Tales of Moderate Terror III

Cameron: Happy Halloween, Cory

Cory: We're back for another episode of Lost Dreads

Cameron: As in dreadlocks?

Cory: Yeah, this episode is about hair. No, that's next episode

Cameron: I thought we'd do something a little different this year. We typically spend a lot of time writing these scary stories we find, and I spend a lot of time editing all these sound effects, and I think we're just both tired

Cory: So, so tired.

Cameron: So we have some stories, mostly stuff that we found last year that didn't really fit into the format, but they're interesting stories nonetheless, and I think it's worth talking about them

Cory: You heard it. These are interesting and educational stories. Strap in

Cameron: Well, did you want me to start?

Cory: Yeah, 'cause I gotta find my story

Cameron: So this first story comes out of Augusta, Georgia, August 4th, 1888.

Cory: Whoa.

I have a story from 1889

Cameron: Wow. So the newspaper writes, "For a year past, the people living in the vicinity of Dead River Swamp have been alarmed at the appearance of a strange object on a public road near the swamp. Travelers gave evidence that after night at a certain point on the road, a figure dressed in white appeared and moaned piteously as it crouched beside the road.

Cory: Is Dead River Swamp a real place?

Cameron: I looked it up. I was trying to find it in Augusta, Georgia, and I could not find it. So it must have been something that the locals called a certain area back in 1888, or it's changed the names or something

Cory: I mean, if that's like a, a colloquial name for a place, that is like hollowed ground

Cameron: So this was apparently enough to scare the people around there that they wouldn't travel after night, and some families even left their cabins and deserted their crops

that's how creepy this ghost was

Cory: because of this white figure

Cameron: Yes. So nobody even had the courage to investigate this until two nights prior.

So the story's from August 4th, I guess August 2nd. A guy goes out named Dick Dennis,

Cory: PI

Cameron: It's a very private investigator name. I, I kinda saw him as, as like a cowboy, ' cause it says he's a reckless character. He decided to investigate, and he was staying at some friend's house a few miles from the spot, and he made a bet with them that he could prove what the ghost was.

So he seemed like a very rugged figure who was in the area and heard this story

So after midnight, Dick Dennis went to the spot on the road where the ghost had been sighted. He's going up there and all of a sudden his horse starts to get scared and suddenly this crouched figure comes up from the side of the road. He's wearing a white cloth over him and he's knelt down in the road and he's moaning and crying Now, Cory, what the hell would you do if you saw this?

Cory: I would, uh, call the authorities and, um, have them come and help this obviously, like, a hermit who lives in the mountains

Cameron: Well, Dick Dennis just shot at him.

Cory: Oh, okay

Cameron: He shot him and the figure let out a cry of pain and fell to the ground

Cory: Dick Dennis takes no prisoners.

Cameron: But I guess people didn't feel bad because after investigating, it turned out to be a man named Swinton. A year before, he had murdered his wife and escaped from the law, and the paper says he doubtless became insane and chose the swamp as his retreat. But I don't ... My personal opinion is I don't think he went insane.

I like to think he was pulling a Scooby-Doo and was trying to scare people

Off so he wouldn't get caught. But instead of, like, the ... What was the mystery ... What were they called?

Oh, mystery gang. The mystery gang. Anyway, I, I imagine the Mystery gang showing up and just shooting at the ghost.

Cory: Every

episode of

Scooby-Doo ends like that.

Cameron: You meddling kids and your

Cory: that's less of a ghost story and more a tale of vigilante execution

Cameron: Yeah. It's like this creepy vision in my mind of this guy haunting the swamp and the guy solves it with a bullet

Cory: Yeah. Like, right? He's up in the mountains. He has like, I don't know, um, hepatitis or something. And he's slowly dying.

Cameron: He's a literal ghost hunter

that's, uh, that's the swamp ghost

Cory: Thank you for the story, man. Clearly not a ghost though. I don't know why you're continuing to call it a ghost. It's a person

Cameron: Anyway, the ghost bled out and died. Um, should I tell another?

Cory: I can do mine. So yeah, mine is long. Mine is like, as a Word doc goes, five pages of stuff

Cameron: So you dug in a lot more

Cory: was just a very, it was just a very long story. So like I said, this story's from 1889. November 25 from the Ottawa Journal.

