And That's Why We Drink - E266 Em's Condemned Troll Hole and a Ouija Related Genital Bridge

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

The other shoe just dropped... onto Christine's mixer and we've discovered some great sound effects! Join us for some audio adventures in episode 266 as well as a super fun topic Em definitely downplayed, the history of Ouija boards! Then Christine covers a story Em dubs "the opponent of cool", the wild story of Nikko Jenkins. And stay tuned for your weekly update on the breast milk Christine left in the fridge at the ATWWD apartment... and that's why we drink!

hi christine hey oh what did you do just now oh my god oh my god oh my god i'm sorry i didn't know i was on the set of friday the 13th oh i dropped what did you drop i dropped my shoe onto the mixer and it hit a button. I accidentally... Do you realize my brain didn't know what to do with, oh, that sound was because I dropped my shoe. I was like, what in the

little band that plays in their phone? I have those fancy sketchers where when you walk, they light up and play like the X-Files theme. Oh, my God. You guys. Okay.

We got these new mixers and they're way too fancy. Like, I don't understand what they are. They're just like, they have all these buttons and I don't know what they do. But clearly now I know what one of them does. And it's that. My skin. I like left my body. my soul disappeared for a minute there oh my gosh my mixer is all the way over here like i it's be careful it's dangerous should

i press a random button yeah don't i think the the bottom right one seemed to make that noise so pick a different one here pick a color. Ooh, okay. How about green? Oh. Did you hear anything? Yeah, did you not hear that? No, what was it? It went wah, wah, wah, wah. Well, now I know exactly what to press when you talk. Wait, that's so weird.

I wonder why you couldn't hear it. Oh, well. I'm the mixer settings. I'll probably go straight to you. I don't know. Great. I at least know the green one is a winner. Oh, my God. I'm going to stop dropping my shoes on things, I guess.

Wow. That was alarming. Anyway. Hi. Good start. How are you? Oh, my God. Well, I brought our special and that's why I drink wine glasses, that I think are, I don't know if they're for sale right now, but whatever. I have a special, and that's why I drink wine glasses, and I have a box of wine.

Bota box. It's a bota box in Cabernet. It's a special day. I'm going to be drinking some wine. How are you doing? I'm, I'm, ugh, fine. Oh, no. some wine how are you doing uh i'm i'm oh oh fine oh no uh by the way i'm drinking uh i was gonna think of a funny way to say lemonade but nothing oh a funny way to say lemonade that's a cool just what if i just do it now hang on okay oh damn that's good we should label these so no we shouldn't we shouldn't i shouldn. I shouldn't even touch them. The Christine button. So, no, I'm going through it for no reason other than my own concocted anxieties because as of yesterday, we are a home of two people.

Oh. Right, Allison moved out. It's you and RJ. Yeah, so during COVID, RJ met a girl on Tinder. And then they... That's for everybody who had a crush on him, all the audience.

I know, I know. And, but yeah, they did like socially distance, like FaceTime COVID dating for like six months and then they. It was so, yeah, it was like a whole process because it was right during COVID. Yeah, it was. I actually, Allison and I like to take credit for his profile. I'm sure you do. When we first, well, when COVID first started every Friday, we would turn the kitchen into like a bar. Oh, it was so cute.

A little happy hour. Happy hours. And so one particular night where Allison and RJ got a little too drunk. Impossible. All of us ended up sitting around and like fixing each other's like profiles. So like I did, like we did Allison's like Bumble BFF. They did my BFF. And then we fixed upison's like bumble bff they did my bff and then we fixed up

rj's tinder profile and a week later he met this girl i mean you're not wrong about that credit and uh yeah so they started they hit it off and they are engaged for people who don't know they're engaged they're in gagged and that's what m calls it and yeah they found a new they found a place together and they moved out so we have this empty room now it's very weird like echoes when oh how weird it's very weird so i am personally really just like taking it for the worst for no reason. I'm very happy for them, but I just, I really just have a huge problem with change in general. So that's where you and I differ. My favorite thing is I really, I like, what kind of Gemini are you? I don't know, but I do not take a big adjustments. Well, like life changes. And so he's been my roommate for like

five years, five or six years. So it's just just different so i don't know what to do with his new room either i well it's probably going to become an actual podcast room which i've never had alpel works from home right so then you can both have like your own spaces that would be cool allison and i also made a made a deal where she was like uh if you pay the rent of that room you can do whatever you want oh that's smart i was like okay so now i'm gonna like put my captain america shield up that's so smart you have that's that's true it can be like your man cave for the worst possible phrase ever i know my non-binary hole no your troll hole you just go in there it's gonna be

don't you wish you could go back to man cave I'm just saying I gave you an out that's it's name now it's too late I'm stroll it's too late I can't wait to visit anyway i'm overwhelmed by

the possibilities of how i could make that room look because i can do whatever i want with it my little troll maybe i'll make allison answer my riddles three before she ever enters she's not gonna want to answer i can guarantee you but yeah so um anyway i'm taking it really hard that he's gone even though like i am aware it's not about me at all but i'm still finding a way to make it oh that's that there's the gem that it's finally tracks got it okay yeah um i did by the way i tried really hard not to like ruin their energy i like have been kind of containing this to just me and Allison, but it was, it was really hard yesterday. Cause it was the first time where like he brought his, he brought his last stuff over

to his new place and he'd be like, I'll took a selfie together as roommates. And it was just hard. It was like, bye RJ. And like, he's not coming back. So it's just, it was weird to like, wait till he hears about the troll hole. Then he'll be back. He's going to be like, I'm going gonna board it up so it's condemned now it's just uh it's no it's just weird that uh like i didn't i don't think i noticed how often he was on my mind when he lived here but like there were certain times where i would think oh i hear a sound i'm like oh it's rj and now i'm

like oh shit what is it oh no you can't blame it on RJ anymore. I know. Anyway, not to, you know, take over the last five minutes. But that's how I'm doing this week. Next week, I'll be better. Okay, well, we are we're feeling for you. I think we've all been in similar. I don't know the way I'm about changes. I'm like, over eager about it. And I'm like, yeah, switch it up. Let's move. Let's buy a new house. Let's do this. Let's have a baby. I mean, you know, you've witnessed it. Let's get married. Why not? Let's do it. But then like the day that like the thing ends or the thing happens, it all hits me at once. And I'm like, why did I do like, so when I moved out of my house in LA, I had like a mental breakdown. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. But, but it all happened in that contained period. And then, you know, I don't know.

I don't have energy and a hot 24 hours. Yeah, that's me. Um, anyway. Oh, can I say one more thing to, uh,

why I drink this week? Yeah. Um, it's so not as important as yours, but it's just so on my mind and I've sort of harassed you via text message about it, but I'm starting a new fandom and, um, okay. What? I don't know what you're getting it's called I don't like it you hear me and fandom and you're like oh no I shouldn't have brought up lemonade earlier

what is it um it's I'm a huge fan of a tv icon his name is chip coffee oh god and all i can do is watch shows that he's on it's my favorite thing he's my new idol um i watched that for people who don't know who is chip coffee okay so let me read you a thing because he has before you ask everybody uh his merch site is called the coffee shop and emma's like well literally what are you talking about and I was like I feel like I I feel like we all should know this already but um anyway he wears a lot of scarves he's a go he's a psychic medium um and he's on a lot of these shows so I've been watching the show called Kindred Spirits on um Discovery Plus and I've become absolutely obsessed with it um and there's six seasons so all I do is

watch Kindred Spirits have you heard of that show no but I feel like I'm never gonna be able to get away from it now no it's so good okay and then the other about it's these two paranormal investigators who go to like people's houses and help them like process what's going on and do a ghost hunt but oh wow yeah it's it's very cool it's like they it's it's a ghost show but they're not you know screaming at ghosts and banging on shit and like they're like dealing with families who are having you know weird shit going on at their house and so on the the anti-bagel bites the anti-bagel bites if you will and sometimes their good friend chip coffee comes along because he's a psychic medium and these two ghost hunters are not and so he comes along and is like he will walk in with his scarf and he'll be like

it's low-level demonic and everyone's like oh no chip said it's low-level demonic watch out and one time he turned to the guy in the show uh adam and he was like he does not like you and i was like oh shit if chip ever said that to me i would probably cry um but he's does he does so he always shows up in some of the episodes do you watch every episode only hoping to find him and then if like 15 minutes in i was gonna say oh i was gonna say do you just go never mind no because i didn't know he was on the show i so the i discovered him originally when i watched binged all ofic Kids when I was pregnant and I got obsessed with it. And he would come and help the kids because he was like, I was a kid when I discovered that I was a psychic medium.

And so he like helps the kids process it and like helps figure out if they're just dealing with like mental health stuff or anxiety or if it's like really, you know, paranormal. And so when he showed up on this show, I was like, Chip, oh my God, I've missed you. And now I've developed like a weird fandom that includes only mice. normal and so when he showed up on this show i was like chip oh my god i've missed you and now i've developed like a weird fandom that includes only mice i've tried to drag evan and i was like um okay i okay so here's the thing i've never watched anything i know like it's long enough with him in it to understand yeah you're like on the outside yeah you're like you're on the outside being like i can't be a fan of something i don't know anything about. And I'm like, just do it. Just do it. I will say I believe you that if I ever let myself have a big old swig of chip coffee, then I'm sure I would be just as enamored as you.

I'm fully supportive of this fandom. This is much better than the weird mummified lemon you found under a bed all those years ago. Mummified lemon who? I'm just kidding lemon is still number one don't worry um anyway so i know who lemon is oh you're drinking him he's going away by the end of the episode okay anyway that's all i wanted to say um if anyone like gets it you know gets the fandom or is it a part of it let me know because i would love tiktok says the girls who get it the

girls who get it get it and um i can't wait for him to be one of the girls who get it so we'll see i'm gonna be his little chocolate chip or is it a coffee bean which which one are we doing here okay java chip does that work oh i love that we'll work on it chip mocha chip i don't know. We'll see how this goes. Chip, are you there? Do you want to give your opinion? He's like, no, I'm not involved.

Thank you. He's like, I am a psychic, but I'm turning it off for this moment. I don't want to hear you wherever you are. Anyway, we've been talking for a hot 15 minutes and i'm here to talk even longer but now you have to stop talking so i could do it no you're gonna like this one i think christine i'll drink this is um hmm not it's not a it's it's one of those stories where it's more fungication than an actual story it's more like a history class oh cool okay relax you better fucking fake you're not good at selling it you gotta be like

professor i've never been able to i've never been able to sell it but we all end up in the right spot at the end okay so this is the informational episode of the history of the Ouija board. Okay. Why did you just, why did you make it sound so weird and like dry? I think I do the insecure thing where I like really dumb it down so no one's disappointed later. I don't know. Yeah, but then you're just going to like, people who are like, eh, I don't feel like an info episode are just going to tune out not knowing they're missing a ouija board episode are you kidding me well if they already tuned out it's too late for them this is amazing i cannot wait now i'm really they've already they've already

skipped to your side so sorry okay here is when mine starts i'm gonna go all right i know i know who you are go back don't you're not fooling Okay. So we've got a lot of stuff to cover today. First of all, I want to give a shout out to a man named Robert. Chip Coffey. Sorry. Robert Chip, as he calls himself. Shout out to Robert Merch. Okay.

Who is, I think he created the Talking Board Historical Society. That's fun. Which, why are we not a part of that? I don't know, but I want to be. He calls himself the Chairman of the Board, which I love that he gives himself this title. Get it? Chairman of the Board? Oh.

I thought you already got it. I was like, holy shit, that's... I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I want to find the clapping one, but I don't want to hit all the buttons because I don't know what's going to happen. But that is excellent. Chairman of the board. That's so funny.

