My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 234 - Ghost Stories: Part II

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

This week's minisode is a compilation of hometown stories about ghosts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the Minya soap, where we read you back your shit. Do you love it? You do. Then say it. Scream it to your car. Okay, this one's called Haunted House Story, Lighthearted. Sweet. This is perfect. We're in fall at this point. There's lots of haunting stories. There is. This is good. Yeah. I just finished, wait, sorry, it says hello ladies, non ladies and animals.

Perfectly. I just finished the episode Sprankers, which reminded me of a terrifying haunted house experience. I'm sorry, Sprankers is as funny as the day it happened to us. We put an exclamation mark on it. It's called Sprankers. You have to say Sprankers. Sprankers. Because I have a corrections corner, so this isn't it. Okay. Okay. I just finished the episode. Is it not Sprankers? It's Spanker. No, it's some, I'll tell you it next episode. Okay. I just, let me repeat what I said. Great. I just finished the episode. Sprankers. Which reminded me of a terrifying haunted house experience. Northwest Minneapolis is well known for the soap factory, which hosts a haunted house in its

basement each October. Eight years ago, my then boyfriend slash now husband and I went with another couple on what was supposed to be a casual double date. Fucking couples dates, man. The haunted house started with a self guided walk through a complete darkness in which we found our way by following a rope. That's cool. Then there were a few jumpy parts, the creepy guy chasing us on stilts. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. But he can't, that wouldn't be scary because he can get further or fucking come at you. But he can get further along faster. Just fucking push that stilt over. That's the end. Goodbye. Okay. Well, what about an interactive family dinner with an alcoholic father holding a gun? Oh my God, that's fucked. Whoever made that haunted house had some fucking

issues. They were just drawing deep from the well of their own fear catalog. Charlie, what's the scariest thing you've ever experienced? My fucking dad. Near the end of the haunted house, I was directed to face a wall. I was unblindfolded and taken away from my friends. Nope. After being pushed into a new room, I felt my body being turned around and I was laid flat on my back. A woman removed my blindfold just fast enough so I could see a solid wooden door close in front of my face. Yes, ladies. I was in a coffin. Oh, no. I completely froze and kept repeating over and over to myself. It's not real. It's not real. I simultaneously heard the other woman, you can leave that in when I fuck up words like, Stephen goes to note the time and I'm just like,

no, it takes me three chances to say simultaneously left. Leave it in. I simultaneously heard the other woman from my double date screaming, help, where are my friends? After we all got out of our coffins, my boyfriend informed me that after a few seconds in his coffin, he realized he wasn't alone. There was a woman waiting in the coffin who whispered in his ear, let's play a game. No. And then put a rope around his neck. Needless to say, we have not been back to any haunted house since. Quick shout out to my murdering mom, Lori, who introduced me to Stephen King when I was way too young. And to my murdering mother-in-law, Julie, when we were first introduced, she said, you're from Wisconsin. They have the best serial killers. True. Stay sexy and don't go to a haunted

house on a double date, Danny, with an eye. Oh, my God, that stressed me out so bad because, and I know we've talked about this before and I've said this before, but any haunted house situation, seasonal, not real, is set up. Those are just actors. So you have to trust that the person in the coffin with you is saying is okay enough that they would want to do that for seasonal work and yet still be, know that they aren't allowed to harm you. I mean, isn't it weird to like be, what if the person who you're trapping for fun and play in a coffin has this, like, has some fucking claustrophobia issues and starts beating the shit out of you? Punches you, yes. 100%. Like, has an issue with, I don't know, a rope around their neck?

Or has a knife in their pocket. I mean, like, anything could happen. No, I'll stay home and pass out candy. I was already in the drama department. I don't need that kind of interaction with people who want to whisper creepy shit. And also, there must have been a warning of some kinds. Or like a thing you had to sign away to be like, I know this is okay. I can't even imagine the behavior that I would be exhibiting if I had to walk through the dark following a rope. And that was the beginning of it. No, I'd go home. It's the same thing like getting on a roller coaster. I don't want to, I'm not even going to wait in line. Yeah. Why do it? Wait in line for, like, the worst experience of my life. Okay, sorry.

