My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 354

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

This week’s hometowns include a chill, cool ghost and surviving an avalanche.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. I'm Candace DeLong and on my podcast Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds you hear about in the news. Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon Music Out. Download the app today! Hello!

And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-sode. That's right. We read you your stories and maybe you listen to them. Bobby cool. You should... You're here. Well, just listen.

Shall I go first? This time? Okay. How about some spooky Halloween ghost stories? Yes. Hello! Here's a series of spooky Halloween ghost stories. Yes. Hello, here's a series of spooky Halloween ghost stories. And they do the uppercase lowercase, uppercase lowercase over. Yes.

I'll tell you now. Up until I was like seven, I saw ghosts and stuff. This is a fairly normal timeline of kids and supernatural things, I guess. I eventually got super scared of it and therefore stopped seeing paranormal things. Here are a few of my favorite stories of me being a totally freaky child and telling others I see dead people. Wow. My mom's friend Adam died in a motorcycle accident before my brother and I were born. My family was having dinner with Adam's parents. I was sure three at the time, so tiny baby. Adam's dad starts crying and says, I wish Adam were here. He would have loved to meet you kids. I do not skip a beat and say,

what do you mean? He's standing right behind you. Here's another one. I'm like two or three years old and we were visiting my great grandmother who I called Bob Shee. It's Polish for grandma in hospice. She used to give us some money, send us to the toy store to get something and have us come back to show her what we got every time we visited. So we go to visit her and I curl up in bed with her and sing to her the only song I knew,

proud to be an American. I can't look like a three-year-old singing that. My parents, brother and I, then get into the car to go to Toys or Us and get a toy like Bob She told us to. Little BBMe says, I just sang Bob She to Heaven. Oh, my family thinks nothing of this. I'm the youngest and the literal baby. We do our shopping at the toy store, and my brother and I each pick something out.

We then head back to Bob Shee at Hospice. When we got there, the staff informed my parents that Bob Shee had just passed a little after we left. I indeed had sang her to heaven. And knew it. And knew it. Oh, what a nice way to die to have your little granddaughter singing a song to you.

And an American song. For how to be an American, up to a Polish grandma. She had no idea what that child was saying. After this, I inherited Bob She's super fancy self-made dollhouse that sat on my shelf in my room for years. By age six, I firmly believed that Bob She was stuck inside for a while, and that's when I started getting scared. Yeah. After this came the things that really scared me, and I never saw anything again. My parents told me to tell the spirits, you're scaring me, go away.

And I guess it worked. I stopped seeing things. All these slightly creepy somewhat heartfelt stories to say, I definitely believe there is something after death. All the love, Kayla. Oh, good email, Kayla. I mean, that's just fascinating. Like, you are living proof that there's potentially something else going on.

That's such an exciting feeling. So many other stories in the world, like, there has to be some kind of credence to them, yeah. I think so. And while we're talking about it, you should definitely listen to Ghosted by Ros Hernandez on the exactly right podcast networks. That's right. So my first email, I'm not going to read you the subject line. talking about it, you should definitely listen and go to it by Ross Hernandez on the exactly right podcast network.

Right. So my first email, I'm not going to read you the subject line. It just starts out, hey, it's me again. Third time writer, hoping this story is up to par. Oh, by the way, if you've written and written, please don't take it personally. Our Gmail is jam-packed.

Alejandra, our producer, who is here with us right now, does such an amazing job, but it takes a lot to go through these emails and organize them. Anyway, please keep submitting. If you know your story is good, then your story is good. Okay. Still love you all the same as the day this podcast dropped. Are they saying they're a day one listener? Oh.

So this is a tad long, so let's get into it. When I was just a weathing in my early 20s, I decided to take a solo trip from my Wisconsin College to Copenhagen, Denmark. The overall goal was to visit one of my greatest friends who was an exchange student at my high school, shout out, Caroline. Everything started off grand with free upgraded plain seats

and amazing walk to see the little mermaid statue and stumbling into a plaza that turned out to be the queen's castle. Crazy as part was I saw the queen herself leave the castle in a motorcade because it was a national holiday. I was off to a great start but something told me it was a little too great. A few days later I went to a museum. One exhibit in the museum held the crown jewels. Yes, the crown of the queen I just saw days earlier. The room that held these jewels was a descending spiral ramp to a small room at the bottom.

