Trick Or Trauma

Krystal with a K: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Plot Twist, still alive! I am your hostess, Frank and Titties. Just kidding, guys, it's me. Crystal with a K, three-time cancer survivor and chaos coordinator. Welcome back, bitches. I know it is officially breast cancer awareness month, but listen. I was a fucking Halloween well before I was a breast cancer survivor. I have to have at least one fucking episode that is not all about breast cancer. That being said, I do have a very special, smart, beautiful, amazing guest. She's actually one of the most popular up to date. she has a plethora of knowledge when it comes to anything spooky, anything creepy, anatomical shit. She is officially our doctress of. Of death. Everybody say hello to Mora. Say hello to everybody, Mora.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Hello, it's so good to be back. This is my second full episode and my third time appearing. So this is awesome.
Krystal with a K: my gosh, well I'm so excited that you were like, Yes, I will dress up because I was like, Who will
Maire (like Laura with an M): Hundred percent.
Krystal with a K: who will do a freaky deaky weird shit with me? So catch us up. You are a breast cancer warrior, and this is your first breast cancer awareness month as a breast cancer warrior. I know we're celebrating this week. Can you give me a little update on your life?
Maire (like Laura with an M): So on October 13th, which was Tuesday, I officially rang the bell because I finished my six rounds of taxaterian cytoksin chemo.
Krystal with a K: Yeah and for people
Maire (like Laura with an M): I'm so excited.
Krystal with a K: chemo is hell on earth. I don't know many people that were like, that was nothing. It was a breeze. It is fucking hell. So I'm so
Maire (like Laura with an M): yeah.
Krystal with a K: proud of you. I know that was a huge hurdle. And it doesn't mean that you just moved past it, guys. it takes a really long time to feel normal again. But once you check that off, you start seeing that light at the end of the cancer tunnel. So I'm just I'm just beyond grateful that you're d you're done with that part.
Maire (like Laura with an M): And I have amazing friends.
Krystal with a K: Do you? What does that
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mm-hmm.
Krystal with a K: say?
Maire (like Laura with an M): It says, Dear Cancer, you picked the wrong bitch.
Krystal with a K: Sure did. Sure fucking did. That's right.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Thank you, thank you.
Krystal with a K: I may or may not have sent her a few celebratory gifts because listen, when I went through chemo, I had a lot of really good friends and they took me to dinner. We went out and celebrated. They sent me things. So I just I just felt like you needed to celebrate. Yeah, you're welcome, boo. Well
Maire (like Laura with an M): spoiled me. It was so sweet. I'm looking at the flowers right now and surrounded surrounded by love. Thank you so much, truly.
Krystal with a K: Of course. And for y'all out there that have a family member or a friend going through it, you can do something super simple. Just send them something to let them know that you're thinking about them and that you're celebrating them. And even some funky ass coffee mug like that, because cancer did pick the wrong bitch. It always does. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Did a hundred percent. And now I get my coffee in a really fun mug at night.
Krystal with a K: Yes. So between your knowledge on history, especially when it comes to Halloween, and my knowledge on horror movies, I think we can have some tricks, some treats, and probably some trauma involved with our cancer shit.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Hundred percent.
Krystal with a K: let's go ahead and get started with the history. So can you give me like I know some of it, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about All Halloween's Eve and all of that, because if I'm not mistaken, it originated where you are from, which is Ireland, right?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Did. So Halloween actually has its origins in an ancient like pagan festival f called Sawin, spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N. So it looks like Sam Hain, but it's pronounced Sawin. And it's an Irish festival, a harvest festival, where they believed that the veils between worlds, the living and the dead, kind of bled out and got really thin. So there were instances where people could talk and experience and interact with spirits that had passed, ghosts essentially. And there were malevolent ghosts and benevolent ghosts, good and bad. they would dress up in costumes to try and ward off the Ghosts from inhabiting or crossing back into the world. this got co-opted around the eighth century, so the seven hundreds, by Roman Catholics who took a lot of pagan festivals from around the world and attached Catholic ideology to it so that it would be easier to get people to convert to Christianity. So you start to see an around November 1st, November 2nd, All Hallows Day, Saints Day, etc. And then All Hallows Eve becomes Halloween. so it's a three day festival by the 1400s where people celebrate the dead and they celebrate how the dead can still interact with the living. And it's not just this Roman Catholic. Irish festival either. You've also got Iranian f festivals around the same time that celebrate the thinning of veils. You've got Dia de los Muertos in Mexico.
Krystal with a K: Dios telos huge here in Texas
Maire (like Laura with an M): it's a really fascinating Beginning where it's all about how the dead and the living interact. this goes on for a large while. And in the 1800s, you see it start to take more of a little bit of a modern shape, but it became almost like a matchmaking holiday in the 1800s in Victorian times. So they'd play these festival games like bobbing for apples. women would mark the apples, and when the man bobbed it up, that would be who they would marry. or they'd Peel apples. Yeah. So it was like these festival, fun games, parlor games during Halloween.
Krystal with a K: So you might get stuck with a guy with a tiny mouth if he short
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: nothing wrong with a short pocket king, I have one. But that's interesting. I never knew that that had anything to do with marriage at all. That's wild.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. They would peel apples like to get the longest apple peel and throw it over their shoulders and then they would look at it almost like divination and see what shape the apple peel fell in and the letter that it revealed would be their soulmate's letter. Yeah. So it it it has a
Krystal with a K: That's crazy. I'm glad we don't do that anymore.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, me too. It'd be a little weird it gets weirder. So the Halloween we think of with like the trick-or-treating and all that stuff doesn't really pop up until the mid nineteen hundreds. in the earlier nineteen hundreds, it was very much what we think of as I don't know if you have it down in Texas, but we call it like goosey night. And like all the kids go out the night before Halloween and they make an absolute ruckus. They throw toilet paper and they shave in cream and they make a disaster out of things.
Krystal with a K: Wait, this is allowed where you live in Jersey?
Maire (like Laura with an M): yeah, they kids just do it. It's not really allowed, it's just a thing that happens and you just kinda know that, your car might get shaving creamed overnight.
Krystal with a K: Here we call that vandalism, but that's just what we do in Texas. Do they throw eggs and shit too still? Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, sometimes. that has kinda gone away, but you'll see toilet paper, you'll see the shaving cream. It has a bunch of different names. But yeah, Goosey Night is what we call it in my area. That is much more like the original Halloween celebrations. They would do a lot of goosey night stuff in the early 1900s. It was like Vandalism Central. dress up really scary, freak people out, do all that like naughty stuff. And
Krystal with a K: The trick part of the tricks and treats.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes, the trick part, not the treat part. and then yeah, by the nineteen fifties, then we start to see like, the cute little costumes. It starts to get hallmarkified almost. because you really have to take away that trick part because it starts to get out of control. it's really messed up when you look at the past and you're like, huh, interesting. so we we changed this because it was getting out of control.
Krystal with a K: Leave it up to kids to fuck it up every time.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly. sorry for the tangent, but we were at my old house on Goosey Night one time. It was like four years ago, I wanna say, and I'm cooking dinner in the kitchen and all of a sudden kids kicked in our front door. That one we called the police
Krystal with a K: What?
Maire (like Laura with an M): for. Yeah, kids kicked in our front door and then ran up the driveway and out the down the street. That one was a really particularly bad night. and then another like a year later they exploded a gas can in a fire in the woods.
Krystal with a K: Okay, that's dangerous shit. that's not tricks.
Maire (like Laura with an M): but you Darwin
Krystal with a K: That's a B and E when they kick your shit in. Okay, I don't blame you. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes, that they did get charged for that. But
Krystal with a K: they actually caught the kids.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Well, they caught 'cause two doors down they did it to someone else and they had a camera.
Krystal with a K: Got it. Wow. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: wait, let's rewind for a second. I know we do pumpkins
Maire (like Laura with an M): Right.
Krystal with a K: now, but there was a turnip thing, right? Where they used to like put turnips
Maire (like Laura with an M): So
Krystal with a K: out.
Maire (like Laura with an M): we carve pumpkins in the United States, and that became the symbolism because pumpkins were more plentiful. But it was really root vegetables, and this was Ireland. There was a a myth or a story of a guy named Jack, and he would go around carrying carved out dead root vegetables of turnip. So people would do that in homage to him and to keep him away from from you at points. So the the turnips were definitely used because those can dry out very well and they were plentiful in Ireland and Scotland and the Isle of Man. But when we came to America, it was like, hey, these pumpkins serve about the same purpose. They're much larger, they last longer, and we worked with the indigenous populations to grow and cultivate them. So we started using those in the eighteen hundreds in the United States.