This isn't about me. No, no, no. I mean, I'm just, I'm still there. Are you just sweating? I mean, because I don't like the idea that it's in a basement of a soap factory. Yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't know where you're going. It just means it's the creepiest place they could find outside of Minneapolis. I think you made up the basement. No, you're right. Yeah, I fucking didn't, because the second you said it, it was like, oh no, it's all cold and lower than the ground. I never had a basement, so they don't really scare me. I don't like it. I have one now, but it's fine. Get in there. Okay. Okay. It's just full of cat litter boxes. So it's pretty terrifying. The subject line is the ghost of Route 26, the Merry Night

murder. Hi, MFM family. I'm a little late to the murder party, but I mean, it's not a party. But since I've started listening, I have been binging like crazy. My hometown murder is a pretty crazy one, mostly because of the ghost of the victim has been seen many times over the years. Anyways, I live in a sleepy little town called Poland, Maine. I wonder if that's where Poland Springs is from. Delicious water. Could be. We'll look into it. With just a few thousand living souls and possibly a few other spectators. So it's a tiny town in Maine. I love it. Every year, when October rolls around, the stories come back to life about the murder of Merry Night, also known as the ghost of Route 26. Merry Night was gruesomely murdered on October 6th, 1856,

by her husband, George, who was 20 years younger than her. Hala. Merry had been ill for quite some time before her murder. Many people, including her doctor, believed that her husband was poisoning her. Oh, fuck. That night on the 6th, Merry was murdered in cold blood while she was lying in bed with George's 83-year-old mother. It's said that for some reason she had gone to bed with his mother that night, maybe because she felt the evil that was soon to occur. When Merry's body was discovered, people at first thought it might be a suicide, but it was soon clear that she had been murdered. A few days later, George was arrested for that murder of his wife. It's said the word murder 15 times. While the scene of the murder is just down the road from my house, the home is no longer

there. The homestead changed hands many times over the years, but the house is no longer. This leads us to the ghost of Route 26, who is believed to be Merry. A woman in a white dress, sometimes resembling a wedding dress, has been seen walking or hitchhiking along Route 26. No way. Many, many times. Once my mom was driving by a cemetery on Route 26, and she saw a bride in the cemetery getting her photo taken, maybe it was a real bride in a cemetery with that. That doesn't sound like a ghost action. Nope. She's got one foot up on the tombstone. It was a goth, you guys. It was a 90s goth. High school students need to go somewhere, and it's not going to be the fucking mall. It's going to be the cemetery. Although I've never

personally seen her, many locals have. Some people believe that she's searching for her house that is no longer there. Whether the ghost is real or not, Merry Night was still gruesomely murdered in my small town of Poland, and her memory will never be forgotten. Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Love, Nicole. Aw, that's so like a thoughtful tribute. A thoughtful, ghost-based, classic hometown. Yes, bring them on. Okay, this is called a hometown haunting. Good old haunting. Okay. Okay. Hello, murder girls. And then in parentheses, it says, that's what I call you when I recap your shows to my husband every week. Oh. I live in a suburb, the suburb? Probably. I live in a suburb north of Boston. Is it in Arizona?

Cute new England town, but not exciting until about six months ago. A resident posted a question on a Facebook community page. Has anyone else seen the ghost in market basket? Apparently, this person noticed an elderly woman strangely at a place and dressed in Victorian-era clothing wandering around the frozen food section of a local supermarket. The strange woman apparently vanished into thin air, leaving ghostly vibes and goosebumps in her wake. And for some reason, the Facebook post about the haunting went viral. For some reason, it's the best. Like local and national news story, front page of the Boston Globe kind of viral. News vans and photographers showed up in the parking lot and I was getting extra texts from my

friends asking if I needed a protein pack. Nope. A proton pack to go grocery shopping. Do you need a protein bar to go grocery shopping? I obviously need a protein right now. Some reporters connected her ghost to a Wilmington woman with a strange fixation on death. Her name was Franz Hiller. Her nickname was the lady of the caskets. Incredibly wealthy, thanks to her husband's medical career, Franz hired a contractor to build nesting coffins and sarcophagi for the two of them so that when they died, they could be laid to rest above ground. She had a fear of being buried underground. Franz used to dress up in her funeral clothes. Yes, she picked out her own funeral clothes. Wow. And go lie inside her coffin, gazing at herself in a mirror she had

installed in the ceiling above. When her husband died, Franz remarried a much younger man and made him legally change his name to that of her late husband. Oh, sweet romance. She became the first woman to hold town office when she served a term on, I can't make this up, the Cemetery Committee. What? When Franz Hiller died in 1900, she joined her husband on their funeral mound above ground until their tombs began to leak and they had to be buried underground in the 1930s. Oh, she doesn't want that? No. No, she's that's going to upset her ghost. That's classic haunting reasoning. This is the beginning of every haunted movie. That's right. Is Franz Miller the market basket ghost? If anyone's haunting my hometown, it's got to be her,