Okay. Robert Murch can stay. But so I guess he's like the household name, as you know him for the uh he's like the biggest historian of ouija board history wow um and he started back in 92 so he's been researching for as long as i've been alive nice and uh before him though there wasn't really a lot of like clear uh well thought out timelines about this history so i gotta give it up to robert merch he got it all consolidated for consolidating cool all right oh my god my glasses what's wrong with me this is how i feel a million years old when i have to take my headphones off okay

leave me alone so uh yes he's also been a consultant on movies that I guess are Ouija themed, like a lot of horror movies. And he went to the, I think the 2015, because I didn't see one that exists other than the 2015 one. He went to OuijaCon in 2015. Which I think was, I think it was a one time only event. Because I looked it up and every single article said 2015. So I think it was like an anniversary of it. All right. Someday.

Let us know, guys, if it's back. If it's back, I'd love to go to Ouija board. Me too. So here is the history. Do you want to take a whack at what year the Ouija board came to? Okay. Well, I'm thinking it was during spiritualism, unless that's like a different thing. Like a spirit board is different than a Ouija board. I don't know. But I guess maybe 1932.

Okay, you were wrong. You were at first very close, and then not very close. And then I don't know when spiritualism is. if you had not said anything i would have not known because i you remember there were two waves of spiritualism and the 1930s were okay that's the second way that's what i thought and i was like i didn't know if there was an earlier one okay so it was earlier 1886 actually what's so fucking weird is 1886 is the year no it's not that's very weird okay i've been practicing this is not a joke i've been practicing my psychic abilities i don't know why but i've been why did chip coffee tell you to do that no but i just want to impress him you know and i'm trying really hard i hope he listened to only the last 20 seconds and he's blown away me too somebody sent him that clip. Get rid of the part where Christine doesn't know when spiritualism is.

Nobody needs to know about that. So you are right, 1886. But we're going to go before that really quickly. And then we'll come back to that. Okay, cool. So 1848 was the beginning of the first wave of spiritualism in the U.S. Okay. And this was thanks to the fox sisters which was episode 201

um if you want to go listen to that but basically they were these two sisters in upstate new york and they uh seemingly were capable of conjuring spirits and doing table raps and they like toured the town i think is what it was or was Or was that the town? The tour, toured all of upstate New York. They toured. Yeah. Yeah. I think they toured, right? Or I may be thinking of the Davenport brothers.

They were so similar. I think they both did. I think the Fox sisters did, if I remember. I know the Davenport brothers came like 60 years later. So I just. Oh, okay. I'm not positive. But the Fox, the Fox sisters basically did the same thing in my memory.

So they kind of blew everyone away. And that was the beginning of spiritualism taking the U.S. by storm and their celebrity for being spiritually inclined or at least creeping people out. uh it fast-tracked the concept of communicating with the dead and at a very prominent time because around this time the average lifespan wasn't even 50 years oh my the people were dying real quick okay but do you know why that okay sorry i don't mean to be a be like a well actually but did you know teacher's pet but why since you're the teacher right now it's a good thing right um yeah what happened why so i was gonna say disease and so the reason that um a lifespan is listed as being short is not because people were dying younger it's because so many so many people died in infancy that it lowers the average so it's not necessarily that people were only living to be

like 50 it's that like people were living a longer life. But right. So all the people who died as children or infants dragged down the average. So I don't know. I learned that somewhere probably on TikTok. So because I was going to say the lifespan wasn't even 50 years. A lot of it was that children were dying at childbirth. And so were a lot of women dying. That's true, too. Yeah, that's true. Also disease. And 15 years later was the Civil War.

Right. OK. Wow. People were unfortunately dropping like flies. And especially after the Civil War, people wanted to hear from their sons, their brothers, their dads, their cousins. And especially after the Civil War, people wanted to hear from their sons, their brothers, their dads, their cousins. And a lot of people, they just never saw their body again and just wanted to make contact with them or go through doing okay. But so that was where spiritualism or having mediums or using some sort of you know fox sisters-esque tool of using like cabinets or table turning despite having all of that people

were still getting frustrated at how slow these ways of communication with the dead were which i love that even in the 1800s people needed like instant gratification right they didn't even have instant messaging yet but they were like this is too slow to talk to my ghost friend right well so for example with table turning uh you had to like call out every letter of the alphabet until eventually there was like a knock on the table and it was like that was an m and then i was like i forget the last one start over like you exactly that would be such. So, yeah, it became a whole thing where, like, you couldn't even answer. You're, like, taking or getting full intimate messages from people took for fucking ever. Right.

And so it just was not very efficient. And it was very tedious. And people would stop being kind of, like, stimulated by it halfway through. Right. Especially in my mind, if i had if like because at the time spiritualism it wasn't like a spooky thing it was a very well right respected situation and so i imagine if i thought i just always had access to being able to talk to my dead parent if they were taking too long to spell something out i'd be like i'll do this tomorrow i'm late

for dinner yeah that's such a good point it's like this is something i had to start over tomorrow yeah yeah so a more efficient system uh would have been a huge seller in the rapidly growing spiritualist community um and basically this all comes down to people wanting to capitalize on spiritualists okay love it so the first ouija board that i could find there was only one source that mentioned this so i'm unsure how true this is but it's the earliest version i could find of like the ouija board origin was in 1853 so uh that was what like five six years later yeah once spiritualism started happening in the U.S. at least. So to make things go faster in terms of communicating with the dead, there was in 1853 a spirit, probably a medium,

but there was a spirit during a seance saying, you should put down a pencil inside of a basket. Like take a basket, turn it upside down, and put a pencil inside of a basket like take a basket turn it upside down and put a pencil through it and then you can guide the basket and the pencil will basically it was like almost like a planchette meets automatic writing right okay that's interesting if i'm so i don't know if i just described that well enough for other people to understand but like it writes a letter out while you're yeah moving the pencil basically consider the basket a planchette but a pencil through it so it could draw um so and i i say it was a spirit

who suggested that it was also at the time it could have been like a medium or a fraud pretending to be a medium who was like right the spirit saying we should do this so that's anyway that's the earliest origin i could find also fun fact in 1853 the same year um spiritualism was so big that like media was covering spiritualism and to a point where music was being made about spiritualism really um there's a song in from 1853 called spirit wrappings oh it was a rap that would have been hysterical if it were a wrap but no it was about like table wrappings but um i will i don't know if you want to listen to it or if we could insert some of it i absolutely want to listen to it and we should insert it okay i'm gonna send it

to geostrio okay um this is definitely a modern a person singing the music today like this is not like oh i see it's an original when i think of yeah when i think of 1853 i would imagine like phonograph music this is clearly someone took the music sheet and performed it but i couldn't find any 1850s music okay i don't think they could record things back then spiritual rappings you don't have to listen to all that if you don't want to could record things back then. Spiritual rappings. You don't have to listen to all of it if you don't want to, but it's only a minute long. Okay, I'm going to play it here.

We got it. You can't hear it from mine. I can hear it. You can? Softly, softly hear the rustle of the spirit's airy wings. They are coming down to mingle once again with earthly things. They're rapping and they're tapping. Rap, tap, tap, till we go napping. Rap, tap, tap, lost friends are near. Rap, tap, tap, they see and hear you. Oh, my God. Wow.

Wow, Em, that's something. Stop. Rap, tap, tap, good friends are, or wait, dead friends are near you. Rap, tap, tap, they see and hear you. In my mind, in the 1850s, there wasn't a lot of music out there compared to today. So I feel like you could have done anything and it would have been considered new. My Spotify wrapped would have been like, number one hit. You are in the 0.01% of top listeners. It would have been your Spotify wrapped.

Wait, I'm so stupid. I didn't even think that. Spotify wrapped. Anyway, I don't know if we're allowed to use all that or if we I don't know what it was I think that probably the creative commons license is like is enacted now yeah I feel like I feel like there's not really any I mean

I could be wrong but I feel like we were probably okay all I know is that was some 1853 music for you hot off the press so I hope you enjoyed it so that was some 1853 music for you hot off the press so i hope you enjoyed it so uh that was all up until basically it was spiritualists uh spiritualism becoming more and more popular and then um uh the first kind of evidence we have of this basket upside down planchette thing right and people getting bored and looking for more efficient ways to talk to the dead so now comes in your big year 1886 who knew and the people most consider this to

be the year that is the beginning of ouija boards at least as now that robert merch has done enough research this is the farthest back we can officially go and say 1886 was the year that is weird that i just kind of said that and it's almost like they were rap tap tapping in your little head there a little brain so in 1886 the associated press put out an article um about uh i guess in northern ohio at the time there were some spiritualist camps in that area. And the Associated Press put out this article that the camps up there had this new mystical creation that was just sweeping the town. And it was this new craze called a talking board. More or less a Ouija board. By the way, just before anyone's waiting for the answer, I really couldn't find the difference between a talking board, spirit board, or Ouija board by the way just before anyone's waiting for the answer I really couldn't find the difference between a talking board spirit board or Ouija board except that um Ouija board is

like a trademark right and for the most part they're all spirit boards and Ouija boards so it's like tissue and Kleenex okay yep cool so uh so this does mean that before 1886, there were some sort of spirit board in Ohio. We just don't know who created the first official one. But we know they were in spiritualist camps at the time. All right. So one person who read this article about these camps happened to be in Baltimore at the time. And this was a merchant named charles kennard and he claims that he between reading this article or we we assume at the time that this article came

out and he read it and this is what inspired him but he ended up going home he sat at his kitchen table with a cup of tea and you know how when tea's moving around in the cup your hand kind of moves with it so he was holding a cup of tea over his table i think it was over like a breadboard or something on his counter and he realized that his hand was moving without him being in control of it and so you mix that with the article he probably read and he had this epiphany of like he can make his own talking boards in baltimore interesting so not knowing how to actually make it, which is silly because it's a board, um, even I could fucking make that. Um, but okay. He was not

the most skilled carpenter. Um, he asked the guy that worked next door to him to make some of these talking boards for him to sell. So the guy door his name was e c reish and he was kind of uh perfect for the job for making a bunch of wooden boards because he was a cabinet maker a furniture maker and eventually just became solely a coffin maker oh my so it's interesting that a coffin maker made the prototypes for a ouija board it is spooky ooky uh-huh so yeah so uh Charles Kennard came up with this idea or really ripped it off from these spiritualist camps in Ohio and then he went to his next door coffin maker and was like can you make a couple prototypes of this so as of 1890 so four years later in 1890 Charles Kennard had some investors backing him, and he started the Kennard Novelty Company.

Wow. And it was the first manufacturer of Ouija boards. He really went for it. He really went for it. And also this poor coffin maker who made the prototypes and probably did not get a cut. He better have. That's terrible. Every article I read about charles kinder it

felt like he was a little slimy so i mean he also like literally took the idea from someone in ohio right you know it's mine now yeah yeah i came up with it so so question do you know where the name comes from yes i believe so I believe it's the French and the German for yes combined so you are is that a like a is that like a false thing it is a false but the most popular thing oh interesting okay then I don't know so that is the uh mass majority's understanding of where Ouija comes from that it's the French yes and the German yes put together so it's a yes yes board which is interesting because there's not a yes yes option only yes no so what is it so it should be technically a we nine board okay I was

gonna say that but I'm so glad you said it good job thank you I know one word in german um that's a good one okay so the reason why it's called the ouija board is so charles kennard in 1890 he created the kennard novelty company and it was the first manufacturers of ouija boards to have their to get their name cooking though and to like get a copyright and have the patent for it uh they decided that they were going to go to a patent office and he was going to go with his attorney who was also one of his investors so this co-investor slash attorney of charles kennard's his name was elijah bond and his sister helen peters came with them to the patent office and she came with them to the patent office. Okay.

