The House That Bled Human Blood | Haunted With One Strange Thing

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very spooky hi hi everyone hi welcome to an extra special episode of two girls one ghost haunted with one strange thing we are loving these Crossovers and having all kinds of podcasters and friends join us on our show and share their stories and share their formats of their podcast and this is an extra special one because we were introduced to Laura and Maura through our friend Sarah Turney a shared friend and oh my gosh are we glad we did or were because we just this episode

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contains one of the most fascinating stories I think Korean you and I can agree that we've ever heard we were I'm uh yeah words what even are they yeah it's a story where you're gonna have so many different theories pop into your head and it's just a mystery to figure out what exactly happened at this very special haunted house which Laura and Maura have spent years trying to figure out and then they shared their expertise and their knowledge with us in the most fun way so you get to hear yes a little bit about them about this haunted house and you can also track and you can also check out their podcast one strange thing wherever you listen to podcasts and then part two or part one however you want to listen to them they come out the same day yes we are on their feed also sharing a familiar story of Jeff the Mongoose so check out that episode over on one strange thing and also just listen to One strange thing because as

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you will hear in this episode Laura and Maura's storytelling and Laura's voice because Laura's the one who mostly does the talking on one strange thing is mesmerized if you were looking for some rhythmic storytelling this is it for you this is it baby there are many strange

The Robert the Doll curse

things out in the world and they they seem to find all of them so yes check it out we hope you enjoyed this episode okay we were already teased for the ghost story so Laura I'm putting you on the spot ready to know all about it is it a ghost story is it a haunting is it a curse it's a little bit of maybe all three but that's kind of what we do right is we leave somewhere in the middle on our show I will say as a quick teaser too we we tend towards skepticism in our work Laura and I but we don't so we are very much Skeptics but we did

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have something weird happen a few weeks ago we had released this story about this cursed doll in Florida which one his name is Robert wait Robert his name is Robert oh and Laura are you okay when you find out what happened you'll see why we would love to be able to explain this and we cannot um so okay as I started writing this episode I got the worst migraine I have ever had in in like years years I was like could not see on the couch for days for days we recorded the episode Laura got a headache for days what the hell days and so it turns out that Robert is very Persnickety about being photographed and we assume that that also extends to having his story told without permission if you meet Robert you're supposed to

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say hello take his picture and then thank him for allowing you to take his picture or he will destroy your life and so we did not ask Robert's permission before writing this or recording this and we were both like knocked out with headaches that is why I don't know where like it's unconnected to anything else yeah yeah what happened how did it end we released the episode and a couple days later it was fine we were considering sending him candy which is you know what you do I was gonna ask yeah because Robert doesn't like to be made fun of and on our show okay when Mara says we're not quite Skeptics we are we exist in a place of in the middle of Wonder right so we never say something does or doesn't happen we we live in between belief right but we always tell stories with a little humor right we never make fun of anyone but we

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play right we like to play I did make fun of Robert you did we cut most of it out um what did you yeah what did you say she made repeatedly apologies in advance to Robert because I'm just repeating my past mistakes this is not how I feel about um I did call him ugly repeatedly I mean he is a bit Swiss cheesy there was one bit about how he had been his skin had been like pockmarked um by bugs and we cut that because I was like it's like the worst acne you've ever seen it's so ugly and so not only did that have offended people with acne it turns out that Robert also probably didn't yeah he's sensitive yeah writing this that I figured out that it was probably not a great idea to call him ugly I had already written like a 3 000 word script where I had called him ugly routinely and she didn't even quite say it like that it was much more lighthearted and not quite so mean but I

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don't think it mattered so yeah we both had migraines for two weeks but I'm leaving a little nervous discussing it now but I just got my meds refilled so so you're prepared yeah it happens again I'll be convinced I know I was just wondering I was like what if we are all struck with like nausea and headaches at this very so thank you Robert for your grace and good and good spirits and yeah sorry we talked about Robert before right Karen I I don't know who we did I have no I it was so early on in our podcast and I have no idea if we were respectful or not I I hope probably not I hope we had some respects but I don't know we have been really haunted so maybe it just has never left and it's been Robert yeah we never know who or what it is it's interesting though that

Robert's tour and celebrity

once you guys released the episode that it it all the migraines and headaches started to roll back because that's I wonder what the sort of limbo was for

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was he trying to urge you to tell his story quicker which would kind of go against what we've been told about asking for a rewrite we don't know right or was he just like yeah it's too late now so I guess because move on you said you edited out a lot of the Laura edited out okay that's what worked as I presented acne as a teen and I was like we're cutting the acne too yeah I did too and I was fully ready to be like this is the worst thing oh yeah I got bangs which was the ugliest thing on me but to cover all my acne because I had like Mounds like I literally it looked like horns coming out above both of my eyebrows and so I don't want to say that Robert has that but the effect is similar so maybe Robert appreciated that you cut that out and so and we definitely at the end of the episode we retooled it slightly in the edit process so that the ending is very much like