a murderer before her time. She's probably pissed she ended up buried and she's taking it out on the frozen peas. Stay sexy and don't bother a ghost who's just trying to get the shopping done. Kate. Wow. Creepy, right? Yeah, but also, I get, you know, she's obsessed with death and this and that. Then she marries a 24 year old. I feel like lady, your problems are solved. How about living in the here and now? Yeah, you got a good. You got a good young man. That's right. Did you hear that thing where they were trying to make up a story about how Elizabeth Warren was having an affair with a 24 year old trader? No. It's the funniest, dumbest fucking fake story. And it's just made everybody love Elizabeth Warren even more. Because they're like,

somebody tweeted like, how does she, she does four hours of selfies and then goes and has an affair with a 24 year old that she should be leading this country. Smokes her vape to relax at night. Good. Yes, get it. Everybody get it. Get it and send it. This is a good one. It's just this hometown story. Hello. A few years ago, I was staying in a hotel in the Czech Republic Mountains with my friend Kara. We were sharing the very last hotel room on the left at the end of the hall and also shared a small entranceway with the room to our left so we could tell that there was no one checked into that room. One of the first nights in our hotel room, Kara and I were laying in our separate beds talking with the lights off. After a while, we both mumbled good

night and the conversation stopped. I of course took out my phone and took advantage of the free Wi-Fi to connect with people back home in the States. While I was scrolling through my phone, my friend started sobbing quietly and somewhat pathetically in her bed. I paused listening to hear her crying and felt mostly uncomfortable since she wasn't typically a crier and I wasn't typically a comforter. I locked my phone and listened letting another minute pass hoping she would just stop. I can't help you with this. Please stop and trying to figure out just how to respond to this awkward situation since she wasn't called. Are you okay? Can I do anything? Yeah, I guess that's all you really need to do. You don't have to solve it in the moment.

Yeah, you don't have to talk. You just let them talk. It's just the depth and breadth of night time in the room sobbing. Here's a secret. If someone's sobbing and they know you can hear them, it's because they want you to help them. Right, which then triggers the part of me that goes, now I will never help you. See how I can be? Wait, this isn't a story about me. I was just about to say something from across the room when Kara says, are you okay? I remember freezing for a second and taking the time to think, are you fucking kidding me? I put my phone down, acknowledged with annoyance that I was about to tell Kara there was a little ghost girl sobbing in our room after another beat said, I thought that was you. Kara, of course, screamed,

shot out of bed, flew straight to the light switch and flicked it on. There was no one there and the crying had stopped. Kara explained that she felt someone standing next to her bed in the dark and thought it was me. Oh my God. We both slept with the lights on that night in my bed, obviously, and made the mistake of looking up why little girls would be haunting the Czech Republic Mountains. All we could find was that those mountains used to be a hiding place for Nazi soldiers who'd fled Hitler's army during World War II, so make of that what you will. Oh. Stay sexy and don't get a hotel room at the end of the hall, Amber. That is terrifying. Isn't that crazy? Yes. Holy shit. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping,

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everything you need. So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Arisha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable Diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney

Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This one is called eBay coffin, not as advertised. Hello from my union lunch break. God bless it. God bless you. As a scenic painter in the film industry, I've had to paint my fair share of creepy props. Hello, jar of real bones and spend late nights at creepy locations. Hello, haunted jails. Oh, but recently I had a run in with a real coffin that tops all my crazy stories.

This coffin was actually the kind of pressure sealed steel box that small coffins carrying fallen soldiers go inside of a coffin for a coffin, if you will. It got wheeled into our paint shop and dropped off with instructions to make a replica of it. The task went to me right before the end of day. Not enough if it's just like paperwork. Yeah. But then it's like here, make this giant coffin. It says so it's late. So it's nighttime. I'm alone in the shop working on my replica and I'm not feeling too hot with this real life steel body box next to me. I'd heard a rumor from a co-worker that it came from eBay and was supposed to be unused, but that our boss had opened it and saw yellow juice inside of it and then closed it. Could have been pineapple

juice. You know how that goes. Oh, God. I wasn't sure if that was true since we all joked around so much in the shop, but I legit did not like this thing and had to hum to myself while I worked. What's wrong? There's nothing like humming that comforts you just a little bit. Just hum monster master yourself. You'll be fine. The next morning when I come into work to finish the replica, the prop master comes over and frantically yells to stop working because a crime scene cleanup team was on their way to clean this coffin. No, it wasn't pineapple juice. They'd heard about my boss saying the juices in the coffin. Juices. Stop using the word juice. It's so horrible. It's really awful. And called the crime scene people the night before while I was

alone with it for over an hour. Barf. Anyway, the crime scene guys come out in their creepy van and put on their hazmat suits and swab the thing. It's not their fault that they have to drive a van. No, or wear creepy hazmat suits. Yeah. Over an hour later, they come back from the back of the van. I guess they had tested the swab and simply say, yep, those are human remains. Gotta have to rope it off. In their full crime scene cleanup regalia, they put caution tape around this thing and then squirt Clorox bleach a few times inside the coffin and wipe it with paper towels. And that's it. Then they closed it. But the end. No. Apparently, that's how you clean a coffin with human remains in it. Clorox paper towels. Even though you bought it off eBay under a listing that said it was unused.