As I approached the bottom, I passed a cute baby and its mother said hi and approached the case that held the crowns. Almost immediately, that baby I passed started crying. I do not know if it was the acoustics in the room, but all caps that baby was loud. So loud, the burglar alarms were set off. To make things even more exciting, they were set off

as I was one of two people in the room with one of the country's most prized possessions. Guards came rushing in and instructed us to take a seat on the floor as they insured all items were in their place. As any young 20-year-old with anxiety would do, I started rehearsing my one telephone call to my parents, explaining to them that I am not a master jewel thief, all the while giving some casual side eye to a baby. Obviously, all was in its place and everyone was free to go on about their day. I was forced to take one last stroll past the infants that almost sent me to a Danish prison. Let's not be dramatic.

Exit at the museum and enjoyed some pastries in the park to call my nerves. Actually, though, all that love to the mother and child who both must have been just as embarrassed as I was feeling. What if that baby was so embarrassed? Oh my God. It's like, oh, dying. All in all, the trip to Denmark was amazing and I recommend it to everyone. It's such an underrated country filled with amazing people and culture. Say sexy and don't have a face that makes babies cry, I guess. A Quentin, he, him.

Oh my God. That was great. And now we need vacation disaster stories. Yes. Quentin gave us the idea. Good idea. And you know we're going to get so many fucking crew stories. Oh yeah.

I want disaster stories of trips. I think Quentin's burglar alarm, near the Danish crown jewels is a perfect example. Do anything around that area, that embarrassing, that large scale. We love it. Send them to my favorite murder at GMO. Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast. It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. Why medical mysteries? Well, we've all been there. Turning to the internet to self-diagnose are inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes. Though our minds tend to spiral to worst-case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an

unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery, like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated. Or the time when an entire town became ill with nausea and chills, and the local doctor chalked it up to being food poisoning until people started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings. Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

Follow Mr. Ballon's medical mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music. Here's New Orleans Hidden Remains. Hey, y'all, in 2018, I was dabbling in the dating world and met a super hot exceptionally tall. And it says this is relevant later, rot climber while visiting a friend of it in Atlanta. The only problem, he lived in Georgia while I was living in New Orleans. We hit it off so well that after I returned to New Orleans, we continued talking and he asked if he could visit me for a weekend. It's like a seven hour drive. I said yes, and excitedly made plans

to show him what New Orleans and I had to offer. He arrived and I gave him a quick tour of my, it was an aside, so that's how I imagined it. And I, you know, and I. And I maybe, that he arrived and I gave him a quick tour of my rental place, which was a slightly renovated portion of the ground level floor in a quintessential giant old New Orleans house.

My landlady was lovely, but eccentric and lived upstairs where she primarily hung out with her cocker spaniel, Ike, and drank rum and diet coax. Yes. That's the life. I love her. And her name was Jennifer Coolidge. Oh my God. And a night. Hot rock clamor guy and I were suddenly awkward around each other when he arrived. And we sort of made small talk and stood around the kitchen. Oh God, that's the worst. And we're like, I'm so excited.

Are we going to hit it off again? We had such a great time and then they get there and the magic isn't fucking there anymore. It's too much energy and then everybody pulls way back and then you're in a weird, like, you're almost pretending you don't like each other because you went too far in the other direction. Right. And the expectations are so fucking high

that no one can live up to them. And there's no worse feeling than when someone's like, I think you like me more than I like you. So like, I think everyone operates in the, oh my God, if that's what you're about to accuse me of like I can't live in that world Yeah, to the detriment of their relationships Mr. Clammer ended up glancing at my refrigerator and spotting something unusual in the wall behind it He was tall so he could see over the top of the fridge. Wow

He asked jokingly. Do you have a secret compartment in your wall back there? I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. I ended up climbing onto his shoulders. Yes, hot. It sounds like a good icebreaker, yeah. So I could peer farther over the refrigerator. Can you imagine it being awkward already? And I'm like, I'm not gonna get a chair.

I'm gonna climb onto you, Mr. Rock clamoring. How did they bridge that gap of like, kind of stammering and bad conversation? And then it's like, he did he go down and when he is like, get up here girl, you know we've gotta do this together. I'm gonna go ahead and guess alcohol was involved. That's how they bridge that gap.

Yeah, it was just like 45 minutes passed and they had three core lights. Okay. Da-da-da, I could peer farther over the refrigerator when I saw a small alcove in the wall. In this small cubby there was, go-do-do-do, well, it looked like a shrine with an ornate box nestled in the center.

I tentatively pulled it out and me and my new date stared at it. I opened the lid slowly and saw on the inside the engraving, quote, in loving memory of our mother. And there in the red velvety interior of this box was a white powdery substance in a baggy. And I was pretty sure it wasn't cocaine. No. It was somebody's ashes. Initially my land lady lady was just as mystified as I was. She came to own the old house through her husband's side of the family.