And she came to the patent office with them because Elijah Bond said, oh, my sister is a medium. Ooh. So it might be useful to have her there when we're trying to get the patent for this spirit board. Okay. By the way, this was April 1890, and I think that some people think it's probably april 25th

1890 the day that they got the that they went and uh looked for the patent okay so it was charles kennard i think he was there at least his attorney elijah bond and his sister helen went to the patent office okay they again decided to use helen uh because she was a a medium and they had her use the board to show the patent officer how it worked okay interesting and i guess it also probably made it look good they're like oh a medium is backing us on this is before the patent actually i'm sorry this is not but this is not the patent office they just happen to all be together with the ouija board and they're going to go get a patent after this i'm sorry okay sorry sorry sorry i just totally threw everyone off um okay so april 1890 uh don't send chip don't send chip coffee this part i know i've just

everyone erase everything i've said up until uh we nine every then everything erase your memories okay so april 25th ish 1890 charles uh kennard was using the prototype with his co-investor slash journey elijah Bond, and his sister, Helen Peters. Okay. When they were all using it together, I think they were practicing for getting the patent. Right. They were prepping their case or whatever. Yes.

So they were using the board and they were like, oh, we don't actually have a name for this yet. What are we going to call it when we try to get it licensed? And they said, oh, well, we might as well ask the board what we should call it. So they had Ellen use the board and ask what it should be called, and they got the word Ouija. What? And when asked what it meant, the board spelled out good luck. That's funny. That's a good sense of humor here's a fun fact for you though suspiciously okay the board could have named itself ouija out of nowhere but helen who was

the one using the board and was the medium so she she was the most trusted. She happened to be a big fan of Marie Louise Ramé, who at the time was a famous author and activist whose nickname was Ouida with a D instead of a J. No way. No way. In fact, on this night, Helen was wearing a locket with Ouida's portrait in it and her name Weedo written on top of the picture, which feels a little homosexual. I feel like I'm feeling like there was maybe a little love thing going on there.

I don't know. Maybe they I mean, I don't know anyone who's carrying a locket of like someone they admire for no reason. If someone has a locket of M, please tell me because I need, I must know. It just, it feels a little, it feels a little, and like I kind of, I want it to be. That's the problem. I'm projecting a hundred percent. That's the problem. No, I get it.

It's like, it feels weird to put, I mean, but I guess it was also different times. Like, I don't know. It was different times. I could be totally wrong all i know is if i met someone today who was carrying around a locket of someone they didn't know i'd be like what's that about like oh you must have some strong feel passionate feelings for that person really really interested i don't know i could totally i'm just being an asshole i'm sorry but i just know it's an interesting point and also to like have that so on the brain that you're like i will name this

new project after this person so we duh was it spelled so it was spelled the same but with a d okay so we don't know if maybe the locket like the handwriting was just fast and it looked like a j or something or maybe maybe for all we know helen who was using the board was trying very hard to actually not influence the board and like part of it just came out and the other part didn't i don't know but it's staying it's very like what are the odds that yeah one letter off would be named? Unless the ghost was like, hmm, this is a lot of pressure. Let me look around the room like Crentist, you know, like, oh, I see a word on your locket. Let me write that out.

Honestly, so here's what I think. I mean, I don't know what's true or not. Maybe it was Weedah who was the one channeling the board and like slipped on the letter or something. Interesting. was the one channeling the board and like slipped on the letter or something interesting but i do like the idea of helen secretly using this opportunity to either name the board after like this activist uh-huh like make it like a little feminist moment or i don't know maybe she went to name the board after someone she had a crush on i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't m doesn't know but m really wants to believe so i want to believe so bad it

would just it reminds i don't know why but i'm it gives believe. I want to believe so bad. It would just, it reminds, I don't know why, but it gives like an Emily Dickinson kind of vibe. I don't know why. I don't know. Anyway, sorry for making so many assumptions. Unnecessary. It wouldn't be the first time we've done that, so it's okay. I know. Another fun fact is that the location that this happened at where the weijin board was

officially named was at 529 north charles street which is now a 7-eleven with a plaque on the wall that is they're very very proud of this i took a i didn't take a picture i did not go to baltimore but i i am sending you a picture of the plaque on the wall shut up okay so when we go to baltimore we gotta find this we just have to go to 7-eleven i will buy a dr pepper here and we will take a photo weijia was named here that is it looks like a bathroom wall so i'm kind of wondering if this is in someone's bathroom it absolutely looks like the 7-eleven bathroom you're completely right. Anyway. Wow. That is fun. Fun fact. So anyway, now they have officially named the board and now they're going to the patent office and Elijah and Helen are going with them.

Okay. So they basically knew going into this. This wasn't, by the way, Elijah's like first time going to a patent office. I think he did a lot of patent law stuff in Baltimore. He knew that he wasn't going to be able to get a patent for this unless he could prove to the patent officer that the Ouija board actually worked. Okay. And so that's why he also decided to bring Helen. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. So as expected, the patent officer wouldn't let them continue paperwork until Elijah and Helen could prove that the Ouija board should even be taken seriously. Okay. So the patent officer basically said, if it can spell out my name, then I'll give you a patent. Okay. Okay. I know. I know.

I know. I was in my head. I'm like, that's an easy win. I can do that. Yeah. Oh, wait. Maybe they didn't know his name. That's what I'm thinking. wait. Maybe they didn't know his name. That's what I'm thinking.

Oh, maybe they didn't know his first name or something. But also, wouldn't you think, like, if you're going into someone's office, how do you address them if you don't know them? Maybe it's like Mr. Fredrickson, but, like, you don't know his first name? I don't know. You're right. You're right. It doesn't really make sense. Yeah.

Or I'm trying to think, like, what if maybe his name was hard to spell and they spelled it correctly he's like my name is braylee but not the way that you would usually think it's spelled braylee it has a couple of accents and some vowels silent m uh my name is willem defoe go crazy uh so sure enough they were able to spell out his name i don't know if they secretly knew his name or it was not that hard or maybe this guy was confused on how the board was he's just easily impressed who knows that's the one time you absolutely fake the ouija board working your okay fucking literally you're like go step aside we got to take care of this one ourselves sure enough they ended up getting the patent and that was on february 10th

1891 and for those that care the patent number for a ouija board or the whole ouija board is four four six zero five four oh i i weirdly care i don't know why but i do there you go and the first location to actually make ouija boards was uh is now a Wells Fargo on St. Paul Street in case you care about that with a plaque in the bathroom no plaque damn it I know y'all if you're Wells Fargo if you're listening and you get a plaque I will get your shit together Wells Fargo with you yeah um interestingly the patent offered no details on how the board actually worked which I guess is what makes it extra spooky okay like you needed it to work for them to fill out the paperwork but you're not going to write about how it works yeah you're just like figured out yourself like good luck as a ghost said

i guess so uh in the same month that the ouija board got its patent they wasted no time and there were immediately ads starting to come out in newspapers wow so the first one that i could see the first ad was in pittsburgh and this was 1891 and it was called ouija the wonderful talking board and it cost $1.50 oh gosh did you do you ever remember buying your first ouija board i say your first as if it were like, but. My first, I do think I actually had a few at different times because I think my dad probably. My stepdad kept throwing them away. Yeah, I had multiple for that reason. It was for my 10th birthday party because I feel like this is like probably gross or cringy now.

I feel like this is like probably gross or cringy now, but at the time for my 10th, it was my 10th birthday or my 11th birthday. It was a Harry Potter party. And I think because magic and spookiness, I think my mom was like, oh, well obviously we'll play with a Ouija board at the end. I don't really know.

Right. I don't know how she clicked those two things together, but I remember it. I didn't even really, I remember having to go to like three different places until we could find one because at the time Target didn't sell them. Well, Target still doesn't sell them because remember I had to make my own on the back of one of our posters. That's right. I mean I didn't have to do anything, but I made one on the back of our posters and used a wine glass as a planchette. I bought my first – well well i had a Ouija board

then my stepdad threw it away then i went to new york city with my dad and stepmom and i bought what my mom and or my dad's stepmom gave me 20 to spend at fao schwartz and i bought myself a Ouija board honestly i love that uh i i remember like it was my first like real sleepover party so i remember some people being truly freaked out. Oh, yeah. And thinking. Nobody ever wanted to play with me. Interesting that it still happens.

I think all of us that didn't know what it was, was excited to play. And then someone, one of my friends had like heard of one before and was told to never touch it. And so she freaked out and like sat upstairs while we played. And I was like, okay, loser. Oh, no. And then I i ended up i don't know but uh yeah i only played that one time in my basement and then i think any other time i played with one i it was never really in my own home man well we let it by the way i looked it up and it was $1.50 at the time. Yeah. In 1891, that was the equivalent to about $45. Whoa.

Yeah. I was like, wow, how cheap? Because mine was like 20 some bucks. Nope. Wow, that's expensive. Okay. But I guess it wasn't for kids, right? It wasn't like, oh, it's Hasbro.

It was a tool. It was like an actual spiritualist tool. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. This is according to in 2013.com so i don't know if that means as a site one dollar one dollar and fifty cents yeah today it would be worth 46 bucks wow okay so but yeah that makes i mean that makes sense that it was an instrument or a spiritual

tool at the time right uh but so i also appreciated that some of the ads were like very vague they were like the the we joe wonderful talking board it's interesting it's it's like yeah it's like when people ask me like what's your podcast about i'm like i don't think i should tell you you don't seem like you want to know the truth it's pretty interesting who did that happen to me too i feel like that sentence doesn't make sense i feel like i just told someone that i have a podcast that happens every time i get remicade and the nurses are like so kind and they're like tell me about your show and i'm like i'm stuck here for four you're stuck with me for the next five hours i don't think you want to know about this.

Well, also now I feel like everyone has a podcast. Right. It's so weird to say. It's so weird to say I have a podcast because now that I mean, I feel like every single person is like, let's just get a microphone and start a podcast, which, by the way, I fully support. Which is a good thing. That's what we did. Right. But because there's so many of them it's like now it's almost like it's just a cliche it's almost like devolving into uh a reputation for being a hobby versus a job absolutely yeah i feel like there was a moment there it wasn't forever but there was a moment where i could say like oh i'm a podcaster and it sounded like that

was my real job and now when i say i'm a podcaster and it sounded like that was my real job and now when I say I'm a podcaster I feel like everyone's got one and so people be like oh well what else what do you do though but I will say um try being in Kentucky because you're like I'm a podcaster and people are like oh what and I'm like and they're like where's your where's your husband can I talk to your husband that's not quite the how it goes but in my head that's what happens we need to we need him to bring you to the nearest asylum. You're having woman problems. We need to put you away.

No, 100%. It feels very like, I'm like, but I always couch it with, which is so douchey. But I do it just like out of my own self-defense. I'm like, oh, I moved here from LA recently. I work as a podcast producer. That's how I phrase it because i'm like too embarrassed i don't know it's i do the same thing i never know how to sometimes i'll just straight up say that like it's not even true i'm just i'm just blatantly lying to people but i don't know

how else to get out of it and so i'll just say like oh i am a comedian which is ironic because i'm not i don't think i'm that i'm not I don't think you say it with such non-confidence I just say like I like how else do I say I'm a talker like for the worst thing about saying you're a comedian is they're like tell me a joke immediately and I'm like no one time because I was with people my mom's age and I've heard my mom do it so I was like okay maybe I can pull it off I just like to avoid the whole what's a podcast conversation i just said i i did a radio show and then people thought i was like on local radio and then they were asked i was it was mornings with m on kt4x yeah i really psyched myself out every time so now i just don't know what it never ends well it never ends smoothly i'm with you i do the same thing smoothly yeah uh anyway sorry folks for

all that but just how our life is every day um okay so the first ads came out in 1891 for a dollar 50 and within the first year of putting them out the kenner novelty company expanded to seven different locations holy shit soon 2 000 boards were being sold weekly holy shit so it came at the perfect time they were like this is right after the war and or was it right after no it was not right after the war but it was like you know spiritualism was up and out rampant they were like we got them right right at the sweet spot yeah so uh another fun fact is at the same time that they were selling ouija boards kennard and other companies tried to make other similar boards at the time called the Volo and the Iggly.