Krystal with a K: Wow, okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): It was very influenced by Irish immigration though. That's when you see Halloween really take off in the US is when like the eighteen forties, when the potato famine hit in Ireland.
Krystal with a K: Which is wild because for lack of a better term, Irish people were treated like the redheaded stepkids of America for a really long time when they first immigrated over here. So that's crazy that we were like, come on over. But also let's take a lot of the shit that you did in your country and do that here now. I mean guess
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: I love America but also we're kinda known for that.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds it sounds American.
Krystal with a K: Sounds very American. so we fast forward, we're doing pumpkins now. You guys have goosey day, which we do not have again in the South. I think we're just maybe we have a little bit of a stick up our ass.
Maire (like Laura with an M): You have guns.
Krystal with a K: We we own guns. That's true. That's probably why we don't have that.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. Now that I think about it, yeah, that's probably the reason.
Krystal with a K: I bet a lot more people would get hurt. Yeah, for sure. So obviously we took costumes because they did that back then to ward things, but was there something you were supposed to dress up as before like
Maire (like Laura with an M): Not really supposed to dress up as. the stereotypical ghost costume, which is the sheet and the eyes, that came from poor and poverty. stricken persons not being able to afford caskets. So they would dress people in what's called a winding sheet, which was just a large white sheet that they would then put them, inter them in the ground in. And so the stereotypical image of ghost in the sheet with the eyes comes from literally just wrapping a body in a sheet to bury it.
Krystal with a K: So it's like the poor man's way of mummifying somebody,
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mm-hmm.
Krystal with a K: except they don't put them inside of anything.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, they don't have the money for the coffin, so they just w wrap them in the sheet and bury them as is.
Krystal with a K: I never knew that. That's actually something I didn't know. That's crazy. Did they cut holes for the eyes? Okay, that's just us. We were like we need to see to walk 'cause we're not dead. Got it.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. No. But that's just for us now. Yeah. Exactly. for people who were buried, the there's those stories of you know, coming back to life or people like seeing claw marks in the caskets. That's actually true. And going back to Ireland here, but a lot of times let's say you were drinking the first pull of whiskey and It could put you into a pseudo-coma because it was so strong. So you do have people mistakenly buried, which is why you have like the six feet under or the dead ringer idea, because they would tie bells to corpses for people who would wake up in coffins from medical injury or comas, and they weren't really dead, but they got buried anyway.
Krystal with a K: I wonder what the percentages were of people that were. I'm imagining the the caretaker of the cemetery, making his rounds, waiting for a bell, and then it rings. What the hell do they do? They didn't have phones, they weren't calling anyone, they were just like, better start digging, hopefully before the person dies.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. It had gravediggers on staff. Yeah. You'd send someone to go get the gravedigger diggers who would live closely and they would come. Or you'd have someone waking the grave, the the you go to a wake today. A lot of the time the wake was held at graveside and people would stay awake twenty four hours around the clock at the graveside to listen for anything.
Krystal with a K: Wow. So this had to be a relatively common thing to happen
Maire (like Laura with an M): Common enough.
Krystal with a K: that yeah, that they were actually doing it that way. This is really sad, but it reminded me I would think nowadays it's a very, very, very rare occurrence. But there was a a child that drowned and they pulled them out of the pool. The doctor pronounced him dead at the hospital. He's in the morgue for hours and you've worked there. We'll get to that
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: in a bit. But he was alive. he actually survived that somehow. They stopped doing CPR. They stopped working on him. And he survived. From what I understand, this is in the news. You can look it up. I I don't know how w how he's doing or any of that. He was very small, and it's again tragic. But It's crazy that that even still happens today. I it's terrifying. I can't but also what the fuck is wrong with that doctor? I I'm sure there's a lawsuit happening. That's all I know.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, no, I'm sure there's a lawsuit happening.
Krystal with a K: Anyway, so we talked about ghosts, what about witches?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Well, witches were a way to explain the unexplainable. So my favorite story about witches is that in the fourteenth century, a pope actually commissioned a book to be written on what witches are and how to like locate witches. the advice is that witches keep penises in the barn and they feed them like corn to keep them wriggling. so you know a witch because she has a box of penises in her barn.
Krystal with a K: I'm sorry. That was real.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, that th it's called the Malleus Maleficarum and it's a book commissioned by the Pope and that was in it.
Krystal with a K: I'm a witch then 'cause I have a bedside drawer that has a lot of wriggling things.
Maire (like Laura with an M): There you go. Pope Leo, one of one of the earlier Pope Leos would definitely have called you a witch.
Krystal with a K: man, that's okay, didn't
Maire (like Laura with an M): But they're not in your barn, they're in your bedside drawer, so you might be okay. Okay. Valid.
Krystal with a K: Well, I don't have a barn. I if I built I don't have that many. I don't need an entire barn for my wriggling penises. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): You don't need a button. Yeah, no, th it's really funny.
Krystal with a K: did it only have to b was it only women?
Maire (like Laura with an M): w women were witches, men were warlocks. So you weren't going to f especially in the past, you weren't going to find a male witch being referred to as a male witch. they would be referred to as a warlock. But there were men who were believed to be coer covorting with the devil or with evil spirits as well. And it's really interesting because witches didn't just have to be responsible or dealing with the devil. They could be dealing with the ideals of evil as well. So some of my favorite other quotes is when a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil. and that's from the Malleus Malificarum as well. so it's about in a lot of cases taking away the intelligence of women, specifically in herbal medicines and caretaking and medical history, and ascribing evil to it to move the field of medicine towards a male dominated. aspect or male-dominated field. So witches really pop up there. In a lot of cases as well, witches are seen as positive impacts. So think of like Circe or Medusa in in ancient history, Greek history. There's also like Aspasia, who's directly associated with medicine. But these are positive witches and they're now spoken about as protectors of women. So it's interesting that the ideology of witches, even though it's associated particularly with Halloween, it's about the power and strength of womanhood. actually, there was a event in New Jersey that was supposed to happen tomorrow, but we're getting a nor'easter called the Pink Witches Night Out, and it's all for Halloween and breast cancer awareness month. So it's interesting how these two ideas kind of move or merge together during October specifically.
Krystal with a K: Yeah, I never thought I would wear this much pink ever. And and again, it's been a weird mashup, but I've also found fun ways to like incorporate it. When I work for the nonprofit, we had an event called Save the Boobies and it was a Halloween party there's ways to still incorporate the spooky and the Halloween. plot twist, bitch. I ended up a nurse in the medical field and you ended up studying everything that you needed to and being in a morgue for funsies to no medical history. It's so wild to think how far we've come in regards to that. And that they were actually trying to deter women I think there's still majority women when it comes to certain things in that. or labor and delivery nurses and things like that. Places you really need women. And they were like, No, better not. you know what we should say? There's a barn with dicks in it. That's what we should say. And write it in an entire book and make everybody believe it. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): I'll tell you this, women were outlawed from doing midwifery because men invented an obstetrical forceap that was safer and then refused to allow women to access it. So they moved midwifery, midwifing out of women's hands, out of community hands into a medicalized sphere. And we actually see the development of like septic fever because men were doing like autopsies and teaching with cadavers and then immediately going and putting their hands in women's hoo-has and giving them
Krystal with a K: my god.
Maire (like Laura with an M): sepsis of the uterus during delivery.
Krystal with a K: Yep. when we were in New Orleans a month ago, we went to the pharmacy museum and I'm telling you some of the things, the tools that I'm sure were made by men, were in there and f as far as L and D. Yes. There was one it was horrific. Where if the delivery was gonna kill the mother or she was dying, they literally put it inside and basically killed the baby. They would probably going to die anyway, but it was like, Go ahead and try and save the mom. Horrific. Just
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: crazy tools. I was like, Ugh, I'm so glad to be a woman again now, nowadays.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Have you seen the chainsaw? That the original chainsaw was invented to open the vaginal canal to allow for birth. Yes. Yes.
Krystal with a K: No. What? Maybe I missed that one. That's what it was for?
Maire (like Laura with an M): One of the originals, yeah. The original mechanical ones was to specifically.
Krystal with a K: And it was like an egg beater, I bet. god. Ugh. All right. That's what happened to me right here. Hysteria.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Just like the vibrator was originally invented for men.
Krystal with a K: In for hysteria, right?
Maire (like Laura with an M): well, it was co opted for hysteria, but it was originally vibrations for men. and then they would they used it on women because doctors would induce orgasms digitally and it was easier to do it with a vibrator. But that was true. Yeah. How terrible.