That's Ottawa, Canada

It is a lengthy story that dominates the, the entirety of page four almost. It's titled "Daggs Demon," subtitle, "What Mr.

Percy Woodcock Experienced." Now, this story is the follow-up to a larger story that had been circulating in the rural newspapers for, like, the last month. So before we get to what Mr. Percy Woodcock experienced, the article is kind enough to give us some background on everything that had gone on with this demon up to this point, which is the following.

We open on the Dagg family. They own a farm in rural Quebec. You've got Mr. Dagg, Mrs. Dagg, and then their three kids, Mary, Johnny, and Dinah. At 11, Dinah is the oldest. Also, she was adopted five years earlier

Cameron: You said that so menacingly.

Cory: the, the, you, you know it's going to be a plot point because they make-- they, they stress it a few times early in the story. so starting a little over a month ago, the family reported just a bunch of weird stuff going on in their home. You've got all the classics. You've got strange voices, random fires starting, kind of a bit of a callback to our Ghost of Antigone tale from a long time ago

Cameron: Yeah, and that one was also in Canada

Cory: Yeah. Yeah, it was. Uh, you have smashed window panes, you have stones thrown through open doors, quote, "strewn trash." Most strange, someone or something had cut little Mary and Johnny's hair

Cameron: That's creepy. Like waking up in the morning and most of your hair is gone?

Cory: Yeah, that would, that would be horrifying.

Cameron: It's also a sign of old age, I guess

Cory: Yeah. Or radiation poisoning. Now, it might sound like a really obvious solution to this case because you don't mention that someone was adopted unless it's really important. Notice Dinah's hair was not cut.

Cameron: You know these adoptive children are always the troublemakers

Cory: Yeah, I was w- I was wondering if there was like some subtext there like with stepmothers in, um, like Grimm fairy tales of just being evil. These interlopers into f- into families, being a danger to the family. I don't know. It's weird but everyone was thinking that it was probably Dinah, because they deduced that when she was out of the house, none of these things happened. So they came up with a plan to supervise her, when she was at home, but obviously she's-- didn't do any of the spooky things, or n- at least none of the spooky things happened, while she was being supervised, quote, "She was closely watched, but nothing could be discovered, and the people came to the conclusion that spirits were at work."

Cameron: Wait, so they assume spirits are at work because they watched Dinah and the events stopped? Wouldn't that point to Dinah?

Cory: Yeah, Cameron. Yeah, it would. It would point to that. but they assumed that she was doing it, and then they watched her, and then she wasn't doing any of those things, like throwing rocks through windows or cutting people's hair. So they were like, "Okay."

Cameron: the

obvious answer is

Cory: to quote the article again, "The people came to the conclusion that spirits were at work."

Cameron: God, these people were dumb

Cory: to support this, the children said that they could actually see the thing, but their accounts were all different. One said that it was like a cow walking on two legs. Another one said it was a black dog. A third said it was a man with a beautiful face dressed in white with long hair

Cameron: Like Jesus.

Cory: Like Jesus

Cameron: They think Jesus was coming in and like cutting their hair and throwing rocks and spreading trash

Cory: Yeah. There, there's another detail that they throw in early that it was wearing a starry crown, like a kid would say that. so you've definitely hit on a subtheme of this story. We've got a mystery. By this point, the story has attracted a lot of attention in, back in the big city of Ottawa, so now it's time to introduce Mr.

Percival Woodcock. he's a kind of a well-known painter. He's from the Royal Canadian Arts Academy, very well-respected. He's also a dabbler in spiritualism. He becomes invested in the story and dispatches himself to rural Canada to conduct his own investigation

Cameron: Real quick, do we wanna mention anything about spiritualism?

I don't know a ton, but it comes up a lot in our research because it was so popular in the 19th century to early 20th century. a lot of the stuff we see today about tarot readings or mediums speaking with the dead or rappings on the door, it, it's, it all came about from this. It was like a movement, but it didn't have a core set of beliefs or anything.

