Your Scary Stories Episode #8: Max Headroom TV signal hijacking & Kelly-Hopkinsville Alien Encounter

Luke, can you hear me? Yes? I can? Can you hear me? I can hear you? Yes, I can already get a little bit of a video lag going. It's that great internet. Do you have? Wonderful? Some would say you have scary Internet. I would say that get everything going? All right? All right, all right, this is your Scary Stories Live. This show where we share your scary stories live every Monday at ten thirty pm ish. As it's eleven pm. Luke was busy beating the first boss. Would you say that's the case? Yeah, something like not quite like that. No, weird stuff always pops up though it seems like put us off slightly. It's all good. We're here though, man, how are you doing? Good? Good? Are you good? Man? Cutting in and out? It's all right though. So yeah, I've got three stories tonight that I'm gonna share. How do you? I have two. One's a little bit different than what I normally do because it's more of a pretty well documented story. Okay, well, it's nothing wrong with that. I have one. It's pretty well documented too. So yeah, this one I've been wanting to talk about for a long while because it's something that I was always interested in when I first heard the story, and so this one I'm pretty excited about though. Yes, Lucas spooky Internet and a sure what's going on? You must live out there in a some rural area. I'm excited about this. I will start off with the first story tonight. Cost If you want to submit a story to us, you can go to your Scary Stories dot com. There's a submission tab there, also available across all social media, including Discord, Reddit. I think there's some variation differences. You'll have to give the Discord and read it. I know that we're your scary stories on every other platform, but it's a little different on one of them. Were your scary stories on Discord as well? It's sharey or scary stories on Reddit because somebody already has your scary stories that they're not using tragic on Reddit. Yeah, well I'm going to kick things off. Luke, Are you ready? We'll see if we can get the music going. You ever been more ready in your life, that's what you're saying. Yeah, well, okay, I'm going to share the first story this evening. This is called evil Clown Story. This happened at a haunted house on Halloween. Just me and my friend Sarah. Me and Sarah are total opposites. She's blonde, outgoing and completely fearless. I have dark hair, introverted, and I'm honestly at people pleaser. That's actually how I ended up at this haunted house. Anyways, we go through the haunted house and it was pretty awesome. The usual people with chainsaw, screamers, clowns. However, one clown in particular kept following us. He wasn't like the other clowns who wore face paint with fake blood splattered on them. He didn't have a big rigged nose and clown clubs either, irregular if not, tattered jeans, stained sweaty white tea, and a clown mask. The mask was very detailed. It had eyes cut out and a wicked, jagged teeth with blood smeared around the mouth. It was seriously creepy. He followed us all the way through the house as we giggled and ran into the last room full of fog. Once we make it outside, we go to the stand outside the attraction to get some hot cocoa. There was a local band playing on the stage outside. This is on the fairgrounds in their local area. While enjoying the cocoa and watching the band from a distance. The clown. That same clown walks up and stand inches away from me. I noticed he was breathing in and out so hard his mask was sticking to his face and releasing with each breath. I was thinking, Okay, this is pretty odd, but I guess we're an environment where this could be considered normal. He walks away for a moment. We giggle about it, but he stays pretty close, staring. We walk up closer to the band, and he comes back right back up and stands right behind me. He starts tugging my hair. I try to ignore it. He's just tugging the hair softly at this point, but he keeps tugging harder and harder. Suddenly he pulls my hair so hard my head whips back. Sarah starts yelling at him, and he lets go and walks away, but not far. Like before. She wanted to tell someone, but I didn't want to tell anybody. We're at a haunted house and he probably didn't mean to. But she said no, that the people working in the house and on the property are not allowed to touch you during this attraction. We told her something like this, ma'am. Your clown over there pulled my friend's hair so hard it almost ripped out. The manager replied, I don't see any of our clowns. They're all in the Haunted House. We don't allow them to walk around out here because some families with small kids are doing other activities in this area and we don't want to scare them. I told her, but it's that clown standing right there. He did it. Do you not see him? How do you not see him? She told me, calm down, that's not one of our clowns. Are you sure that just isn't a friend of yours messing with you? Terrified, I responded with a thank you and told her that we're sorry to bother her. I just wanted to leave. At this point, the clown is still staring and I'm missing a hair nails, so this isn't very fun anymore. Fearless Sarah decides to confront the clown. She marches right up to with me behind her, and demands he takes off his mask. He doesn't speak, he just looks at me and turns his head to the side. He reaches out his hand to me, and I refuse to touch him. He pushed Sarah from in front of me and stepped two inches from my face and screamed the most terrifying, psychotic scream I've ever heard. Everyone turned to look. The band even stopped playing music. Sarah grabbed me by the arm, but I was frozen in fear. Sarah then grabbed my face and slapped me. She pulled my arm again and we started to run away. We stopped a short distance away. I looked back at the clown and he was still standing and staring. Everyone just went back to what they were doing like nothing happened. We got into our car