Krystal with a K: 'Cause they got Carpal Tunnel. Yeah, that part's true. we've got witches, we've got ghosts. Is there any other creepy, spooky shit that there's history about? anything like that?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Frankenstein's monster. we know Mary Shelley had a little obsession with graveyards, had some fun sex in graveyards. and she is the inventor of the genre of science fiction with her book Frankenstein. I'm not the biggest Mary Shelley expert. but again, Mary Shelley is a badass. female and she is the daughter of Mary Wallstone Craftshelley, who was actually like a feminist in her own right. So it's it's fitting that like the sci fi monster genre, both of them were invented by women.
Krystal with a K: I love that so much. That makes my heart so happy. So how has it evolved now? Because let's fast forward to us growing up with our Halloweens and what types of shit either we were told, what we believed, like the nineties was a wild fucking place. Yeah. ahead.
Maire (like Laura with an M): The nineties. yeah, it was. I have a question for you. What did you dress up as the most as a kid? Like princesses, monsters, where did what'd you dress up the most as?
Krystal with a K: No. So dead something. My dad and mom loved Halloween, but they were cheap asses. So I was a dead soccer player more times than I could count because I just use an old
Maire (like Laura with an M): Amazing.
Krystal with a K: soccer uniform. I would wear scrubs and be a dead doctor. I was always something dead. Every other year I was a zombie, something undead. So that's what I had to be most of the time. And now I still love it a little bit. But I like to change it up in how I do my dad. What about you? What was yours?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, you do it on your own A bride. I was a bride. I don't
Krystal with a K: I really wanted to get married.
Maire (like Laura with an M): know. I never thought I'd get married. I just really like dressing up in the puffy white dress. I thought it was better than princess. I just I loved
Krystal with a K: I agree.
Maire (like Laura with an M): it so much. And then I could get it really dirty. I remember liking being so pristine and then not being pristine. Like I knew I could get it really messy. Yeah.
Krystal with a K: You just wanted to destroy it. Did you get a different dress like every year or every other year?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Not every year, but so sometimes I'd be like a zombie bride, but once I grew out of it I'd get a different dress. I was always a dress girl.
Krystal with a K: You still are. I love your little spooky dress today. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): I am. I'm in one right now. Yeah.
Krystal with a K: fucking cute. And guys, she owned that already. Okay? She didn't buy that just for this.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I did. I did. And it glows in the dark. All of the skulls. I've worn it to teaching. My students have seen it. And I don't know if you'll be able to picture these, but Jeffrey Campbell shoes, the seven-inch tall ones with the spiked heels. I wore those to teaching one year and got a surprise observation from my department chair. And I was I was like a head and a half taller than him at that point, and I was just standing up in front of the class almost six foot five Yeah, 'cause I'm five seven. So I was six one.
Krystal with a K: How did you stand for that long with those?
Maire (like Laura with an M): they were quite comfortable because their platform is so big that you're actually almost flat. It's like a three
Krystal with a K: my gosh.
Maire (like Laura with an M): inch platform.
Krystal with a K: You have to be like a fun ass professor. when students come in, they have to be like, This is gonna be an interesting year. first day.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, they don't know what to do with me because we start with studying prehistory and the tattoos on Atsy, the mummified Iceman, and things like that. And so they they they get this weird aspect of it, but I treat them like adults once they're in my classroom. So like we're gonna talk about the weird stuff. I'm not gonna hide things from you and we're gonna have fun because history is fun, even if you haven't liked history before.
Krystal with a K: Well, I think that your passion for it just makes people want to learn and want to listen to you. It exudes out of you. I told you that when you came on the first time. I was just like, you make it so interesting and so fun. And I'm always interested in it, but I don't know, your passion is visceral. And so it's very cool to talk to you about it. Don't do that right now. This is
Maire (like Laura with an M): you're gonna make me cry and that's because I had Lupron the other day. I'm so sorry, but I'm really like luproned up right now.
Krystal with a K: Fucking chemo. Don't cry, don't cry. This is spooky time.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Seriously. It's okay. I'm not I'm not I have too much eye makeup on and it took forever to put the eyelashes on too.
Krystal with a K: You wore the eyelashes and then you still put the mask, so it's like barely.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I did.
Krystal with a K: So fucking adorable.
Maire (like Laura with an M): 'cause if if I had to do this, you'd have to see
Krystal with a K: well you look beautiful. Stunning. Where'd she go? So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Thank you.
Krystal with a K: you were a bride, I was a dead thing. what were some things that you think were just to scare us and some shit that was like real?
Maire (like Laura with an M): real real talk. knocking on people's doors without a parent, let's say you wanted to go trick-or-treating by yourself. I think that if you were only like two people, like that's a little scary, especially two girls. my parents never let me do it, but trick-or-treating alone I think is a real thing that was scary. Even today, don't trick-or-treat alone. and I think the things to scare us. Did you ever get told about the razor blades in your chocolate bars?
Krystal with a K: Yes. Razor blades and poison or drugs.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. Rat poison.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. Poison or drugs. And now I still to this day search my kids candy so I can eat it. And if there were drugs in there nowadays you'd be like, Let me check the gummies. What do you have?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, gimme the gummies. We've got for the adults.
Krystal with a K: Not in Texas, we don't. I know it's unfortunate.
Maire (like Laura with an M): New Jersey you might.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. I will say here as an adult, it's been kind of cool because where I've went, they do like cookouts. They'll give you a beer or a shot and a a hot dog or like chili or Frito pie. some of the neighborhoods here. So it's been pretty cool to be an adult going trick or treating the last several years. But when I was a kid, I definitely went trick-or-treating by myself. Or stayed out late, later than everybody. I think I was probably seven or eight years old going with my little girlfriend or two or sister and knocking on people's doors. I agree. That shit's creepy. I think another thing we did not do enough that we really should have is we didn't put anything glow in the dark on anybody at all back then. and you did hear about kids getting hit by cars and shit. And
Maire (like Laura with an M): yeah. yeah.
Krystal with a K: nobody ever went out and bought like trick or treat bags. You took a fucking pillowcase with you
Maire (like Laura with an M): Low case.
Krystal with a K: and you went around and I don't even know where that started at all. I no idea.
Maire (like Laura with an M): So wait, yes, in the history the idea of trick-or-treating, you would go around and it would be called souling and you would ask for a soul cake and it would have a cross put on the top of it. So it often was like poorer children or poorer people would go around asking for that. So that's why you go around asking for treats. I don't know where the pillowcase came from, but you would do that and collect soul cakes.
Krystal with a K: Well, they took it just in case, because if they had to bury you, they might as well use the pillowcase and the sheet and just wrap you. I'm just kidding.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly. Just wrap you up.
Krystal with a K: I'm just kidding. No, but I never knew anybody that ate a razor blade. never knew anybody that got drugs to my knowledge. Not that didn't want any drugs. And then
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, no fun drugs at least.
Krystal with a K: no, and the only other thing you had to really worry about is other kids that are bigger stealing your shit or like jumping you and taking your candy. But that never happened to me.
Maire (like Laura with an M): We didn't have that. We didn't have mean older kids who did that. At least not to me. Maybe my brothers. But I I always went with like adults. I was a very scared child. I liked being alone in the woods where there weren't a lot of other human beings, but I was not another human being person.
Krystal with a K: that makes sense. That's why you study the dead.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly. Exactly.
Krystal with a K: They can't hurt you. People are fucking scary. They really are. my kids, my daughter's thirteen now. I still will not let her go trick or treat by herself. she's just getting to the point where I'll let her go wait for the bus. And I'm still like listening and watching and have the door open. and my husband now is like, just let him go. I'm like, no, there are pedophiles and rapists out there. Absolutely not. And I would rather be overprotective than have something happen to her at a young age. But I also teach her it's weird. I know this sounds like fucked up. But I teach my kids there are monsters in the world and they're people. People can be monsters. Not everybody is, but you need to understand that monsters look like everybody. They look like everyone. So if we're talking about monsters.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes. Yes. There are no No, we are talking about monsters. No, people don't realize that monsters look like you and me. And that's where some of the scariest like horror genre comes out of. it's almost like that shades of reality. you could be looking at someone and not know they're a monster. It's like Patrick Bateman and American Psycho they blend in. And I think that's where you get the scariest horror stuff is when it's plausible to a point of like, shit, this could
Krystal with a K: Well
Maire (like Laura with an M): happen.
Krystal with a K: it's weird that I find those things, even things about real life serial killers, I'm fine with it. I I watch it and I I have a fascination with it and it doesn't freak me out. But I cannot watch a demonic movie by myself. I can't watch a movie about a haunting. Because listen, you come into my house with a fucking butcher knife, we're fighting I've beat cancer three times, bitch. You better come ready to murder me. Otherwise you might end up dead. I have a
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: fighting chance. I can't fight a demon. I can't fight a fucking spirit or a ghost or a goddamn like Annabelle
Maire (like Laura with an M): Well
Krystal with a K: doll.
