Spoop Hour

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS: this week we're talking curses! From King Tut's tomb to paintings that burn down houses, get the deets on how to spot curses, how to break them according to the Traveling Witch and Witchipedia, and infamous stories of cursed Egyptian artifacts. And if you were planning on getting your friend a mummy hand for a paperweight...maybe don't!

In the longest ever Spoop Hour minisode, we catch up with the spooky things we've been up to! With Sasha's ghost tour in Harper's Ferry, Courtney's newly stolen books on Weird Virginia and Victorian ghost stories, and a listener story, we have a spoopy hodgepodge primed and ready for you. Pi-yahtzee!

In our most Mean Girls episode ever, we talk doppelgangers (and toaster strudel?)! The spooky variant on twins, traverse the history of doppelgangers from Egypt to Norse mythology to the term FETCH. Then dive in to pop culture, literature, and historical accounts of doppelgangers wreaking havoc on lives.

Last week it was parents, this week it's BLACK EYED KIDS doing the scaring! Learn about the relatively recent phenomenon of black eyed children, from the first story documenting them to a few tales of otherwordly BEK encounters. Finally, stick around for a discussion of why Nextdoor is the perfect place to solve the mystery of BEK (and who keeps leaving banana peels near our house.)

We collected stories from friends, listeners, and fellow podcasters for an episode on ways our parents scared us into behaving! From threats of removing your batteries to being left at a pumpkin patch/orphanage, hear family lore of all varieties with one goal: to keep you from breaking rules. Hear us talk snallygasters, boogeymen, things that will kill and/or eat you, and then join us for a discussion of why you maybe shouldn't scare your kid. And finally, hear a few stories of kids who scare their parents with the things they see...

Regress with us back to past lives this week! How can you tell if you've had a past life? Past life regression, of course! We (sorta) tried to figure out who we might have been, and are talking some interesting instances of recovered past life memories. Featuring shared stories from listeners, podfriends, and various internet people who remember everything from being a monk in Spain in the 1300s to colonizing Africa with the British Army.

SEND THIS EPISODE OF SPOOP HOUR TO 7 PEOPLE or they won't get to laugh at tales from chain letters of yore! We talk classic chain letters, like the clown statue, not turning on the light, and Bye Daddy, to the newer tales of Saki, Teddy, and Carmen Winstead. From the days of paying postage to scare your friends to posting chain death in youtube comments, learn all you need to know about that which plagues your inbox.

It's time for a spoopy sleepover! Dr. Alysa Lucas of Best Forevers and Fataliteas joins us for a discussion of spooky sleepover staples. Hear the most upsetting story you'll ever know about bears with recorded voices, get to know Bloody Mary, and learn the ways we would have died in historical times. Sleep with the lights on!

Cast a distrusting eye at your computer: we're talking ghosts in the machine this week! Get the deets on haunted technology in pop culture, a haunted laptop that made its way to eBay, a probable creepypasta about getting messages from a loved one from beyond the grave via social media, and more. Then we get introspective about the nature of grief and bring it back up with our favorite meme this week!

We bring special ghost Mike back for a MEGA SIZED episode on LGBT spoop! Hear about two haunted gay bars, queercoding monsters and villains like the Babadook, and possibly gay cartoons. Then learn about civil rights icon and incredible gay man Bayard Rustin: his life, his love story, and what we think he'd be like as a ghost. Finally, meet the latest member of the Badass Non-Straight Ladies of History Club: Charlotte Cushman, a lesbian actress known for playing male and female roles and living the most bananas life.