and peeled out of there. Sarah kept yelling that we needed to call the police. I told her that it wasn't a big deal and there was just some weirdo at a haunted house, and that I had no hard feelings for her slapping me because I know I wasn't reacting because I was so scared. Then she said the most terrifying thing ever to me. He had a knife. That's why she slapped me and pulled me to run away, not from fear of me being screamed at. She saw the weapon in his hand. We contacted the police, but they didn't take us seriously. I am now afraid to go to any haunted attraction, not because they're too scary, but because you never really know if someone works there or they're just there because they fit in so well. Shit, you have a fear of clowns. Look not so much of clowns. But I have always thought about how like a place like that, if you were going to be at Killer Man obvious, that you could get away with it there, like you might not get hot like yo, you would just be like yo, quick stick and move and you get out of there and uh, drop your disguise. Did you just say quick, stick and move? I did? Oh well no, all right. So on Netflix there's this nice knife for death I think what it was called. And there's this challenge called stick and Move where you're supposed to stab these things. So that's like stuck in my head for everyone. I think of knives. I think of knife for dads, and sometimes you got stick and move. Yeah. I think a lot of people out there have a fear of clowns. So I antally think back to it was like two thy sixteen or something with all those clown sightings everywhere, but all those random creepy ass blowns. It's just like that was so weird. They were like everywhere man like, they were scary, terrifying. They would like fake charge you. Well, I guess I don't really know if fake if you run away, but they're like charge you, you know what I mean. Some of the most scary ones I seem were like the doorbell cameras, like the cloud to walk up to the door in the middle of the night and be like, what was that? That was so weird. That's spontaneously like everybody's gonna get in on the movement all of a sudden. Yeah, it was just crazy that. I don't know, that's that's crazy. I definitely I'm not like afraid of clowns. But I guess I haven't been to a lot of these hotter attractions since I was like little, right. I don't even remember doing it. I was a little bit older maybe in call It and stuff. I just can't really remember. But I think this clown sounds pretty terrifying and compare compared to like Ronald McDonald it's definitely a little bit different than Ronald McDonald's. Well he was still loving it though, Yeah, he was that A lot of people get. Uh, it's a it's a natural instinct to be afraid of something that you can't fully make out, you know, and when something's behind it, each type of mask, you don't see their emotions, right, and this is a human creature coming at you, but you can't tell their friend or foe by looking at their face. And this guy had a face mask on for what the story described, whether it's even just paint, it was a fall on mask with eye holes, which is why, like you know, Michael Myers is such a scary villain. It's because his face is so emotionless because it's a mask, and so it makes it more terrifying. Do you think the body language is very telling though? Like they like she said as he turned his head, like you know, I'm talking about like a dog does, Like you know what I mean? That speaks to a person who is more deranged than your average person. How did you feel about the point when it the clown that started screaming in her face? That was kind of terrifying. Uh, And it shows that they kind of have a total lack of respect for normal human interactions. It doesn't seem like something that they would even do at a regular haunted house. Now they're there are more extreme haunted houses like that was really weird one you hear about they go overboard and but I don't think this was that kind of because you normally they don't have like clown guys and shit like that, so like that that to me, it seems like this is much more of a somewhat normal haunted house, and with something like that to happen there would be highly unusual, and it makes you think, you know, this is not that kind of person. Kind of seems like she has a pretty good friend though, Yeah, absolutely does. They were definitely on the ball that night. Yeah, kind of a good friend like that kind of reminds me of this. See that right there? Well, anyway, he's staring in the camera. That's the way a killer stares into someone's eyes. But you only get what you give there, right Yeah, And I feel like what he's gonna give you is a knife and you Oh, I love that clip. I was. I was so excited to share that clip with you. You don't even know. I couldn't even wait till like the second story to do that. We have a very long history with that clip. I don't know many people in the world. That would be like everybody, there's so many insight jokes. They're just like, what are they talking about? Yeah, there's definitely a long history with that clip. Yeah, it's funny because like twenty five percent of the jokes that we have knowing but us would get. That's why it makes it great though, great song though, but only give what you give. She had a good friend. Uh, she called her something at one point that I thought was pretty funny. Here something Sarah fearless, Sarah gotta go confront the clown herself. Would you confront the clown yourself? I mean, until I saw the knife, that'd be like, we gotta go wors enough, Harrybird, get out of here, clown. Yeah, then once you saw that, you probably wouldn't beat Yeah, you're right, Probably nothing else you could say. Now at that point, we got to get out and then maybe call the cops. But they called the cops, I think right in the story. So yeah, it kind of seemed like she was very hesitant to act upon any of these things. They did eventually tell the manager and then when they left they called the cops and they said, didn't take them