It kind of seems like it was just a lot of grifters who were taking advantage of people and saying that, you know, heaven and hell isn't just the static afterlife, but spirits can exist in this plane, that we can communicate with

Cory: And that's like the seances, right? Any movie from the 1920s or '30s, the horror movie has a seance in it. These are all your upper class spiritualists who are bored, and

Cameron: Yeah, exactly. I know, like, Arthur Conan Doyle I think got really into it. there's a lot of big names of people who really got into spiritualism back in the day

Cory: Woodcock arrives at the Dagg residence. Which is just a small log house with an attic, and then there's a shed out back. He's gonna spend three nights there with the family, and by all accounts got along really well with everyone. Ever the gracious guest, Woodcock called them, quote, "A decent, respectable, honest family of good average intelligence."

Cameron: Which that's a, that's a compliment

Cory: The first day, Mr. Dagg, right, the dad, says that they're not gonna expect any weird stuff that day because their adopted daughter, Dinah, went to stay at her grandpa's house, and when she's gone, all the ghost stuff stops. So it's gonna be a quiet day. Woodcock says, "Oh, that's a really strange coincidence.

Would you mind if I interviewed her tomorrow to see if she knows anything about the ghosts?" And the parents are like, "Yeah, you can talk to her when she's back tomorrow."

Cameron: do they think that maybe Dinah is like a vessel who's haunted, who's bringing the spirits and not the source directly?

Cory: Yes, I think so. She is, um, a trigger for the ghosts

The next day, he meets Dinah and right off the bat asks her if she's seen anything odd that morning. Dinah responds that yes, in fact, she had just seen something a few minutes ago when she was in the shed. So the two of them walk to the back of the house and go up to the shed, where Dinah asks to the shed door, "Are you there, mister?" Suddenly from inside they hear, quote, "A deep gruff voice as of an old man," that starts spouting off all of these awful obscenities that the Victorian press says that they simply cannot put into print.

Cameron: That's fair. I've never seen the word fuck or shit in a 19th century paper

Cory: I haven't either. Mr. Woodcock is in shock, but he recovers and then he demands to the voice, "Who are you?" And the voice responds, quote, "I am the devil. I'll have you in my clutches.

Get out of this or I'll break your neck." And then it starts screaming a bunch of other expressions that are just, like, too crude to print

Cameron: So either someone is in the shed or Dinah is really good at ventriloquism and voice acting

Cory: Uh, nope, you're wrong, Cameron. As they're talking, Mr. Woodcock is doing this thorough search of the backyard, including the shed. But inside it's just like a dirt lean-to. He was sure it wasn't Dinah because the voice was all gruff, but to make double sure, he asks her to fill her voice up with water during the conversation so she doesn't do any trick of ventriloquism.

Cameron: Oh, smart of him

Cory: so poor 11-year-old Dinah She, she is guilty until proven innocent by all these adults so they like go back and forth just like shouting at each other, and the paper says that this conversation goes on for five hours

Cameron: Jesus

Christ. Uh, Like

are they having conversations or are they just cursing at each other?

Cory: Well, it's, at, at first it's like they're yelling at each other. Um, and Mr. Woodcock is like, "Dude, calm down. You're gonna scare the children. You shouldn't cuss around the children." And the voice is just like, "Get fucked." Like, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna say what I want." over time though, like it starts to become a little bit nicer and a little bit nicer as Mr.

Woodcock kind of gives it some paternal correction on its behavior. But like, there's a couple weird things that it says. Like one of them is like at, at, at the start of the conversation it says, "I'm only here because your neighbor Mrs. Wallace summoned me to come torment you." And then when they ask it, "Why did she do that?"

It says, quote, "Shut up. You meddle with the black art. I'll break your neck, for I'm the devil, the son of the blessed." So it's like heavily implying that it's this diabolical beast, maybe some sort of a demon. But it never says demon anywhere in the story

Cameron: And were there any witnesses aside from Dinah and Mr. Woodcock?

Cory: good question. We'll get to that in a second here. So towards the end of the conversation, Mr. Dagg has come out and joined in. They've been talking for five hours, everyone's exhausted, and finally they wear the ghost down. The ghost starts to make amends, and he says that he's sorry, he'll leave the family alone, once the clock strikes midnight on the next day. He says he doesn't hold anything against anybody. He doesn't mean to be a pest. Just being mischievous is in his nature. He doesn't hate anyone except specifically he calls out, "I don't like Dinah." So, and maybe that's why her presence triggered him whenever she was around

Cameron: How do you hate an 11-year-old?

