HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. Now we're in the Doo.
MARCUS PARKS
We're in the Doo. We're finally in the Doo, where you've wanted to be for weeks now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, man. I saw this, it's because I was excited about finding like a good meaty poltergeist story.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure, this is where it started.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But it's kind of funny because then we called in, like I wanted to get a response from the government of Humpty Doo, right. And we did call. So first thing, I did offer a Snickers to the child that runs the city. I offered him a Snickers. He said (Australian accent) what's that then? And then we fought for a while but then afterwards he listened to my story. No, we tried to talk to the local government of Humpty Doo to find out. I was like this is this poltergeist story-
ED LARSON
They're not gonna acknowledge it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they literally came back and were like we have no idea what you're talking about. And I was like this is a cover up.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean to be fair-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a coverup!
MARCUS PARKS
To be fair, this happened 30 years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's modern times.
ED LARSON
You should have just started calling random old people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I honestly tried to. I wish I could. I don't know how the phone numbers work. They're longer than ours!
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the confused about telephones Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got my coffee.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice. And Ed Larson who presumably knows how to use a phone.
ED LARSON
That's right now. I'm ready to get stoned in Humpty Doo.
MARCUS PARKS
Sounds nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're not gonna get weed yet though.
ED LARSON
No, it's stoned. It's a reference to all the stones that the ghosts in Australia throw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess I'm just hankering. I'm hankering and I need it.
ED LARSON
Now before we get to the story of the haunting at Humpty Doo, which is gonna involve even more stones than the Guyra Ghost-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Holy shit. No fucking way.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's visit the Australian City of Canberra for a story that takes place over a five year period that surprisingly spans the early to mid 90s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is kind of like... This story technically has MaXXXine vibes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Sexy ladies.
MARCUS PARKS
Jo, is it Can-BERRA or CAN-berra?
JO
CAN-berra.
MARCUS PARKS
CAN-berra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
CAN-berra.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the city of Canberra. That's why I asked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're learning and we're growing.
MARCUS PARKS
We're learning. Now I say surprisingly because stories like these tend to happen in the late 19th, early 20th century because of the hauntings' various locations.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true. And I love we're finally getting into the 90s, man. That's what Gen Z likes.
MARCUS PARKS
See this is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big pants, little glasses. They look stupid just like we did see.
ED LARSON
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. See this is not just the story of a haunted brothel but rather the tale of a haunted sex worker who made her poltergeist a feature in her sexual escapades.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now not haunted like a normal sex worker.
ED LARSON
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no.
ED LARSON
No, she's haunted by outside things.
MARCUS PARKS
She's haunted by a poltergeist.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It's not within her.
MARCUS PARKS
The woman in question was Liz Fleming, who left the sex game in 1997 to become a social worker. When she was still in the business she went by the name Caressa and even wrote a book about her experiences called 'Caressa: From Call Girl to God's Child'.
ED LARSON
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Apparently had a very low print run. We couldn't get ahold of a copy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God's child could still have sex like a fucking tomcat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's right.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at me!
ED LARSON
They want them to in fact. The pope was like don't have dogs, have kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Liz's poltergeist experiences began in Australia's capital city of Canberra. CAN-berra?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Capital city of Canberra in 1992, the same year that brothels were legalized in Australia.
ED LARSON
Brothels were legalized in Australia?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Since 1992.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's been decriminalized since 1992. You're not supposed to do it on the street, you're supposed to do it in a brothel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, it's been decriminalized for over 30 years.
ED LARSON
But my wife's coming.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the brothel where Liz began her career had experienced a bit of paranormal activity before she arrived. But once she walked through those doors, the poltergeist attached itself and started putting on a show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Objects like pencils, knives, shoes, and candles began disappearing and/or flying with great force at Liz's feet or at people. But they never flew hard enough to hurt anyone, just like the stones in the Guyra ghost story. But while the other girls were terrified, Liz found the phenomena entertaining.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is a common theme in all of these Australian stories is they have a more commiserating attitude towards the ghost. Like this is fun. But in my mind I do wish it could be like her dancing on the pole to like (singing) Pour Some Sugar on Me! As like forks fly around her in a circle. That would be really fun.
MARCUS PARKS
She believed that there were several spirits involved and she claimed to have figured out how to psychically communicate with them in order to encourage them to ramp up their mischievous activity. She found that it was good for business if she was the haunted one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That makes a lot of sense because I mean that sounds like a blast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I love ghost tours.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine you have a ghost tour and then getting your dick sucked?
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that's my favorite things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It'd be like busted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow! That'd be Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, I wanna do this.
ED LARSON
(singing) Bustin makes me feel good!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah! Now soon after, Liz moved on to another brothel called the Golden Apple and the poltergeist followed, almost like pets. Liz came to be known as the ghost lady to the other girls.
ED LARSON
So she was a sex worker at a Chinese restaurant?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man, fucking asshole to the wantons.
MARCUS PARKS
But the owner of the Golden Apple wasn't impressed by the ruckus the ghost caused. Because the poltergeists were so disruptive, the owner fired Liz. But when she went to a third brothel she actually became a draw to clients who wanted something a little extra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like the guy who told the Beatles that guitar music was going away. Guy was wrong. Obviously that's fucking awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't even need it and I would just go, I'd go hang out with her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd pay to hang out and be like do the ghost thing again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And you don't have to do the rest of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Let's just fucking hang out and do ghost shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then I'll start crying, telling all my thoughts, all my sad thoughts.