I-G-I-L-I. I-G-I-L-I. Okay. Neither of them sold as well. They also had some other people, I guess, try to do similar boards. If you look at them, they're all more or less the exact same thing except the letters are in different places oh okay in 1893 probably thanks to the creation of the ouija board perpetuating so much interest um at least a portion of the thanks probably has to

go to the ouija board in 1893 spiritualism grows even more popular and is deemed an official religion what okay and the we and the ouija board only started selling two years before In 1893, spiritualism grows even more popular and is deemed an official religion. What? Okay. And the Ouija board only started selling two years before. Wow. Okay. In that same year, Kennard and his investors all basically pull out. I think they were like, let's get out while it's hot.

And they hand the company to one of their employees named William Fold. Okay. So William Fold carries on the Ouija brand. Despite his obituary, folks, in the New York Times, he had an obituary that said he was the inventor of the Ouija board. Not true. But I think he maybe tried to sell himself.

I wonder if the others, his bosses died first and he's like, okay, this is my chance. They can't stop me. Right. So yeah, I i think i don't know i don't feel like that was favorable but whatever um another fun fact this whole story is full of them uh he ended up dying from a freak accident in one of the factories that a ouija board told him to build no he died from a broken rib which after thinking he would survive it pierced his heart what the fuck yep oh no the ouija board what the ouija board say like build it on this street or well whatever you said something much more vague it was like prepare for big business or something and so then he built this factory sounds like a fortune

cookie but okay uh allison just texted me and said find a time to pause recording please no toilet paper oh no okay so this now's the time i will call it throw a roll real quick to her yeah this is what happens when rj't live here. He can't help anymore. You know what? Good point. Okay, hang on. Stand by, everyone. Okay, we're in the clear. Wait, that was so fast. She was coming in as I was coming in. I think she heard

chaos and she was like, I can get in there. That's very funny. Okay. Good job. Good job. So that's eventually that he dies. But in 1898 he ends up getting the rights to no other boards being made outside of the company so they have full copyright um they have i think he had over 20 copyright and patent registrations oh wow even and he even owned the right to the design of the planchette oh wow so good for him good for him and now we're gonna and then he

ended up uh dying after that so let's now time travel to the 1920s let's and there is a resurgence of spiritualism and thus use of the ouija board thanks thanks to nearly 800,000 deaths from the Spanish flu and World War I combined. Oof, yikes. Okay. So, spiritualism wave two is in full swing, and Ouija boards are more popular than ever. They were even, Ouija boards had become so influential that authors were now writing books claiming that they were dictated by spirits. Oh, my. Okay. It's so wild now because when you think of today's world versus then, spiritualism was just so normal, so normalized that authors could be like, oh, yeah, well, this is actually literally one of the authors wrote a book and said that it was Mark Twain telling.

Oh, I've heard about that one. But so it's it's a literal ghostwriter. Like it's like, oh, this was ghostwritten, but not but not how you think. That's exactly right. Exactly. Ghostwriting. How weird is that? right exactly ghost writing how weird is that um they're not only so there was pearl curran okay who wrote works saying that it was by a spirit named patience worth okay i think they wrote quite a few things together and then emily grant hutchings is the one who wrote for the spirit of mark twain okay i think lord did an episode on that. I'm pretty sure. I've definitely heard that story. It's very wacky. Super wacky. So also at the same time, like it's not just authors or other influential people who are being driven by Ouija board decisions. There's other people out there who are amateur detectives and they're solving cases with Ouija boards. Oh my. There's men who are joining the military because the Ouija board tells them.

Oh no, no. There are at least three different people who committed murders because the Ouija board told them. Okay. All right. Too far folks. All the way up until the nineties,

by the way, in 1994, uh, there was, I think there was one guy who, he was convicted for murder, and he ended up having to get a retrial because they found out in the original trial the jurors were using a Ouija board to determine whether or not he was guilty. Shut up. How fucking stupid is that? It's still abound, folks.

And we're talking the 1990s. Yes, 1994. Wow. Okay. Oh, my what how do you get 12 okay forget it it's just stupid so yeah or maybe there was 11 and one of them was like um i feel like i should report this i feel like i need to say something that was the one person at my birthday party was like i don't mess with the airport i went upstairs like my mom said I shouldn't play with that. So, yeah. So, everyone is just using Ouija boards left and right and it is totally normalized.

And it's, in my mind, like dangerous but kind of cool. And it's just like fascinating. Yeah. In 1920, the New York Times even wrote in an article that Ouija boards were selling as popular, were as popular of a sell as bubble gum. Holy shit. Okay. Were they still $45 equivalent? That was actually bubble yum.

That was $46. Okay. That makes more sense. I don't know how much a Ouija board cost at that point. Interesting. But probably maybe $5. I don't know how much a Ouija board cost at that point, but probably maybe $5? I don't know. Good guess. More than one? I don't know. So it's now considered, at this point, because it's just so all over the place, it's not just considered a tool for spiritualism anymore, but it's now becoming a toy used for general entertainment.

Also in 1920 1920 the same time that there was a that mention of bubble gum being as popular there was a court case for the ouija board uh trying to argue whether or not it was in fact a toy or an instrument for spiritualism and they wanted it to be a toy so that they could tax it the same as other toys. Okay. That's interesting. And they ended up saying that it was at this point more a toy than a tool because more people were using it for just general entertainment. Wow. Okay.

Not only was it a toy for entertainment, but it was also becoming cool with the kids. It was like hip, hip with the young folk. So ads started trying to market the ouija board with slang for ouijas for ouija boards and tell me um one ad also in the 1920s was if you call it ouija or ouiji it still spells good fun um which like i love that even a hundred years ago people were having this debate on how to pronounce

it and we still fucking don't that's a great point uh we should mention that the hip term at the time to make it alluring for the young adults was you weren't playing with a Ouija board you were Ouija-ing oh you're Ouija-ing Ouija-. I was Ouija-ing around the corner with my friends. Ooh. Smoking cigarettes and Ouija-ing. Ouija-ing. Also, not just making it fun for the younger kids, but for the older kids, it started becoming a way to skirt past dating etiquette and get close to your crush. What?

This is not how it worked when I was a teenager, by the way. It didn't work for me. I tried tried unless you were dating like the emo kid yeah well even that it didn't work for me either so here's why because the original instructions told you well first of all you were supposed to touch hands which at the time then ooh la la forget about it forget about it uh so you were allowed to touch the other person's hands for the planchette plus at the time the board wouldn't always be sat on a table it would be held in your lap right right like so it would be two people sitting across from each other and it was instructed that you hold it on your lap so your knees are touching you got a little genital bridge going on a genital bridge that's gonna be the title of

this fucking episode now i don't know why i said that i'm sorry i forget it i regret it i regret every second of it i'm sorry bridging the gap i'm so sorry i regret it i regret it deeply and heavily i regret it i'm so sorry so your knees are touching i was just gonna say like wow i can't believe the girl's knees were like even being like considered yeah body part i don't know um but so it was so common that kids were starting to use this as like a way to like do more than the dating etiquette or what right you probably have to turn the lights down too like make it dim and spooky oh yeah make it yeah get close to each other also i think the original instructions said that it worked best when there was a man and a woman okay

i think because it was all sorts of energy out of some bullshit like that you know you know um so it was so popular that norman rockwell uh he i guess at one point was at a dance and noticed that couples were running off to ouija together oh saucy and instead of dance at the dance and i guess he made a joke sock hopping instead of the charleston i don't know what people did we jay we jay they were touching knees and making bridges with their genitals i don't know how sexy so he uh i think he joked to his friend where was the quote he said maybe they can predict what the 20s will bring. And this inspired him to do the art for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for the date of May 1st, 1920.

And it's literally two people Ouija-ing together on a date. How fun. I want that. That art, by the way, is called Ouija Board in case anyone wants to look it up. Ouija-ing together on a date. No way. How fun. I want that. That art, by the way, is called Ouija board in case anyone wants to look it up. Ouija board Norman Rockwell. I feel like that. Em, what a cool picture. I feel like that would be so cool framed in our little pot in your new troll hole. In my troll hole, we should reenact the picture. Actually, we get like a professional picture of us weeding now that genital bridge remember like two weeks ago when you wouldn't talk about my

face rubbing up against yours but now we're rubbing genitals or something we're planning our poor alison's like seriously guys i'm right here in the bathroom. My mom has unfortunately cranked the volume up on this episode. So in 1927, the Ouija boards made their first million dollars in sales, which is today the equivalent of $16.2 million. Holy shit. Wow. And they came out in 1891. So that's nine. It's like, what, 36 years it took to get a million dollars in sales. Wow.

During the 30s, the Ouija boards were in even higher demand during the Great Depression for people seeking answers. Oh, that's sad. And then again, and then again in the 40s because of World War II. Okay. Again, and then again in the 40s because of World War II. Okay. The last big surge of the Ouija board was the late 60s, early 70s because of the Vietnam War. It was a lot of war causes.

And hippies. And hippies. Literally the next thing I had was because of the Vietnam War, hippie counterculture, et cetera. Yeah. In 1967, that was the first year when William Fould's family ended up selling. This whole time he's been leading Ouija board brands. Right. And his family ends up selling to Parker Brothers. Oh, okay.

And this is in 1967. Parker Brothers had, they sold two million boards that year, which outsold Monopoly. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Around this time, oh, by the way, fun fact, Parker Brothers was conveniently based in Salem, Massachusetts, which I love. Oh, come on. I didn't know that. Worked out for everyone.

So this is where it gets sad for the world of Ouija boards. Do you want to take a guess on what killed the love for the Ouija board or the normalization of the Ouija board in our country satanic panic almost that can't that comes after this that comes after this um satanic panic was the 80s and this thing happened in 1973 oh oh I don't poltergeist I have no idea close I don't. Poltergeist? I have no idea. Close? I don't know. You were so almost on it. Really? Not Poltergeist, but a different movie. Ooh.

Exorcism? I mean, The Exorcist. Yep. Clearly, I've never watched it. Oh, my God. You're kidding. Everyone had a complete normalcy with the Ouija board from the 1890s all the way until 1973 when the answers just came out. So almost 100 years of people just being like, this is just something we do.

And also like think of, it was like, what? That's almost a century of people just think like normalizing this thing. And I've never heard of a world where it was just normal like that totally for there to be so much fear-mongering in today's world for me to have never even heard of that as a thing people did what wow so anyway wow so and then you're probably right that right after that satanic panic didn't fucking help and people were like you're just talking to the devil yep so in 1973 the exorcist came out which was based on quote a true story where a kid played with a ouija board and became possessed and the story that it was based on by the way was the story of roland doe which was episode 23 which was also the episode where you all like to

make fun of me for shamelessly flirting with allison i didn't know it oh you didn't know it i didn't know it everyone else did you you poor sweet soul knew it very well i cut out six hours something like that a lot so immediately uh ouija overnight basically became this evil tool and it got worsened uh in people's eyes due to the recent manson murders due to the rise in the 70s of serial killers oh shit and satanic panic wow okay wow everything just on top of each other people were like this shit is demonic so soon ouija boards were commonly used uh on top of everything else in horror films and books and the end of people loving ouija boards were commonly used on top of everything else in horror films and books. And the end of people loving Ouija boards was now happening everywhere. So now instead of using them for religious practices, dating games, or daily parlor room fun, people were now buying them basically as spooky novelties starting in the 80s.