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Robert we love you would you like us and so maybe he heard that and he was like okay they're cool right oh wait I'm gonna get candy I have fans did you guys see the video some woman who has a channel I think where she goes to different haunted places she had posted a video only maybe a month or two ago where she was at the Museum where Robert the Doll lives and Zach Bagans Museum in Vegas and was begging Robert the Doll to possess her little like replica of Robert the doll that she had brought in without that wait Robert's at Zacks now no two separate music Robert I was gonna say I'm sorry he tore I thought he was in Florida right he is in Florida but he doesn't believe he's on an island in Florida so occasionally he leaves the island and like goes to the mainland for our natural conventions he may have been on tour Robert on tour I could have been misremembering I think clearly Sabrina was probably the one that presented this

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information since I'm walking it was definitely Aaron yeah

Strange true stories

have you guys had any other experiences through the different topics that you guys discuss any other we've had some people um so we cover a lot of different kind of stuff you know so we cover and we try to cover stuff that most people haven't heard of because we dig really deep into like Regional News archives and find these little lost stories of just strange things that happen to really normal people and one of our very favorites is this UFO Abduction that most people haven't heard of of this trucker who was driving several tons of ketchup and mustard across Virginia and you know I'm ready yeah and disappear the whole thing is perfect and disappeared for 12 hours and woke up at the place he was supposed to be with no memories after this blinding light had come into his truck and you know feeling this feeling of going up in the air and the story is just wild the episode's

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called you know what episode number nine I think somewhere in that room yeah but it was just a wild ride it involves aliens talking to them for weeks afterward and him showing up places it's totally soaked in water you know all kinds of stuff oh my gosh how perfect that we're recording this on May 4th May the 4th be with you because that's how I'm going to celebrate today I'm going to listen to that episode yeah absolutely something about me is that I desperately want to be abducted by aliens and so all I do is just like listen to stories of other people getting abducted and I'm like okay what do I need to do in my life to replicate this this situation a little bit like asking Robert to possess something for you like unlocking something that you maybe wish totally find some condiments go to Virginia you know okay okay that trucker story is wild his son found us oh wait his son found you you said so sometimes the people who involved will find us and his son found us and was like this is

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the best thing that has ever been written or said about my father and it wasn't it wasn't our spam and of course you know I'll we also work in True Crime so we pay a lot of it in a separate way right so we pay a lot of attention to how we talk about people but when I get an email just called the trucker was my dad I'm like oh my gosh you know you're like oh my God I told this respectfully I think I told it well let me open this and he was like this was great I loved it good whatever nice so yeah because we're writing about stuff that has happened generally post 1950 a lot of these people are very much still alive and if they listen to podcasts they they stumble upon us occasionally I have two questions one well I forgot my second one uh I will let you know if I think of my second one but how did you both get

Origins of One Strange Thing

into the strange and unusual has it always been has it been a lifelong interest or

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how did yeah how did you find yourselves here do you want to tell the story of how this show started because like you can tell that story and I can explain how I was raised um so I mean I just the X-Files as an early Teen um and that was sort of my first foray into the genre um I was not raised especially superstitious um I was not raised by people who are interested in the idea that aliens Walk Among Us or anything like that um so it's really been a more like in the context of fiction interest for me um and only now am I sort of realizing that there may be more Credence to that sort of thing than I thought um but the show started because Laura and I in September it was really more like early summer of 2020. so the pandemic had been going for a couple months um we were working together on the fall line which is strictly like hyper

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researched hyper ethical True Crime um and we were looking for sort of a creative Outlet so that we didn't go insane right because there was so much heaviness in the topics you were discussing so we wanted to do something fun and humorous and like fun to produce and fun to make um and that hopefully would help other people have a little fun too because it was such a terrible can we curse on your show super shitty like it was terrible shitty awful time um and so we had sort of been kicking around the idea of doing another show for a bit but we settled on what if we look for actual instances of the bizarre and the Supernatural and we present them in a way that is both straight faced but also like with a wink and a nod um so the first episode we did and we didn't know if it would go anywhere we didn't know if it was the only one we'd

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ever do um was about this ring that a high school sweetheart couple had exchange a class ring um so the boy gave it to the girl um the girl set it down on the sink in the mall in like the 80s I forget when it was 70s or 80s set it down on the sink while she washed her hands because it was a little bit too big um and then left the mall bathroom realized that she forgot the Ring went back the ring was gone decades later the ring shows up several feet under the ground in the woods in Finland and the person who founded was just metal detecting dug it up posted online figured out the clap like this person was finished he had no idea what a class ring was figured out who the school was posted in class Facebook groups and the ring found its way back to that girl in Maine oh in

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Maine her husband had died her husband had died she had married got back to her and she has it that is I I am like holding myself because I have bumps yeah so we came out the gate with that one and I think that is probably why we were able to keep going because that was the one that like we showed advertisers that was the memo

Research and team insights

um and so we we have just gone from there but there's all kinds of stories like that if you know where to look there's all kinds of stories like that that was my second question thank you for reminding me how do you do your research you were saying you do read like looking at Regional archives is that in person because how do we get in there so okay we're we have a bit of an advantage here I was an English Professor for over a decade I'm a trained archival researcher I also do primary research like I go out in the field and do research um Mara is a trained researcher so if we can't find something I'm very used to