ED LARSON
We know what you do. Now do you think that the sex inspired the ghost?
MARCUS PARKS
I think that... Well from what it said is that the poltergeist-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like when your dog's in the room?
MARCUS PARKS
Well the poltergeist was already there when she arrived but as we'll talk about here in a bit, it does seem like that sometimes the sex did up the ante a little bit. Now because the poltergeists were so disruptive-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, it was just the term 'up the ante'.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sorry, man, I'm fucking fading fast. I haven't slept in a long time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're doing great, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
So questions are gonna be hard.
ED LARSON
Okay. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well on Liz's command, it was said that she could get her poltergeist to move baseball bats and a potted palm tree that she kept in her room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's how you know that this is way before the time period of OnlyFans and all that stuff because you know that poltergeist would be delivering butt plugs. It feels like a little bit of a waste because it's nice that she's making them dance, but she's not using it to make herself cum.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's true. Now Liz became curious as to why this was all happening to her specifically. So she contacted a woman named Monica Hamers who belonged to a group called The Canberra Skeptics. And it's weird because it's The Canberra Skeptics but it does not sound like they're skeptical in any way whatsoever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So another thing, that's why you can't really trust anybody that says it's a skeptic group because sometimes it's so skeptical of being skeptical, they're actually too open minded.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then if they show up and they say it's a part of a skeptic society, they act... It shows like oh no but we're thinkers' thinkers. But actually a lot of times you skeptic yourself into being a moron.
ED LARSON
Also good day to be a skeptic when you get called up to go check out the brothel.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Because then hopefully you get a couple of tugs.
ED LARSON
It's work!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta go, honey!
MARCUS PARKS
Monica put Liz under hypnosis, where Liz saw a shepherd of some kind. Monica suggested that Liz leave a tube of lipstick open near her mirror so the shepherd spirit could use it to communicate. And shortly after, 'I love you, Liz' along with a heart pierced with an arrow appeared on the mirror.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So a shepherd is gonna flirt like a larrikin? Like he's going to flirt like a child in a middle school? Like me: yes or no?
MARCUS PARKS
That was followed by more messages from spirits named Matt, Roscoe, and Marty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Roscoe. Another name we never see for kids anymore.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Don't trust them.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the mirror communication was sweet, the poltergeist activity became more violent. Loud raps shook the walls, a vase full of flowers was thrown about, a large mattress hit Liz in the face and knocked her to the floor, and a male sex worker in the brothel was pummeled and thrown against the wall by an invisible attacker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's punching my dick! Man, they have dudes in there too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
I guess dude side, lady side.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And again the poltergeist activity became too much for Liz's brothel to deal with. So Liz left and started working alone out of her home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man, independent contractor.
MARCUS PARKS
And her clients who enjoyed sexually paranormal experiences followed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, there's a bunch of Ichabod Cranes trying to get in there, man. I'm right there. Me, Dan Aykroyd.
ED LARSON
If you were unwed, this would be perfect for you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh this is all I want!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now two years after the poltergeist activity began, Liz was put into contact with a paranormal author named Ken Llewellyn, who was also a reserve wing commander of the Royal Australian Air Force. Now Ken found Liz to be very charming but as she told her story in an almost nonstop monologue, Ken suspected that she might be on meth maybe.
ED LARSON
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She could just... Hey, coffee.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when he talked to Liz's friends and clients who had all witnessed the poltergeist activity, Ken became convinced.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they confirmed she was indeed on meth. Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive.
MARCUS PARKS
They do not. One friend named Teresa said that all she had to do was be on the phone with Liz to experience paranormal activity. Teresa said that the poltergeist caused her car to stall out, it smashed a vase, and caused the electronics in her house to malfunction. One of Liz's clients, a man named Ray, who's a fucking john if I ever heard one-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Name's Ray.
ED LARSON
Don't look it up.
MARCUS PARKS
He said that one time he locked his keys in his truck and asked Liz to request help from one of her poltergeist's. Liz called upon the spirit named Matt and Ray said that the keys subsequently dropped onto the bedroom floor from thin air.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Another client, David, said that he saw the potted plant move around and he also saw three potatoes appear from out of nowhere and fly across the room. Because for some reason potatoes were actually a favorite object of these poltergeists. They loved potatoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tasty rocks.
ED LARSON
Now do you think the guys were cumming in the plant?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the Weinstein special.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the strangest event however occurred as three clients were waiting for Liz to finish with customer number four. They said that a baby stroller rolled across the room untouched, followed by two potatoes and a gold painted rock that appeared and bounced on the floor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing I like seeing better at my brothel appointment as several baby strollers.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing gets me in the mood more than a parasol.
ED LARSON
You know what I don't want to see at my brothels appointment is a line of dudes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! I don't wanna see-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Stagger. Stagger the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Give a 5 minute breather inbetween. We don't need to stack these. I don't want to all be sitting there being like (Australian accent) I bet you I'll do it better. No, I think I'll give her a go. That's sad because if the guy rails her real good right before you, they go like oh now I gotta go back and clean up.
MARCUS PARKS
But it wasn't over. After all that, pieces of rolled up bark fell through the ceiling which were accompanied by the appearance of a coin and a key. All of this happened over the course of 25 minutes while these men were waiting around to have sex with Liz. After hearing all these stories though, Ken Llewellyn himself had an experience. While talking with Liz, he pulled out a cigarette and found that he didn't have a lighter. Almost instantly a small red lighter appeared and fell on the floor. It worked perfectly and Ken presumably kept it as a souvenir of his experience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cool. Ghosts are flirting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Unfortunately though this story does have a sad ending. Liz Fleming died by suicide in 1997 at the age of 42. But hypnotist Monica Hamer said that she communicated with Liz's spirit who said that she was happy and in a beautiful place with Marty and all her other spirit friends, if that makes you feel any better.