But after she did some digging and inquiring, she told me that it was her late husband's aunt, or was it great aunt, and that quote, we just forgot she was there. But don't worry, she'd be a good spirit if she decided to stay around and haunt the apartment. Excuse me. No. But don't worry,

we're not going to do anything about it. Right. Leave our aunt alone. She's chill. So she's there. She's like not a dick, you know, ghost. She's like a chill cool ghost. Just live with the ghost of our aunt, please. My landlordy took possession of the ashes and she made sure to tell me that this wasn't a whole body's worth of ashes. Rather only a portion and the rest had been divided up among family members most likely. So calm the fuck down. Worse news. Yeah, but it's gone from ghost to worse. Where's the rest of my body?

That's why she's coming to haunt. That's terrifying. I couldn't help but shake the feeling that I hadn't truly been alone in that little apartment. Yeah. And sadly, Mr. Clamer called it off after that. He blamed it on the distance, but it could have been that our first official date involved finding human remains hidden in my apartment.

Yeah. Finding hidden remains, while you're on his shoulders like you're at a vanhale in concert, right? Right. Like, there's nothing normal about this date. Finding Hidden Remains while you're on his shoulders like you're at a van Halen concert, right? Like there's nothing normal about this day. Yeah, but I feel like for some of us And I think a lot of murdering as well and agree that that would bond you and for the rest of the weekend you'd be like We fucking treasure hunt it and found this insane thing. That's we can just talk about it all weekend And it's kind of romantic. Yeah, but it sounds like rock climber was like no bonding for me.

It doesn't matter how incredible the experience is that we have. He sounds like a normie. And so maybe... By climbing a rock, then friend. Go for a climb. By rock. These exy and double check your apartment for weird shit before your date gets there to Reese. Trees, that was an epic email because the details were also the story. And that's my favorite.

I wish I could watch a 15 second high eight film of you climbing on the sky shoulders. I think that piece is what I'm in it for. Okay. The subject line of this email is my husband Husband's Avalanche Survival Story. Oh my God. And then the first line just says, My People, It's Really You. Since you've featured so many natural disasters as MFM topics and Karen can't get enough of survival stories, allow me to introduce you to my husband Paul.

In short, he's the bane of a lazy relaxed weekend with brunch, a nice book, and nothing productive happening. He's a professionally trained mountain guide, rockin' ice climbing instructor, backcountry skier, Arctic survival expert, trail runner, backpacker, and all around nature boy. You see the fucking rock climber? That's what I'm saying.

What if Paul went on to meet this person and have this life? Yeah. That'd be amazing. Yeah. This whole podcast turns into just a chronology of Paul's life. He's involved in every email we've ever read. He's R4's gone.

Six degrees of Paul. Okay. I like the degrees of Paul. Okay. I like the sound of Paul already, though. I like when people live their life to the literal and upmost fullest in the exact opposite of how I am. Right. It makes me happy. Oh, the next line is he has absolutely zero chill.

There are all aspects of his career as a master mountaineer where he can do things like coordinate mountain rescues and train members of the military. And while I agree that people have no business in the forest, if you have Paul, you'll be totally fine. An important part of Paul's job is avalanche risk assessment. You need to be able to move safely in a high altitude mountain environment without triggering an avalanche by considering things like the snowpack, what face of the mountain you're on, and weather patterns. It's a science that takes hundreds of hours of training to learn.

And for our non-mountain living listeners, here's the gist on avalanches. An unstable mass of snow that breaks away from a slope due to added weight or vibrations and picks up speed as it moves downhill, producing a river of snow and a cloud of icy particles that rises high in the air. The moving mass picks up even more snow as it surges downhill, and according to Nat Geo, a large, fully developed avalanche can weigh as much as a million tons and travel faster than 200 miles an hour. That's insane.

Yeah. So Paul goes out often with other instructors on weekends to scope out new training areas for the courses he manages and uses this knowledge to navigate. This involves backcountry skiing where you essentially hike and cross-country ski for hours up a mountain and then ski down it after. And then in parentheses it says, yeah, that's a hard pass for me also. This spring, he was just starting his initial ski descent

down one of these climbs, when a large flat rock concealed by the snow caused his ski to slip and ultimately detach from his boot. His subsequent and uncontrollable fall triggered an avalanche. He was swept up by it entirely until he couldn't see, feel, or hear anything. He almost got buried underneath it, which would have been absolutely fatal, but the avalanche ended up throwing him off a cliff where he landed on a different part of Snowpacked Mountain to continue his descent, but unburied.