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calling libraries and sweet talking Librarians for the trucker episode um we actually have a copy of one article I knew existed but couldn't get and she sent it to me and she said I'm really sorry there's going to be something on this right and I thought it was going to be like coffee or something no someone had snuck into the library and put a giant stamp of a UFO across the entire thing so that I have a picture I can send it to you this huge stamp someone had put across it like someone's like this is what I'm doing today in like 1984 or something um so that's how that's what we do so we of course have the same subscriptions that everyone else has um but we also you know will go to archives special collections sometimes call uh you know various folks oftentimes I'll get on Ancestry and do stuff um you know and we have just you know connections from our lives being researchers in True Crime as well so I hope you understand that by telling us this you two are now going to become our

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resources oh yeah when we can't find something like this yeah oh yeah Laura you should definitely talk about the lizard man as your origin story well okay yeah delicious I also want to add guys public libraries and this is for all your listeners too Librarians love to help especially they love to find hard to find stuff call special collections like if you have a date range they will help you we just recently started getting more into that but because we have you know two episodes a week we're like okay how do we start researching months in advance so we have the time to do all that rather than researching a week before we record because that limits the amount of time you have I don't say too like it's not just Laura and I doing all of this we have a team of research assistants who generally also work on the fall line um but one of their homework assignments is to sort of always be searching for keywords like aliens or paranormal or unexplained or whatever in

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newspaper archives and then they pull screenshots and we have these you know hundred Page Long Google Docs where they're just pooling stuff for us team sounds way you're making Sabrina sound like this is something that can easily happen these are a couple these are a couple of my old students mostly Sabrina um who like work for us on a very part-time basis a couple hours a month to pull things but you could totally do that so don't think you have to have like a team right I mean it's a team of doing stuff that we don't personally have to do yeah I just don't want her to think that she has to like go assemble like a Marvel team 40 hours a week oh I'm for sure about to assemble a Marvel team a couple of uh grad students who um know how to do research and have access to a college library because they have all those subscriptions that are extra yeah and they can go in there and do a little searchy searching for you and pull some articles I feel like this is this episode has become not only a get to know you and hear all of your spooky stories but it has also become a business lesson for Corinne and I yeah

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we're learning yeah we're happy to learn from you guys too because I think you're really really good at the like interacting with people and like so that Laura and I only ever have to talk to each other yeah which we need to remember to stop doing and actually like talk to listeners well how lucky are we that we got to pull you in to this yeah

Personal paranormal beliefs

okay wait what is the lizard man oh yeah okay so you have to understand that I was raised by a benign conspiracy theorist okay and by that I mean like not the one who's like the government but the kind who's like aliens do you know like my mom oh that's uh yeah like my mom believes in ghost my mom believes in Bigfoot like intensely right we all would love her parents yeah my mom yes let's have them on next but my dad phone a friend can we bring her in right now I love it my dad's along for the ride okay but my mom my mom even will believe in like the ones where you're like really

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like the Loveland Frog she's like maybe maybe the Frog that's correct you know that's me so I'm accused to say it's not if we have no proof that it's not that's my mom and so I was a really little kid in the late 80s in South Carolina um and that's you can that that's where the accent comes in um when the lizard man Panic struck and this is the most famous uh Cryptid in South Carolina and he was spotted by a teenager and he was just running amok about two or three Towns over um we moved a lot so and my dad was a newspaper reporter at the time so he didn't get to cover that because he was on investigations like serious investigations but there was like these you have to Google it because the 14 who saw him did like a sketch um and it looks kind of like that leprechaun sketch if you've seen it you know of like like yeah um but the lizard man was coming out of the swamps and attacking not people but their cars like chasing cars and like ripping parts of cars off and like it

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was just this huge month or two long a Cryptid Panic happening in this really small area of South Carolina um and just was this huge thing and there was you know documentary Crews and now they have a lizard Man festival and it's become this giant South Carolina tail and it's kind of a really original and interesting Cryptid but I actually got to be there when it was happening except I was so little that I didn't really understand what was happening because Z was on TV at the same time which was a really weird TV show about aliens you know because I was like in like well it was really long time ago um it was but it was basically people were in human suits and eating rats and stuff it was too scary I wasn't allowed to watch it um but there was ads on TV at the same time and I was like blending all this stuff together and I was like all right well all this is real and yeah it just were you scared you were so young I was just I was just confused and my mom of course you can

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talk about this stuff with absolute Authority she's like you know not like look at this crazy zany stuff she's like there's a lizard man on the loose which is interesting because at a young age I feel like I mean Chris and I talk about this a lot when kids are experiencing this and their parents are accepting of it they know no different which is I appreciate because then it's like that a child doesn't feel like they are doing something wrong or like they're crazy for having these experiences and then it sounds like Laura just became part of your everyday life it did and my mom was always seeing UFOs and saying their spirits and stuff and I of course was the very logical child and I was like well I don't know about that but just you know growing up and just accepting for a fact there was a lizard man running amok you know three four miles over I think that did shape me in a lot of ways the lizard man is now part of one strange thing Canon yeah we do have an episode on him yeah wow

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it's so weird that the lizard band was just really hating on automobiles it's yeah that's such a strange sort of like what did the cars do to irritate his swamp area because South Carolina um does have some swampy areas which you wouldn't think necessarily but there's it's actually like an environmental justice story if you dig deep enough this is this is her side coming out I'm over here being like oh maybe they just have an appetite for metal maybe it's lacking in this metal ingredients eating sheet metal like is that yeah yeah maybe it was there was a new residential neighborhood that was put in near it was like an offshoot of my parents neighborhood and for years everyone in the town was trying so hard to fight against this neighborhood being developed and what a lot of people did would they would they would survey the land and put up like hunting cameras and nature cameras and try to document all of the animals that this was their