ED LARSON
I talked to her and she's fine!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's fine.
MARCUS PARKS
She's fine, you can forget her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine you die by committing suicide, you go to heaven to see your ghost friends. And in my mind what if it's like the reveal? Like the Patty Hearst reveal? Like in your mind you think oh, sexy ghosts. I'm gonna have a good sexy ghost boyfriend or whatever when I'm dead in heaven.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's Roscoe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's Roscoe.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you meet him and it's like hey!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I knew if we just met each other, you could see through all my physical deformities. And you're like fuck! God, I should have went with Ken.
ED LARSON
Yeah, you know what Roscoe looks like. Chicken and waffles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's unfortunate.
MARCUS PARKS
But now that we got you warmed up, let's finally get to the big one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
The haunting of Humpty Doo. Now this one picks up chronologically right where Liz Fleming's story ends in the year 1998.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And 1998 is approximately the year when Australia hit the year 1975. So it's important to remember that.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it did actually take... Could you Google real quickly how long it took color television to make it to Australia? Because I think if I remember correctly it's a surprisingly long amount. I think it's like 1976.
ED LARSON
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well did you see... 1975.
ED LARSON
Wow, Marcus. I'm very impressed with this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Both of us. Both.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know why I knew that but yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. That's very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Color television, 1975. Now the town of Humpty Doo is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 23 miles from the Northern Territory's only biggish city, Darwin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is straight up the outback.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean well this is kind of the entrance to the outback.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Darwin's about 120,000 people, it's right on the coast, and it's like surrounded by kind of bedroom communities-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Including Humpty Doo. But to give you an idea of the scope, the Northern Territory is 520,000 square miles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's the 11th largest province in the world. And the nearest major city, Adelaide, is a 31 hour drive south to the other end of the continent. I think Brisbane is like 33 hours and that's like driving to the east side of the continent. It's shorter to drive to the other end to the south to get to Adelaide.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What the fuck? This place big.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if you think Humpty Doo is a silly name, which it is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you know.
MARCUS PARKS
It's actually a variation on an even sillier name, Umpity Doo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Umpity Doo is much sillier. Umpity Doo is where the sprinkle was invented and there's ice cream on the streets.
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to Umpity Doo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Umpity Doo! But that's racist.
ED LARSON
Is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Umpity Doo was a nearby cattle ranch. But to locals Humpty Doo is just called the Doo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You best believe the Doo is through.
ED LARSON
You get fucking Doo'd, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's Doo.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Doo is mostly an agricultural and commuter town that also makes a fair living off tourist dollars due to its proximity to a national park. It's also home to a 42 ft tall fiberglass boxing crocodile called the Big Boxing Crocodile.
ED LARSON
I mean now we gotta go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have to go.
MARCUS PARKS
That was commissioned by a rich local eccentric in 1987 for $137,000.
ED LARSON
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
In 1987 Australian money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Man, that's what I'm gonna do if I ever get rich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Just large crocodile statues all over Los Angeles.
MARCUS PARKS
The Doo is also known... Actually you gotta go here. It's known for what's called the jumping crocs.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
They lift themselves out of the Adelaide River for pieces of meat lowered on rods by tourists from the sides of boats on river cruises.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't sound super safe.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
No, it's not safe at all but it sounds like a goddamn blast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But for our purposes, the biggest attraction in Humpty Doo is 90 McMinns Drive where the Humpty Doo poltergeist made its home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not according to whatever is in charge of Humpty Doo. Because when I went and talked with them, they pretended like none of this ever happened when it was all over the damn news. And I watched all the news coverage of it. And I'll tell you what, it made me sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because everybody inside of the story is pretty rough.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like at the very top-
MARCUS PARKS
Like Snowtown rough?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And so the there was a little documentary I saw and it's like you saw the lady character, the matriarch-
ED LARSON
It's 31 hours from Snowtown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Dude, it's 31 hours from Snowtown, dude. There's a lady in it. So it's like you could tell because she's got a black eye, she's got a 13 month old I think is smoking a cigarette, like the child is just there hanging out. It's an intense place.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You gotta let him finish or he starts to cry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he takes it right down to the filter.
MARCUS PARKS
One evening in early January 1998, five friends who all lived at 90 McMinns Drive were watching a lightning storm when strange and unnatural things began to happen. Small pebbles started falling from out of nowhere and were landing around the five people who lived at the house. The friends were married couple Andrew and Kirsty Agius, unmarried couple Jill Somerville and Dave Clark, no relation to the Dave Clark Five-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank god.
ED LARSON
Well that makes me glad all over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Buddy!
MARCUS PARKS
And their single friend Doug Murphy. Now these five roommates thought that the Pebbles were a prank pulled by some larrikin but no one answered when they called out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Child! Child!