serious. This is on Halloween too, right, you think that's you think there's probably a lot going on. Yeah, I imagine that's a nightmare for police every year. Yeah, Like, what do you take serious? You know? Yeah, Luke, it's your time. Let me cueue up the music. So the title of this is Shadows over the House in the Desert. When I was ten years old, I lived in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona. There, my mother and I lived in a house with their significant other, Rick. I would have fun playing outside in the sand and playing around the cacti. Who's a decent place. Our closest neighbor was a mile down the dirt, dusty dirt road, no one else around for good hike Down behind the house was a railroad track trained to go by once in a blue moon, and the distant whistle could be heard faintly from our house. Everything was going well until Rick's mother passed away. Once that happened, he changed. He became more aggressive. It was understandable considering the tragedy, but kept getting worse. Each day. He seemed to become more and more disturbed. My mother was not a religious woman, but one night she felt the need to pray. She prayed for me for herself and for him. She went to place her hand on him as she prayed. As soon as her handmade contact, Rick shot up, gasping, two light must get to the dark. And he left the bed and went to go sleep on the couch. My mom was terrified, unsure of what to do. After a minute, she got out of bed to go check on him. He was dead asleep. She tried talking to him. Rick started muttering about trains. She wasn't sure what he was on about. Then second later, the distance sound of the train could be heard. Since Rick started changing, I had also been experiencing phenomena. Each night I would go to bed, couldn't sleep. There was something there. It wasn't the usual shadows cast by things that make monsters in a kid's mind. Now this was real. There were a dozen shadow figures standing in my room. Very clear, black figures with distinctly human shape stood around the room looking at me. They had no features, but I knew they were looking at me. They were there every night, couldn't sleep. Each night they became clearer and less like shadows. They became these bluish creatures with pure red eyes and sharp teeth jutted out of their mouth, but still had the shape of humans. They were always looking at me, and now they had features. I could see they were smiling. All of this came to the head On my birthday. Rick and my mother were in an argument. I was told to step outside. I did so I couldn't hear them. After that, I sat outside for several minutes. Suddenly every fiber of my being told me to go back into the house. I ran back inside and I saw Rick rage to strike my mother in the head. I yelled, He stopped, brother ran to me, and we ran out the door. We got into the truck and drove off as fast as we could. As we drove away, Rick through a rock that cracked the rear the window. We never returned to the house. We never saw Rick again, and I have never seen another shadow person. Yeah, that's creepy. I guess a lot of times you hear about these entities that have that appear and stuff. Sometimes negative energy can attract them. Some people would say, right, that was my thought process on the whole thing. That seemed like what he was going through brought something into that house. Yeah, that is terrifying. Uh So people are sitting here that gave me serious chills people. Yeah, yeah, me too. So people are saying, is they come in along their live I think it was interesting that they went into the detail about seeing the features. Yeah, typically you don't talk about shadow people and facial features. That was something I thought was interesting too. You know, he mentioned that first they didn't and then each night, as things got progressively worse, they became more full featured. And I actually had never heard of a shadow person becoming like this, like bluish uh looking or whatever, and having these sharp teeth. So that was a different spin off from me. I thought that was interesting, and I thought that, you know, it seems like someone can be made to be worse under these conditions too, like Rick was clearly getting worse as their influence grew. Also, it just seemed like there was some sort they're feeding off each other almost kind of thing. Makes you wonder if when he had the tragedy happen, you said his mother had passed away. Story said that, excuse me, It makes you wonder if that, like, if that leaves a person vulnerable for like that sort of thing to happen to them. I believe so, Yeah, assuming something has I don't want to overtaken. It's like such a strong thing has got somehow involved with him. I don't know how it's to word it, you know what I'm saying, though, absolutely I do believe so. I think it depends on the person. It depends on how the person that you knew passed away. I think those things all contribute to what could happen to you. And I do believe that certain things will leave you more vulnerable to some sort of darkness, you know, something that you don't want to have in you. It all comes down to how how you let it affect you. Someone asked, do you think they could see them clear? Because it was getting worse, like progressively worse. I think that was making the entity become more visible. I think it was the whole tragedy of the situation forcing itself on his mind that allowed him to perceive these things. It was like stripping away the barrier between one world and another. Yeah, that's terrifying. I think it's It's fortunate though, that when they got out of the situation, they didn't experience it anymore. Like it's not something that followed them, this evil thing or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah, it seemed like it was there in that house. He was ten at the time, and I kind of wonder what happened to this Rick after that. You know, they never saw him again. He's ten years old at the time. We don't know what happened with him, the Rick guy ever again, but we do know