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habitat and that was the big stance against this residential area being built it was built but I love the idea that this lizard man could be used as an argument to protect the swamps like that's incredible like you can't there are regular frogs and then there's also this giant frog lizard man who lives here I love that I want to be in that room when someone presents that no we we love the lizard man we tend to take a really favorable stance toward Cryptids like the Cryptids can do no wrong us too yeah all right we're all in the right place I guess we one of our merch shirts is uh Bigfoot is my boyfriend because despite Corinne getting married at the end of this month she has a side piece in its Bigfoot as you should I feel like you should allow room for that the hall I just want to I'm waiting for my big my own Bigfoot hunting show to happen but what would you do if you found Bigfoot probably perish on the spot from

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excitement heart attack I don't know he smells though too so you might faint just from the smell I would hope you at least get to like hold hands yeah I agree I agree Sabrina once asked me she said if Bigfoot was just like an actual creature that we all got to know and he started his own foot fetish only fans would you join the only fans and I was like I wouldn't because we would be thick as thieves like we'd be friends and I'd be able I'd see those little hairy niblets every single day like I don't need to pay for that subscription subscription I got Early Access well Bigfoot if you're out there we love you just like how Sabrina has been asking aliens to abduct her for years I feel like I've been very favorably speaking about Bigfoot so if he hasn't heard me yet I don't know if the bigfoots will will ever come for me but they're waiting for the right time yeah okay so Laura has the lizard man Sabrina has the alien I have the Bigfoot

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Mora what do you what are you drawing what am I begging to have happen um I would love a ghost friend I think I would love to have like and and we have stories like this um Laura actually the script I sent you last night at a non-godly hour has a ghost like this uh who's just friendly and wants to protect everyone and be friends and maybe he follows you when you move out of the house because he's just attached um I think that would be marvelous just like knock something down and let me know that you're there I I think that's sweet I'm all for we do have a ghost his name is Sven well okay a listener named our Spirits Sven we also believe Sven encompasses many spirits um but Sven has been known to pay uh listeners a visit yeah you're here so I am begging you'll get something well we are so excited you're here because when

Introducing the bleeding house

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we started talking about what the this crossover would look like you two mentioned a story that crit and I had never heard of and we were like we need to know everything and it's been so hard not to look anything up about it because you've been waiting we want to be surprised yeah we haven't we've been waiting for you guys we had some selfishness so I have so much material on this story we had to like restrain ourselves um I'll just say as a preamble I used to teach this in class wow I wish I could have taken your class it was fun I had my students um I would give it out as a topic and I would have my students do as much research as possible to like you know be like you know true or false like what could have happened so it was fun and this story actually started as an Instagram live during the pandemic the first time we ever took it for a spin as like a show was Lara doing an Instagram live during the pandemic wow so cool gotta write it gotta write

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it and so yeah what you're about to hear is a very very condensed version of events because there is so much do you plan on doing a longer less condensed version of it in the future we have one uh it's sort of a different because it's a different take on it because you know on OST I narrate you know it's a single narrator show but we wanted to do it a little differently just to have fun with you guys so Chris and I will sit back I have my coffee I'm just I'm excited for a story and please feel free to jump in if you have questions comments concerns whatever okay okay all right okay here we go so normally Lara is the host and the voice of one strange thing and I produce it we both take turns writing the show but because we're here we thought it might be fun to tell the story together it takes place in Laura's Home City and my former City Atlanta Georgia you might call this a ghost story or A Haunted House story or a really really creepy unexplained event

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we like to think of it as all three so basically it's our favorite kind of story this is the story of the Atlanta

The events of September 1987

Bleeding House Laura absolutely and I will give you our usual introduction to set the scene on one strange thing we searched the nation's News archives for stories that can't quite be explained this particular story first hit Atlanta papers in September of 1987. it's set in downtown Atlanta and a house on a residential street called Fountain Drive and the Associated Press tells us that a retired couple named Minnie and Will Winston have been living in their home there for at least 22 years many was 77 will 79 they'd been married for 40 years they had a six-room house but it gave them plenty of space because their adult children had long moved out at that point and at least two of their adult children still lived in Atlanta keep that in mind

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they were happy but unfortunately will was also suffering with an illness that he'd had for a long time so per the Associated Press he needed daily dialysis treatments which they were actually able to do at home but the treatments really tired him out so most nights he would go to bed super early his whole ritual was he would set the house alarm and then he would hit the sheets but many would stay up much later she was kind of a night owl and one of her favorite things to do was to take a late night bath so on the evening of I know right I mean same on the evening of September 8th 1987 which was a Tuesday she was still awake at 11. she's like okay bath time so she decided to set up her bath she gets in the tub she's enjoying herself totally normal Tuesday evening at least it would have been except for one strange thing I have