Maire (like Laura with an M): here's the thing. Can you fight something if you don't believe in it? Like if you think
Krystal with a K: I do believe in it.
Maire (like Laura with an M): see, I believe in it too, but if you look at something it came in and you're like, you're not real, it can't do anything to you. If you don't acknowledge
Krystal with a K: Mm. I think
Maire (like Laura with an M): it as an entity, I don't think it can do anything to you.
Krystal with a K: I think that's fair. And I think that's where a lot of people stay. To be honest, life's too busy for me to worry about hauntings and shit. But
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, also I share my house with ghosts. I'm fine with it. I don't care.
Krystal with a K: Right. But speaking of that, let's share some Jeepers Creepers creepy vibe thing. Have you ever had something creepy happen? It doesn't have to be ghost, just something that really freaked you out or weirded you out. I'd imagine
Maire (like Laura with an M): Okay.
Krystal with a K: that it's hard to do that with you.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, I had nightmares from this specific event. So I was working at the morgue, and we had a person come in who was a contractor, and they had overdosed in a bathtub at the house they were working at, and they hadn't been discovered for a few days. So they came in straight from the house. they had gone marbling. so when you die, your skin can get green marbling in it. It's actually quite beautiful. He had begun to marble so we'd known he'd been there for a while and to start an autopsy in a case like this you have to undress them bag their clothes, bag their items, And we start to do the unbuttoning and a phone begins ringing. And it's none of ours and it's just ringing and ringing and ringing. And we're undressing the the man and it's his phone. And we can't answer it and we can't silence it, we can't do anything on it. So we're doing this autopsy, and this phone is just constantly ringing from its bag. this person doesn't realize on the other end that they're dead, I guess. And then we finish the autopsy, we zipper up the bag, the phone stopped ringing, thank God. And just as we're closing the door to the freezer. The phone starts ringing again. And for me, that was one of the eeriest things I've ever experienced that phone was never going to be answered again. it was just gonna have to sit there till it died. But we had to listen to it ring because nobody knew that that person had passed away yet. And that still gets me, that liminal space of like. Is this person alive or dead? The person on the other end doesn't know yet. It's Schrdinger's corpse.
Krystal with a K: This something that I've seen in movies even
Maire (like Laura with an M): Nice.
Krystal with a K: at 9 11, right, where people are calling their loved ones and don't know, but to actually be the third party in that space of like knowing this person's dead, whoever's calling doesn't know, and there's nothing you can do about it. And like you said, that person will never answer the phone again. That would be so so creepy. That made my skin crawl. Do you put all of their belongings in the thing with them or so his phone just gets shut it shuts in there?
Maire (like Laura with an M): So so their organs go back inside their bodies. Once we're done examining everything, we put it all in a bag, we put it back in the body, and then we sew the bag into the organ cavity. Their personal effects get put into the larger body bag or at the body bag so that they're all together for when they're picked up by the funeral home.
Krystal with a K: I wonder how that works as far as who told his family or when.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Well, we had to identify him. So they couldn't have been Yeah. Yeah. We pulled his
Krystal with a K: Okay, so they couldn't have told they couldn't have told anybody at that point. Ugh. That's that is creepy.
Maire (like Laura with an M): wallet out and found it all and yeah. But that was probably one of the creepiest events because you could almost feel something there hanging over the room, whether it was anxiety or fear or just the sound of the phone ringing, that was something definitely hanging over the room. And then ghost wise, I don't know if I've ever like felt a ghost per se, but I am positive that I've been in an area with one because things moved. And ghosts don't freak me out. I'm not afraid of ghosts because For me, I've worked around the dead for so long. To me, ghosts are just lingering electricity that need to fix something or or spark a few times before they go on their way. So if I find a ghost, it's just because the electricity is still hanging around.
Krystal with a K: But you do believe in ghosts,
Maire (like Laura with an M): I think that there's ghosts. I'm very Newtonian in that I don't believe that energy is created or destroyed. So when someone or something dies, their energy is left behind in a way. And whether that energy is ghost or it transfers into sunlight or the way, flowers bloom, however the energy moves around. Is how the energy moves around, but some of that energy can become ghost.
Krystal with a K: I find it so interesting that some people that are so like logical in like in your sense, you still have the capacity to think, Okay, well this can be energy and this can exist.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I've seen a body on a table. it's just a body on a table, and the human being part of it is gone. And it's so hard to explain. And I've come down to electricity. Some people call it a soul, but like I call it an energy. you know that there's no energy within that body anymore. And it's just so hard to describe, like you can actually feel. Feel the difference between a living person and a body.
Krystal with a K: Agree. And again, working as a nurse and also being around enough people that I I love that have passed, they're not there anymore. that life force is gone. I do believe
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: in spirits. I do believe in ghosts. I don't tell this story often. And again, I don't walk around going, my god, what if it's haunted? What if it's haunted? Do I wanna go do some shit? Yes. had a a really awesome experience. You know how I have my fuck it list. I had a woman that is a cancer survivor. She recently just got done with chemo, also a young survivor, I believe lymphoma. She has her own podcast and she reached out and she's like, I wanna do a haunted tour as well and do like a paranormal thing and stay the night. she's reaching out to one of the hotels here in Austin and we're kind of working together to see if we can do a paranormal night with them. But I thought it was so cool because I'm like, yes, bitch, if you want to go do a fucket list, I am your girl. Let's go. 'cause yeah,
Maire (like Laura with an M): That is so cool.
Krystal with a K: I'm always down to do a fuck it list thing with somebody. I don't care if I know her or not. I
Maire (like Laura with an M): That's amazing.
Krystal with a K: I'm glad it's a woman, to be honest, because I was thinking I would end up with some random dude doing paranormal shit and just be like, okay, is it is it creepy in here? Is it just you? but it's
Maire (like Laura with an M): The creepy in here is it just you is great.
Krystal with a K: it's you. it could be me actually, 'cause I'm fucking
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: weird. So I had an experience where I lived in a house that I believe was haunted. It was in Massachusetts, which if you know, you know. that is one of the most haunted places.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Old houses.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. In the United States. So we l we lived on base. It's Fort Devons. It no longer exists anymore as far as a military base is concerned. The day that we moved into this house, we're unpacking I was probably ten, ten to eleven years old. I was walking down the hall and my dad grabbed me by the shoulders and when I turned around he wasn't there. My dad would play tricks, really fucked up tricks sometimes. So I really thought he was just fucking with me. I got that hair on the back of my neck standing up and I just I knew in my heart of hearts there's no way he could have done that and run outside really quickly. So I turned around, I go out and he's unloading the couch with my mom. And I was like, okay, that's weird. I thought that's creepy, but I just moved on. the next time my sister and I shared a room and we had bunk beds right next to this window. I swear on everything that I love. This sounds crazy, but this is how I remember it. I had a friend over from down the street. We called her Randy. I don't know if you're out there, Randy, or if you remember this. If you do and you ever hear this podcast, please call me and validate this story. we were sleeping and our heads were by the window. The window's back here. My sister's sleeping on the top bunk. And I start hearing like this scratching noise. I'm looking at her and I gotta work up the nerve to look because I can hear it from outside. Mind you, we had a ten foot slab of concrete, so no trees were able to touch the window or anything like that. I turn around, it's dark as shit outside, like it it's dark, and we see a hand like this with like gleaming blood on it, and I freak the fuck out. I scream. My parents run into the room, turn the light on, immediately it's gone. And I'm like, I'm petrified. I'm like, no, I saw something. There was a hand. And she's freaking out. We're both freaking out. There they went outside. They looked. Nobody was out there. He's like, it's probably a tree branch. And in my head, I'm like, ha how? But they're
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mm.
Krystal with a K: like, go to sleep, shut up, it's fine. So they turn off the light. We go to lay down. And a few minutes later we start hearing the scratching. I could not bring myself to look at the window again. We literally moved all the way to the other side of the bed and slept on the foot of the bed together. And then the last thing that happened was my dad was gone for some military thing and we had a cat and the door was shut. And I see the cat running around in our room, but I knew the cat was not in our room. again, I get that eerie, creepy feeling. then all of a sudden the your small bedroom turns into a fucking football field to r run to turn the light on. And I was like, fuck, I have to do it. I'm trying to wake my sister up like she's gonna do anything. And I
Maire (like Laura with an M): Nice.