Okay. Okay. now buying them basically as spooky novelties starting in the 80s okay okay start with 70s 80s but after satanic panic that was when they really i guess the the rise in them or the resurgence in them spiked yeah um i think people kind of left it alone for a while when people were freaked out and then when the 90s hit i think it was 91 all of a sudden they were going up again but now as like spooky josh keys okay so the rise in sales since the 90s uh that was when like people got really into like paranormal stuff and the occult and people were kind of branching out into more i think witchcraft um and people who were just enthusiasts about the

ouija board started looking for the graves of charlesard and Elijah Bond, his lawyer and Helen. And they ended up finding Elijah's unmarked grave. And then they all like rallied together to give him a new grave. And it looks like a Ouija board. No way. Wow. I am kind of pissed that Helen didn't get that. Like,

doesn't she be the one who named it Ouija board? Also really where this ouija girl like why didn't we get her and where is she she's the one i've been wondering about this whole time they should make her grave look like look like a ouija board but call it a ouija board ouija board oh that'd be fun uh obviously there's a lot of pushback on ouija boards today from primarily christ circles. And also M. Schultz. And also me when I'm alone in my own home. I'm just saying. Even to a point where extreme Christian circles were burning Ouija boards with Harry Potter books back in the early 2000s. Okay.

Well, like, if they know anything at all, they should know that that's probably going to be worse for you than actually using one is burning one. But whatever. know that that's probably going to be worse for you than actually using one is burning one but whatever well also now that i'm reading this i'm realizing like they were having like a burn party for ouija boards and harry potter and your mother was literally my 10th birthday party mother was like guess what i found at the local bonfire i snuck it into christians probably heard what my mom was up to and just tried to set everything else on fire i don't know so she probably stole it from their fucking burn fire burn party my mom did say when she was a kid she used a ouija board and she found out that uh there was a guy named al who died in her house because he got or was his name al it was like al or fred or like a one syllable name and he got killed in the house with an axe and oh my god and she

never she never touched the ouija board again but later looked it up and found out that there was actually a guy by that name who died in the house so i don't know she was like yeah ouija boards are fun let's have my fifth grader i know yeah i was gonna say she's like i know what would be a great activity even people today who identify as either mediums or occultists or are in some part of I know. Yeah, I was gonna say you are responsible and cautious and know what you're doing then it i think is okay thank you thank you i feel like i feel like everyone has different views my personal view is like i just would rather not touch it and find out how bad it could get my personal view is m please christine's view is taking a wine glass and turning it into a planchette target doesn't sell it uh so real quick the science to ouija boards and why they

uh the science to ouija boards basically is the principle called the idea ideometer effect well i don't know it Well, I don't know. It sounds like I don't know how I think I'm saying I'm saying it right. It's basically the influence of the unconscious mind moving your muscles. You just don't know that you're doing that. So this is a concept that's actually been around since the 1850s. So since spiritualism began, it was even the explanation all the way back then for table turning but people just ignored it um but here's just a common ouija board experiment is

if you were to blindfold people using a ouija board you would find out that their messages become much more incoherent because you can't actually see the letters yeah i read about that once and it made me sad so it kind of immediately disproves that you're not in control the whole time because if you were to blindfold me and use the Ouija board all of a sudden nothing would be making sense damn um and the more the other psychology to it is the more people that use the board at once becomes a diffusion of responsibility right and so you can kind of even if you accidentally like twisted your hand a weird way or flinched at all you can kind of be like oh well it wasn't me since we're still moving to different parts

of the board oh man uh plus the fact that planchettes are very lightweight and have like those little felted feet so like it's so easy for them to move like it's you could just barely move or not even realize you're moving and it's sliding all over the board try my original wine glass that was a tough one that was actually we had to like shove it again exactly so uh so ouija boards are almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the ideometer effect because our desire to get proof of spirits convinces us that the spirits are there because we want to see it go so bad that we're subconsciously unconsciously moving around and showing ourselves proof that a spirit exists

but there's got to be an argument that like it's it works right like i'm sure i mean i think it's spooky enough that i am because i'm prone to believe anything i know there's still debate like i know people still believe that they work i mean me being one of them i think they work which is why i'm afraid to touch them but i literally did all this all this research to prove that like they were a like snake oil salesman item yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i but i i still believe that i'm like i cannot be convinced despite all of the hard i'm one of those like woo woo people who's like well you're opening up energy and inviting in a presence to talk to you and it's like you know however you do that well interesting what if i told you that in 2012, there was a test using Ouija board robots and they could be on to helping people with neurodegenerative diseases and Alzheimer's?

What? So in 2012, the University of British Columbia, there was a study that basically ended up determining people could recall information with more accuracy when using a Ouija board than when not using a Ouija board. Oh my gosh. So I wrote this in shorthand, so bear with me, but participants were asked yes or no trivia questions that you could or could not know. They were kind of challenging questions if you didn't know the answer. You weren't expected to ace the test. So you had to guess yes or no or answer yes or no for each question. And if you didn't know the answer, you had to also jot down that you were guessing.

The participants were then paired to do it a second time instead of answering these questions by themselves. No Ouija board. They were asking originally these questions without a ouija board second time around for this uh new round of questions they were going to be playing with a ouija board with a robot who was basically mimicking another person in a room that they couldn't see so it was almost it was almost like you were playing ouija board uh or you were ouija- board uh or you were ouija-ing with someone who wasn't actually in the room with you you're basically they they were kind of i don't know all right is it is it clicking i don't know what you're saying i know what you're

saying someone else is controlling the other movement the other the robots movement yes so it as far as they knew there was another person in a different room who was playing with the ouija board with you but the robot was moving for them right um they were told that this robot was just a monitor and should be seen as nothing else other than the person in another room but you just didn't want to be influenced by the other person so they gave you this robot to play with okay they were asked the same questions as they were the first time around and they had to admit whether or not they were guessing for each question they ended up finding out that this robot was not at all monitoring another person's movements in fact the robot was just enhancing your own movements oh so it was

like confirming your own if you were if you slightly moved to the left and you didn't even know it the robot was pushing it like let's go this way okay so uh in actuality the robot's movements were just amplifying their own motions and there was no other person that existed that was helping them okay so the participants were again asked the they had been asked the same questions and they found out the first time around with no ouija board when they would guess a question they were 50 correct they were they were right half the time when they were playing with the Ouija board and they thought there was another person

helping them answer the questions, but it was really just them the whole time, they were actually right 65% of the time. Whoa. That's weird. Okay. How fascinating. So then to confirm this even further,

these participants were then asked a new set of questions without the board right um and they had to let people know whether or not they were guessing on these questions and then the second time around they did a ouija board with an actual person instead of a robot right so now they're playing Ouija board with a new person what they didn't know was that second person was a plant and when they're playing uh when the participants were doing the Ouija board with this plant they were blindfolded okay so they can't see the board the plant the plant is or the participant is blindfolded? So if you're the participant, after you just answer the questions the first time without a board, then you answer the questions with the robot. Now the third thing is they're asking you brand new questions while you're blindfolded and playing with another person. Got it. Okay. And the other person is a plant. And so

since you're blindfolded, what you don't know is when you start playing with the Ouija board, they've taken their hands off the planchette and you're just playing by yourself oh okay and basically they found out the exact same thing that when they were asked questions before this and they were just asking questions without a Ouija board or a person around they were about 50 correct when they were guessing and when the when they thought they were playing ouija board with somebody else but they were just playing by themselves blindfolded they were again only they were right 65 percent of the time interesting um and so basically the results uh it ended up finding out that people knew more when they felt less in control

because if they thought if they thought they were being guided by a robot or a person in another room or the person they were playing Ouija board with, somehow they were right more often. That is so interesting. Even though nothing was influencing it besides themselves. It's like psychologically they're backing themselves up and they don't even realize it. Wow.

So one of the quotes from the study was you do much better with the ouija on questions that you really don't think you know but actually something inside of you does know and so this this this all these are all quotes from this study but this could show a lot about the mind and how it makes decisions below our level of awareness. And future studies could use Ouija boards to, quote, determine what the non-conscious mind knows, how fast it can learn, and how it remembers. Wow. or learn through this study how unconscious memory works or when it's able to pop up by itself when you're unaware of using it or accessing it they could then use this as early indicators of alzheimer's by letting people use ouija boards and if all of a sudden they're not able to recall

something even when using the ouija board yeah it could imply that there's some memory loss before they're even aware of it what the fuck um and then before i go i just i couldn't before you go don't go before i go there's just one last thing i want to say about the ouija board which is that there is um it was pretty ripped off from other cultures so let's okay wow uh just don't want to not address that. Of course. But the ones I could mainly see were that Rome and China. Before the Ouija board, there were other similar practices that don't get a lot of recognition. Dare I say, we fully ripped them off.

So in Rome, they would use a board to predict future leaders. And they also use something called augury, which was studying animal behavior to predict future leaders and they also use something called augury which was studying animal behavior to make future decisions and then in china up until the king dynasty uh people would practice some people in a it was called the i didn't save it but it was a certain school but some people practice something called fuji which was basically automatic writing with a planchette oh okay okay also super gross but in 1890 when the original ouija board came out it was uh marketed as a quote egyptian luck board yikes because quote egypt was in vogue in spiritualists yikes yikes so no thanks i mean that doesn't surprise me at all but yikes no but i still wanted to make sure people do uh also today there are a lot of museums on ouija boards especially the museum of talking boards which i think is in salem

um if it is i have been there and it was very interesting it's literally just ouija boards just from ceiling to floor cool and uh there's also in my neighborhood i don't know what the deal is with burbank but we are known to have like the most halloween stores per capita or something uh eva says it is in salem rachel and i went so y'all all three of y'all went and i haven't gone and i'm so jelly it's it's literally just a room full of ouija boards from every era. But so in my neck of the woods in Burbank, if you ever were to go to the Mystic Museum, they also have a secondary store called Slashback Video. And they have similar Ouija displays of wall-to-wall Ouija boards.

How cool is that? And then I wanted to end on another shout out to Robert Murch at the Talking Board. There he is, Mr. Murch. Historical Society for all of your research. He's chairman of the board to you. I know. And also that was so long and I'm so sorry. But I wanted to fit it all in there.

I love it. And that is the history of the Ouija board. Can I do a slight, I hate to say correction, but like question? Yeah. Is it the Qing Dynasty? Qing Dynasty. Yeah. Q-I-N-G. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I just didn't know, but like question. Is it the Qing Dynasty? Qing Dynasty. Yeah. Q-I-N-G.

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I just didn't know how to pronounce it. Wow. And Mr. Merch, 1992, was like, step aside. I want to write this shit down.

He was like, someone better figure it out. I'm like, no one's doing it. I wonder if he thought of Chairman of the Board and was like, well, shit, now I got to live up to that awesome fucking name. Okay, that's how I feel about Trollhole right now. I know. I put you up to that. Now I really got to make this thing like super crazy. I really like put some pressure on you there.

I know. Anyway, there it is. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, I guess it's my turn to tell you a story. Yes, and I am excited and sad and scared. As you well should be. So this is the story of Nico Jenkins, and it's kind of a random story that I'm pretty sure you probably haven't heard of. I hadn't heard of it. It's kind of random, although there's a weird number of YouTube videos about this.

There's a weird number of like, you know, crime YouTubers who've covered the story. And I think it's just a very strange one maybe. And that's why. But one of the videos I watched was this woman named Danielle Kirstie. And she does true crime and makeup is like her brand on YouTube seems to be a thing on YouTube right like yeah murder and makeup murder and makeup I love it it's so fun to watch it's so soothing for lack of a better term um but she her video on this had almost a million views and I was like shit that's pretty impressive. So here we go.

Nico Jenkins. Born September 16th, 1986 in Colorado. He began his criminal activity at a very young age. He was raised in a family of criminals. Omaha, Nebraska's KETV, the extended Jenkins family counts seven felons, including both of his parents, Lori Jenkins and David McGee. So, fun fact from this YouTuber, this Danielle that I watched on YouTube, Nico's great-great-grandfather was Levi Levering, and he was a well-respected tribe leader in like the late 1800s in Omaha, Nebraska. Wow. And, weirdly enough, 38 of Levi Levering's descendants are convicted criminals. Right? It's so strange.

Right? It's so strange. And collectively, these 38 descendants have committed 633 crimes since 1979. Holy shit. So, like, not even that long ago. You know, I mean. What happened? 50 years ago. What went down for that to happen? I have no idea.

