My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 310

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a dad’s secret stash of traysure and working in a haunted house.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. So my favorite murder. The mini sewed. It's mini. Here it is. Look at that. Oh. This precious little thing from Sanrio.

Somebody on TikTok, there was some kind of 80s throwback thing. Oh, no, is it, it was just a girl going through her mom's old sticker album. And it was all these Mrs. Grossman stickers that like, only made in the 80s. And then a bunch of other, were you too young for like that Mrs. Grossman sticker where it would be like a goose or a heart real simple designs? I remember those for sure. Yes. They got fancier and they got a little more Lisa Franke and sparkly.

Yeah. It was so satisfying to watch. Do you know what I have? I have an album of my grandmother's cards, like greeting cards she's received throughout like the 50s and 60s. Oh. Like she just pasted them all in this huge old album. I should go through that.

TikTok, that'd be perfect for TikTok. TikTok. What's that? It's like thank you cards and happy birthday cards and stuff like that. Yeah. Thousand times. They're all a little sexist and weird. It was a strange time.

Yeah. All right. Should I go first this time? Yeah. Do it. Okay. This is called death bed, treasure hunt. Hmm.

Hi, y'all. Trigger warning for bummer terminal illness, but otherwise I promise it's a fun story question mark. Hey, we're ready. It was definitely a bright spot and an otherwise dark time for my family and it involves treasure. To set the scene, my dad was always a weird dude, played the accordion member of an English folk dancing group, established hippie farm commune in the Washington wilderness with a bunch of friends, you know the usual.

And true kid form, I thought my dad's oddities were hugely embarrassing. Like please don't wear the jeans shorts to the fourth of July party dad embarrassing. Now that I'm a quote adult, I truly appreciate that he was the epitome of you do you regardless of the opinions of others. And I wish I had more of his zero shits given personality in me. You can. Yeah, it's in there. It must be in there.

You can figure it out. Yeah. When I was in high school, however, his behavior seemed to become increasingly off. After a couple of dangerous accidents, my mom insisted on seeking medical help for my dad. During my sophomore junior year of high school, he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease and his health was a slow decline from there. Fast forward six years or so to 2011, I had just graduated college and moved home to be

with my family during my dad's final months. At this point, he wasn't able to speak or move for the most part, but he could point to letters and images to relay basic needs. One night, only a week or so before he passed, my brother and mom, dad and myself were hanging out together at home when my dad seemed to have a miraculous boost of energy. He indicated that he needed to tell us something important. We gathered around and held up the alphabet sheet and he started to slowly spell out the word G-E-L-T.

We were momentarily stumped and asked if he meant to spell something else. All of a sudden, my vaguely Jewish mom goes, well, guilt can mean gold. Are you trying to say gold, we asked? He pointed to yes. And like our own personal national treasure movie, we set about trying to decode his clues and cryptic communications to find his secret stash of treasure. Mom stayed with dad trying to get more information while my brother and I dashed from room to room searching drawers and cabinets.

The details are fuzzy now, especially since my brain has kindly blocked out much of that time period, but we eventually understood that the guilt was in the garage. Still thinking this might be some strange wild goose chase, my mom headed out to the garage. We waited, feeling as if we were experiencing a shared hallucination, when finally my mom came back in the room with her mouth open in astonishment. She laughed and held out her hands, revealing a stash of honest to Gaia gold fucking coins. We laughed, we cried, we thanked him, and we laughed some more. Of course, my weird ass dad was hiding a stash of gold coins like a fucking pirate.

About a week later, my dad succumbed to his illness and passed in his sleep. To this day, we talk about how perfect it was that in his final days, dad gifted us with this exciting and joyful adventure, not to mention providing for us in this one final way. He also communicated with me twice after his passing, but those are stories for another time if you want them. Well, we do. Yes.

Thank you for being you and encouraging our MFM community to be our weird and wonderful selves. You make a difference. Stay sexy and don't forget to tell your loved ones where you stashed your gold, Jenna, she, her. For real. Oh, that's beautiful. Isn't that beautiful?

Also, it's like, all of a sudden it came to him in the midst, you know, that brain was trying to send that message for however long I love that. I love it so much. It's a good story. There's gold hidden in the garage. There's gold in the garage. You got to remember to tell people where you stashed it. Got to.