ED LARSON
Did they hear a tee-hee?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what I'm saying. If it's larrikins, there's gonna be a sound, you're gonna hear games being played and marbles clacking together. Also larrikinism, I was reading on our little break, actually was inspired by the intense social rules and British rule put on them during the colonial times. So larrikinism, according to Ned Kelly, the bushwhacking hero of Australia, he says oh that's the key to unlocking the Australian's heart is understanding the larrikin.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Larrikins is how we won the Revolutionary War. I'm just kidding around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that true? Because I don't think we had larrikins. I think larrikins are working quite a bit in the Congo.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the residents of 90 McMinns Drive, slightly annoyed, moved inside. But the pebbles, no larger than the gravel that made up their driveway, followed them. The pebbles fell on their floors, tables, and heads. But again, like the Guyra poltergeist, the stones were dry and warm despite the fact that it was raining outside. One of the housemates grabbed a ladder to check the attic to see if maybe there was some explanation. But as soon as the ceiling hatch was opened, he was showered with even more pebbles than before. But besides the pebbles, knives, small batteries, wrenches, and shards of broken glass that were dropped from the air or hurled across the room on that first night, no one again was injured.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have a theory about why they don't get hit?
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea. I mean because I think it goes back to the trickster phenomenon that you were talking about where I don't think they really want to hurt anyone. Because it seems like I don't know why in America and in the UK poltergeists are fucking angry all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and they hurt you.
MARCUS PARKS
They're really trying to hurt you. They're trying to make your life absolutely fucking miserable. But in Australia it seems like they're just trying to say hi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, it does feel like a fairy/fae/weirdo scenario way more in the high strangeness realm straight up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I was thinking gnomes, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very similar to that. I talked about the kobolds.
ED LARSON
Also they don't travel fast so they could be getting hit and it's just not affecting them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're just getting flicked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well some objects however were destroyed. Over the following days a CD player was broken-
ED LARSON
Fuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Several windows and glass... Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How am I gonna listen to my fucking Live albums that was delivered to us at this time period. Yeah. (singing) I alone love you!
MARCUS PARKS
Well the CD player was broken. That's 1997 CD player, that's some big money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I know, you need it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Several windows and glass cabinet doors were smashed by flying objects. A lot of broken windows. They do break a lot of windows.
ED LARSON
I'm telling you, they gotta look into the glass guy in town.
MARCUS PARKS
The glazier. One night the stones even seem to work in tandem, wrenching appliances from shelves and turning over mattresses. They were sort of like you remember that video game where there was those balls that all formed like a human and it was a fighting game?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what the hell was that called?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know but it's like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It was as if some intelligence was using the stones to affect the corporeal world. And all the while the residents of 90 McMinns Drive would hear scraping noises inside the walls throughout the night that terrified them and kept them awake.
ED LARSON
Rats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's capybaras. It's Australia. They got bigger things than rats.
MARCUS PARKS
But none of them could leave because they had nowhere else to go. Now none of the five residents were religious but they decided that they might as well call a priest just in case it worked. They reached Father Stephen de Souza in Darwin who came out to investigate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love this man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. This is a good old fashioned... They just cut it different. We talked about it last week. It's the same guy from Dead Alive. It's the fucking (Australian accent) I kick ass for the lord. He's just like a hard drinking, hard smoking priest that the only reason why he doesn't wanna fucking be a regular dude is because it's cool that it's evil to have sex with men. And he's loving that. He's like this makes it extra juicy.
ED LARSON
Also the idea of a priest from a town named Darwin is just fun to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as Father de Souza was observing the kitchen, a knife left on top of the microwave lifted into the air and flew at the priest when no one was in any position to throw it. The knife stopped 3 ft from Father de Souza's chest as if it had hit a wall and it fell to the floor. Father de Souza however was unfazed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Yeah, that happens, yeah, I've done it. I've seen it.
MARCUS PARKS
And he said that he had dealt with many restless spirits in the past.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) You should meet my ex-wife. Why do you think I got this goddamn collar on?
MARCUS PARKS
Being brutally honest though, he told the residents that prayer rarely did anything to stop the poltergeists.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was literally just straight up like this shit ain't... I'm the wrong guy honestly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just good to be in town.
MARCUS PARKS
He told them it's gonna go away when it's good and ready. He said basically fucking deal with it and then he left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all that's the most I want to deal with a priest.
ED LARSON
Did everyone not tell you I was fake?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you know that this is a whole scam for wine?
MARCUS PARKS
Now the priest's prayers, he did say a couple of prayers before he left-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey ghost, get outta here, ghost. Oh Jesus.
ED LARSON
In the name of the dad and the boy and the enchanted...
MARCUS PARKS
Now that kept the poltergeist away for three days but then it returned at full strength. And the residents, suspecting that maybe Father de Souza was just lazy, they called another priest, a guy named Father Tom English. He was the local Humpty Doo priest and presumably had more invested in helping out the residents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know if the government of Humpty Doo even cares about poltergeists. I don't even care. They definitely aren't handling the larrikin problem and they're not handling anything else. What are they doing? We need a change.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Father English visited the house four times and each time he saw flying objects. But this priest, instead of a knife, saw bullets being thrown against the walls, flying out of the rooms no one was in. Again, bullets. Now Father English tried prayers as well. But when he brought holy water into the mix, the Polt quote unquote "went ape" and the activity got worse. Flabbergasted, Father English said fuck it, I done all I can do. And he just left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry, god's not that strong.
MARCUS PARKS
Left behind a crucifix, a bottle of holy water, and a bible just in case and said figure it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is some of the shit I use. You could try that, right. This is all my bullshit. You could try some of that. Y'all could. My main thing is get out of here, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Throughout that night the poltergeist smashed windows and continued throwing objects including the bible which is used as a projectile to smash the bottle of holy water into pieces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff) It's fucking Dio. That's who the fucking ghost was, man.