Cory: don't know. There's something about her. The way she laughs, the way she drinks tea

Cameron: The way she's adopted

Cory: so Woodcock asks the voice, "Well, why don't you just leave right now?" And the voice says, " Well, there's a lot of people in this town that don't believe the Dagg family, that I exist, um, so I want you to invite all the skeptics to the Dagg house tomorrow and have like a little party, and then I'll show up and I'll convince them that the Daggs were right, that their house was haunted." And everyone's like, "Okay, cool. We'll see you tomorrow."

Cameron: This is so weird

Cory: we haven't gotten to the weird parts yet. So the next day, it's a Sunday, the house is all crowded with visitors. Starting in the early morning, the voice starts answering all of the guests' questions, and it's a totally different personality. It's charming, and it's funny and insightful, and it knows a lot about everyone's personal lives, and it's giving them advice.

It's a real crowd-pleaser. At one point, someone in the room says something like, "Wow, I heard you were a massive jerk, but you're, like, really nice." And the voice replies, quote, " I am not that person who used the dirty language. I am an angel from heaven sent by God to drive that fellow away." So a bit of a tw- plot twist here

Cameron: the guy in the shed didn't even show up. It, he, he sent a spirit to drive him out?

Cory: Uh, yeah, that, that's one theory, or it's the same ghost who's like, has multiple personalities. hold onto that thought. You can develop your theory as I give you more evidence. While everyone is having a nice time with this cool ghost, Woodcock is wandering around getting people to sign a witness testimony, there's your witnesses, to affirm that all this voice stuff is real.

He gets 17 people to sign, all of whom are respectable members of the community. The paper says, quote, "Mr. Woodcock said he could have procured 50 signatures, but when he got to the 17th name, he concluded it was enough." I like that

Cameron: You know, 17 is the magic number

Cory: An 18th guy's like, "Sorry, I was in the bathroom. Could I sign that?" " We have 17. We're fine."

Cameron: 17's plenty

Cory: the paper goes on to write out the full testimony, which is part of what makes this article so long, and then it, it includes the names of all 17 signers. And the testimony is pretty boilerplate. It goes like, "To whom it may concern, we, the undersigned, solemnly declare that the following proceedings began on the blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it goes on to explain every single weird occurrence that had happened was because of supernatural means. And then it goes on to list each and every single thing that happened in this incredibly long, unformatted paragraph. You got the fires, the stones thrown through the windows. There's a jar of water thrown at Mrs.

Dagg. Someone was playing a mouth organ in the next room. There was a rocking chair rocking on its own. Uh, just a bunch of stuff. It's a very long paragraph. So during the gathering, there's this really weird scene, um, that I would've cut if I was writing, uh, I mean, reporting this story. During the party, while everyone's having a good time with the ghost, a priest walks into the door, and then the voice starts acting like a total dick again, and starts taunting the priest and calling him a coward. The priest takes out his Bible and tries to exorcize the voice, and is like reading, you know, the s- passages aloud, and then he kneels to loudly pray for the family. But then the voice just lets out this booming laugh and says like, "Oh, these are just words. These can't do anything to me." And then it chases the priest out of the house, and the, the priest runs away into the, the night.

And it's like, what?

Why

Cameron: J-just

Cory: that s- why did we have that scene? Plus, if he's like an angel, why did he do that?

Cameron: wouldn't that speak to the fact that it's the demon from the shed who's trying to deceive everyone?

Cory: That the demon has told everyone that it's an angel

Cameron: Yeah

Cory: Well perhaps. But I had to tell that part about the priest because I had to explain why the voice is all agitated after the en- after that encounter. and it starts yelling out to the gathering, accusing everyone of thinking he's lying about being an angel because his voice is so gruff. Which I can be like, "Dude, we didn't think that.

We thought you were an angel. We've been, like, having a great time with you. What are you talking about?" But suddenly, the voice transforms into a tone of, quote, "exquisite sweetness." And everyone's like, "Wow, what a beautiful voice. Why didn't you just talk like this at the start?" And the voice says, "Well, then you would have thought I was Dinah, the adopted one."