that it ended and escalated to the point where he's chasing down the car and threw a rock at it as they were leaving his So they lived at Rick's house, I assume, Yeah, moved in with Rick, and this was like the one night it all escalated and that's when they decided to get out of there. Yeah, it was when he was already actually hit his wives. Yeah, so they never saw him again. Yeah, probably for the best. Yeah, definitely just wonder what happened with the guy though. Can't imagine it ended well, No, I wouldn't think so. Okay, move on to the next story. I'm excited about this story. It's got video with it. I don't know how familiar you are with the Mac's Headroom signal hijacking in nineteen eighty seven. I know a bit about it. Yeah, we're going to talk about that tonight. A lot of people consider this to be really scary to me, it's almost humorous, but I can see where it's pretty freaky too though. Oh yeah, and this is a well known thing, but there's got to be people watching this right now that have not heard of this, and I'm excited to share that with him. Sound good? Okay? So yeah, this is the Max Headroom signal hijacking. On the night of November twenty second, nineteen eighty seven, the television signals of two stations in Chicago, Illinois were hijacked, briefly sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home viewers. So, just to go to a little bit of a backstory here on what or who rather Max Headroom is. He's a fictional character that they really got going in the eighties. I think it was actually played by an actor. But this is advertised as like the first computer generated TV host TV presenter. It was clearly just an actor. I think they makeup on him and other prosthetic things and contact lenses, and I think the way they shot with the camera they tried to make it look like this was an AI generated person. The lighting looked weird, right, and he would have this weird the background to be moving these like straight bars had been moving behind him, and he actually caught on. I think it started as like he had like a television series and stuff. He caught on to the point where I believe major companies were using him, like Coca Cola for other advertisements things like that. He was well known. Put it that away. This is not the first time this had happened with the broadcast television. There was a real notable event that happened the year before with HBO where somebody had hijacked the HBO signal and broadcast at a message essentially complained about the price jack and then I don't want to mess up the terminology, but HBO basically made it where you weren't going to see it for free anymore. They would mess with the image. I think they called it scrambled it. So this wasn't a new event, new thing that happened, But this is definitely like probably the most notable one. Obviously there's stories that go back to like War of the World's plan on radio and stuff like that, but this one is pretty creepy. So we'll get into it here. Okay, So yeah, like I said. This was the night of November twenty second, nineteen eighty seven. This takes place in Chicago, Illinois. The first hijacking of the radio of the airwave took place at nine to fourteen PM during a sports segment on WGN's TVs the nine o'clock news. Home viewer screens went black for about fifteen seconds before footage of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses is displayed. The individual rocks erratically in front of the rotating metal panel behind him. You could tell it's it's somebody in a Max Headroom costume, but they're trying to mimic this background that's moving around. Like we talked about, it was just a bunch of buzzing sounds on this first one is as if the audio did not go through, so it was strange. This lasted about twenty seconds and was cut off when the engineers that were on shift then change the frequency of the signal linking the broadcast studio to the transmitter on top of the John Hancock Center. I do have a video to share of this first event when they're able to take over the this particular news channel, slowt me pull it up here dumps of the five McMahon McKennon fourteen nothing bears. Well, if you're wondering what's happened so on, I actually the computer that we have running our news from time to time took off and went wild. So what we're gonna do is tart over from the top of the bears and tell you once again about the thirty to ten victory they had over Detroit today out of Soldier Field. So yeah, this first instance goes by, and the news crew on shift actually acknowledges it, right, they don't know what happened. Back then, funky things would happen sometimes, like what you were trying to display would get scrambled or whatever it get stuck on the screen, So they're not really sure what happened at this point in time. Like I said, there's no audio. It's just a brief interruption. I think how long did I say, maybe fifteen seconds? I think the whole thing went on twenty seconds in total, So just weird. Nine to fourteen at night is a very is a primetime television time, right, I mean, And they kind of blew it off and said it was the computer doing funky things, which I guess back then probably people didn't really know as much about computers either, right, so they're just like, hey, that this is just this is a computer acting funky. Right, moving on later in the night, This is at about eleven twenty pm, and that is the same night. However, this is a different station. The first one was WGNTV that eleven twenty pm on WTTW. It's the essentially the local signal for the PBS station. It was interrupted during Doctor Who. It was a horror of fang Rock, which I'm not familiar with that, but the culprit of this hijacking of the airwave was the same. It was the Max Headroom impersonator, and this time audio actually came through. Let's just go ahead and share that clip before we discuss it. This is where things get freaky. You should go with the old ones of your child. But the only way to learn, I'll get you a hot drink. You can fourteen r