MARCUS PARKS
But this activity continued for months. Sometimes shit would fly around for 20 minutes straight followed by an hour of peace and then it would start again. Other days only a few objects would fly around. Other days nothing would happen at all. As far as what the residents thought about just moving to escape all the hubbub though, they said, and this is a direct quote from Dave Clark:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) "It's a nice place. We like it and we were here first."
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's the whole like why should I change? He's the asshole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's my house!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
The ghost was obviously there first.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know.
ED LARSON
That's the whole thing with ghosts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, that ghost paying rent?
MARCUS PARKS
Well they'd been living there for a little while before the ghost came.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah well it was dormant.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll talk a little bit about that later.
ED LARSON
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
There may be something there. Now at one point the poltergeist began communicating with the residents at 90 McMinns. It wrote in marker, spelled out words with Scrabble tiles, formed letters with the piles of pebbles. The words however were just as terrifying as the method of communication. The most common words were fire, skin, car, and help.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
ED LARSON
Okay. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But the name that kept getting spelled out was Troy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The most mysterious name of all.
ED LARSON
It sounds like a ghost was pretty shitty at Scrabble. Four letter words tops? Come on, how are you planning on winning?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and trying to use a proper noun? Fuck you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This doesn't count.
MARCUS PARKS
See just before the activity started, a friend of the residents of 90 McMinns named Troy Raddatz had been incinerated in a horrific car accident when the car he was driving, full of paint thinner, had crashed and exploded.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey Troy, do you think this is a good idea? (Australian accent) Yep! Absolutely. Just fumes as he's just like high as balls, driving the car.
ED LARSON
you gotta get lids for the paint thinner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) No, I like seeing the levels.
MARCUS PARKS
The residents however were not so easily fooled by the poltergeist. They loudly told the poltergeist, and this is another direct quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) "You're not Troy, you piss-weak bastard. Why don't you just fuck off?"
MARCUS PARKS
After that the poltergeist stopped spelling out the name Troy.
ED LARSON
Damn it. All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, I understand. Well this is actually one of those where I think is interesting of if this is indeed real, this is one of those where whatever this energy is using is coming from the people inside of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I really do think that's why they used a name they'd know.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. We're gonna get into that later.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I'm sure he was like crying about his friend Troy in the house.
MARCUS PARKS
We're absolutely gonna be getting into this later, yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
When we put this whole story together. Because there is a very angry Greek man that still has yet to enter this tale.
ED LARSON
Oh well Humpty Doo continue.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll be right back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh great, perfect for a commercial.
MARCUS PARKS
Now pretty far into month three, a local teacher, her partner, and their young son were visiting the house when they saw a number of pebbles almost instantly form themselves into a cross that was so perfectly put together that it would have taken many hours to make by hand.
ED LARSON
The cross was so nice it could have hung a man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Now that's a cross. That's not a cross, that's a cross.
MARCUS PARKS
You got it in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Dave Clark however touched the cross and when he touched the cross, it basically exploded in a shower of pebbles. Not exploded, more it went like (scattering sound) like a Skittles commercial.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But speaking of crosses, the poltergeist apparently loved to play with the crucifix that Father English had left behind. The artifact would disappear, reappear, and fly through the air. But it was only one of the poltergeist's three favorite objects. It also loved playing with the homemade bottle opener that had a spark plug for a handle and it particularly enjoyed a small silver skull. The polt also loved knives, .44 magnum bullets, and Father English's bible which was thrown around so much that it became battered and worn.
ED LARSON
I love playing through the bible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate playing catch the bible.
MARCUS PARKS
Now eventually the Humpty Doo poltergeist started drawing media attention and several reporters observed the showers of stones. As the author of 'Australian Poltergeist' put it after hearing the story, journalists swooped in quote "like seagulls onto the proverbial sick prawn".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In what proverb is this sick prawn featured?
MARCUS PARKS
That's what I was wondering. The proverb of the seagull and the prawn?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have not heard... It doesn't need to be sick.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it doesn't need to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually I think that hurts the seagull if the prawn is sick.
ED LARSON
Well sick prawns are easier to catch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think they're even that hard to catch when they're healthy.
MARCUS PARKS
Isn't that the proverb is that sometimes the easier thing to catch is the thing that is not what you need. You think you need it but it is better to catch the healthy prawn than the sick prawn and to not go for the easy thing-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Because you need the hard thing instead to make you feel good.
ED LARSON
It is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the key to the proverbial sick prawn.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I just made up a proverb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, no. It makes sense though because things that are loved taste better.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not lambs.
ED LARSON
We'll find out tonight.
MARCUS PARKS
On April 4th, a presenter named Greg Quail from the show... I don't know if this show name is fucking horrible, fine, or really clever. It's called Today Tonight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's fun.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It's like Last Week Tonight.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They arrived with a four man camera crew. With them was a journalist named Max Anderson who had researched the methods of a skeptic from the Chiara College of Metaphysics in Sydney. So he was obviously there to disprove the whole thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is very interesting. I watched all of this coverage.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this guy, he really is... First of all I will say Australian television really does feature the chest hair of their reporters more than any other country that I've seen. Each one of the reporters, I saw their nipples.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a chest hair heavy country.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which makes me feel comfortable.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this man, he's haunted, he's very much like I came here to destroy this story, we wanted to debunk this entirely. My crew is now scared. We've been inside of this scenario for the last couple... And it was really awesome. It felt like I was watching Ghostwatch.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, nice. I love Ghostwatch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then there's a little bit...