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chills when Minnie gathered her towel and got ready to step out of the bath she saw a puddle on the bathroom floor a red puddle spreading quickly nothing had spilled she wasn't injured instead she saw what looked like a tiny geyser bubbling up from the pool a pool spreading quickly across the bathroom floor such a dark red that it was nearly black she would later tell an Associated Press reporter quote I didn't get scared because I didn't know where it was coming from it didn't occur to her then that it might be blood why would it true crime podcast wouldn't exist for 30 years Minnie knew she had to go get will but when she left the bathroom to wake him she was met with another surprise according to the UPI she saw that five of the home's six rooms had been splattered in red liquid concentrated apparently near the air and heating

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vents but it was splashed across walls some spots would only be found way later behind furniture or tucked into corners many woke will but he didn't have any answers could someone have snuck in and splashed paint or another liquid through their house but will had set the security alarm that night as he always did and it didn't go off for the AP the Winston's called Emergency Services who responded with a fire truck the firemen took one look around saw the red all over the walls and radioed the police department officers saw no signs of a break-in no evidence of a crime the winstons were uninjured but the walls were dripping red the police were concerned as they should be because it certainly appeared that they had a house full of blood on their hands and blood has to come from somewhere or rather someone so samples were taken and sent to Grady Memorial Hospital for testing in 1987 it was simple to determine if the substance

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was blood and then to see if it was human so that night Atlanta homicide detective Steve Cartwright was in charge which is lucky for us because he went on to write a book about this case and some other cases that he worked on so we were able to read that whole thing and get some insight into his version of events wow yeah that was like handy thank you Steve um he said that when he talked to many he kind of grilled her about that red geyser and he was like are you sure there was a red geyser coming out of the bathroom floor how does that happen you know are you sure it wasn't coming from somewhere else but she was really certain and she kept saying I know what I saw and you have to understand here the winstons were totally calm they were not hysterical they were reasonable um but a little irritated because they were tired they had a house full of strangers there was a lot of possible

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blood everywhere and they were waiting for answers and they were also tired of all the questioning because they simply did not have the answers they were just as confused as everyone else

Police investigation findings

so detective Cartwright decided to do an additional search as well as the officers on the scene and he was going through looking for weapons and other evidence and one thing he mentioned was whenever he was searching a house that possibly had an intruder he always checked the washing machine which is something I'd never thought of but he said people who were running through would often throw things in a washer or dryer because who would check there like a weapon I was thinking someone was hiding that I know me too um but I'm gonna check my washer dryer every night that's a great place to stash weapons for instance which is something I had never thought of but when he went to go check the washer he only found one thing which were many slippers which had red on them and so he kind of came to her

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like Aha and she was like what I had to walk down the hall to go wake up my husband in my slippers which I was wearing when I got out of the bathtub and there's blood all over the house so I put them in the washing machine so then he went outside and he found a broom that had a little bit of red along the bottom he comes back inside with that and I assume he said aha to what she said well the firemen can tell you I tried to sweep up the blood because it's a huge mess and they told me I had to stop so that the cops could look at the blood so those explanations were pretty simple but you can kind of get the feeling from that that the police were trying to figure out what was going on because they never go straight you know something crazy meanwhile while all of this is happening the AGC reported that indeed the police verified it was human blood not animal blood and it sounds like so much human blood a lot of it now of

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course it seemed like it had been perhaps sprayed right but they couldn't figure out like from where like it hadn't been sprayed like with a gun you know like like sort of paint gun it looked like it had perhaps come up from like the HVAC vents in some way but there was no clear way that had happened in the basement um so it was just really unclear where it came from can I ask one question and maybe maybe you will answer this but did it appear to be blood from one single Source or were there multiple we'll get there okay yeah there I will say that it seemed like it all entered the house around the same time but it was in lots of different places in the house like it didn't just come up from the floor in the bathroom and then spread that was one place but then there are also other places in the house where it seems to have come right if that answers your question so we have this Blood spreading through the house but we also have the story spreading all over the place not just in

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Atlanta but in other areas as well

Theories and debunking

soon people across the country were reading about this mysterious bleeding house and they wanted to know if it was a stunt they wanted to know why the winstons had waited a little while to call police because they did and there was no real answer there except that perhaps they didn't want to get a bunch of people involved maybe one other answer but we'll get there in a minute but as the days passed simply no suspicion pointed at the Wilsons at the winstons rather and here's why per the AP the blood typing test came back as well so first we have someone on dialysis in the house right and if you're on dialysis that does involve quite a bit of blood will Winston's blood type was a got that okay many Winston's blood type A the blood type in the house oh

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so this is where things get really crazy obviously according to the UPI a Paranormal Investigator from South Georgia managed to get a tour of the home we don't really know what came of that but after that the Winston's denied further visitors they hung up the phone they wouldn't answer the door they yelled out the windows to the people who were waiting on the street to see if they could see the bleeding house that they weren't bleeding there was no blood and that they should move along the UPI wrote that the winstons suggested that die from a rug had been to blame obviously it wasn't because it was type O human blood they had another theory too that the steam from the pipes in their home had mixed with rust and traveled through the house and suddenly stained everything bright red they didn't care what the hospital tests had proved they were trying to offer up as many explanations as they could so that reporters could stop calling I mean it must have been so frustrating for them because yeah like you said all