checks, worsening ocasions, special years, the way you don't get social bars. Oh I guess they are giant blast you spa home the greatest girls newspapers Remember when you were the other one? Small as I can tell the mass. Yeah, freaky, so we'll go on with the description of the events here. The mass figure made a comment about nerds, calling WGN sportscaster Chuck Sworsky a freaking liberal, held up a can at Pepsi while saying catch the wave. That's a slogan from the campaign for Coca Cola. That what we were talking about the Max Headroom character was doing, and held up the middle finger inside what appears to be a hollowed out sex toy. The figure then ran through a series of quick comments and in song snippets with exciting noises and explanations, Max saying the phrase your love is fading on part of the theme song for the nineteen fifty nine animated series Clutch Cargo, and he then said I still see the X. This was a reference to the last episode of that show. He also started rambling randomly about the files and explained that he had made a giant masterpiece for the Greatest World Newspaper Nerds. WGN's call letters actually stood for World's Greatest Newspaper could have just mixed up there, and he was describing sharing dirty gloves with his brother. After a crude video edit, the person had mostly off screen at this point. He had his partially exposed, but talks visible from the side with a female figure wearing a French made costume what appears to be a mask. This is on the right side of the frame. She is spaking him with the fly'swater and he was holding the mask out there for a second before that and scream and I know they're coming, make it stop. The female, like I said, figure was spanking him flyswater. The image faded into static, then viewers were returned to the doctor who broadcast this is a total interruption about ninety seconds. Technicians at the stations could not counteract to takeover because there were no engineers on duty when this happened. So this was a serious tower now known as Willis Tower. I guess where the station's broadcast tower was located. According to the station spokesperson, technicians monitoring the transmission from the headquarters attempted to take countermeasures but couldn't. The director recalled that as the content got weirder, we got increasingly stressed out about our inability to do anything. The pirate broadcast actually ended because the pirates transmitted and ended it. By the time the people really got into looking what was going on, it was already over with. They received a bunch of phone calls about this. Then some experts FCC gets involved in stuff, and the broadcast intrusion was archived by sending a more powerful microwave transmission to this broadcast towers. Then the stations were sending themselves, triggering a capture effect. This was a difficult task in nineteen eighty seven, but was possible before American television stations switched from analog to digital signals in two thousand and nine. But even so, we've seen things happen with the digital signals. It's just not quite as easy to do, I guess. Experts have said that this stunt required extensive technical expertise and a significant amount of transmitting power, and that the pirate broadcast likely originated from in the line of sight of both station broad broadcast towers. No one has ever claimed responsibility for this. There's a lot of speculation out there about the identity of this Max person. Really, nothing solid has ever come out of this. People have said it's former employees upset with station. People have tried to connect to various other people. Nothing's ever come of it. Soon after the investigation, FCC official quoted it in news reporting that perpetrators would phase A five, which excuse me, face a maximum fine of ten thousand dollars then up to a year in prison. However, the five year statute limitation has done long past. No one's ever been identified in the case of who did this? I love that so much. I guess it's crazy and messed up, right, but I loved how like crazy early television, you know, eighties television was out, like there's no security at all. You just needed a lot of electrical power and an antenna and you could blow out their transmission and take it over. That's so crazy. Yeah, what happened where it didn't really work the first time? I get somebody was there working. First of all, they're able to counter it, but it's like the audio didn't go through. I guess it must be when you're intercepting a signal. Maybe it varies. I think they had just enough power to get on the screen, but not enough to blow out their audio entirely. Do you think this is scary to some people watching it? Absolutely? Yeah, I mean it's crazy. This is a crazy person doing this. I mean, obviously, whoever did it is slightly unhinged, and so you have a person that has it's like the Joker and in Batman he takes over the airwaves at one point and he does a broadcast like this in the mac Michael Keaton Batman. I thank even so, Yeah, this is something crazy person would do, and if they actually applied themselves, they could be a terrifying person. Yeah, we got a lot of comments saying things like that unstable person. Then people are asking why would they come forward now? Right like it's all done. They can't get in trouble for it. Nobody has a claim responsibility for it, though it seems like something you'd be like, Oh, I did that. You know it's crazy, as I'm sure you are. Besides the people who did it, I'm sure that there are a lot of people in deeper par pockets of the Internet who know who did it. And I don't understand why no one's coming forward. That is super weird because there's more than just a people who were there who know guaranteed they probably told somebody at some point. A lot of people are so sure it's an inside job. I'm not so sure. Yeah. So, like you mentioned early on in the HBO thing, which happened like the year before or something like that. Yeah, so that was a guy who who did run like another station and