His ski partner watched everything happen in seconds from just a few feet above him and didn't think his friends survived flying head over foot down the slope and off a cliff. Until he got a call on his walkie talkie about five minutes later, saying, I'm okay, I'm okay, but I'm definitely a little fucked up. Oh my God, that's horrifying.

His ski partner, a professional medic, made the incredibly dangerous 2200 foot trek down on foot for almost two hours, pain stakingly avoiding triggering a second avalanche due to all the newly loosened snow and began treating and assessing Paul's wounds. Bleeding from elaceration across his knee and only having a single broken

rib, Paul was in shock but alert and talking, never having lost consciousness despite his helmet having a life-saving-sized crack across it. Paul was airlifted by search and rescue to the nearest hospital where he stayed for two weeks to treat severe internal trauma and extensive internal bleeding. Oh, man. So it's like he was okay on the outside, but it was the inside. Wow. He sustained no head, neck, or spinal injuries, and nobody from the flight team, the many surgeons, the nurses, or the case workers could believe the Paul literally walked away from his accident. He chalks it up to the cardinal rules of being outside. Oh, I would love

to hear these. Let's find out. Can we please? Maybe I'll go outside once I know this. Maybe it won't seem so scary to me. Here's the cardinal rules of being outside. Being prepared and never being alone. Ah, I could do that. The amount of equipment that he and his medic had on hand in addition to satellite radios to call in for help saved both their lives. I would argue that a lifetime of training doesn't hurt and he will also concede that he's just one lucky son of a bitch. So far in the 2022-23 season, 25 people have died in avalanches across the US. So, holy shit, that's a lie.

I didn't realize that number was like that. But my nature boy was not one of them We joke now that we are a knitting family and that Paul can never leave the house again. Yeah, yeah Stay sexy and just wear a helmet everywhere all the time Andrea she heard See when I hear stories like this it makes me feel less bad about the fact that I'm a, I'll stay in the lodge and watch everyone's purse and have a hot toddy and read a book, skiing girl, you know what I mean?

I think it truly is for adventures and the idea that everyone is supposed to feel like, oh, I should ski or I should, whatever. It's like, I remember the first time I was made to ski as an adult and I was like, I don't wanna do this, I don't think it's for me, I don't like it, and it was a disaster. I think you have to start young.

That's a big piece of it. I did it as a kid, my dad, you know, always trying to find something to do with us every other weekend would take a skiing. I was still a couch potato. I wanted a cat and a couch and the TV. There's nothing better than being inside when it's cold outside.

That's like, that's success for human beings. Yeah, that's right. Okay, here's my last one. Dad did what? Is the title. I've sent this before, but let's give it another go. Last year, my sister, who lives with my parents, was hanging out at my apartment. I got a call from my dad, put it on speaker, and as I started to say hello, he yelled,

all caps. What is this? What is this on Nico's leash? I said, what? You mean the poop bags? What's going on? He hung up 20 minutes later. I got a calmer explanation phone call.

You see, I have a dog, Nico, who often stays at my parents while I work, so he has a leash at their house. My parents were about to take their dog on a walk. My mom was getting ready, my dad was grabbing their dogs, leash, so my mom shouted across the house for him to grab some poop bags off of Nico's leash. He did the typical man look and couldn't

see what was right in front of him, so he yelled for my mom to help him. In a perfect storm of timing, just as she started to walk in, he said, oh this and pushed down on the red button. What my dad would later call a little black poop bag dispenser as he turned toward her. The problem is he hadn't grabbed Nico's leash. He had grabbed my sister's key chain and it wasn't a poop bag dispenser. Say it with me. It was pepper spray.

That's right, as my mother walked into help, my dad sprayed her right in the face with pepper spray. That's huge. That's huge. That's huge. I know. They didn't end up going on their walk. To this day, he still claims that it is somehow mine and my sister's fault.

Sure. That's the way to be about it. Thanks for existing love. Ty, she, her. Oh, that is truly awful. Yeah, that's their fault. I love that that's such a dad. Well, you're shouldn't have had the thing and the you shouldn't have done anything.

Right. Okay, here's my last one. I'm not going to reach it. The subject line it just says, hi friends, since it's currently late summer and the season for county fares, I wanted to send in this celebrity story from my childhood. I grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York State. My hometown is almost two hours away from NYC by train, but many city dwellers and others living in the tri-state area are known to travel the distance in order to visit our county

fair. It's not as large as the state fair, but it's still a pretty sizable event with all the rides, games, and food that we know and love. My family would visit the fair every years I was growing up, and even though I was an anxious child who avoided every ride at all costs, I still loved playing carnival games with my mom. One of our favorites was the Water Gun game. Yes, that was absolutely my favorite. You know the one where you have to aim a giant water gun at a target in the hopes of reaching the finish line before everyone you're playing against.