Cameron: this

Cory: then the voice quiets everyone down so it can sing them a song. I will not sing nor even read the song, for it is two stanzas long, but it is a very Christian song with lines like, "Come to the Savior. He's calling you to Jesus. Come to Jesus. Come away." It's beautiful. He's-- It's a beautiful song.

One of the ladies in the room who's an accomplished singer, is asked to accompany the voice. Even the voice is encouraging her to join in, but the paper's like, c- um, compared to the voice, she was garbage. It was awful. people are singing, people are crying. This clock strikes midnight, which if you'll recall, is when people are supposed to leave, and it's still singing.

At 1:00 a.m. the voice says, "Well, I better get going." And the crowd's like, "No, please, just one more hour." And then they do that again at 2:00 a.m. And then at 3:00 a.m. the voice says, "Okay, I really gotta go." But he says he'll be back at 11 o'clock the next morning to say goodbye to the children.

Cameron: He just can't get enough of this attention

Cory: The next morning, Woodcock is hanging out with the Daggs in the kitchen around the appointed time when one of the kids comes running in all excited, shouting, saying that they just met a beautiful man outside who hugged them and then left for heaven. Well, wouldn't you know it, the adults rush outside and they don't see anything, but the other kids are out there and they report seeing the same exact thing.

They're like, "Yeah, he was beautiful with ribbons and white hair, and he was covered in gold." Before he left, he whispered to Dinah, " Woodcock doesn't think I'm an angel, but this'll show him." And then he went to heaven

Cameron: I don't know why, but I just imagine in Ralph Wiggum voice like, "A man hugged me, then he to

went

Cory: Yeah. Yeah. And then it just cuts to a news story of just some bearded creepy guy f- found in the

neighborhood. Okay, so, uh, that's where the story ends. No more spooky disturbances for the Dagg family. And a- as for Mr. Woodcock, he adopted Dinah from the family, and I guess they had a

nice life. Yeah, I know.

It's like the last line in the story.

Cameron: He's a spiritualist, so he wanted some vessel to attract more spirits?

Cory: Yeah, maybe like, yeah, that's a good point. Maybe she was like proven very sensitive to the other world and it'd be good to use her for his experiments.

Cameron: I'm

Taking you away from your family because I like ghosts

Cory: So after I did my script, I found out that there's actually a good amount of research on this story, lots of podcasts and blogs. Someone just wrote a book called "Dagg's Demon" this year.

Cameron: Wow

Cory: that the coverage feels a little overrated.

Lots of stuff about Canada's most chilling poltergeist case. And I, I don't know. I, I think the story is very much a story with strong Christian undertones, with way too many plot threads going on, many of which aren't resolved. And it's like, like how it builds up the suspicion of the adopted daughter at the start, you know?

Like that, that is such like a narrative thread that it's following only for that to be subverted later on.

Cameron: Sometimes when we're researching, uh, especially for the spooky stories, a lot of times in the paper we find things that were written as fiction, but they don't say they're fiction. Do you think this is one of those cases? Or because Mr. Woodcock is, like, a big enough name, they wouldn't just write this as fiction

Cory: I had the same exact thought, I, I don't know. I mean, this is kind of during the era, at least where we live in Nevada, where, uh, like about 10, 20 years before this when Mark Twain was writing in Virginia City, and this was a big thing, I think they were called feints, where journalists would write stories that appeared true.

They, they had like interviews and witnesses, and they reported things kind of just matter-of-factly, but the entire story was made up. It was 100% fictional. And the entire story, the point of it was to be like a joke where it was so real that, if anyone was tricked by it, you could make fun of them for being tricked by the newspaper story, which is kind of a cool era where like newspapers were intentionally trying to make fun of people.

Y- yeah, and trying to just make fun of people who would let themselves be deceived by a story.

Cameron: It's like they trying to be a real paper and The Onion at the same time

Cory: Y- yeah, for sure. For sure. And then shame on you if you let yourself, like, try to spread an Onion story. I, I don't, I don't know, just because this was, like, circulated in papers before, and this, this article was just a summary of everything that had gone on. Not really. It wasn't really a summary.