Yes. This subject line is haunted house light hearted. Hey there. Back in my college days, I took a part time job working in a haunted house as an actor, quote unquote, scaring all of the tourists who visited our amusement park. I was very pleased with the job title as I was in theater school at the time and took a lot of pride in my job. This haunted house was not for the faint of heart and we suggested only ages 13 and above

would be allowed to enter. Because of this, the other actors and I would compete every day to see who could make the most people cry or take the chicken door out of the house. The chicken door. I love that chicken door. My favorite scare was in a pitch black hallway that immediately followed a brightly lit graveyard so no one could see a thing. I would sit in the corner of that dark hallway.

Oh my God. I'm already upset. I hate shit like this so much. I do too. I would sit in the corner of the dark hallway wearing all black with a blackout mask so no one could see me. Fuck that. Fuck that shit.

Yeah. But I would see them. I'd then quietly sing ring around the rosy in my cutest, creepiest little girl voice. When the guests would finally brave a step into the darkness, I would scream as loud as I could followed by a maniacal giggle. It was a top notch scare. On this day, a guy and his girlfriend braved the house. This stereotypical couple consisted of a large man wearing a small tank top and a teensy

blonde girl wearing the same thing. While in the graveyard, he acted completely unfazed pointing at random things and yelling, oh my God, that's so fake, not even scary, this is so dumb, eye rolls and all. His girlfriend was less convinced and hid behind him each step. Here's what's crazy. You're just going to walk, you're in a haunted house. That's all they care about is scaring you and you're going to walk into a fake cemetery and think that's all they have for you?

Yeah. Come on now. You fool. And of course it's fake. Of course it looks fake. It is fake. Yeah. They didn't bury people there.

They thought that it's paper mache, it looks super realistic. Yeah. That's not the one. Oh, I feel like I'm really at a fucking cemetery. Oh, okay, anyway. When they got to my dark hallway, they stopped and listened to me sing while discussing whether to enter. Girl, is that a recording?

That's so creepy. You go first, guy. It's not real, babe. Ugh, it is pretty dark though. You go first this time. I'm right behind you. And the girl goes, oh my God, no, you go. Come on, please.

And the guy says, uh, okay, yeah, I got this. Okay, let's go, babe. And with a shake of his head, he stood up straight, grabbed his girl's hand and stepped forward. The next part happened kind of quickly. They stepped forward into the darkness. I screamed loudly and laughed. He grabbed his girlfriend and threw her at me.

He tripped on me and fell to the ground. He ran down the blind hallway at full speed and slammed into the wall and then turned the corner and hit another wall. And the next corner and was gone. His girlfriend and I quietly sat in shock for a moment before I helped her up. Me, are you okay? The person dressed entirely in black with a blackout mask. I love it.

Are you okay? And the girl goes, yeah, are you? And then this person goes, yeah, where'd your boyfriend go? And the girl goes, I don't know, but I'm about to find out. She stomped away angrily and found him outside the house where he started apologizing profusely while she's stormed away. This was my crowning achievement in my actor life and it could never be topped. I hope you guys enjoyed these stories.

Many more where that came from. I worked in the house for almost four years and loved every moment of it. Oh, we want more of those stories for sure. If anyone is ever looking for work in October, I highly recommend scaring for stress relief and a lifetime of good stories. Love you lots. Fallen. I've pronounced like Fallen as in I've fallen over, but there's a D at the end.

Oh, yeah, that would be a fun job for stress relief, just being able to scream as much as you want. I love that. It'd be amazing. Also, it's almost like if you haven't seen the movie Force Measure, you should absolutely see it because it's basically the ski resort version of this same story where that relationship's over. That was his girlfriend toward the danger and got, and ran.

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Hey, I'm Aresha. 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. Well, here's another horror one. This is a horror movie parenting fail. Dear Karen Georgia, whatever pets are in the vicinity and all additional people who may

read this email, honestly, I'm just writing this in because it's the right time of year for it and should make you laugh. For context, my generation of family has a very distinctive split, the older cousins and the younger cousins. As the oldest of the younger cousins, there's five years between me and my closest in age older cousin. This story takes place when I was about five, so the older cousins would have been between 10 and 15, and my younger cousins, if they'd even been born would have been three or younger.

So understandably, I was in a bit of a strange spot at family gatherings. Too young for the older kids, but way too old for the toddlers and babies, which meant that as long as my older cousins were doing something considered safe for my size and age, I was usually shooed in that direction. It's no surprise that when my cousins asked to watch a movie while the adults and babies hung out, I was told to watch with them. My cousins picked a movie and we all started watching. Now, I should probably say that I was and am that person who saw Titanic and had nightmares,

so I clearly don't do well with anything scary. But every time my little five-year-old self would leave the room to find my mom and tell her, I didn't like this movie. She would shush me and send me right back in. Now my mom claims this never happened because she would never have made me watch this movie, which I think is true, had she had known what the movie actually was, which she didn't. I couldn't read, so I didn't know the name of the movie for a long time, Think Years, and so clearly couldn't tell her while saying I didn't like it.