Krystal with a K: couldn't get her to wake up. So I finally got the balls to run across and turn the light on. I look everywhere for the cat. Can't find the cat. I go out into the living room and my mom used to sleep on the couch a lot when my dad was gone. Cat's asleep with her on the couch. So those were three things in a home.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Ghost cat.
Krystal with a K: I've definitely been to places that were haunted because I wanted to and I was looking for things. And I felt some things, but That was definitely the weirdest fucking shit ever. And I I wonder if other people had experiences in that house.
Maire (like Laura with an M): an old coworker of mine swore up and down that they'd experienced a ghost at the bar they used to work at. and the only reason people believed them is because it was on video of the door opening and closing and nobody coming into the actual bar. Like they heard someone come open the door, walk in, say something, and then there was nobody there. And the only reason they were believed is because the CCTV caught the door opening and closing. And flock cameras now we're gonna be catching a lot of ghosts.
Krystal with a K: Catching lots of ghosts nowadays. But it also doesn't scare me like it did as a kid. I think as a kid I was a lot less understanding of that. there are times when I felt presence of people that I loved and it was comforting and it wasn't a haunting. Thank God. by the way, when I die, I'm not gonna be that spooky bitch that comes to your bedside and be like, Hey, I'm here. I'm gonna come as whatever you wanna see me as. So Don't don't haunt me that way. Sotta freak me the fuck out, even though I like spooky shit. Don't do that.
Maire (like Laura with an M): That's so funny. Do you believe that people are haunting you if they visit you in their dreams? Like if someone's past? I always say like I want my grandma to haunt me in my dreams.
Krystal with a K: I don't really consider that a haunting. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): A visiting.
Krystal with a K: a visit. I do yeah. I do because I know that I've had that happen. I know that I've had that happen. Nobody's gonna tell me different. Judge me all you want. And even if it's my brain making me feel better and making me feel like the people that love me came to see me, that's fine with me my friend that passed away when I was 28, was also my cousin. passed away massive heart attack at 36 years old. I had to go have surgery the following week because I had a gallbladder disease. And I was feeling sick. The only reason I went to the hospital, actually, is because I was having GI issues. And she was two before she died, and they didn't ever catch the heart attack thing. So I go, I wake up from anesthesia, which you already know it's it's when you have it, you're already emotional and all blurry. And she's standing there at the bedside. I said, Amanda, is that you? And she goes, Yes. And I said, Why are you here? And all of a sudden my eyes start clearing. And then I realize the nurse has a similar haircut I start crying then and she's like, are you okay? And I'm like, I'm so sorry. You just look like my dead friend. And then I asked if it was you and you said yes. And she was like sh poor lady. Didn't know what to do with me. But I was really scared about that surgery. it was before breast cancer. I obviously now I go in there and I'm like, cool, I get to sleep. Fucking awesome. But I was really
Maire (like Laura with an M): Give me the verse it.
Krystal with a K: Yeah, but I I want to believe that the people that I love, my grandmother, my Jen, my, my Amanda are coming to see me. And anyone that wants me to, my my kids, my family, I'll try to find a way that's not super creepy. Or maybe I'll just come like this, because it's bougie. A little creepy. So wear those.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Creepy. Yeah, I was gonna say look creepy. You can dress up as your I have to do this 'cause I keep hot flashing and it's really odd to get it underneath my eyeballs.
Krystal with a K: And sweating, isn't it great? In places you never knew you could sweat.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Awesome. Awful. Behind the knees and under the eyes are my least favorite. I'll tell you that.
Krystal with a K: Same. And then well, under the boobies too. I really didn't have that until I had my freaking titties put in,
Maire (like Laura with an M): I don't really have any boobies anymore, so they don't sweat underneath That was a problem I used to have. And then I asked for small, so
Krystal with a K: Yeah. Well you mixed it up. See, I did the opposite. I was small forever and then I finally got bigger breasts and now I get sweat under there and I'm like, I don't hate it. Or I have to wear a sports bra now. And I'm like, this is interesting. They jiggle. That's awesome.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, they they they move.
Krystal with a K: whoa, I get it. I don't feel bad that I don't have the back pain from having it for like 30 years, my sister and my other friends that are well endowed have. But, you know, give us some time. We'll see what happens in a few more years.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Ha ha ha
Krystal with a K: So let's move on a little bit from ghost stories, into horror movies, which I know that is not necessarily your forte. That's mine.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, I'm as I said, I'm more of like the mess with your mind horror movies than the
Krystal with a K: Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): traditional horror movies. Because it's hard for me to believe now like the blood and the gore I know that it takes more than one chop to get someone's head off kind of thing. Like it's hard for me
Krystal with a K: Don't you?
Maire (like Laura with an M): to suspend belief.
Krystal with a K: I'm like that when I watch medical shows. When they're like, go ahead and and shock them, I'm like, they don't have a heartbeat. What are you
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: what are you gonna do with that? That's not gonna do anything. So it destroys the suspension of disbelief for me. So it ruins it. when they actually do it correctly, I I love it. I'm like, fuck yes, I nerd out about it. So for you, if this blood squirts weird or they don't bleed out or They get shot in the liver, whatever. You're like, dumb. Don't like it.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, this isn't a great death. this this wouldn't be that spectacular. come on.
Krystal with a K: what would your favorite horror movie be?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Honestly, I really, really, really liked Contagion as a horror movie. If you consider it a horror movie. Yes, it does. A pandemic
Krystal with a K: That doesn't even count as a horror movie.
Maire (like Laura with an M): movie. It is such a horror movie. It is it is something
Krystal with a K: If you would have said the stand.
Maire (like Laura with an M): that can really happen and it can wipe out almost an entire global population. I think that's scarier than most horror movie villains, to be honest. Like the idea of
Krystal with a K: I would put that in like a
Maire (like Laura with an M): a germ. Is terrifying to me.
Krystal with a K: I get that. But when I watch the movie, I don't think, man, this is a horror movie. I think more like thriller drama, that vibe. Because
Maire (like Laura with an M): Okay, thriller I'll give Yeah. Okay, so then
Krystal with a K: if you were talking about that, I would be like World War Z or The Stand by Stephen King, which is actually a miniseries. They've done it twice now,
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: once with Alexander Skar guard. Mm, damn. The wicker man, whatever he is recently, which
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: I'm like, that seems painful. I don't know. I don't know if you've seen the previews, but I'm usually a big fan of him. He was in True Blood But those are both some sort of pandemic type thing. I Am Legend, which was a book, and then Will Smith was in the movie. The book was way better, by the way. Very short, very good read.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes, the movie got me when the dog. Like that just killed me. I can't watch
Krystal with a K: Always
Maire (like Laura with an M): I can't watch dogs suffering. Humans? Fine. Dogs no.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. Humans it's fine. Don't kill the fucking dog. I bet go ahead.
Maire (like Laura with an M): traditional horror then, I really liked Dario Gento's Suspiria. it's a classic horror film. It's set at a ballet academy and it's like really, really messed up. And there's a lot of slasher, it's filmed so beautifully. And they just redid it. I haven't seen the remake yet, but they redid it in like 2024. but yeah it's about a yes, yes, one of yeah, but I would
Krystal with a K: Dakota Johnson's in it or something, right? I haven't seen either. I've never seen either of them.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I would suggest starting with the 70s version. I'm going against what I just said, but it's because it's so beautifully shot. the blood is bright, the filming, the suspense of it is really beautiful. I really liked that. That one is definitely up there for me.
Krystal with a K: I love that
Maire (like Laura with an M): Definitely out there.
Krystal with a K: even in a horror movie scenario, you pick the most artistic shit on the planet. you're just so like, it's because of the blood and the colors and the music. It gets me in the mood.
Maire (like Laura with an M): it is, it is, it's such a good story too. But Sweeney Todd was also good. I liked Sweeney Todd.
Krystal with a K: I do really like Sweeney Todd. I do. Please, Mr. Todd. Please,
Maire (like Laura with an M): Sweetie Todd is great. that's a great
Krystal with a K: Mr. Todd. Yeah. But blood the blood in
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly. And the original
Krystal with a K: that drove me crazy because it was like orange. And it was just like
Maire (like Laura with an M): Well, that's because they filmed it with a blue screen over the camera. when the blood spurted out the blue screen turned it orange.
Krystal with a K: See, I didn't know that. But it drove me nuts. That's where I get annoyed.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: If the blood doesn't look like blood, I get pissed off about it. But I I
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. But A Little Priest is one of the best songs ever written. Have a little priest, they're too good at least. Then again they don't come with sins of the flesh, so they're pretty fresh.
Krystal with a K: That's true. But there's always cockroaches in them if they're made at her meat pie place.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Pie place. it's so gross.