he just sucked hijack. Yeah, he hijacked their signal to you know everything like that. So like these people probably had access to some stuff and they just decided to use it for something crazy. Like they weren't like part of WGN or it was WGN, Is that right? The first one is WGN, the second was wttw okay yeah, yeah, so I don't believe they were affiliated with either of those two stations, but they were definitely people who worked at some other station because they knew at least the broadcasting power. So when I was researching the HBO in the INI happened here before, they were talking about how there for a while they were like both amping up their power to see who it who could take over the frequency. But HBO actually backed off because they were worried that it would blow their trans I get like blow a transmitter. I don't know now to describe it. They're worried that it would damage their satellite if they continue to up their power. So that's why, I mean, that's why they like let it go. Yeah, it's really crazy. And like I said, That's something I really like about that era of TV and radio and stuff like that. Radio is still saying what you can build a little FM transmitter and then pump in a lot of electricity and you'll overpower the local FM radio. They gather this HBO got like a one year probation in his ham radio license second way for a year or something like that. That sounds about right, Yeah, you see, it's weird like these uh these uh fi and like everything seems a little low. But after but because of the HBO thing, they made a federal offense. Oh did they? Yeah, so that's why the person didn't come forward then yeah, but now so long later, it's like, why would you not do that? Let's talk about the obscene gestures he was doing though, Luke, that was gross, Like it's a gross thing to do. It's a gross person to do that, and light because you don't know who's gonna be watching this. Granted this was at like eleven o'clock at night and but eleven twenty, but this was still a PBS station like oh broadcasting SISH. They interviewed a couple kids, They interviewed like a bunch of different people, Like I saw news reports. Some people were like it was funny. Some people were basically called them terrorists. Some people were kids are staying they're scared. There's like a bunch of different It was a mixed reaction, but some people were legitimately freaked out. So here's the thing. These people are deliberately doing weird, gross stuff like that when they know it was a good chance to kid it is going to be on the other side of that, and so yeah, that's a terrifyingly gross thing to do. It's a weird thing to do. I just think it's funny that it was even impossible to be done. Like it's you know, technology has changed so much. They like you said, it can still technically be done in some instances, but it's a lot harder. That's definitely pumped a lot of power. I saw one where this had happened in the last fifteen years, I believe, Oh where was it. I don't know. If it's a Montana, I don't know. But somebody was able to hijack like the emergency system, so it came on or like you know, like public service, like emergency service announcement, and they said the zombies. They basically said the dead was coming back to alive. The person caught and got in trouble. But it's still possible. But it definitely seems like what it was analog that was kind of like a free for all that. Yeah, I remember when that happened. Actually, well I don't remember the year, obviously, I remember hearing about it. That reminds me of another story in Hawaii when it wasn't someone hijacked the emergency broadcasts, but someone made a mistake with the emergency broadcast and they broadcasted a nuke was on the way. Wow. And this happened I think maybe six or seven years ago. It wasn't very long ago now, and so a lot of people believed they were gonna die. So it caused about like it was like fifteen fifteen, twenty minutes of just pure chaos. I had someone said, doctor, who got a little more PG? Maybe at thirteen? I had to blurry out the butt talks. Yeah, like I've seen the unblurred video at one point, So you did. I fear it's more appropriate, it's not really Definitely get the point. You get the point. I mean, it's gross, it's weird. Why the hell did we do that? Definitely several people involved, that there's a person filming it, just twisting the camera trying to create this effect. You got a person in a French made outfit, so there's not just one person behind it. Yeah, and the French maid was definitely a female person. Yes, Yeah, people were really You could basically come to the conclusion this wasn't live, it was recorded because the cut in the video. Yeah, I guess the creepy part is. The scary part is what was the purpose? Was there a message they were trying to give or because nobody really got it. People have their opinion on things, but I think it was a narcissistic sociopath kind of saying, like they were just like, hey, we could do this. These people are stupid. We can just do this ourselves and mess with everybody. And they think they knew no one was working to counter it. I think so. Yeah, I think that they knew, well, they probably guessed that nobody was gonna be there, and they probably figured, well, we got enough juice, we can pull this off and we'll be legends because everybone's gonna be talking about us for the next thirty years. People still are. Do you think the scary part is that this could be done though, Like what else could happen? Yeah, because like you know, they could have done stuff that you have more malicious if they wanted to. Yeah, they showed a definite flaw in the system and all you needed was power and you could do ever you want. You may never know. It's like Cooper, they're playing guy, We'll never know, you know. Yeah, so exactly like that may he may be a future story right there. Yeah, there you go. Uh, good one. I enjoyed that one. I did too. I didn't know that's what you were going to go do. And I'm really excited about I'm glad