But there are some images and scenes that really stay with you. I can tell you the decor of the room and which cousins were sitting where, et cetera, when that alien popped out of the guy's chest, because, yes, my cousins decided to watch Alien. Yeah, they did. Thank you for everything you do, Hannah. Just reminds me of my mom making us watch, what was it, Total Recall when I was a kid? Oh.

Is that the one? That's the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger and the lady at the airport who opens up and there's a person hiding inside. Yeah. As a child, I watched that at a family, at a children's sleepover in my house. Yeah. Also, we had the same thing. I had the same situation where I was the youngest, but my cousins were also our next-door

neighbors and my, the girl cousins were like 15 when I was five. So they were so irritated. Anytime we were forced to, if they were watching TV and then they would be like, watch something that girls like, it drove them insane. And so they just knew enough to wait five minutes so the parents weren't paying attention anymore and they did whatever they wanted. And we knew, if we told, we would just get a beat down. Yeah.

And you wanted to watch what they were watching, probably, it was exciting. You start, at the beginning, it was thrilling and then it would get to the point where you were scared shitless and they thought it was funny. Yes. And it was the 70s. Everything was very rough and tumble. Totally. Totally.

DIY. Very little consideration for the children. Yep. Okay. I won't read you the subject line of this. Collective hello to all. I'm rewriting this hometown. As the first time I wrote it, I was drunk at a football game.

Oops. At said football game, the kid in front of us was losing their tooth, which unlocked a core memory of a shorty but a goodie. There was no call for this type of story, but it doesn't matter as rules don't exist for these anymore. That's right. That is so right. Taking it back so many years, I lost a tooth and excitedly went to bed early and I couldn't

wait to get my greedy little hands on some unearned money. Being that I went to bed so early, I woke up pretty early in the night to check and see if the tooth fairy had paid me a visit and she had. What a stroke of luck. I'd gotten a $100 bill for simply outgrowing a baby tooth. I only got $5 when the one was forcibly pulled by my dentist. So surely this was making up for that injustice. I left from my bed and went running to show everybody the good fortune I had had.

$100. Oh my God. Suck it, siblings. I am favorited by all. To which my dad got up, took the $100 bill from my hand and said, the tooth fairy meant to leave you a $10 bill. And that, my friends, is how I found out the tooth fairy wasn't real and started questioning everything.

Stay sexy and always check your bills before leaving them under your kids' pillows. Tabby. I love that. There's a PS that says, shout out to my fave, Prego, Murderino, Whitney. I love that. Parents making mistakes. My favorite. My favorite subjects.

Classic. And entirely unavoidable. Yes. But that one is the biggest. But the elders are fucking too. It's kind of a good way to break the news. Yeah. Dude.

Come on. Also, $10 for a tooth. Man, we didn't get that shit when I was a kid. Fuck no. $10? Quarter. I think we stopped getting anything after a while. Oh yeah.

Quarter. It was always spare change. Maybe a dollar. But once you were a little bit older, it was just like, that's enough. You don't need to. Yeah. We don't need to keep doing that. That's right.

My last one's called Polish Superstitions. Hi, all. On the last minute, you asked for strange superstitions. I've got some for you. My family is Polish. My parents left Poland before the fall of communism in 89. So I was born and raised in Canada until the age of 13, after which my mom and I moved back to Poland on our own.

Being raised by an immigrant single mother was a wild ride for many reasons. But as I'm sure most children of immigrants can attest to, having one foot in both cultures leads you to have many quirks. My first language was Polish, and I didn't learn English until going to preschool. Thanks to that, for a long while, like until the age of 10, I wasn't always sure which words were Polish and which were English. I would randomly insert a Polish noun into an otherwise English sentence, and my peers would look at me in confusion.