Anyway, stay sexy and don't buy coffins on eBay, Kelly. Yeah. No, you needed to, like, send the detectives to whoever you bought this thing from. Yeah, I know. How is that the final, I guess, them having the swabs, then they just take the DNA and go? I don't know. They don't know. I need to know how this is going to get handled. Yeah, I do too. That's creepy. That's so creepy. Anything off of eBay is creepy. Yeah. Yeah. Coffins. Did you see there was some museum did a creepiest doll contest? No. Can we see those pictures? Let's find them for next week's episode. Yes. For the Halloween episode. Yes, good idea. Yeah, okay. There's nothing scarier than a doll.

No, it's the creepiest thing. It's unless it's a two year old saying, boy. Boy. And Teddy Rocksman. Send us your stories. We're doing a special Halloween episode. And you still have time to send us your stories at my favorite murder at GML fucking creepy shit, Ouija boards, ghosts, everything. All any, you could be a Halloween themed event, something that happened to you because of Halloween. It could just be something that's scary and goes along ghost stories. Your worst costume. Somebody that stick their arm out from behind a curtain and rub, put their finger down your spine. Who was the creepy guy who would pass out candy in your neighborhood and pass out like sunflower seeds or whatever.

And then your little child body would be sending alarm signals that you would be standing up on your arms and you'd be like, let's get away. And then later on, 10 years later, turns out they dig up the backyard. They find pumpkins. It's just loved to raise pumpkins. And you, it's you that is wrong this time. Okay. I'm not going to read you the subject line of this. Hi, Karen, Georgia and Stephen, a classic opening. I have a true ghost story for you that will warm your soul. My grandma passed away in October 2012 in Rochester, Minnesota. My grandma has seven children, but my mom and her were especially close. In the days before her passing, my mom and my grandma, my mom asked my grandma to send her a sign that she's okay

when she makes it to the afterlife. Being that my mom and grandma were both religious, I'm sure my mom prayed for her safe passing and a sign from her as well. On the day of the wake, my mom distinctly remembers turning her phone off out of respect. But during the wake, she heard her phone go off at full volume. She was really surprised by this. So she went outside to check and saw a voicemail from my grandma's church. An important detail for later, the church is affiliated with the Mayo Clinic because the church is in a Mayo Clinic retirement community. So it was a Mayo Clinic phone number that called when she listened to the voicemail, it was just classical music playing for two minutes, specifically string quartet number 21 in D,

K575, Prussian number one, five, five Allegretto. No, I don't remember this detail, but I did text her to ask. At the time she brushed it, brushed it off as a technical glitch. Then when we arrived home at the end of the weekend, she checked her landline voicemail and she noticed a voicemail from the same number at the same exact time as the voicemail on her cell phone. And guess what? She listened to the message and it was the same song playing. While freaking out, she called the church and asked if they called her during the weekend and the minister replied that he didn't call her once. The church also never heard the song before and said that they'd never had that happen to anyone else. The minister said,

that must have been a sign from my grandma. Here's where things get even stranger. No, what? Remember how I mentioned that this church is from a Mayo Clinic phone number? The only time she's gotten a call from the Mayo Clinic that resulted in music playing on a voicemail was on the same day that one of her close friends passed away. Coincidence or does my mom get voicemails from heaven routed through the Mayo Clinic? Love you all, love your podcast and I hope you love my mom's story, Michelle. Oh my God. That is a weird little, you know, but the Mayo Clinic is pretty great. So I can see that. The Mayo Clinic does great work. Heaven also apparently does great work from what we're told. And maybe they're in cahoots. Maybe they're cahoots friends. I love it.

Guys, send us any kind of story at my favorite murder at GML. If you think it's entertaining, if you think we'll like it, if it's horrifying. We just need it to be the truth. That's all anyone needs these days. And even slightly well written. Yeah, it doesn't have to be. No, no, certainly not. This is not an essay contest. It's not. It's a storytelling contest. You won't be graded. It's an are you an okay human contest. Good luck. No pressure. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want to cookie?