And I think she said it in the video, but sort of like a nature versus nurture argument that's not neither here nor neither. How do you say that phrase? Neither here. Neither here nor there. There we go. Yep. The jig is up. The gig is up.

Whatever. Oh, God. Which one is it? Now you're freaking me out. The jig. The jig. The jig is up. And I said the gig.

Yes. Okay. I said the gig. Yes. Okay. I'm never going to know. So anyway, this is just kind of the environment that this Nico guy has been raised in. So growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, according to a website that I'm going to mention a lot called criminalbehaviors.com, Nico was in and out of juvie state care and mental treatment facilities from a young age. He suffered with bedwetting, anxiety, night terrors due to things he was experiencing at home, and he was subsequently removed and put into foster care. His first notable crime was at the age of seven when he brought a loaded handgun into school.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay. No good. Wow. handgun into school yeah oh shit okay no good wow um and when he was eight he was taken to the hospital because he was exerting aggressive behavior and threatening self-harm he spent 11 days in the hospital and a psychiatrist diagnosed him with oppositional defiant disorder and adhd nico would later say that it was around this time he began hearing voices who encouraged him to steal things. And along with these voices, he would also see black spirits as well as having recurring nightmares in which his father would shoot his mother.

So just a very dark, horrible mindscape for a fucking child. It's terrible. So he was permanently put into foster care after the handgun incident but at age 11 um he was acting so violently that he was expelled from his group home and he was later expelled from multiple schools for the same reason and once he hit the seventh grade he just kind of stopped going to school altogether. And he did later get his GED, but that was kind of the end of like his traditional schooling. So at age 13, Nico assaulted someone with a knife. And by the time he was 17, he received a total of seven charges, which included arson, assault, theft, unlawful absence, and habitual missing or runaway.

And he was put in and out of detention centers and group homes and then finally in 2003 he was convicted of robbery and use of a deadly weapon in a carjacking incident and was basically sent to prison for 10 years and this started in juvie but by the time he was 19 they transferred him to an adult prison and in 2007, he's now in this adult prison. And after an incident involving fighting with other inmates, he was moved into solitary confinement. And now solitary confinement becomes like a horrible pattern or a horrible, it's basically like his whole life in prison there's a there's a timeline in the youtube video i mentioned that danielle made of um his time in uh solitary confinement and you see like the on a on a timeline of years you see like the red marks are all of his solitary confinement and

it's like the whole it's like 85 of the thing is red and it's like oh my god for multiple years at a time back to back to back day to day to day he's in solitary confinement and it's like i don't even agree i don't even agree with solitary confinement for three days let alone like years upon years so i mean we know we know how terrible that is for for a person especially when he he already like walked into jail with so many like mental health concerns already so mentally ill and that's part of the problem too is like he had so many conditions already that like nobody was fucking taking seriously and it it just ended it went so bad um and it was like you said he already was diagnosed it's not like it was a mystery like he

okay yes i mean and then throw them into solitary confinement where like no one has gotten better right exactly exactly that's gonna fucking help like let alone make it so much fucking worse yeah exactly and so not surprisingly after being in solitary confinement he later claimed it led him to experience deep stages of depression uh having angry and sad thoughts a sickness inside of him and issues with his sanity um and you know they've made reports of that for people without mental illness who've gone into solitary confinement and are like you know i felt like i was quote going crazy or whatever. You know, it's not good for the people with the most healthy mental state.

I was going to say, the most stable people can't tolerate solitary confinement. Yeah, exactly. So when he got out of solitary a month later at this point, he was involved in two gang-related fights because he, I guess, in his mind had been told to attack innocent people. And that's what prompted this. And then he was back in solitary again. And while he was in solitary the second time, he started to hear what he called voices of gods, including Apophis, who was an Egyptian deity. And this voice became more clear around september 2008 uh and this deity this egyptian uh deity named apophis was also known as the great serpent

and is sort of seen as the embodiment of chaos which whoa whoa can you imagine of all the gods that's the one i'd be like man like couldn't it be the one of peace or something? Like, couldn't it be the one of naps? Like Dionysus, some wine, some partying. Mental health organizations. Yeah. You know, the goddess of mental health. Yes, precisely.

But no, unfortunately, it was the god of chaos. Not great. He's also known as the great serpent. chaos um not great he's also known as the great serpent uh he's also known as the opponent of light and order in the cosmos which is so like basically everything bad and unruly the opponent of peace the opponent of peace so in december nico was overheard saying that he desired to kill people and he was caught on one occasion hiding a weapon he had made. Basically a shiv. It was a toilet brush that he had sharpened.

So he was put on psych medications. And although he did confirm that it helped with his hallucinations, he often refused to take the medication. So it didn't really regularly work as well as it could have. And so for the rest of his time in prison, he had this kind of volatile up and down behavior. So in December of 2009, he was still in prison, but he was granted furlough to attend his grandmother's funeral. But while he was out for that one day, he ended up assaulting an officer.

So yeah, basically he got five years added to his sentence for this and all the other behavior that went wrong during his time in prison not that it i don't know if it matters actually but like how much time did he have left that he's now added five years on to that is a good question let me see so he was uh this was 2003 so he had four years left because he was put in prison in 2003 and for 10 years. And then in 2009, so six years into his sentence, he assaulted an officer. I don't know if this is, I don't know the, I don't know what it would be like, but I wonder if four years left of a 10-year sentence feels like a lot of time or no time. Yeah, because you're more than halfway, but also, like, you'd be like, I'm only halfway. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if it, because in my mind, I was like, what if you only had, like, six months left and then he just added five years? Well, and, you know, I don't know if the five years was added just because of this incident or if it was like everything else happened and then it was like you got one year now you got two years and i got i don't know i don't know how they added the five years but like after everything that happened he ended up staying five years longer than he initially was supposed to um which just spoiler alert, he later said, you should never have let me out of jail. I asked you to not let me out of jail. So this isn't even a thing where he's like, I wish I didn't have to be here. And I think that's what's so upsetting, too, about this case is like he was so aware of his own mental health issues.

Which is so interesting interesting yeah and yeah and it adds such a like a depth to it and nobody fucking took him seriously and it's just for a lack of a better word if it feels like it makes it more of like a well i don't i don't even i still don't really know how to phrase it but it makes it more human i don't know yeah yeah for for him to be like i'm fully aware of what's going on here and no one's listening to me yeah and it's so fucking tragic and like exactly what you just said of like i know what's going on no one's listening to me is basically ends up that basically ends up being like the whole theme for the rest of the story which is terrible because people died and it's like you know they're basically and also not trying to romanticize like a killer that's the other part of this is like it's so hard to tell

this story without vic without victimizing the killer but also you know that's exactly the thing and like the youtube video i watched too where she was like i i want to be clear i'm not saying you know he's not at fault or whatever but it's also like clearly the system fucked up somewhere along the way yeah um so yeah there's definitely a weird gray area that's like hard to hit. So anyway, with all this going on, slightly lighter note. In 2010, Nico gets married to wedding bells. He gets married to a woman called Shalanda in February of 2010. They were both incarcerated at the Tecumseh State Prison. And congratulations, I guess.

the tecumseh state prison and um congratulations i guess uh and then from 2011 to 2013 nico was once again placed in solitary and let me repeat that from 2011 to 2013 he was placed in solitary confinement oh i see thank you for repeating because that means two years consecutively isn't that rough 2011 2012 2013 so like at least two years so could be two and a half oh my god and they say like they say as if i just know like a whole slew of people who've gone through this but i mean from the from the very few sources from lawn order svu 30 days and in like the whole is like yeah insane i remember when elliot stabler went in for a couple days and he about snapped oh yeah remember that it scared me when i was little when i was little i was probably like 21 he thought he'd been in there for like a certain amount of days and they're

like it's only tuesday or something it's only tuesday no something like that no 100 that like struck such a chord with me when i was younger and i don't know i'm gonna go i'm gonna go google that so i can watch that after we and i remember him like doing a bunch of push-ups and then like yeah just to like try to stay somewhere in his own mind yeah to stay mentally at stabler solitary confinement okay now i know Okay. Now I know what I'm watching after this. Oh, I'll watch it with you. Okay. My favorite. All right. So he gets married and then he's put into solitary, which sucks because like, what about your honeymoon?

I don't know. But you're in solitary now for two and a half years. So that sucks. During this time, this is where, again, it goes back to what you said. During this time, this is where, again, it goes back to what you said. During this time, according to criminalbehaviors.com, he repeatedly requested to be transferred to a place where he could receive the appropriate mental health treatment. And it's like he kept asking i have mental like a mental illness i need to be seen by somebody who knows what they're doing a psychiatrist and they just fucking ignored it and it's like they just kept him in solitary awful it's awful so during this time in isolation um according to

that same website correctional staff noticed he had violent ideation, including sacrificing children, cannibalism. And this is cool. And by cool, I mean terrible. The opponent of cool. The opponent of cool. The god of chaos. Yeah. Which is that, A, he drank his own urine, which, okay okay we've seen that before but b text message from m stabler

endure solitary confinement law and order svu on youtube.com sorry it must have been delayed it just uh warmed my heart okay um so yeah he drank his own urine okay one thing he drank something else from his own what. What? His own body. His semen. Yeah. And he also snorted it. Oh, that's a new one. That's fun.

Apparently he claimed. Why? Apparently he claimed that it was helping boost his, like, mental wellness, which, and, like, decreasing his anger which it's making me think about like all like i mean because i want to be grossed out that he's drinking his own semen but then i'm like there's some woman out there that poor woman who has had to also do it and like pretend she was having what shalonda his wife yeah maybe any i mean every every person on earth who has done that at a moment of ecstasy congratulations i not like and that's just i that you know what world i don't understand i'll be honest with you i had that same thought where i was like okay but so many people do that but for some reason him doing it to himself is suddenly so repulsive but also it's

like but wouldn't it be grosser doing that to somebody else you know what i mean like wouldn't it be grosser to drink someone else's bodily fluid than your own but for some reason the thought of him drinking his own semen is so much grosser i wonder yeah i i'm also trying to want because yeah it's for me it doesn't seem gross and someone else is doing it because it's so normalized and i guess that might be it yeah and in basic sex 101 it seems but yeah when when you're doing it to yourself it's different like there's something there's extra oh there's something i think because it's not supposed to be sexy if it's yours i don't know i mean i don't think it's sexy either way maybe if you're a dude i don't know i don't i don't

see how whatever i don't know i'm trying to think also like i have heard of like the the benefits of hey really i know about like the ones like if it stays on your skin it's supposed to be a really good moisturizer what yeah yeah why do i know more about semen than you i i'm not surprised because your mother was linda who was hosting all these fun little parties for you she's probably the one who told me about it benefits of semen let's see where we end up it beats depression number one wow bullshit so let me guess a man wrote it honestly maybe um it's good for oh it's good for decreased risk of prostate cancer wait if in a man in better sleep you mean if a man drinks it himself right like he drinks his partners or his own benefits of drinking your own semen

i hate that my mother-in-law listens to 14 shocking health benefits of drinking of swallowing semen gross of course the first picture is like all those little tadpoles gross it's protein rich gross it contains sugar both fructose and glucose yes sodium sodium citrate zinc chloride calcium lactic acid magnesium potassium and urea which i think is p uh god it is not highly caloric so what it is less acidic than a whole list of foods and it is a mood booster that includes endorphins prolactin oxytocin and serotonin bullshit i don't know if that it cancels out if it leaves your body just to go back in your body take a fucking wheatgrass shot stop it don't know if that it cancels out if it leaves your body just to go back in your body

take a fucking wheatgrass shot stop it don't do this thing that you're doing stop it some people some people might be into it it's certainly not my thing i'm saying you can be into it but don't try to write an article telling me how healthy it is are you serious like it does come on i would like a nutritionist to back up that article like we all know what's going on it's not like oh wow well i only did it because i thought i needed a little extra zinc in my diet it's like that's bullshit i am surprised that it's you know how like if you drink your own pee for survival that it's supposed to be sterile i would demand i guess well semen is the exact it literally carries life okay so not sterile got it hmm anyway continue the exact, it literally carries life. Hmm. Okay. So not sterile. Got it.

