21:53
Speaker 1: on his very real looking decoration sitting on the other
21:56
Speaker 1: table next to him. When one child went to touch it,
22:00
Speaker 1: he blocked them and said, oh, don't do that. She
22:03
Speaker 1: wouldn't like that. What was this decoration? The decoration was
22:08
Speaker 1: that of a human head, long gray hair, the eyes
22:12
Speaker 1: and mouth clothes, and there were still earrings in the ears.
22:16
Speaker 1: The head had a waxy look to it, but overall
22:19
Speaker 1: it looked incredibly realistic. It had a lot of fake
22:23
Speaker 1: blood on it, in the hair and along the stump
22:26
Speaker 1: of the neck, so much so that it was oozing
22:28
Speaker 1: down the side of the table. A couple of the
22:31
Speaker 1: adults that had ventured up onto the patio asked what
22:34
Speaker 1: he sculpted it, out, of which he calmly replied yes.
22:39
Speaker 1: After a while, a group of neighborhood kids came to
22:42
Speaker 1: retrieve their candy from him. They had a couple of
22:45
Speaker 1: moms keeping track of them. I don't know what the
22:47
Speaker 1: kid's costumes were, but I always like to think they
22:50
Speaker 1: were dressed as smurfs, because it just makes it a
22:53
Speaker 1: little bit more absurd. The moms followed the kids up
22:57
Speaker 1: on the porch, and when the kids were getting their candy,
23:00
Speaker 1: one of the moms looked at the decoration in the
23:01
Speaker 1: stroping light and gasped. She turned to the other mom
23:05
Speaker 1: and said, oh my, that's Carol, which is not her
23:10
Speaker 1: actual name, because I don't really know what it was.
23:14
Speaker 1: The other mom quickly recognized the hat as Carol, the
23:16
Speaker 1: woman of the house, the mom of the man handing
23:19
Speaker 1: out the candy. The kids had gotten their candy and
23:22
Speaker 1: were complaining about the sticky blood on the wrappers, but
23:25
Speaker 1: they quickly took off to the next house to get
23:28
Speaker 1: more candy. The two moms quickly followed after them, while
23:32
Speaker 1: the man continued to sit in the rocking chair waiting
23:35
Speaker 1: for the next group of kids. The moms quickly hearded
23:39
Speaker 1: the group of children to the area where several of
23:41
Speaker 1: the neighbors had set up a table to hand out candy.
23:44
Speaker 1: The kids were complaining because they wanted to continue on,
23:47
Speaker 1: but the moms told them to be quiet, and they
23:50
Speaker 1: gathered the group of neighbors and told them what they saw,
23:53
Speaker 1: to which several people didn't believe it. They debated, should
23:56
Speaker 1: others go check, should they make sure it was really
23:59
Speaker 1: a human head? Should they make sure it's Carol or
24:02
Speaker 1: is it someone else? Because you know, they hadn't seen
24:04
Speaker 1: Mike all evening. Should they just confront him in unlike
24:08
Speaker 1: a horror movie? One of the more reasonable neighbors said,
24:11
Speaker 1: forget that, let's call the police, and that's what they did.
24:15
Speaker 1: And when the police arrived, they walked up to the
24:18
Speaker 1: man still sitting in the rocker and they said to him,
24:20
Speaker 1: good evening, sir, that's a nice Halloween decoration you have there,
24:24
Speaker 1: to which the man said, well, thank you. And then
24:26
Speaker 1: one of the officers said where did you get it from?
24:30
Speaker 1: And the man said, oh, that's my mom. The officers
24:35
Speaker 1: were taken aback by that, and one said, okay, what
24:38
Speaker 1: happened to her? And the man said, I killed her
24:41
Speaker 1: and then I cut off her head. The officers were
24:44
Speaker 1: startled and paused and said, okay, are we going to
24:47
Speaker 1: have any trouble here? Where's the rest of her? And
24:50
Speaker 1: the man said, I won't be any trouble at all, sir.