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these people are coming in and out of their house there's no answer and they have to live they have to live in this home and I imagine if my home started bleeding and someone told me it was human blood I would have a really hard time wrapping my head around that and still live in that house so will Winston began saying to whoever would listen it was a lie that there was ever blood in this house many told the AP I still don't know where the blood came from and I'm tired of all these people asking me all these questions you have to remember too that these people are in their 70s right they are tired they want to mind their business and have their peaceful bath times and and be left alone

Skeptical views and analysis

as for the APD detective Cartwright assured news outlets that there was no Supernatural cause which is you know a pretty standard thing to point out he wasn't saying though what he thought might have happened Unsolved Mysteries was calling along with every Network detective Cartwright wanted the case resolved but where could he even start how do you solve The Impossible

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an officer was posted outside the Winston's door to deter visitors the APD closed the case citing the Winston's privacy and the lack of any discernible crime and a sergeant told the Atlanta Journal Constitution we have done a thorough investigation until such time as we have determined a crime has been committed it doesn't Merit a whole group of investigators working on it when there are homicides to be solved so Atlanta was left without answers of course no one ever talked about it again just kidding over the last few decades online sleuths have had the time to come up with some theories now I do want to get your theories it's your choice whether you want to give them to me now or after you hear the sluice theories and our opinions on them okay why do we do both okay so do you have any do you have anything you want to toss out now the first thing that comes to my mind because and and like we've prefaced we are very big into the conspiracy believe everything paranormal so we've heard

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stories where a place where there's been a crime or a death before sometimes the blood or the stains resurface we actually just heard a story from Vinnie at a Stress Factory who when we did a live show in New Brunswick New Jersey who said his was it his dad Corrine who had passed away in the house and there was one wall that no matter how many times they painted it this blood stain continued to come out of the wall um just no matter what they did so there's a part of me that wants to go down that rabbit hole where there was like a crime or something that happened in the house previously that left this stain and it continued to surface my students were with you 100 on that so I like the way you think they did

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look and couldn't find anything but of course not everything is reported in the media particularly in areas of town that don't get as much support from law enforcement so I don't think we can prove it but I don't think we can take it off the table either right well and the O the O blood appearing I mean O Negative is the universal donor blood type so it does make me think that there maybe be some more accessibility to stolen donated blood that would fit that or that maybe was being used isn't that more rare though the universal blood type isn't that right it is rare but a lot of people donate my mom is so negative so if anyone ever needs blood no I'm a positive little dumb there is a reason coming up soon why Blood was not as easy to steal that might as it might hypothetically be now I don't know how easy it is to steal blood now but there's a good reason

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I am glad you don't worry about it wrong but um these are both very good theories and

Proving the impossibility

theories that that we had to look into as well first of course the main Theory people always have completely ignoring the blood typing which I find a little irritating is that it was the Winston's own blood that they were just spraying all over the place right as people do and to be fair there is another story out there um in a different country and it's escaping me where it happened I think it was in South America of another Bleeding House that involved eventually it being solved with someone who ended up having a pretty deep vein wound on their leg and not realizing it at the time because they were elderly and like their skin tour you know and they're like where is this blood coming from but the blood typing matched that was the major difference there and that's how they tracked it and was there a geyser of blood like that that's a different thing too yeah there was no blood in the floor right and so the blood typing is just

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not going to match there um another thing is is that so with dialysis your own blood is being cleaned you know that's another thing for people to consider as well with my understanding of dialysis correct Maura yeah yeah you're not getting someone else's blood your own blood is being cleaned transfusions not not doctor creative writer yeah so please to correct if wrong but I don't think you're getting a transfusion I think your own blood's being cleaned some people said that you know well they still might have done it but still I say why right they didn't try and sell their story they didn't want the media attention they actually chased the media away um they turned down interviews they turn down attempts at documentaries they turn down don't stick on the radio they didn't even want to move so they weren't trying to get out of Elise right they were pretty upset about the whole thing and when we look at why they didn't call the cops right away it

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turned out one of their children was actually on the Atlanta police force and that is a pretty good reason why you might hesitate to immediately call the cops yeah about embarrassing your child with a spontaneously bleeding house and probably also why they called the fire department first so that all kind of comes together so another theory people have had is so what if it wasn't them what if it was their landlord what if their landlord was like I need to get these people out I want to sell this house right you got to remember Atlanta is a very hot property now it's expensive to live here now if you haven't lived here for a long time like some of us have um but back in 1987 it was not a hot property um Atlanta especially downtown Atlanta was pretty distressed the land was not worth a lot and having in place good renters who paid the rent you know were nice quiet older people and had lived there for 20 something years I mean you want to keep them in place you're not trying to get rid of them the house is

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not going to sell for very much the property value was something like seven thousand dollars it was not very much money so why would you want to you know scare them out with the blood of all things right that seems more expensive than you know trying to evict them yeah so another take is that some people thought that the winstons went out procured blood right and sprayed it all over the house not to get attention from the Press but because they were lonely and wanted their children to pay attention to them there's absolutely no backup for that except that I think it has some sort of poetic appeal to people like we need our children to pay attention to us let's spray our house with blood and make up a blood geyser Story I mean I think that saying like you know your Dad's sick we miss you might work better I do like the creativity of of that version of the story no the house is bleeding please come visit your parents is that something that like 80 year old Sabrina would do