Krystal with a K: It was just depressing. The end was fucking tragic. it doesn't necessarily scare me at all I feel like the whole thing was about being blinded by wanting justice. But it was great overall. Very, very good. I have too many horror movies to name my favorites. Obviously classics.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I was gonna say
Krystal with a K: There I mean I grew up, I remember the very first scary movie that I went to. My family tells this story. Is they took me to see Night of the Living Dead in theaters. And you know, they used to have the curtains and then it would
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mm-hmm.
Krystal with a K: open and you'd watch the movie. I didn't fucking mind a horror movie at all. I sat and I was waiting, and then again, my dad liked to fuck with me. he was like, look, you know what's behind that curtain? And I said no. He goes, monkeys and bears. Like it, Chuck E. Cheese. And I hated those animatronics, which Five Nights of Freddy should freak me now, but it really doesn't because I'm I'm a grown ass woman now. but he's like,
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, you've learned better.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. He's like, it's monkeys and bears and I freaked the fuck out in the theater. No, not the monkeys and bears, not the monkeys and bears. So he laughed about it And then it opened up and Night of the Living Dead started playing and I sat quietly through the whole thing. So Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the thirteenth, like Those were some of my favorites. And then obviously love Scream because in the nineties that was our first like genre movie that became a classic. And I loved it. I always loved when there was a female the final girl, the scream queen that made it to the end. I know what you did last summer, all of them. Like they're just
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: nostalgic at this point for me. And then ones that were remakes, but I really ended up liking was House on Haunted Hill. And that one was basically a millionaire Vincent Price vibe. You go and you stay for a million dollars at a haunted place but it used to be like a psych ward and there's these creepy ass fucking ghosts and they're moving like this. And I don't know. It freaked me the fuck out and I loved it. So those are most of my favorites. And I really did like the newer ones, like Insidious. And
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: the conjurings and things like that, those legitimately scared me as well.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Did you ever see darkness falls?
Krystal with a K: Yes. So like that one was good.
Maire (like Laura with an M): That was the first horror movie I ever fucking saw. My cousin was 10 years older than me. I think he was 16 visiting us. I was six or seven. And he had it on the TV. And I remember it scared the hell out of me. My former best friend lived up three houses up the street from me. And after watching Darkness Falls, I could not walk her home without freaking out and running from street lamp to street lamp. I just it was
Krystal with a K: yeah. I was like that.
Maire (like Laura with an M): It terrified me at six to seven years old.
Krystal with a K: I was like that about it. I couldn't run over the sewers at night. I would have to run around them.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I I still don't do clowns.
Krystal with a K: I don't fuck with them. What is it? Chlorophobia? I think it's chlorophobia. Yeah. A lot of
Maire (like Laura with an M): Cholerophobia, yeah, it is. Cholerophobia.
Krystal with a K: people don't fuck with clowns. both the Tim Curry one and the newer one, they did really, really well. I actually this month to fill my spooky cup because I've been doing a lot of breast cancer shit, I listened to The Shining this month as much as I love a good book, because I'm always busy and running around or watching kids, I'll put my earbud in. I did listen to Doctor's Sleep years ago and I loved the way they did the movie. I loved the book and it was very, very good. And then now I'm listening to it, which is forty four hours to have some random person
Maire (like Laura with an M): my gosh.
Krystal with a K: read it to me. But I already knocked out five or six the other day. And
Maire (like Laura with an M): Amazing.
Krystal with a K: and I love it. I'm go I'm on a kick now.
Maire (like Laura with an M): My husband is a big Stephen King fan. so he's reading a bunch of Stephen King right now. I can't off the top of my head remember the one he's currently reading.
Krystal with a K: Dean Kuntz is my other favorite. but I mean they're classics.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I've heard a lot of good things about Riley Sager. I literally just bought Final Girls. I've heard really good things about Riley Sager. And then other author who's really good, spooky wise, is Grady Hendricks. Southern Book Club's guide to slaying vampires is really good. Very, very good for this season. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is my favorite.
Krystal with a K: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, that's a book.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: Is it actual witchcraft or is it like a story about witches that are wayward?
Maire (like Laura with an M): It's it's about a young unwed mother's home and how they turn to witchcraft to get their revenge and peace from their own traumas.
Krystal with a K: Did they have a barn full of penises, though, is the question.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Unfortunately, you'll have to read the book and find out. No. No barns full of penises though. Yes.
Krystal with a K: Okay. Okay Okay. It's a cliffhanger, let me tell ya. last but not least, I wanted to play a little game because, this
Maire (like Laura with an M): I can do this.
Krystal with a K: this is the treats and the tricks. I did send her the questions before, but I'm just gonna be raw dogging it because I don't ever pr plan for any what we're gonna ask.
Maire (like Laura with an M): So I was gonna say we had to send me the questions before because I have chemo brain right now and I couldn't
Krystal with a K: That's fair.
Maire (like Laura with an M): remember even what Jennifer Love Hewitt looked like. So we had we had to we had to chemo brain me. I know she is. I
Krystal with a K: She's fucking stunning and a scream queen.
Maire (like Laura with an M): recognize the name, but I couldn't put a face in my head.
Krystal with a K: She played in Melrose Place and a movie called Heartbreakers that I loved with Susan Sarandon, I believe. And anyway, really good movies. Really good movies. So let's start. And I have them written down, guys, okay? So don't judge me for having to read because I also still can't remember all this shit. round one By the way, I will put this on my blog if you want to play with your friends because it is, it should be fun. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): It is really fun.
Krystal with a K: so This is basically fuck Mary Kill. And we're both very married, so obviously our husbands will forgive us, but it's just a game, you guys. It's just a game.
Maire (like Laura with an M): It's
Krystal with a K: As married, it's a game. All right.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: So fuck Mary Kill. And you have to explain why. First one, slasher starter pack. Ghostface, Mike Myers, or Jason Voorhees.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Okay. So mine was fuck ghost face because it's at least it's a human. Like you never know who's gonna be behind the mask. So it's like a shot in the dark, really. But like were I a single woman, I wouldn't complain about most of the unmaskings they've had so far. we're killing Michael Myers because he's just crazy. It may not be a permanent kill, but it's worth a shot to like try and get it off the map, right? And then lastly, I said Mary Jason. Because he has a tragic backstory and he honors his mama. Plus I love life on a lake.
Krystal with a K: Those are fucking fantastic. Those are fantastic.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: Okay. am I gonna fuck? I would probably fuck Mike Myers because he's huge and he's strong and he has hair. So I think I'm fucking Mike Myers. Also, he loves Halloween. Same bitch.
Maire (like Laura with an M): There you go, yeah.
Krystal with a K: I'm going to kill Jason He just he looks like he smells like lake water. And
Maire (like Laura with an M): He does.
Krystal with a K: I as much as I love a lake, I don't like that fucking stink, fishy, dead whatever. Whatever Mike Myers is.
Maire (like Laura with an M): He can live in a different room though.
Krystal with a K: I okay, that's fair, don't love that he is obsessed with his mom. That's weird to me. And Ghostface, I would definitely marry him because all of are funny. they all and they all act like they're pretty normal. So I feel like at least we could like get along in public and they might be a psychopath behind closed doors, but they'll have me fooled for a while until they want to murder me. So I'm cool with that. Okay. Up next.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I like that. And it'll be a fun murder at that point.
Krystal with a K: Yes. wait, bonus.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mm-hmm.
Krystal with a K: Strong silent killer or ghost face conversational skills. Which one do you prefer?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Conversational skills a hundred percent because otherwise the anxiety of my murder is gonna make the murder worse.
Krystal with a K: I just want you to make me laugh. And a lot of them again are funny. So if you make me laugh before I die, fuck it. Before you like push me up into a garage and smash my head, so be it. Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): my gosh, I knew a friend from childhood whose cat got decapitated by their garage door. Like the Yeah. Yeah.
Krystal with a K: my god. That's horrific. And just like the first scream, it was Tatum. I think. Yeah, that sucks. Ugh. Well, I'm sure they've changed
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: that since then, I would hope, for safety reasons.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, they've changed
Krystal with a K: fucking Dumb ways to die?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: okay, round two, red flags. Freddy Krueger, Chucky, or Pennywise the Clown. Fuck Mary Kill.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Do you wanna go first this time? Or me?
Krystal with a K: Yeah, I'll go first. So I'm gonna I'm gonna murder Chucky. I'm not fucking a doll. That's just weird. He's so tiny like
Maire (like Laura with an M): He and I are in a sexless marriage,
Krystal with a K: Okay, that's fair. And he's also like a spirit of somebody so I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna fuck Freddy because it's usually gonna be in my nightmare that I do it, so it's not real life. It doesn't actually count. And then
Maire (like Laura with an M): That's exactly what I said.