24:54
Speaker 1: I don't want to be I don't want to create problems. Oh,
24:57
Speaker 1: and the rest of her, Well, it's in the house,
25:00
Speaker 1: laying on the floor. I can take you there and
25:03
Speaker 1: show you if you'd like. The officers said, well, yes,
25:06
Speaker 1: let's go see her. And he stood up and the
25:10
Speaker 1: officers stood on either side of him, and he led
25:13
Speaker 1: them into the house, and sure enough, there was the
25:16
Speaker 1: rest of the man's mom laying on the floor of
25:18
Speaker 1: the foyer with about twenty to thirty stab wounds and
25:21
Speaker 1: a large kitchen knife protruding from her back, and her
25:25
Speaker 1: head had been completely cut off. There was blood all
25:29
Speaker 1: over the floor around her and on the walls, and
25:32
Speaker 1: it had been obviously walked through at some point. When
25:35
Speaker 1: they cuffed him and were putting him in the police car,
25:37
Speaker 1: they asked him why did he murder his mother, and
25:40
Speaker 1: he said, well, you know, he needed to do that
25:44
Speaker 1: because he thought she was possessed by the devil, or
25:47
Speaker 1: maybe aliens, or possibly the CIA. He wasn't sure, but
25:51
Speaker 1: she was definitely possessed. And they took him downtown where
25:55
Speaker 1: he was processed. He had fully admitted to what he
25:58
Speaker 1: had done. He had obviously mental problems, and he was
26:01
Speaker 1: put away in a mental health facility for the rest
26:03
Speaker 1: of his life to my knowledge, and when he was
26:07
Speaker 1: asked why he put his mom's head on the table,
26:10
Speaker 1: he said, well, she would like to see all the costumes,
26:13
Speaker 1: because you know, she really loved Halloween and loved being
26:16
Speaker 1: part of the festivities, and he didn't want to deny
26:19
Speaker 1: her of that. I mean, of course, that makes complete sense.
26:24
Speaker 1: There's one more thing about this case, and that is
26:28
Speaker 1: my oldest daughter used the story for her eighth grade
26:30
Speaker 1: theater arts class. The assignment was to write a short
26:34
Speaker 1: scary play based on their own story for Halloween. She
26:39
Speaker 1: came home and asked if I had any good scary stories.
26:43
Speaker 1: I provided her was too this case. In another case
26:47
Speaker 1: about a taco expedition that went horribly wrong, which I
26:50
Speaker 1: will talk about in a future episode. Of course, this
26:54
Speaker 1: story was by far the creepiest one, and she created
26:57
Speaker 1: a play based on it. She was sick of fake
27:00
Speaker 1: stories and wanted something real that people should be afraid of.
27:05
Speaker 1: When she presented it to her class, she did a
27:07
Speaker 1: one girl version of the story, acting out the parts,
27:11
Speaker 1: using a ruler for a knife and re enacting the
27:14
Speaker 1: decapitation using a ball falling to the floor. She closed
27:18
Speaker 1: the story with a chilling and it's true. The teacher
27:23
Speaker 1: stood silent, blinking. None of the kids spoke. It was
27:27
Speaker 1: dead silent. The teacher broke the silence and said, that's
27:31
Speaker 1: a true story, to which my daughter said, yes, yes
27:34
Speaker 1: it is. My dad told me this one. The kids
27:37
Speaker 1: in her class knew me because of my career day talks,
27:41
Speaker 1: so they knew it wasn't fake. And one of the
27:43
Speaker 1: kids in the class said, I think I'm going to
27:46
Speaker 1: be sick. The teacher said to her, well, wow, that's
27:50
Speaker 1: just too intense for middle school, really high school, probably
27:54
Speaker 1: even college. I think we better go with something else.
27:58
Speaker 1: And it ended up they decided to go with a
28:00
Speaker 1: play based on the urban legend of the Licked Hand.
28:03
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what that one is, it's
28:05
Speaker 1: a story about a girl home alone for the first
28:08
Speaker 1: time with only her dog as company. She hears news
28:12
Speaker 1: about some random serial killer being on the loose in
28:14
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and of course locks all the doors, but
28:17
Speaker 1: forgets to lock one window in the basement. She goes
28:20
Speaker 1: to bed with her trusted dog in the room, sleeping
28:23
Speaker 1: underneath the bed. She of course wakes up in the
28:26
Speaker 1: middle of the night because she keeps hearing this dripping
28:28
Speaker 1: sound coming from the bathroom, but she's too afraid to
28:31
Speaker 1: check on it, and she reaches down to pet the
28:34
Speaker 1: dog and gets a reassuring lick from the dog on
28:37
Speaker 1: her hand. The next day, when she gets up, she
28:41
Speaker 1: walks into the bathroom and finds the dog dead and mutilated,
28:44
Speaker 1: hanging in the shower, with a message written in the
28:46
Speaker 1: dog's blood on the wall saying humans can look too
28:49
Speaker 1: and that's the end of the story. My daughter feels
28:52
Speaker 1: still to this day that her story was far superior.
28:56
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, a true story about a beheaded woman,
28:59
Speaker 1: bloody Halloween candy is far more creepy and chilling than
29:03
Speaker 1: some fake serial killer and why would you lick your hand?
29:08
Speaker 1: My daughter also felt that story was pathetic because she
29:11
Speaker 1: hates anything in which a dog gets hurt or dies.
29:14
Speaker 1: People is one thing, but pets is just too far.
29:23
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the end of the episode.
29:25
Speaker 1: I hope you learned something like you never trust your neighbors,
29:29
Speaker 1: and I hope you were entertained, and finally, once again,
29:32
Speaker 1: Happy Halloween from Mayhem and the Morgue Until the next time.