My favorite one was the one that it was a water gun that filled up a balloon. Right, like at a clown's mouth or whatever. Yes, yeah, totally nervous. So good. So one year in the early 2000s, when I was probably around 10 years old, my mom and I were at the fair and ready to kick some ass at this game.

When we got to the stall, no one was around, so the game operator told us that we needed to wait for more people to play against. Now I really wanted to play the Watergun game, so as shy as I was, I looked into the crowd and tried to find some worthy opponents. There was a dad and his son walking by, which seemed almost too coincidental. The carnival worker tried to coax them into playing with us, and my shy self did the best I could to try to convince them to play without speaking at all.

My name is Meld. It says in parentheses, A.K.A. I smiled as big as I could and tried to look cute for the boy who was close to my age. I'm not sure if the boy fell for my pre-pubescent charms or not, but the father and son do a walk over to challenge us. It was around this time that I realized that my mom was being suspiciously quiet. Now my mom isn't the most extroverted person by Neem Enz, but she does love to gamble

and normally would have tried to convince any random passerby to play against us. When the game operator said that he was ready to start the game, I brushed the thought away and focused on my target. Despite my determination, though, the dad won the game and let his son pick a prize. I thought my mom and I would stay to play a few more rounds, but she quickly got up and told me to follow her. I looked over to the dad, who waved and smiled at me sheepishly as if to say he was sorry, and we walked away to find my own dad. When we found him, he asked how the game went, my mom had

an obvious frustration in her voice, and she said something like, well, if it wasn't obvious before, it's obvious now that those games are rigged. That carny let the other guy win just because he's James Gandalfini. That's right folks. My mom and I played a water gun game against Tony soprano, and my mother was completely convinced that she would have won against him if it weren't for the quote unquote rigged game. Oh my fucking god. I was not expecting that. And also that isn't what happened. No, no.

I also forgot the title of this because I my brain. And so I was like, what is it, our ex-boyfriend or something? James Giddle, Phoebe, that's the way it is. James Giddle, Phoebe. title of this because I my brain. And so I was like, what is it our ex-boyfriend or something? James Gandalfini, that's hilarious. James Gandalfini. Say sexy and maybe don't get angry if television's most notorious mobster beats you at a game that involves a gun, fake or not, Megan.

Right, totally. Okay, so there's a PS to that. But first I just wanna say, cause it's almost like a subject change, I bet you that is such a treasured memory now, because James Gandalfina dying so young and so out of the blue and at the height of his career, is still to me one of the saddest things

that's ever happened. With someone who delivered that level of a performance where everyone just, we'll say that's the best show of all time forever and it's because of him. And then he is just dead. And it's like you got to have a real life moment with him. I wonder if his son would remember that. Oh, here's the back half of that. It says PS in episode 382 during Karen's story about the boy Edward Jones, you asked fashion historians to let you know what Queen Victoria's underwear would have looked like. Remember that? In episode 382, during Karen's story about the boy Edward Jones, you asked fashion historians to let you know what clean Victoria's underwear would have looked like.

Remember that? I happen to be a fashion historian. And since no one has answered your question yet that I know of, I figured I would add here, as opposed to script, in the hopes of not making my email too long, underwear at the beginning of Victoria's reign actually consisted of several garments, including a shemiz, which is an undershirt or an underdress, drawers, which are basically like shorts, but the middle was left open, making it easier to use the bathroom. Of course it sometimes called stays at the time, and layers and layers of petty coats. Let me know if you have any more fashion history questions.

Wow. Queeve Victoria had literally seven layers of clothes on under a dress. Because how did you pee? How did you pee? Just once in a while. Yeah, you're like so dehydrated because you don't want to keep on the bathroom.

Well, thanks guys for writing in. Please do so anytime you feel like it, you know? Yeah, and if you're in the fan cult, you can watch us read this, which is probably one of the most fascinating things of all time. Definitely, here's Mimi, just to show you how. Mimi's a guest star, she's a drop in guest star.

She's bit me multiple times during this recording so you can check that out. We love Mimi. Did you hear about my idea for a TikTok series you could do called Mimi says no. And you just hold her up to different things and you get the expression on her face of Mimi saying no. That's a great idea. She is very much a no cat. She can't do improv. Uh, okay, stay sexy.

And don't count murder. Goodbye. okay, stay sexy. And don't count murdered. Goodbye! Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Leonis Kulachi. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram

and Facebook at my favorite murder and on Twitter at my fave murder. Goodbye! Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, did you know that you on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, 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 Wendery.com slash survey.