MARCUS PARKS
But while the crew was obviously there to prove the hoax, they were unable to find any evidence of interference. They had seven cameras set up for constant surveillance and while their footage was scant, they also couldn't catch anything to explain it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was truly boring in the most paranormal sense of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. The way it always should be. Apparently all they could capture was a baby bottle falling off a microwave and a bullet falling and bouncing off the furniture, which is hardly proof of the paranormal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is direct proof. That is the proof.
MARCUS PARKS
But cameraman David Davidson noted that every time he went to change tapes or a battery, that was when the poltergeist threw something that would have been quite impressive if it was caught on film. To further drive the point home, messages were left for the TV crew, messages like no cameras, no TV, and pig camera.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh!
ED LARSON
Ooh yum.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, camera pig sounds much better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, the camera pig is fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Today Tonight's visit however was actually the first time anyone was actually hurt at 90 McMinns. Apparently the poltergeist hated the camera crew. One of the crew got hit in the head by a flying AA battery. But even though it hurt, it left no mark or bruise. So even when they tried being nasty, it still wasn't that bad.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it's just a AA, it wasn't like C or a D.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Right, yeah. D would be bad. Yeah, they're not the fucking Philadelphia Eagles fans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's not getting hit by a car battery.
MARCUS PARKS
They're not Santa Claus. Well Today Tonight's host said this upon leaving. (Australian accent) "We rolled up skeptics, we're not leaving skeptics. We'd only been there for two hours and we had realized that it was all on. I thought we'd come here and uncover an hoax but we've endured an onslaught of flying scissors, stones, knives, broken glass, and yes, three live bullets. Not once did any of us see even a suggestion that any of the five residents was trying to pull a swifty."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very good, Marcus.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it was very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your Australian accent is very good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not bad. I mean I should be working... By the end of the week it'll be great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll do it from the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Save it.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't.
ED LARSON
Well this is, you know...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a warmup.
MARCUS PARKS
Now freelance journalist Max Anderson invited psychic Stephen Bishop to 90 McMinns Drive. And when Bishop arrived, he started saying some very Ed and Lorraine Warren-like statements, like his energy was being disturbed and that this was the most extreme case he'd ever seen. The land is dead, he said, it's lost its soul.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like all right. It's fine. It's Humpty Doo!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Bishop then declared the house oppressive. He claimed to have detected that there was a residual gray slime here. And then he left like all the rest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was just the appetizer. I'm not into the celeriac stuff here. It's the only food that I'm not particularly into. It's just like mush, it's like a green mush. That's the only thing I'm not into. But I like everything else I've had.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Good. You like food, we know.
MARCUS PARKS
After exhausting their paranormal bench though, Today Tonight decided to try the scientific approach of bringing in a thermal imaging camera to film the objects the poltergeist had thrown. And this is where things get very interesting. The stones in particular were warm all over which was a strange reading. See when someone holds an object, it warms up where it's touched but the heat will not cover the entire object, even if you hold something in your palm. The way these objects were warmed all the way through, it was like they'd been put in a microwave. Furthermore there were no thermal fingerprints on any of the thrown objects, meaning nobody had touched or held them just before the object flew.
ED LARSON
Unless they had socks on their hands.
MARCUS PARKS
But that doesn't explain why the whole object was warm all over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
They should work at a massage parlor, this ghost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that would be incredible. Incredible. There's a career opportunity anywhere if you just look for it.
MARCUS PARKS
I guess maybe you could have socks on your hands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but that would require... To be honest I think there'd be threads.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think so. Well really the only part that pointed towards a hoax was when one of the residents, Kirsty, was caught on camera rising up slightly as a white pot lid was thrown across the kitchen. Later Kirsty did admit to faking that particular toss, just like the kids at Enfield admitted to faking a thing or two as well. But the argument made in both cases was that they were all extremely bad at faking things because they were all caught immediately. And as far as everything else went, nobody could give a reasonable explanation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not that I don't think that people in the outback are clever. But there's something about that family, if you watch them, that you're like yes, I could see them pulling a swift or two. But they are not the most... It's just sophisticated is the word. To come up with something that long and that intent for so long and holding up for so long-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eventually something's gonna fall through.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And I think that explains why she got caught doing something because she kept like seeing all this shit happen and then you're like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She wants it on camera.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, wants it on camera. It's like the pot thing flew!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean that happens-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the unfortunate thing that happens with paranormal stuff is that people want to be believed so badly and they want people to believe their stories or their theories so badly they fake things thinking that-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This'll help.
MARCUS PARKS
It'll help and they get caught every single fucking time. And it just ends up setting back the entire movement like untold... I mean it just doesn't help. Don't ever fake anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's why people don't believe.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's why people don't believe at all. Which I do understand but it's not that I completely utter 100% believe. I just think that it's a little bit more subtle-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Than haunted or not haunted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's not a briefcase full of Bigfoot guts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Not yet.
MARCUS PARKS
Now near the end of the first month, Tony Healy and Paul Cropper, the authors of our main source for this series, arrived at 90 McMinns Drive hoping to experience some poltergeist activity. And they discovered that stones only flew when the married couple were together, Andrew and Kirsty. For example, Andrew had taken a construction job where no activity took place. But just as soon as Kirsty showed up to work as a cook on the job site, stones started flying. And every coffee mug vanished from the mess hall only to be discovered standing upright on the roof of the surrounding huts or on top of tall posts. That happened several times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's super weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. That's hard to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Kirsty and Andrew just laughed it off as a prank because their story was well known by this point. But the activity was taken more seriously when a knife disappeared and was found in a locked cold storage room, stabbed into the hanging carcass of a pig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless he just wanted fucking pork belly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As far as Kirsty went, they said that she was polite, friendly, and quite good looking but she rarely smiled or laughed. And according to Healy and Cropper, this is common amongst people who attract poltergeists. I think they're just going by this woman and Minnie Bowen.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I guess gothy people can sort of attract it.