It was also... It was built like a story. So it's hard to say. I will say that after this story, if you look at, Percy Woodcock in any of the papers, this, the ghost thing doesn't come up again, so it didn't make that big of a splash in his life. Most of the stuff that talks about him is, like, about his shows and his art So I don't know if this particular article was blown up, but yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a ton of stuff on Dagg's

Cameron: I do have a story that it kind of reflects that idea. I can kinda shorten it down. It's not too long. but I think it plays into that whole thing about, like, hyperbole espe- it's a Canadian story too

Cory: Yeah, go for it

Cameron: So there's a lot of stories about this dark Sunday in New Brunswick. Most of the stories we find are written long after the events, but the event written about took place on Sunday, November 7th, 1819. And it started out as a very typical cloudy morning in New Brunswick. But by the late morning, this darkness covered the whole area as if it was night, and people were forced to light candles in the middle of the day.

apparently people began to think that this was the end of days. This panic swept over the town. And here's what Alfred S. Beers wrote in the Moncton Daily Times on October 11th, 1954 about the event, so long afterwards. He said, "An atmosphere of terror and fear of the unknown sent some insane, and in every home there was a sense of impending doom.

Many, according to the biblical picture of this world's ending, were searching for a place to hide from the wrath to come." and some people were saying that there was like sort of soap suds falling down that would settle into soot. Um,

Cory: You know what? I think stories like that are, way creepier than any of the ghost stories that we get at this time, where they just try to put as much detail into all the shit that the ghost is doing. but like these more... That feels more like a cosmic horror sort of like a, like a Lovecraftian horror where some big event is going on and nobody knows what to do and everyone is freaked out, and there's no information and no one's coming to help.

To me, that's just a, a scarier setting for a story, so I like that

Cameron: scientists were unable to come up with any kind of explanation about it. People have looked. There were no eclipses that day. There was no volcanoes, no wildfires. But like I mentioned, all of these articles were written years after the fact. So let's go back to the date of Black Sunday in 1819. There was an article written two days after the events, and it says, "On Sunday last was the darkest day throughout ever remembered in this city by its oldest inhabitants.

The morning services of the different places of worship were with difficulty got through. Many houses were obliged to light candles at the early hours of 3:00 and 4:00 PM, and the atmosphere portended some awful visitation, either by hurricane or otherwise, which, however, was happily not realized, and by degrees the weather assumed its natural aspect.

Last evening we had a flurry of snow, the first of this season, which, however, was carried off almost immediately by the succeeding rain." That didn't even make the front page. It's like over time, this very dark day that they had where they had to light candles at 3:00 or 4:00 PM, it wasn't that big of a deal.

There were not people in the streets panicking

Cory: At the time, it was probably very terrifying, and there's still like this, "What was that?" But because things went back to normal, it was best to just kind of forget about it

Cameron: Yeah, I think it's just kind of built up over time as this bigger story than it really was, and it's more interesting to talk about, like, yeah, this event really happened and we can say it's true, but let's fudge some of the details and make for a more interesting, scary story

And that, it, that's, I think relates back to the Dagg ghost one, where maybe people kind of made much of a bigger thing than what was happening

or some of the details

Cory: Yeah, because, I mean, they're... Just like the ecosystem of these stories was that something weird would happen in a small town, and then it would go to a local paper, and then the local paper would sensationalize it, and then regional papers would pick it up, and then they would sensationalize whatever was already sensationalized.

And then the big city newspapers would pick it up, and suddenly you've got, you know, a ghost walking around cutting children's hair and appearing like, uh, an angel. And then, when we did our Ghosts of Antigonish story, we w- we ran into an unsatisfying conclusion where the story just ended because there was this ghost that had been, like, starting fires all around the house.

And then as far as our research went, it ju- it just ended. It didn't have a satisfying conclusion, and we wanted to tell a ghost story. So we ended up adding our own ending, which was like

Cameron: Which we called

Cory: would... Y- yes. Yes, Yes, But I, I s- I see the, the impulse to, like, wrap everything up in a nice little bow.

Some very Christian journalist for, uh, the Daggs demon story is like, "Okay, well, I think there's a little bit of a, a moral parable we can, we can get out of this."