that one was the one we did. Yeah, it's awesome. So this one's a very well documented notable case in UFO history. This is the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter, is also known as the Hopkinsville Goblin case. On August twenty first, nineteen fifty five, the Sutton that family from Kelly, Kentucky reported being terrorized by small goblin like creatures that they believed to be exterrestrial in origin. It began on a warm summer night in fifty five when Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, who has visiting the Sutton family residents went outside to investigate strange noises they had heard. According to Sutton and Taylor, they were confronted by a small creature with large eyes, a pointed head, and long, spindly arms and legs. The creature was described as standing around three feet tall and having a metallic or reflective skin. Two men panicked and ran back into the house, where they told the other occupants of the house, including Sutton's wife and his chill children, about the creature. The family quickly locked all the doors and windows and armed themselves with guns, expecting the creature to return. However, instead of one creature, they soon found themselves under attack by multiple creatures upwards of fifteen, which they describe as being similar in apparents to the first they had seen. The creatures reportedly began banging on the doors and windows and making strange noises, causing the family to fear for their lives. The family reported that the creatures were not human and had glowing red eyes. They also reported that the creatures admitted a high pitched whining noise. The family held out through the night, firing shots at the creatures, but the bullets had no effect. The creatures continued to bang on the doors and windows, but eventually left in the early hours of the morning. During the encounter, the family also reported that the creatures had a distinct smell, described it as a burning sulfur smell. They also reported the creatures had strange, hard skin, seemingly there was almost mirror like. The creatures had long arms, as they said, and legs, and they were able to move quickly and with great agility despite their small size. It's worth noting that the Sutton's family account of the incident was consistent and detailed, as they stuck to their story even under intense questioning and skepticism. This, along with the evidence found by police, leads credibility to their claims of an extraordinary encounter. The next day, the Sutton family recorded incident to the police. We went to the Sutton residence to investigate. They found no evidence of the creatures or in need damage to the doors or windows, but they did find evidence of bullets having been fired from inside the house out They also found footprints that they said were of the size of a child's footprints all around the house. Family insisted that the creatures were not human. The incident quickly gained national attention and became one of the most well known cases of alleged alien interaction. Case was investigated by the military, the FBI, and private investigators. No concrete evidence was turned up to support the family's claims. One theory is that the family was suffering from hallucinations or mass hysteria, but this did not explain the showing up of the footprints. Some people said that what they encountered was a screech owl, which can get large and make the noise, but once again does not have the footprints that match that of a small human child. Another theory was that it was mischievous teenagers. They're playing a frank on them, but once again, none of them were found. There was no evidence of them being shot. And this was a family of hunters. Their aim was usually pretty true. Until they had passed away. None of the family members had ever changed their story. It remained consistent for the rest of their lives. Lots unpacked with this well known story. Like you said, great horned owls, that is what they were always saying. It was such a stretch, isn't it. There were fifteen great horn owls hanging out, you know, that's the thing, right, you see one owl, and that's kind of just rare occurrence. Some people have never seen an owl. Yeah, I've only seen an owl, like where I could see the whole in the zoo and like I've seen herd owls in my backyards. They sound crazy, like they sound like some sort of monster. But yeah, I've only seen one. Right to see that many in the whole family beforeting the same number, that sounds insane. This is actually it was actually a Project blue Book case, wasn't this? Yes, a Project blue Book determined that it was not aliens, because that's what Project blue Book depths, regardless of anything that happens, to go in there and say it's something else. Yeah, uh, this is a really popular one. You are a kidd. This is like in a time too where that was really that kind of stuff is really starting to pop off. Yeah, yeah, like fifties, really big time. It was the fifties, right, yeah, nineteen fifty five. A lot of people are commenting that people they actually started firing at them, which is actually I remember them saying that, like their house was full of bullet holes and stuff. Yeah, they fired their guns. That's something you releas sudden ell or sudden and the guy who was visiting definitely did, and I believe the wife also fired at them. Some people just say they're intoxicated them. They try to write it off as that, so that the police that investigated didn't cout to that conclusion though I don't think if I remember, they did not. And also the kids also reported seeing these things as well. How does mass hysteria work? Mass hysteria is a very un It exists so like someone could say they saw something and then suddenly someone who is susceptible to it will also see it. It normally is some people who are sick or under some sort of duress already will will experience it. It is unusual, though, for it to happen so fast and with people of such varying. Like I said, this happened to the adults and the