Hmm. Anyway, continue. We have taken a wild turn. It carries life and also like STDs. So whatever. Okay. I don't know. Listen.

Forget it. Okay. So he. So he drinks his own semen. Yeah. But the thing that also that you hit on for a minute there with your reaction was he also snorted it, which is like, ouch. That I got to be honest, is not something I'm OK with.

Nothing. Don't snort anything like I'm not going to I'm not going to continue that sentence. But oh, OK. OK. I was going to say I was going to go into cocaine. I'm like, I don't want to like I don't want to go there. But also I so i i hope everyone is on the edge of their seat in discomfort but when if you're not you're about to be in my mind as someone who has never experienced semen in any form uh i imagine it is the it is similar to a booger and so my to me snorting it feels like you are just snorting a booger like goo like a runny mucusy booger yeah which like i honestly i honest and

for true i want to vomit just thinking about like i would imagine it would be like egg whites like snorting egg whites or something you know that's nasty yeah and it can't feel good snorting anything liquid getting liquid up your nose in general sounds painful as fuck like maybe it's like a really semeny neti pot i don't know oh a neti pot interesting theory maybe he. It goes in one nostril and out the other. And it takes 10 minutes. You just gotta wait. So gross. Gross. Okay, please quickly. Okay, I'm so sorry.

I am. I'm so mad at myself. I'm going to go downstairs while my beautiful infant child and my husband are asleep. And I'm going to look at them and shake my head and think. Your baby was made with semen. No, that's not true. You don't know that. You're right. Okay, so. I so i hate you all right let's go

so this is what the uh during his time in isolation correctional staff are witnessing this and being like oh okay things aren't great for this guy now in the month before his release things kind of shifted there were no reports of bad behavior, nor any reports of mental health concerns. But I'm talking the month before he was released. And basically, he was released July 30th, 2013. And he had been in isolation since 2011. So basically, the two years up until- Oh, I forgot that all thismen stuff was happening when he was like

full isolation okay so honestly everything i said like i am gonna take back just because like no it's true it's in their right fucking mind no no it's true you're you're completely right it's like he's just in fucking solitary for years on end and he's diagnosed with schizophrenia bipolar disorder i've i'm sure there were more things. OCD, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder. Exactly. And on top of that, he's been in isolation in solitary confinement for at least two years. And so right before he's released, for whatever reason, a couple weeks before he's out, they're like, oh, no, he's done a 180. And it's like like what that that's not how that works but okay he's done a 180 i guess um and like i said earlier spoiler alert he even said i should not be released i'm not ready to be released into the world you should not release me to the public and so on july 30th

they released him uh to the public and wow his family threw him a party at a hotel like a release party and his uncle gave him a gift for coming out of prison do you want to guess what it is no it's a big old gun oh i don't know why i don't know what i thought it was but it was not a gun i interestingly when i was watching that youtuber she like, and his family gave him, his uncle gave him a present, a really weird present. I went, a gun. And she was like, a shotgun. And I was like, how did I know? God.

Yeah, his uncle gave him a shotgun. Also, like, isn't that like, I don't know enough about like the world of like what a criminal is versus a felon. But like, isn't there like once you're out of jail, you're not allowed to. No, no, he's not supposed to be holding. Okay. No. Exactly. Like he should not be having a shotgun given to him as a gift.

I mean, I don't know. This is America. So it's like, who knows what rules are skirted or whatever the fuck. But yeah, he's given a gun, a shotgun by his uncle at this hotel party. been a gun a shotgun by his uncle at this hotel party and he and his uh girlfriend which i don't know if this girlfriend is different from this wife in prison oh because they were in prison together so i don't know but it was listed as his girlfriend get into an argument at this party and that just comes into play later but so on august 11 2013 this is only 12 days after he gets out of prison he commits his first murder so he and his sister erica and his cousin christine decide they are going to go commit a crime

because again i don't know what it is about this family but they just have this were they bored was it like i don't know thursday night nothing was on tv for real i'm like they just it's so strange but they just all happen to be kind of in on it it's like a family affair so he and his sister erica and his cousin christine decide to go commit a crime and what they do is they lure 29 year old jorge uh ruiz and 26-year-old Juan Pena out to away from a bar promising to have sex with them and so they lured them out and then when they were in this kind of wooded area Nico jumped out and shot them both in the head with his new shotgun and stole both their wallets and they were both killed instantly and it would only be a week later that nico would strike again oh my god yeah so

eight days later on august 19th he and erica his sister headed to find one of nico's friends uh that he had befriended in prison named curtis br. And Curtis was 22 years old and Nico referred to him as his little homie. And they were good friends. There were even photos on Facebook of them together hanging out. They looked like pals. But so they went and hung out with Curtis and Erica just pulled out her gun and shot him. And Nico was pissed. But he wasn't pissed because erica had shot his friend he was pissed because he wanted to shoot curtis so he took out his own

gun and said to erica this is how you do it and shot curtis again was he alive with his shotgun i don't i don't know i don't know okay but after this he was killed so i don't know if he was killed by the first bullet or not but basically he was pissed that his sister shot him before he got a chance to interesting that he isn't harming his family yeah because you would think if you don't really have any feelings towards anyone and you just kind of have like as he was saying like this desire to kill yeah i don't know i don't know where the where the buck stops i don't either and i don't know where his like how his where his thought thought process works yeah i have no clue um so curtis's body was found on august 19th um outside a detached garage by a man coming home

from work uh two days later nico struck again it was sort of like a spree kill like it was within a like a nine or ten day period that he killed all these people so on august 21st um he struck again so lil wayne was coming to town. Okay. Wow. Okay. Here's the context of this story. And Nico decided this would be a great business opportunity.

I can rob people leaving the concert. Oh, shit. So he and his three of his relatives decided they want to be in on this. And they decided they needed a new car to fit in so they decided they would have to steal a car wow just riddled with crime just every inch of this everybody's in on it just come on in so they went to mcdonald's uh and they scouted out for a car and in the drive-thru, they spotted an SUV that they liked. And they were like, we want that car. So they began to follow it. Unfortunately, the car belonged to 33-year-old mother of three and bartender, Andrea Kruger, who was just on her way home from work,

picking up some McDonald's. And at a stop sign, Nico and his relatives pulled up, blocked her car. Nico jumped out, pulled Andrea out of her car and shot her three times in the middle of the road. Oh, my God. It's just heinous. Yeah, then he jumped in her car

and drove off. And so neighbors had heard gunshots and called the police. They found Andrea's body in the middle of the road with multiple bullet wounds. She had very much passed away. So at 6.30 p.m. on August 21st, Andrea's SUV was discovered 12 miles away in an alley. There had been an attempt to set it on fire but the attempt was described as feeble so i think um from what i remember the uncle just tried to set it on fire but not really like he like i don't know tried to like throw a match at it or whatever it didn't

really work and they just left it there so over the coming days various bits of evidence began to trickle in as they tried to figure out who the hell killed this woman. Investigators did have an image from surveillance of a female at a local gun outlet buying the kind of ammunition that had been used to commit the killings. They'd also found some like street surveillance shots along the road where the suv had been driven and while police were trying to piece together not only andrea's murder but the other murders as well the the two people that they had killed near the woods and then curtis his friend from prison geez all of this like within like yeah like being out i think it's like nine or ten Yeah. So they don't have any clue that it's him at this point. They're trying to figure out all these three separate murders.

I guess four technically. So then on August 30th, 2013, Nico was arrested. But not for any of the above murders. He was arrested on a completely unrelated terroristic threats charge. What? Okay. Now this goes back to that hotel party i mentioned the fight the fight with his girlfriend exactly where i guess he and his girlfriend got into a fight and then later he threatened her life and he said like the god of

the egyptian god will come after you whatever like he he began threatening her and she got scared and she reported this to the police and she took it really seriously and so he was arrested simply on that charge um but because i guess he knew he would be caught eventually when he was arrested for that he just immediately confessed to all four murders oh shit so thankfully they took him in for that because when he was in the interview room he went on an eight hour ramble to the cops and confessed to all four uh murders oh whoa although he said it's not his fault it's the fault of the god apophis who came to him and ordered him to sacrifice people and you know sometimes i feel like when there's a sentence like that i get kind of like eye rolly whatever but like it's very clear this man has been is not well not well and it's not one of those cases where they're like feigning

quote-unquote insanity you know like he's clearly very mentally ill and again that does not excuse any of this behavior obviously but at the same time it's like uh you know it's not as quote-unquote funny as if somebody who were saying oh no i totally it wasn't me you know like he clearly is very he's not bullshitting exactly yeah he Yeah. He's not okay. He's not okay. And, like, for all we know, he really believes this. Not that any killer is okay, but this guy is, like, almost, it's almost not his fault that he is not okay. Yeah. Like, he.

If that's, you know, whatever the gray space of that is. I know. That's the thing. It's, like, it's hard to find that line for sure. And whatever the case may be, like, it can't be denied that he's very mentally ill um and so in the run up to the first murder nico remembered quote my head kept pounding boom boom boom boom boom and i was like what the fuck is going on and the demonic forces just attacked me i can't sleep 36 hours at a time until i did the first one and so basically, cops didn't even need to like push him for a confession,

like he gave them all the information they needed. You can even hear one of the detectives in the interview saying, Do you not realize I got Nico Jenkins, I've got you, I've got your DNA at the murder scene, I've got your DNA in the car, I've got the weapon. And he fully admitted he's like, I shot Juan, I shot Jorge, I took their wallets. He even hand wrote a letter in 2013 where he expressed his wish to plead guilty to all four killings and that he would protect Apophis' kingdom with animalistic savage brutality. And I know this is so irrelevant, but they, like in that YouTube video I mentioned, she showed the letter he wrote and he had the most beautiful handwriting. Oh, really? I know that's so random, but I was like, wow.

Wow. I was like striking handwriting. I was like, oh, that's interesting because I feel like you see like letters written by serial killers and they always look so scratchy and scary. Yeah. But he had just beautiful handwriting. I know that's like so not relevant but i just it struck me you know the point one percent of something not horrible about this yeah right exactly you're finding the silver lining wherever you can thank you you know how i feel about fonts

i was like i know you love a good font i love a good font i'm just i was it was touching to me. So anyway, he wrote another letter also, where he wrote about the chemistry of the mind and body, biochemicals, formulas, activities of the brain and pituitary glands and surgically implanted devices. I mean, this is, you know, his schizophrenia playing out, according to psychiatrists, like he's very much not well but he's writing these letters and he's petitioning for his own case i'm not really sure what he's after but at this point that's what they're getting um and during his hearing this is not great he was reported to have laughed as they detailed the victim's deaths um and so when uh the douglas county attorney don klein outlined how uh nico's sister had shot curtis bradford and then nico had said like this is how you do it and shot curtis

again himself because he wanted to do it jenkins or nico scoffed and said you're lying dude is crazy and then continued by claiming to not remember any of the killings and that this was all puzzling because Curtis was my homie. And so I would never do a thing like this. that the voices whispered to him included kill them destroy them attack them and he later actually tattooed those phrases onto his own face so we'll get there okay he told the court that apophis and lucifer told him that the people he murdered were attempting to kill him so he killed them under orders whoa and yeah hey lucifer of all of them of all of them you know and it's it's it's hard to tell this too because you know like i know people who suffer from schizophrenia and and like i hate to paint it as like oh well he was schizophrenic and so he was on a murder spree you know and it's hard to like tell the story without it sounding like