ED LARSON
Haunted!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's haunted.
MARCUS PARKS
Haunted.
ED LARSON
They are haunted, they're literally haunted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, haunted people don't often giggle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're scared.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the landlords of 90 McMinns Drive threatened to throw everyone out because the house had been so trashed after the poltergeist activity escalated in early to mid April. The landlords filed for eviction but the tenants defended themselves by saying they had no control over the poltergeist, so why should they be the ones thrown out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get it.
MARCUS PARKS
In the end, the magistrate decided that most of the damage to the house was superficial and could be easily repaired at the expense of the tenants and declared that there would therefore be no eviction. Now eventually Healy and Cropper finally got their poltergeist show. One night pebbles began falling from the ceiling. And while Healy and Cropper were overjoyed, Kirsty left wearily and said here we go again. And with this, Healy and Cropper were convinced that this was not a hoax. Simon Potter of the Northern Territory Skeptics Association however declared that it was indeed a hoax. This was his idea for how they pulled it off. He said that they were faking it by putting pebbles and other objects on a ceiling fan. And when the fan was turned on, the objects gained enough speed, then would fly off and appear to fall from out of nowhere.
ED LARSON
And not fall that fast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
ED LARSON
They would kind of be on a-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The little thing, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's possible.
MARCUS PARKS
But this does not explain the thermal imaging or the fact that the objects were uniformly warm. Unless of course-
ED LARSON
Heated fan.
MARCUS PARKS
The ceiling fan was heated.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that doesn't mean anything.
MARCUS PARKS
That doesn't make any sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not anything.
ED LARSON
Then why even have the fan at all?
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. You're just gonna blow hot air?
MARCUS PARKS
That doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's the point of that? Set a fire.
MARCUS PARKS
An impartial journalist named Frank Robson however, writing for the Sydney Herald Good Weekend Magazine, declared the poltergeist legitimate in his adorably titled article 'Humpty Boo'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that's cute!
MARCUS PARKS
He noted that the pebbles fell at unnaturally slow speeds, made unnatural sounds when they landed, and did not bounce or move once they landed. That's the interesting part about it.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They just boom, right to the ground.
ED LARSON
That's scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's weird. I'm looking at now Pictures too because you can kind of see the words that were written are very childlike. These words are very interesting on the wall. But this is here, this one when it just says (Australian accent) car.
MARCUS PARKS
Car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Car, skin, fire, Troy. But that's the thing is that these objects moving very strangely, just falling straight to the ground and just hitting with a thump, this is common markers in poltergeist phenomena.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I do remember some of the shit from Enfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is very similar. Enfield is the one that this like really reminds me of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Both these and the story from last week.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Furthermore a woman who worked with Robson recalled that while she was talking on the phone to Kirsty, she received several electric shocks while discussing the poltergeist. This was pretty fairly close to the thing that was described by the woman who talked to the haunted sex worker over the phone, where she would say-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, weird shit would jump through the phone.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which we all now know is the hitchhiker phenomenon that George Knapp talked about. Many people have talked about how a lot of times if you do encounter something like this, you go home and then weird shit starts happening in your house. They don't know why.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as where people landed on the entire event, some say that the residents of 90 McMinns Drive did it for the money. But the only cash they ever made was a $400 appearance fee for Today Tonight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's again-
MARCUS PARKS
No one ever makes money on this stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was like two guys, right. It was like Whitley Strieber made actual legit money.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the family from the Amityville house, they started it, they made money but because they engineered the whole thing.
ED LARSON
And the Warrens.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the Lutz family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the Warrens helped, did work with them on that. But they really don't... I guess that's what it is. Watch the documentary, watch the footage of them. Honestly it's on YouTube. I'm saying to the listener. They're kind of like okay. I don't know. It just feels weird watching them all kind of fool everyone. Like I don't think they got it in them.
MARCUS PARKS
Nope. Healy and Cropper meanwhile believe that the death of the resident's friend Troy was the incident that brought the poltergeist to their home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh because he died screaming on fire like literally covered in gasoline in his own car?
MARCUS PARKS
Well housemate Doug Murphy was very close to Troy. Healy and Cropper however are reticent to declare Troy to be the ghost and instead suggests that it was Doug Murphy's psychic anguish that fueled the poltergeist, which is why the name Troy appeared until the residents told the poltergeist to stop. The other ingredient in this so-called psychic stew, as Healy and Cropper put it, was the extreme anger of a former resident named Stavros Kanaris who was evicted from 90 McMinns Drive in 1993 after his building business failed. Kanaris' wife apparently put a curse on the bank that contributed to Stavros' failure and their combined anger was so incredibly potent that it possibly served as the seed that grew into the poltergeist at Humpty Doo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That does not necessarily make sense to me.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. Dude, it's fucking Ghostbusters II.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? You're right. It's bad vibes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's bad vibes. It's like if you're in this... Two people that are in a house that are angry all the time, they're just painting the walls with fuck energy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Not fuck energy but fucked up energy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then someone, these other people come into the house with this extreme grief and it just sort of fucking... Just something just goes pop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you've ever been through, if you go through one of these where you have to kind of, you lose all of your things, I imagine it's very stressful.