Krystal with a K: okay, and then Pennywise, he only comes around every twenty eight years or so. I think that's right. So I only have to stay married to him for the little bit of time he's there, and then he's gonna be gone. So I I can handle that. And he morphs into different things. He's not always a clown. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. See, that's where I got really screwed up. That's why I was like, I wanna kill Pennywise because he's this cosmic evil horror thing and he decides clown. So that's really messed up. That's what he lands on
Krystal with a K: He pets clown.
Maire (like Laura with an M): is clown. so he's gotta go for that. that's just for me, mm-mm. And also he hangs out in the sewer, that's gonna stink. We wanna talk about smells. That's gonna be the smell. I said marry Chucky because he's a cute little guy, even if he is a bit murderous. And here's the thing he
Krystal with a K: A bit.
Maire (like Laura with an M): can fit into a travel bag. So you can like take him around with you. And once you're his comrade and his accomplice, he's like totally loyal. So like ride or die. I
Krystal with a K: so that means you're fucking Freddy?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, because again, it's only in my nightmares, so it's not real life. He is kind of like child predator though. So mm, but
Krystal with a K: Well, him and Pennywise both.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah. So if we could kill both that'd be great. Yeah.
Krystal with a K: Can we just murder both of them? I think on that we should just kill them both. I didn't even think about that. That didn't factor in.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Ha ha ha.
Krystal with a K: yeah, fuck them both, actually. They're both dead. I'll also marry Chucky and fuck Chucky then. I changed my
Maire (like Laura with an M): I could
Krystal with a K: answer. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay. Round three, Deadly Divas. So we've got Jennifer Check from Jennifer's Body, Tiffany
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: Valentine from Bride of Chucky, and Mrs. Voorhees, Jason's mom, who was the First murderer in the very first Friday the thirteenth.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Right. So for this one, I said, I'm fucking Jennifer because it's Megan Fox. Please, she's and also the storyline of her going after like teenage boys as a succubus. there's a lot of them that need to be culled right now. So like please go for it. If I can help in any way push you towards the succubus thing, go for that. Yeah,
Krystal with a K: Well she goes both ways. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): there you go. I'd say I'd
Krystal with a K: all right.
Maire (like Laura with an M): marry Tiffany Valentine because I'm afraid she'd kill me because I've married her husband already. So we'd need to make it a weird thrupple. Yeah, we'd need to start a polygamy
Krystal with a K: This is a polygamy thing happening. It's you, Chucky and Tiff.
Maire (like Laura with an M): thing because otherwise she'd kill me. and then I'd kill Mrs. Voorhees because she's a crazy woman out for revenge. And we both know how dangerous that is. So I think that that's probably the safest bet to get her out of the equation because she's she's too much of a a loose canon.
Krystal with a K: So I agree with fucking Jennifer. It's Megan Fox, like in every every
Maire (like Laura with an M): Hundred percent.
Krystal with a K: way, yes. But I also couldn't marry her because she'd be way hotter than me. And I still ultimately am straight. Tiffany Yeah, no, it's still the doll thing. I'm not. I'm gonna have to murder Tiffany. And then
Maire (like Laura with an M): But see, sexless the thing for me is the sexless marriage. I was I was able No, I know, but they
Krystal with a K: Why do you keep saying that? They had a baby. They had a baby.
Maire (like Laura with an M): had a baby. I don't need to have a baby. I can't.
Krystal with a K: I can't I can't. I'm not. and I actually would marry Mrs. Voorhees, believe it or not, because I think she loves her son so much she would murder a bunch of fucking campers. And I do love that. she is kind of my spirit animal in that sense. So I I'd marry Miss Voorhees. So bonus, who would ruin your wedding?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Mrs. Vorbeast. sorry.
Krystal with a K: Say it on three. One, two, three. Tiffany.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Miss Yes. wait, Tiffany. I would say Mrs.
Krystal with a K: For me, Tiffany.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Voorhees.
Krystal with a K: I think Tiffany would ruin it. She just seems like the type.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I I mean, yeah, I think both of them, I just think that if you have someone who's that obsessed with their son, she's gonna ruin a wedding.
Krystal with a K: You're not wrong. If I but I'm not marrying her son.
Maire (like Laura with an M): That's true. Well but
Krystal with a K: Now I'm confused. Who are we marrying? Who's ruin are they ruining our marrying
Maire (like Laura with an M): Wait, no, no, no. I was just thinking who not your wedding, I didn't think of it like who'd ruin your wedding of who you'd marry. I was thinking if you were getting married, who would ruin your wedding? And then I I made the
Krystal with a K: Okay, I go with that too.
Maire (like Laura with an M): jump that if we were if I were marrying
Krystal with a K: Her son.
Maire (like Laura with an M): her son, she'd ruin my wedding.
Krystal with a K: I agree. I think you're right. Okay. So and we don't like that. I've already had a toxic mother-in-law. No thanks to that shit. Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Talk yeah. No, I'm very lucky with my mother in law.
Krystal with a K: I am so happy for you, but you chose right. You chose right the first time. Way to go. round four, ghost face edition, because you know I'm a slut for Scream. So out of the Ghostface, we've got Billy Loomis, Stu
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: Mocker, and Richie Kirsch, Was it six, I think? Scream six, whatever. Five or six. he is played by Jack Quaid, which is Dennis Quaid's son. Fun fact.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): So that's the reason I chose to marry him, just because it's Jack Quaid. I don't care about anything else. It's Jack Quaid. We're marrying Jack Quaid. He plays Bradward Boimler on Star Trek below Decks, which is showing my nerd. Jack Quaid a hundred percent. That's my marry Kill Bill just because it's the name of another horror franchise and I thought that was funny.
Krystal with a K: That's why. It's the only reason.
Maire (like Laura with an M): And then Fox Doo because I feel bad at Killed Bill.
Krystal with a K: Okay, mine's different for sure. I'm just fucking Billy Loomis because he's a fuck boy. And like you find out later all this weird shit and he was like fucking her and then help murder her mom and all this weird No, thank you. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: I'd fuck him I'd marry Stu not just because I met Matthew Lillard, okay? He's cool in real life. He's not necessarily my type, but he's funny. Again, I go back to like him being
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: fucking funny. So I'm gonna marry him. And I would kill Richie because both Billy and Stu, I feel like you could still see something creepy or something off about them. Like you question it the whole time. I feel like Richie was so under the radar, like a real life narcissist, like psychopath. I can't fuck with that again. So like I'm out on Richie. He's dead. Kill him.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, Richie is really out of the three of those, he is the most twisted and also has the s silliest plot line, I guess you could say. they really like dug deep there. Jack Quaid. he does
Krystal with a K: Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): great in his in his stuff. Please don't clip that and and
Krystal with a K: Well, you can have him I do love him too. He was in the boys. I'm obsessed.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I'm related to to Queen Maeve. Yeah.
Krystal with a K: What the fuck are you serious?
Maire (like Laura with an M): She was almost at our wedding in Ireland.
Krystal with a K: And then she had to go work on the boys.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, she had to go Queen Maeve.
Krystal with a K: This is crazy. Hold on. I'm gonna tell you this really weird side story real fast. when I was dating after chemo, when my hair was growing back, I have so many stories about this. But I've been catfish like a lot. And I was randomly messaging this guy, he was super fucking hot. He wouldn't answer like a f a face call, FaceTime. And it
Maire (like Laura with an M): Right.
Krystal with a K: was just vi we were just in the midst of like starting to talk. We weren't like dating. I was just trying it out. And I was like, this is weird. So I had my friend Google image search and it ended up being this guy named Anthony Bulls. Anthony Bulls is some Canadian actor he was a body double in the in the show The Boys for the main character. And so I'm like, holy shit. So I message Anthony Bulls on Facebook and I'm like, just so you know, I got catfish, this dude is using your picture. And he messaged me back and he was like, I'm so sorry this has happened before. Where are you at? I said, I'm in Texas. He's we chit chatted back and forth. But I just find it so crazy that that that is my tie to the boys. It's very small. But we ended up being Facebook friends basically. He was very nice. Not obviously
Maire (like Laura with an M): That's so cool.
Krystal with a K: he's a fucking model in Canada. We're not actual friends. but I just thought it was cool. And you're fucking related to Maeve, which is a way closer, way cooler connection. But I just thought it was crazy.
Maire (like Laura with an M): We've never talked. She and I have never talked. We we don't know each other in any any
Krystal with a K: Okay. Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): capacity, but her mother was at my wedding. Her mom came.
Krystal with a K: Gotcha. So you guys are related but don't like hang out.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah, we don't hang out.