Cameron: I also wonder, I mentioned that a lot of spiritualists were grifters and it was an opportunity for people to come in and make money. And I'm wondering if there was some financial benefit for Woodcock to come in and convince people that the spirit really did exist

Cory: but it does feel like a new age health scene where all these upper class people are into it and, there's a lot of money to be made by selling products or services. And it, like, changes people's lives, but it's mostly bullshit. I don't know. I guess it's good to work out, but

Cameron: So for this last one, it was one of my favorites last year, but it just didn't work with the format we were doing.

So this story is from The New York Times, September 14th, 1899.

We have a woman named Alice Nott, who's 23 years old. She lives alone in this small apartment in Washington, and she owns a little pet parrot that was referred to as an evil dispositioned bird. Everybody fucking, hated this parrot.

E-everybody except this young lady. The parrot would follow her everywhere and was just tailing her through every single room. People hated this parrot because it was really nasty to them. It would always try to bite people.

It was always biting at things. And one of the things it really liked to bite at was the tips of gas burners,

Cory: It was also like saying mean things to people, right? 'Cause I imagine it was a parrot. It was m- saying

Cameron: it doesn't say anything like that. Maybe it did

It has a line I'm ignoring, which is kinda racist, so

Cory: Okay.

Cameron: So it was described as having a strong beak and it would pull off these gas burners and inhale the gas until it stupefied him

Cory: The ga- gas fiend

Cameron: Yes, he was a gas fiend, it says. A feathered victim of the gas habit.

Cory: Was that a thing?

Cameron: I guess, I mean, it would be like a, a person who huffs nitrous today or something.

Like, it--

you really high

Cory: I mean, the stuff that comes out of your stove, is it like the same thing back then

as like the stuff N-

you

high?

Cameron: no, it wasn't natural gas. I forget exactly what they used. Um, I took a look online at YouTube at one of these old burners, but it, it was definitely different from what we have

today

Cory: Certainly wasn't, um, given an aroma additive to smell like sulfur. That was

Cameron: No. In fact, I think the problem in this story is that it had no smell. Because one night while this young lady is sleeping, the parrot took off the gas tip and started just huffing away, and there was no one nearby to stop the parrot this time. So this young lady, Miss Knott, her relatives hadn't heard from her.

So they stop by, they open the door, and she is inside dead. And they say her little murderer was found half unconscious by the door. He had his little beak under the door trying to get the clean air

Cory: a horrifying image

Cameron: yeah, you've got this parrot that's, like, on death's door trying to get the last gasps of fresh air to survive, this dead lady, and while the coroner was in the house pulling Alice Nott out, that little bird was in there trying to get the gas tip off again

Cory: Listen, I'm not-- I, I think it's time to put this bird down. This bird has had some awful behavior

Cameron: I don't know what they would have done with the bird afterwards. I can't imagine anyone wanted it. Everyone hated it. It killed the only person it ever loved. Just just was taken in by the gas habit

Cory: I was thinking during that story about how much I don't wanna travel back in time to even like this middle class apartment in the 19th century where you could break something off of your pipes that would spill in like undetectable poisonous gas into... Like, there are so few ways for me to die in my house right now, thanks to safety regulations.

I mean, I, I would have to do something really boneheaded. My house is very much like baby-proofed against me dying.

Well, going back to the Canada, map, we've done a Nova Scotia story, we've done an Ontario story. I believe yours was New Brunswick?

Cameron: Yeah

Cory: So we're working our way across that great, beautiful country. We need to knock out the n- rest of them. Our Nunavut story, Prince Edward Island, and others I'm sure I'm

Cameron: We gotta do all, all Canadian ghost stories

Cory: That's next year. Tales from the Yukon. I'm sure there's a lot of cool ghost stories from the Yukon

Cameron: Yeah, I, I'd, I would like to explore more Canadian stories.

Cory: We explore exclusively Canadian stories in this format

Cameron: Yeah. We're Americans who just wanna learn more about our neighbors up north

Cory: It'd be cool to get some Mexican ghost stories going on, I don't know if our newspapers.com, thing does Mexico

Cameron: It has international papers. I-- Not a ton, but it does have some

Cory: do you wanna close this puppy out?

Cameron: I don't know

Cory: Well, that's it for Halloween Spooktacular Tales of Terror this year.

Cameron: Tales of Moderate Terror

Cory: That's what it was

See you next

year, folks​