those were inextricably linked like you know he had this mental illness schizophrenic people yeah you can't escape killing yeah like oh of course he murdered people he had voices you know and i'm not trying to at all make it that way and i want to be clear too that's not that's not what i'm trying to say um but clearly you know he needed a lot of help he went through a lot in his childhood he went whatever it may be he was committing these crimes and nobody was taking his mental illness seriously um when the judge strongly suggested that he get an attorney for his death penalty hearing because after you know he had a separate death penalty hearing um he said first of all that he would like to waive his president his president he would like to waive his presence and be notified

through letter like through the post like he he didn't want to be there he's like just somebody write me a letter and tell me and they're like no you gotta be there i don't know how bad it's gonna be i already have a hunch yeah i don't feel great about it write me and i'll be in bermuda send me a letter yeah um and then he's like oh by the way can you just take the death penalty off the table and they're like no sorry yeah unfortunately you've given us some eligible reasons yeah unfortunately be worried if anyone's gonna do it it's us um and so when the judge was like you should get an attorney to represent you at this hearing he replied that's only if i care about it uh and i guess not because he decided to represent himself which legally he

is allowed to do um and although he had confessed to the murders already unfortunately the trial was not as straightforward as hoped um according to omaha.com nico began speaking in tongues which he claimed was the language of um his you know serpent god he smirked and laughed as uh prosecutors recounted details of his victim's death he pleaded guilty but then refused to accept the prosecutor's accounts of the shootings then he pleaded no contest and a judge found him guilty um and then he blamed the ne the Nebraska prison system for the deaths of the four victims because they said because he said they released him despite his schizophrenia. He said he wanted to go to death row. Then he asked the Don Klein, the attorney, to take the death penalty off the table. Then he said he would never hurt a woman unless apophis commanded him to uh then he said they were all over the place all over the place he said they were human sacrifices he was just a vessel etc etc so uh if you're like you know what i was saying earlier like is this an act or not um his wife shalanda said he's not pretending to be crazy uh nico specifically told

me that apophis gives him orders it was this voice that came and was just like if you do what i tell you to do if you follow my demands then i'll make sure you're safe and i'll make sure you're okay um so his wife was like this is not an act like this is really what's happening in his mind. So on April 16, 2014, he was found guilty for the murder of Juan and Jorge Curtis Bradford and Andrea Kruger. So all four of his victims, he was found guilty. According to the Daily Mail, a psychiatrist for the prison system testified that he was a psychopath and one of the most dangerous people i've ever evaluated oh wow i mean i'm not surprised i know it's like it's hard to be surprised at this point so this is where it gets kind of wacky um wacky may not be the right word but in april 2015 nico attempted to carve this is when he starts kind of self-mutilating so he attempted to carve the number 666 into his forehead um unfortunately he was looking

into a mirror so it said 999 are you serious oh my god it's true that happened with my... With what? With what? What did you do? My ex-brother, my ex-stepdad's kid. He used to be my stepbrother. We all went out on a family trip one time with his friends, and they got really, like, super-duper hammered. This is when, like, I think he had just turned 21 so he was invincible on alcohol and he wanted to brand himself with the the letter of his last name like the the first initial of his last name which was

uh an f and he did it backwards because he was looking in the mirror because he did it on himself with a knife he like heated up a knife shut up like a like a dull butter knife but heated it up and then branded himself three times and then when he looked later it was backwards because he died in the mirror dear god i mean that'll tell you like it happened it ended up being the it ended up being the the talk of the rest of the vacation being like let's look at your stupid fucking show me your brand oh yikes of all things an f backwards oh imagine if he had done it like the long part of the f and then he did the first horizontal one and he realized it was backwards and then he was like either

I commit or I like like what do I do start over yeah you're kind of fucked at that point or you make it a different letter make it a blocky A make it a different symbol anyway yeah so he wrote 999 on his own forehead so that's

it happens to the best of us it happens and then a month later he cut the word satan into his face oh okay and then he just it gets worse he decided he wanted to resemble his god apophis so he cut his tongue to be like a snake and it required i think 13 stitches and then in september of 2015 he uh told the judge he was listening to the voice of Apophis when he attempted to cut his penis into the shape of a serpent. And this did enough damage to require 27 stitches on his wee-wee. Sure. So he was sentenced to death in May 2017 by a three judge panel. But fortunately for him, Nebraska abolished capital punishment in 2015. However, as AP News reports, death penalty supporters responded with a statewide ballot campaign that prevented the law from going into effect until voters decided whether to overturn the decision. So nearly 61% of voters opted to reinstate the

death penalty. And so Niko, I mean, I'll be very blunt and upfront here. I'm very against the death penalty, but whatever. So apparently 61% of people in Nebraska voted to reinstate it. And so Niko Jenkins has been given Nebraska's first death sentence since the punishment has been reinstated. Whoa. So apparently from anything I can find, he's still on death row. He's still in the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. He's made a few attempts at suicide, which have landed him in medical wards. And his attorney has stated you can't execute people who are mentally ill.

And I would argue. This man was very mentally ill. I would argue you can, but you shouldn't. Like, I agree you shouldn't, but, like, I wouldn't say you can't because I'm sure it's happened before and it'll happen again, unfortunately. Nico also has a new fiance because he and Shalonda broke up. And this is a 46-year-old woman from Texas called Dawn Argelo, whom he met when she was doing volunteer work with death row inmates. And he tattooed her name onto his face. I don't know if it was backwards, which I guess would be like –

Right. Nwad. I don't know. Oh, my God. Nwad. Nwad. Nwad. Nwad. like right wad i don't know my god nod wad uh wad but apparently dawn was like pissed she was like she literally said i was very ticked off that he did that he doesn't need to be self-mutilating like that so she was like don't fucking carve my name into your face fair enough so far i like her i mean i get it so nico's sister sister Erica is also serving a life sentence because she murdered Curtis Bradford.

And apparently she and his cousin Christine, do you remember Christine, who the two of them like lured those men? So apparently they were both sent to prison, but Christine had testified against the whole family to get a lighter sentence. But then they put Erica and Christine in the same fucking prison cell. And so Erica tried to kill her for ratting her out. Yeah. Which is like, you've got to believe they knew what they were doing when they put them in the same fucking cell. Like, she clearly got a lighter sentence by, like, ratting everyone else out. Then they put them in the same fucking cell.

And Erica almost killed Christine. So, anyway, apparently Erica's latest endeavor is that she petitioned the court for a name change. Her name was Erica Jenkins, and now she wants it to be illuminati with an e illuminati girl what i know it gets worse okay illuminati e goddess so goddess with an e at the front erica with two k's prestige illuminati e goddess erica prestige is what she's princess consuela yes yes is what she's petitioning goddess princess banana make um so unfortunately there's not much we know about the victims of nico jenkins and his family especially juan and jorge we don't know too much about them but curtis bradford is survived by his mother valita glasgow and andrea kruger is survived by her children j Valita Glasgow, and Andrea Kruger is survived by her children

Jaden, Ava, and Hartley, and her husband Michael Ryan. And that is the story of Nico Jenkins. Whoa. Thank you, ma'am. That's, it's, it's it's rough because it's like wow he carved 999 in his

face. Ha ha. But then it's like nobody was so mentally ill and no one fucking took him seriously. And he, and that's the frustrating thing that you mentioned. Like he even said, I should not be released. And it's like, how does that get past people?

It's also, it's such an awkward gray space because you don't all want to feel bad for someone who's done such horrible things, but then like somehow a part of me can like separate it just to be like wow like that guy needed real real fucking hell real hell and it's but then i bounce back quickly and be like oh well look at all the shit and if i were andrea's kid i'd be like why are you giving him you know the grace whatever you know but yeah so it's it is a very weird gray space um and it's it's pretty pretty shitty and pretty heavy and it just goes to show you know mental illness is not taken as

seriously as it should be amen that's definitely an extreme example but extreme very true example indeed well what are you what are you doing after this what are you doing i don't know what am i doing um i'm pouring more wine my baby's apparently sleeping blaze says so i probably woke her up when i screamed one of those many times but um yeah how well can you give everyone an update on the sleeping situation oh it's bad oh really well she turned five months uh today or yesterday march 1st yay five months old so apparently her four-month sleep regression might be ending soon fingers crossed i don't know we're moving her into her own room and her own crib soon and is that is five months the normal age for that um yeah usually around like five or six

well i don't know it depends some people wait over a year some people wait till six months i don't know but she's in like a snoo bassinet that the robot thing that moves and six months is the maximum to keep them in that and she's now over five months so we're gonna try to move her to her own room and she's gonna start eating solids in a few weeks just just like a little bit at a time like little when can funka lem give her a little milkshake wait can we give her a milkshake with your breast milk ew i don't know it feels more baby themed that way just a baby themed milkshake gross you said it is that what happened something happened where your breast milk was in the freezer and i was like here's the thing here's the thing i went to la to do some

work for like 48 hours and i brought it was my first trip away from home and i brought my breast pump and poor m had to witness me while we were on location working somewhere outside of our home. And I was like, I got a pump. So I sat in the courtyard and pumped. And then my dumb ass had a flight. I had to get up at 3.30 in the morning, and I forgot to put the fucking ice packs in the freezer. So I was like, I got to leave all this breast milk in the freezer. And since we have this in the soy drink apartment, of course, it was all there. So then the next day, I was like, Christine, I went to go get some ice cream from the freezer. And all I found was just packs of your breast milk. I was like, can I or can I not? I won't, but in theory, could I or could I not? Could I or should I or could I not?

Is it ice cream and would it be enjoyable? What does it tell me? What's the, what's, where? Where do we stand? How blurred are our lines at this point where's the gray space oh my god and i was like back away back away okay bottom line i did not eat your breast milk i did i am upset though that i still haven't gotten a clear answer on whether or not that is technically ice cream the answer is like no because i feel like if you just pour milk into a cup and put it in the freezer that's also not ice cream you know now i have to figure out this the ingredients of ice

cream and like if i put something else in sugar and then i feel like you got to just like put it in one of those ice cream makers that makes it super cold kick it around in one of those like ice cream soccer balls yeah okay that'll make it ice cream just like shake wait it i'm not gonna eat it i just i just want the information okay yeah i mean listen everyone's judging you i'm not it's still sitting there untouched i didn't even touch the packaging i honestly it freaked me out a little bit but of course it was because it literally was like sharpied with like my handwriting on it. Like it was really nuts. But Blaze was like, just throw it away because you're not going to use it.

I'm like, I'll fly back and get it. And he's like, you're going to fly back and get it. And I was like, I don't know. Is it, should I throw it away? No, I'll come get it. What's wrong with you? Don't text Blaze. He's going to be like.

Send it away. No, because I'll go get it. It's fine. Okay. It's hard to throw away because it takes so much work to get it. No, just like it takes so much work. Is it like, is she allowed to drink it now at this point, though? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. I'm just saying I wish I had brought it back, but I couldn't because I forgot. Whatever. If I don't come back in the next month or two we can toss it okay but i won't make you do it i'll i'll do it i'll pick it up it's fine it's fine it's in a bag it's fine it's if it leaks on me i'll vomit for sure oh my god it's for no reason so on the one hand i was like if it leaks on me i'll vomit but then it's like can i please eat it i'm, make up your fucking mind.

I'm not going to eat it. I just want to know, like, what's the likelihood of. No, it's not ice cream, Emma Fee. If that's the only question, no. Because like. Well, we'll never know. We'll never know. Oh, we'll never.

I guess nobody will ever know. We will think about it, but we'll never know. We'll all ponder the possibility. All right. Anyway, I guess it's time for me to go and scream into a pillow or something really because i think maybe me too i appreciate you as your storyteller do you and i i i don't know i don't know how to end this maybe we maybe tell a joke okay maybe we finally found our and remember how we always struggle to end it maybe it's just

like a breast milk update everyone's like no no no no no don't do that it's still sitting there um what's the status i'm not gonna do anything with that i just okay it doesn't matter goodbye everybody and we love you uh that's why we drink breast milk