Krystal with a K: Okay, moving on from the boys. Round five, we gotta go to the finals girls. Because you and I are finals girls in our own right.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes. Yes.
Krystal with a K: Fuck cancer. And it did pick the wrong bitches. So Sidney Prescott from Scream, Lori Strode from Halloween, Julie James or Jennifer Love Hewitt from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Who Are We Fucking Killing and Marrying? Ooh, I hate this one actually.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I do too. I'm thinking
Krystal with a K: I have to kill one of them.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I don't want to kill any of them. but I said I'd marry Sydney because she's arguably loyal, resourceful, and would be fun to hang out with because I think our trauma stories could rival each other. I might kill Lori, and the only reason for this is that I'm pretty sure if I didn't, she would kill me first. And secondly, I don't know if I could hang out or like end up terrified and miserable long term somewhere. holed up somewhere.
Krystal with a K: And she did.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Right. I don't know if I could do that. And then s the last one, Julia's reactive rather than proactive. So I don't think that she's good for a long term relationship. I think that that's some liability stuff there, especially if we're talking final girls, if people are coming after us. We need someone who plans ahead, Sorry.
Krystal with a K: Okay. Those are really fair. I hate this because I'm a girls' girl and I am a huge fan of all of these women and the actresses
Maire (like Laura with an M): Same.
Krystal with a K: that play them, so I hate having to answer this. Why did I come up with this? this is hard. This is really hard. Because I love Jamie Lee Curtis so much. I
Maire (like Laura with an M): I know.
Krystal with a K: For the same reason you said, I think she had to go most reclusive because he literally wouldn't stop coming, at least with Sydney and and with Julie. It was like different people trying. So it was a little different. So I'd probably kill you, Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I know I feel so bad saying
Krystal with a K: But not in real life because you're the baddest of bitches. Literally, I look up to you so much. And then Sydney, I would I would probably just fuck Sydney. She seems awesome, but she also has the trauma thing. And I can't have two of us. I I have too much. I need someone to even me out. I feel like Julie has kind of like went to a normal life and like kept being upbeat and kept trying, you know, to be happy. So I would marry Julie. And I love I love her. Jennifer Love Hewitt also.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Of all three of them really.
Krystal with a K: Me too. So bonus question then. who would keep you alive versus get you killed? I know that's where Jamie Lee Curtis
Maire (like Laura with an M): Julie would get us killed, I think, but Jamie Lee Curtis would be the one to keep us alive.
Krystal with a K: She'd keep us alive. that's where my redemption is because I would absolutely stick with Lori Strode. The amount of time she's killed this fucker in so many different ways. everyone else, like you said, I feel like is reactive. And they also just do shit like go back to their house and live in the same house. And I'm like, stop doing that. Fucking Sydney kind of did. She changed Who she was for a while but then came back out of hiding and I don't know. So Lori
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: Strode, Sydney just anyone close to her gets killed. So I feel like she'd probably get me killed.
Maire (like Laura with an M): now that I think about it, that seems dangerous.
Krystal with a K: Yeah. Or she'd think you were a killer and then she's not your friend and she detaches. So
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly.
Krystal with a K: All right. Round six. We're gonna pick our deaths. Final destination style. Airplane explosion like the first one, log truck disaster. Roller coaster derailment. Which one? You have to pick what other one. fuck no. Worst nightmare.
Maire (like Laura with an M): airplane immediate. Airplane. Yep, no. I would do the airplane because you die most instant instantaneously.
Krystal with a K: Not in that movie. ripped out and then explode. What'd you say? That wasn't realistic. Okay.
Maire (like Laura with an M): that's not realistic. That's not realistic. Once the explosion happens, you're dying.
Krystal with a K: I'm probably going with roller coaster derailment because I do love roller coasters and if I'm gonna die, it's something I'm doing that I love. No?
Maire (like Laura with an M): You can't put me on a roller coaster. I'm terrified of them. So yeah.
Krystal with a K: but you'll jump out of a plane?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Nope.
Krystal with a K: you won't that's right. You said you watch people, you won't. I like
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah.
Krystal with a K: roller coasters. Someone just died on one too. Okay, that's actually pretty fucking morbid. Sorry guys. Stephen King Showdown. Who would you rather fight? Jack Torrance from The Shining. Cujo, the dog, with rabies, and he is a Saint Bernard, he's massive. Gage Creed from Pet Cemetery. He's the little boy that like
Maire (like Laura with an M): Probably gauge because he's a toddler and he only has a small amount of reach. So even though he does have an
Krystal with a K: He fucked a lot of people up.
Maire (like Laura with an M): arm he he might have a scalpel, he might have some weaponry, but a swift kick in the right direction and you could send him flying.
Krystal with a K: He hung his mom. he
Maire (like Laura with an M): but you kick him far enough, hard enough, and he goes bye bye.
Krystal with a K: I couldn't I couldn't hurt a toddler, even if he was fucking possessed and demonic. I probably going with Kujo because he wasn't really supernatural. He just had rabies and I think I could I could kill a dog if I had to.
Maire (like Laura with an M): If I had the right weapons I could kill a dog, but I would not want to go up one on one against a Saint Bernard with rabies. I'd need weapons. that's why I think
Krystal with a K: No no I'd need weapons too.
Maire (like Laura with an M): I could take on a child if I have 'cause I have a physically larger body.
Krystal with a K: Not that I've ever done it. I've never done it, but if I had to.
Maire (like Laura with an M): No, I've never done it. I've never done it, but I think I could.
Krystal with a K: So that's the end of the game. I think we did fantastic. do you think that surviving breast cancer has automatically qualified us as being final girls?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Honestly, yes, because with breast cancer, not to like make it real here, but you have to make the choice to do scary things over and over and over and over again, even when you really, really don't want to. And I think that final girls get to the end because they face the scary things and they make the smart choices for them in those situations. if having breast cancer taught me anything, it's how to make the smart choices for myself in most scary situations. So yeah. We're final girls. A hundred percent.
Krystal with a K: I agree. And we never fucking know if we're gonna have a sequel. Again, I've had it three
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly.
Krystal with a K: times. You're Bracca. So like that comes with always looking over your shoulder or waiting for it. But it also doesn't define who we are. And we don't have to live in that all of the time. But we can fucking own it. We can be our final girls for Halloween. And I'm just I'm really happy that I met you. I'm so
Maire (like Laura with an M): Me too.
Krystal with a K: proud of you for getting through all of the things because you're right, people don't realize that it's a choice every single time you do something, even doing chemo. They're like, well, you have to do chemo. Well, you could not. There are people that choose not to. They don't always have the best odds. And if your doctors are telling you to do it, usually there's a reason. But that is a choice. You choose to do the surgeries, you choose to do the chemo, you choose to take your meds. And I'm just proud of you because you've done all of those things and you've still tried to Use that time and use what you're experiencing to help other people on social media by sharing your story. You've actually got some really exciting things coming up because you're
Maire (like Laura with an M): I do.
Krystal with a K: doing it, I'm not gonna ruin the surprise, but y'all need to follow her if you're not. She is the breast subject on Instagram. I still have all of her spooky shit up for the doctress of death on my blog. So check it out at www.plot twist. And is there anything else that you want to say?
Maire (like Laura with an M): I wanna say thank you for having me on a third time. This was really fun and it's been really great getting to know you and getting to chat with you both on the podcast and off of the podcast. they really say it it is the worst club best members, and I'm just really grateful to have found another best member of my club. So I'm really I'm really
Krystal with a K: Same boo.
Maire (like Laura with an M): grateful for you.
Krystal with a K: I'm grateful for you. and plot twist. We're still alive, motherfuckers. So let's do
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yeah we are.
Krystal with a K: this the right way. We gotta end it the right way. five. What?
Maire (like Laura with an M): Lastly, wait, happy high holy season to those who celebrate. Happy Halloween.
Krystal with a K: Happy Halloween. Happy High Holy Season. and happy birthday when this comes out. Happy birthday to Plot Twist still alive. We're officially One year old. We just a baby. I know. And you would kill me if
Maire (like Laura with an M): God, happy birthday. Happy birthday.
Krystal with a K: you had to go up against a dog or me. I'm just kidding. And all of you witches, happy Halloween. And make sure that you're taking care of your penises in your barn. Okay. It gets chilly,
Maire (like Laura with an M): Yes.
Krystal with a K: so make sure they have penis blankets. All right.
Maire (like Laura with an M): Exactly. And corn. Don't forget to feed them corn.
Krystal with a K: Don't forget the corn. So we gotta end this shit the right way. Let's do a high five. Psh. Still alive. And do your evil laugh.
Maire (like Laura with an M): We did.