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honestly I think 30 year old Sabrina would do that too where's the progression of events like you would assume that they would they would have tried some things ahead of time with their kids and not just go straight to dumping blood and ruining their whole house yeah come over you know we're having I mean I might honestly like don't do this but like maybe set a small fire first something yeah or just one room one tiny one not the whole little fire even with

Final thoughts on the mystery

all of these little scenarios it comes down to the problem of getting the blood which is what we want to get into now Mara's gonna tell you why it just wasn't gonna be something that was going to happen in 1987. wait can I present one more thing yes because you said it was coming it appeared to congeal or show itself more around the vents what if someone crawled in the house and died in the air ducts

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and or it somehow was producing a lot of blood in the air ducts and then when the air kicked on it or the heat forcefully splattered how much right yeah that's true and also how much blood would be coming from One Singular body it feels like there was a lot yes I did have some students suggest that someone was spraying it into the HVAC system which again does make sense right or someone even crawling into it so I don't think that's a bad Theory you know I just think that eventually I mean unless they were like we're not calling the cops I don't care if the house smells terrible thing yeah we weren't calling them again and the forcefulness of the air that would have to project all of the blood everywhere that also probably does oh yeah because we had a cooling and we had splatter and this is something we get into the whole version of the episode it's not a uniform spray pattern or anything right and wouldn't there be guts and like other weird substances if there was a body in the vents probably also this feels like

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a murder mystery party and I'm having something okay so there was no we don't as far as we're aware there was nobody in the vents um the reason that it would have been really hard for the winstons or somebody else to get blood and spray it all over the place is twofold number one detective Cartwright called all over town none of the blood banks in Atlanta were missing bags and remember it's 1987. this is during the AIDS epidemic so blood is scarce because people aren't donating and it's under really high security because our understanding of how AIDS was spreading was basically confined to blood but not much more sophisticated than that right so blood was really really hard to get your hands on prank was possible but the house alarm was set and it would have been really really hard to get blood when many saw the puddle in the bathroom she had been alone in the bath

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so where could it have come from it could have come from the basement right someone could have you know stuck it up through the floorboards and tiles somehow but it sprayed on the walls it didn't seem like it was coming from the vents entirely because there was the geyser on the bathroom floor and so naturally people have turned to the supernatural explanation right according to the winstons they had never experienced anything like that nobody has come forward to say something violent or ghostly or otherwise otherworldly had occurred in the home it seems like a normal house on a normal street and even more than that it seems that it was only that one single performance so the house has not bled before or since not that the winstons reported because they continued to live there and that house still stands today and people still live in it and it's still a rental to my understanding so you know

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obviously if you live in Atlanta don't Google it and don't go there don't bother anybody um but you know it's still there and if it is misbehaved again in these later decades no one has been willing to admit it

Podcast wrap up and outtakes

so the the story of the Atlanta Bleeding House has not been disproven and there's simply no logical explanation for the blood see I know you said don't look it up and don't bother anyone but what about look it up and stay you know monitor it in case it goes on the market again and and then there's a watcher season two about you stalking these poor people in their house I I think that if do you want to move a move I think I think if the house is on the market and you tour it that is absolutely legitimate both kosher yeah okay yeah thank you for the permission I mean I have done a drive I've done a little a little drive myself you know

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just just don't it's not the creepy way right like not flowing to a crawl yeah right yeah normal Drive I feel like this was a missed business opportunity for whoever owns that home that continues to rent it out to not just make it a hub where people can come and do paranormal investigations and like try themselves to understand what could have happened by being within the walls and I mostly say that because I want to go there selfishly yeah you don't have to be inside you know like this would be you know this is not Savannah you know so we don't have the same kind of haunted attractions here people will come though I'm curious I would come I would too I'm so curious if there was something specific about that day that it happened the date the what I don't know importance it might have in history or historically on that land specifically I don't know but it makes me think of other stories we've

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read or we've heard where it's like XYZ terrible thing happened here on this day many many years ago and for some reason it has resurfaced that would be interesting to look into it's a good question and Atlanta does have a storied history of awful things happening there you know the the stories of ghosts that do exist are often very much Civil War related right the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War by General Sherman there's a lot of lore potentially as if as with so many places in this country there's a lot of atrocities to dig into it's a good line of reasoning and that's not something I think that we went super deep on okay another pitch this might be a little bit more outlandish but I don't know how you two feel about time but I very much believe it's a construct that we've kind of made up and based on stories we've heard I kind of believe everything is

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happening at once and what if it's not from the past but from the future like something bloody will happen in that house in the future well and alternately Sabrina I was going to say what if there is some sort of alternate Dimension like another version of this life very close to the one wherein bled into hours for a moment and quite literally left its stain with whatever was happening at that same time just in another version of our current life that is so poetic will you please write our show life I mean life happens symbolically a lot of times I mean I think my mom would like this Theory the best so this would be like Janice approved yeah she's one of us yeah an endorsement for sure the hard thing with that is I mean with all of these theories is there's no way to proved and like with so many stories that we cover the the fascinating thing is all of these people who don't want to believe who don't care who aren't interested in