Another quirk that I acquired was the superstitions. One in particular stuck with me for a long time. Since I'd been very little, my mother told me not to look in a mirror for too long or the devil would appear. Once I was grown up, I realized that the superstition existed to discourage vanity and put one's looks above other, more valuable traits. But as a child, I took that shit as absolute fact. When getting ready, I would only take fleeting glances at the mirror, otherwise I ignored

that piece of glass as best I could. While the horror movies we watched at sleepovers that employed mirrors as dark objects, connecting this plane to the other world only seemed to confirm my beliefs. It wasn't until I became a preteen and started doing my makeup regularly that I realized there was no timer ticking a countdown to my inevitable face-off with Satan himself. As you can imagine, since then, life has become a lot easier. Another Polish superstition that my mother-in-law reminded me of recently when I put my purse down on her carpet is not to put your bag or wallet on the floor as it would lead to

financial tragedy. While she said this when we were at home, it's actually a good practice to have a public place as to avoid being an easy target for thieves. I think it's a nice reminder that a lot of superstitions are actually valuable life lessons, and sometimes that added element of Lucifer as a jack-in-the-box helps to ingrain those lessons into a child's mind. In the most traumatic way possible. Anyway, thanks for reading, and for all the rad stuff you guys do, stay sexy and stay

healthily wary of mirrors, Leela. I mean, that idea that you're trying to curl your hair by peeking out your peripheral vision is constantly burning yourself or doing your makeup looks insane because you're not looking at yourself. I'm like, I can't risk it. Okay, wait, I have one more left, right? The subject line of this one is, everything you asked for circa 1978. Great start.

Hello, MFM family. You asked for it. Drunk parents, the 70s, almost dying, and here we go. My dad would sometimes take my younger brother and I on Sunday adventures to give my mom a break from parenting her free range children. He bought some fishing rods and loaded them on the roof of our VW Beetle with a net and an old duffel bag, which he used to keep some six packs iced down. We stopped at a gas station for some coax and some rubbery cheese balls in a plastic

bag. It would be typical for my dad not to know what eight-year-olds eat, and I thought that cheese balls were lunch. He explained that cheese balls were bait for the fish, and I heard my brother spit his out in the back seat. Oh, no. I was laughing at my brother's stupidity, and he began kicking the bejesus out of my seat.

My dad sang along with the radio as my brother and I continued our front seat back seat war as he sipped his brews while handing us our drinks. My brother threw up in the back seat as we arrived at the lake, but my dad insisted on baiting the hooks, and my brother threw up again. Oh, my God. There was a lot of barfing in the 70s. There was a lot, yes. I think because shit like this where just the fishing bait looked like cheese puffs,

so whatever chemicals would be on fish bait. Yeah, you're just eating whatever. And other creepy shit on there. Because there's no supervision, so you're eating weird shit all the time. And then the reaction to that lack of supervision resulting in barfing is the parents being like, you're fine. Yeah, okay. My brother threw up in the back seat as we arrived at the lake, but my dad insisted on

baiting the hooks, and my brother threw up again as soon as he smelled the cheese balls. It turned out that fish don't like rubbery cheese ball bait either, and we caught nothing. My dad thought it would be a good idea to fool mom by buying fish at the grocery store. Yes. We left my five-year-old brother in the car and bought a fish and Pepto Bismol. I asked to drive since my brother wouldn't possibly argue in his sixth state, and my dad put me in his lap as I happily steered while he shifted the bug and drank. This is the 70s story that's ever existed.

This is literally my childhood. My mother took one look at my brother and knew something was wrong. When she bent down to have a closer look, she yelled, Dave, are you letting them have beer? Yes. She marched over to the car and showed my dad an empty beer can from the back seat floor. My dad just shrugged and cracked open another one while picking up my brother to go sleep it off on his shoulder on the porch.

Oh my God. My mom threw a complete fit at my dad, but he kept rocking my brother and putting his finger up to his lips for her to quiet down. And she still does not know that my dad let his elementary age daughter drive two miles on a public road home from the grocery store. I cannot believe we thought this was almost normal, but it did lead to really boring playgrounds and helicopter parenting. Stay sexy.

God bless the 70s and don't get murdered. Jenny. Oh my God. He was drinking beer the whole time. No wonder he was barfing. He was drinking beer and fish bait. And also in the back seat, which is where you would get car sick. There's also VW bugs, like the exhaust just like goes directly into the car, so you're

just like sick. You're just completely sick. Yeah. That the, we were car sick all the time and I'm positive that's the reason. Yeah. It was just like bad filtration. All right. We've done it.

Good job everyone. Thanks for sending in your stories and please continue to do so. We really appreciate it. You're really killing it. Everyone has been doing such a good job. Thank you kindly for your emails and stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Marin McLashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Download the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavoritmurder.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and ad free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today. You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at wanderie.com slash survey.