ED LARSON
I like to curse every bank I go in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's different.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, of course.
ED LARSON
Just walk in, just being like I curse you!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I curse!
ED LARSON
Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
Now in all, the Humpty Doo poltergeist hung around for about 14 weeks and a lot of people saw a lot of really weird shit. But the strangest of all was seen by one of the residents' friends, a guy named Brett Styles. See around the halfway point the residents would wake up to find a thick covering of pebbles on their cars. They noticed long shallow troughs in their gravel driveway, as though pebbles had been vacuumed up by an object. And as it went, their friends saw a small unidentified flying object above the house. Like as was seen with the Large family a century earlier, it was spherical and black but it had a 2 ft long stream of gravel trailing behind it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
So it could very well be that there was not only an intelligence behind the poltergeist at Humpty Doo but some sort of mysterious technology as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or it's just something we don't understand about our connection to either like our own brains creating these type of things, also this stuff appearing throughout all of history in different forms.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like the idea of seeing a ghost; seeing a UFO with gravel behind it is to me the same equivalent as back in the day seeing like a fairy or like they've been talking about this. It's all very similar and it's extremely strange. And what I find interesting the most is the fact that all of these stories are so similar. And before these guys compiled all these stories, how in the living fuck would all of these people know in these disparate parts of the country-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How their stories line up with each other.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's so interesting. I think part of the thing that proves your thesis here is that like this story, like the Humpty Doo poltergeist was a nationwide story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Like it was a massive national story in the mid 90s. And today the people who run Humpty Doo don't know anything about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're shutting us down. They don't want us to come!
MARCUS PARKS
Well they just don't... I think they just don't know.
ED LARSON
They're like please leave us alone, we live all the way in Humpty Doo to be forgotten.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's the thing, if you want to talk about something, talk about the fucking gigantic crocodile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We talk about the crocodile. But listen, guys, if you want people to come to the crocodile, start with the ghost.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
ED LARSON
Or I'm starting to think it's aliens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I think that we're really seeing with the capital-
ED LARSON
They can make things float.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Capital P Phenomenon does express itself in many different ways.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Maybe the spaceship runs on rocks. And then the rocks are the poo poo from the spaceship, the exhaust.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you see I feel like we've entered into an area that's not as sophisticated.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What I'm saying is so again, wizened beyond words, international traveler-
MARCUS PARKS
Wizened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
International lover, Henry Zebrowski. I've really learned a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And grown.
MARCUS PARKS
You have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And matured.
MARCUS PARKS
As have we all.
ED LARSON
I still think it's alien poop.
MARCUS PARKS
Patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft. And eddietunes.com.
ED LARSON
Yay!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Get his merch, get his merch. Hail UFO poop is coming out soon, he's selling UFO poop in little bags-
ED LARSON
Yeah, that's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like they do with the moose poop in Canada.
ED LARSON
Man, I remember one time I went to Hoover Dam with my mom and right at the register they were selling Hoover Dam rocks three for 10 bucks and she bought them and then we went out in the parking lot and it was just filled with the rocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was like when I got my Bigfoot cast. Also I forgot to bring up there was an extremely similar story in Tucson, Arizona that I was looking at too with the rocks. But we don't get a lot of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it doesn't matter.
ED LARSON
It's desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
ED LARSON
Desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Desert. Same.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. Well go down to lastpodcastontheleft.com. I think that by this point we are still in Australia.
MARCUS PARKS
I think we might have like one or two shows left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you come to those shows.
MARCUS PARKS
I think we might have like Perth left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perth. I think it's Perth.
MARCUS PARKS
At the very least we got Perth left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to see y'all in Perth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want party in Perth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where the fuck do we party in Perth?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I want to apologize to you in person for how much I've talked about how smelly you are over the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He has mentioned that people-
MARCUS PARKS
I've mentioned it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In Perth were specifically smelly on the last tour. But I think honestly everybody I've been around, I mean New Zealand's not smelly.
MARCUS PARKS
No. And it's also not Australia.
ED LARSON
I was told that Perth is the Florida of Australia and that makes me very excited to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely correct. It feels exactly like Florida.
ED LARSON
Fuck yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we're gonna have fun.
ED LARSON
I can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We better have fun. Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. What bar should we go to in Perth? Because I'd love to know where to hang out.
ED LARSON
Also Side Stories, coming to Chicago September 13th, still got some tickets left. Come and check us out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come check out this shit.
ED LARSON
We're at the Park West Theater.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You're gonna love it.
MARCUS PARKS
And for all our shows in London, Reykjavik, fucking Chicago, Chicago show is sold out actually; New York City and Los Angeles, lastpodcastontheleft.com is where you can buy tickets for all those shows. And check out all the streams. Twitch.tv/LPNTV. And follow us on Instagram and TikTok @LPontheleft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye bye everyone, bye bye!
MARCUS PARKS
Buh bye.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Hail rocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, hey. It's a rock world, we're just living in it.
MARCUS PARKS
I love rocks.
ED LARSON
I know you do.
MARCUS PARKS
I hope to come home with rocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll get stopped in customs.
ED LARSON
I don't think he will.
MARCUS PARKS
I fucking brought human bones through before.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Don't say it in the microphone.
MARCUS PARKS
It's only bad if you bring it into Australia. If you leave with a rock, I think they're fine with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, right?
MARCUS PARKS
They got a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so.
MARCUS PARKS
They got a lot of rocks.
ED LARSON
Always leave a rock.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.