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talking about us on a podcast who have been roped in and have no way to rationalize it right detective Cartwright wrote a book on this he seems like a normal cop who got wrapped up in this thing that he still cannot explain he thinks he thinks they did it somehow in his book it's implied but he cannot prove it you know and some slippers are not good evidence and to me it still comes down to motive there's absolutely no motive to irritate yourself when you're in your late 70s motive or mean okay so yeah so knowing what you know and having so much research that hasn't even been included in in any of the podcast versions of the story you've told what are your theories what do you think could have happened I have no idea and I usually have a pretty good idea which is what I mean by our skepticism right we can usually come up with something that seems likely I I don't like I am dancing closer and closer to

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the like dimensional Rift Theory because I don't I don't know particularly because of the historical context right during the AIDS epidemic this was a super weird stunt if it was a stunt and it was also nearly impossible I had a team of brilliant you know 20 early 20-somethings on this a couple years ago in class and none of us could do it you know you know that's what inspired me to research it myself and I was like all good it's all good on this and I was like well I guess I won't get on this I haven't figured it out do you know if they have any of the bloody evidence left over like I just based on like you know how science has evolved and I just my non you know I have no expertise here but my investigative side I'd want to run tests on those things so let me say this as politic as possible um they closed the case right so we work um semi regularly with APD for other um

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podcasts and they've moved evidence rooms like three times so the likelihood that they will have evidence on a closed case is like nil and again they closed it because there was no evidence of a crime right if there's evidence of a crime and you close a case or the case stays open it's more likely that you have some evidence left over because at least it was a crime they couldn't come to a conclusion that a crime had been committed here so what do you think would happen if this happened today because I feel like if a bunch of blood was found even though there was no evidence of a crime you would assume a crime has happened and it would become a massive investigation they would assume that someone was filming a discovery show I think you know that would be like Zach and then they wanted to do pranks yeah and so I think I mean I think they would do a lot more testing you know they'd have that ability and so and they'd go in with lights and testing and they'd be

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busting out the IGG and you know getting on Jed match and you know figuring out precisely whose blood it is and so that would lead to some answers pretty quickly I think unless of course it's someone's blood from like 1844. or but how do you get blood from 18 I know exactly and then that gets fun again right so then that's and that's that's where Korean rolls back in with their theory if ever it happened the same in 2023 as it did in 1987. I think people would be much quicker to assume that someone was pulling a prank either the winstons for some reason or someone on the winstons right whether it was the landlord whether it was like an estranged child whatever I malfeasance seems like a more reasonable explanation here and also because we live in an era of social media right the notion of having done this for attention is much more realistic right because there are many more people in Atlanta now than there were in 1987. there are many more

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cameras in people's pockets now than there were in 1987. I think like the idea of it having been done for the sake of spectacle makes more sense now than it does for two people in their 70s and their land worth a ton now yeah that's a big thing too you know like so any of the above so the fact that it took place in 1987 is Kind of Perfect in a lot of ways in terms of the mystery this is blowing my mind I'm like I my mind went to vampires at one point when you I know how do I even get there like the geyser of blood is what is taking me away from a lot of the theories too because how do you explain that it kind of makes me think of monster house a little bit too like the house is alive it does feel like the house is remembering something I I keep going back to that too so that's as close as I get is some sort of time thing wow so this is incredible we're glad you we're glad you liked it if you want to

1:00:00

hear the longer version you know we have it out there but we on our food we like we we like a good mystery so I was like talking to you guys that's true well I'm excited because we're gonna share we're gonna share a mystery on your show that I'm so excited to hear your take on we're excited too because our listeners are used to a very you know like proper presentation of I just I narrate at them and then I'm like all right goodbye friends and there's no time for discussion so I think they'll view this as like a fun you know party to hear people talking and discussing yes creepy absolutely I do feel very lulled by your voices and your storytelling like I truly I felt I felt like for a moment people were probably watching Karin and I just react to listening to something like I know I forgot I was on on video for a minute I wanted to lay down wow the highest compliment we've so

1:01:00

experience got a comment recently from uh some folks we work with in the promotion realm who like people with kids listen to the show and so sometimes we do content warnings when the show gets a little gory or scary or whatever um and so we had a promotion playing that's just Laura's voice doing our trailer which is pretty innocuous um on a show for children I won't name the show um and so they tried it with their audience and apparently we frightened a lot of four-year-olds I'm frightened about and I'm a mom that is a compliment and so as a mom I was like no I mean think about it think of all the things that that scarred us when we were younger like Goosebumps scary stories to tell in the dark we seek it out because we love being frightened and so someone had to write those things someone had to produce those things and the right kids will come right Laura's kids loves it Laura's kid there you go

1:02:00

you have a creepy little kid yeah and that's amazing that were suggested by him um sometimes we'll catch production mistakes like I love that you guys have any kids safe episodes dude send them to me later so I can play them for him so this is the thing we don't we don't know what kids safe and apparently a lot of kids listen to our show and we're like does someone screen this for them because I don't think it's very appropriate okay I'll screen it first okay there's definitely curse words but otherwise there's probably some episodes that are just generally terrifying but there's also some lady in other ways yeah I mean the name of our podcast already is pretty illicit so he doesn't he doesn't get that reference he was born right it's a very specific group of like if you're born between these eight years you get it yeah and otherwise if you don't you're confused yeah yeah I did have to explain it