children. Wasn't just one or the other. They really try to write them off. There's meteor showers going on that night, There was metreat Owls have yellow eyes, right, that's the thing, Like they said, meteor shower. Why do you bring up meteor showers if you're so sure it was the owls? But they always do. They always bring up both things. It's like, why would media showers lead them to believe that there was a metallic creature with long, spin ling arms and legs that was three feet tall? You know this doesn't make sense. Let me ask you this, How do you think this would be handled today? Knowing that the last oh, I don't know, five years, four years, three years has been pretty much more have come out about this, right, Yeah, you see a lot of declassified Navy UFO sightings and stuff like that. Now where it becomes like, hmm, what how have we all been seeing this whole time? And why is it that you have all this classified information on it? Yeah? I would think that today, I don't know, maybe they wouldn't be written off so quickly. I don't Yeah, I agree with that. How would you handle this situation? If that's happening to you, would you be firing through house? Too? Oh? Yeah? If I see a bunch of these things smashing against my window, yeah, I want to open fire. Same here. I don't even it's an owl. I want to shoot an owl that's like smashing into my doors? Yeah, like smacking my door. There's fifteen of them, fifteen freaking ours. I've only seen two or three probably in my life. Yeah, that's just being in the woods at night. My daddy just made me go hunting. Some guy had a joke about it. It's like, how many times do you have to see something that is kind of normal before you start to get terrified? And it's like, yeah, we see an owl, that's like, oh, that's kind of it's alling out today. You start to see two or three owls, then you call your mom and start selling to prey, right, yeah, see, yeahs normal. Yeah, man, I just I wonder how close the nearest by house was. The nearest house was, you know, I didn't look that up. I should have. I should have seen how close their neighbors were, because I'm sure it's documented somewhere. Yeah, it's definitely a strange phenomenon that I don't know. I don't know what I do if I experienced it, because it's just such an odd ball thing. It's truly, uh man, it's just crazy and mesori. See. I think it's kind of like the It has that like black dog effect, right, like you don't really know you saw the dog, bett't you the black dog. I've heard truckers talk about it on the yard to say it comes to take everything away from it, and it did. It took everything away from those people. People probably thought they were crazy forever. Did you see them playing with the cards in the background of this st Yeah, atally had these cards here, but it seems like people were jerked towards those people. They did. Yeah, but you know that was the fifties, right, You had to cover if there was something going on. They had to cover it up because you know, it was the Cold War and things were crazy. You didn't want, uh there to we talk of monsters and you know, look stupid from the communists, you know, it was that. That's what it was like, you know, aliens, the big eyes. Yeah, oh, just the black dog. Yeah. Someone said that they see fifteen hours that are calling fifteen owls. They're calling Max Headroom. I don't know if he would be able to help you or or or there's another person says they would call Jean the Kodiak bear guy. Oh, Geneo, he take care of it you if they're aliens, he would take care Yeah, with his bare hands. Yeah, he punched the bear and ended its life. Yeah, that's crazy. That's still the craziest thing we've talked about on here, and he still has the bear hanging up. Just think if they could have got their hands on one of these aliens, it can still have the alien hanging up. Yeah. Yeah, Geo stuffed the alien for him. Yeah, tags the germy that thing. That's a well known one. You're right, that's a super popular one. It's a good one though. It is freaky. It's creepy. It's like, I know that things could happen where people would still like could all they're at the house, start thinking they were imagining it. But that's like a large scale thing. Yeah, it's not like this was like a fifteen minute thing too, Like they are terrorized these creatures all night. Yeah, it was hours, and I wondered, like if they had called the cops, how quick they got there, Like I wonder and all that. You know, So they left their What I remember reading is they left their house about three point thirty and went to town. And so it was like three thirty in the morning. They went to town right after the creature stopped attacking the house, and then shortly after people showed up sheriff station or whatever. They probably couldn't call, could they. Yeah, this is you know fifty five they had a way to call, and especially the out boonies like that, they're probably no even landlines. Just try to hug her down for the night, then try to get help the next day. Yeah, I hope you don't run at bullets you think about that. Yeah, nineteen fifty five, probably no landline out to there, and it was I don't know what the technology is even that, but this is a rule Kentucky, right, So yeah, so like you take the current level and you drop a down peg and yeah, they probably still don't have landlines there. Poor people anyway, Uh, just kidding people of Kentucky. I love you. No one would believe you though. There's like nothing you could say to make anybody believe you that happen to you not at all. Makes you wonder how many people had things happen to them They just don't say anything because they're like, nobody would ever believe me. Probably a lot until the anomymous nature of the internet came out. But you can just like say, hey, this happened to me, and then you don't have to be like having your name attached to it so they can't make fun of you. And shitn't I will say one thing. There's so many more cameras and stuff these days. It makes you wonder why there's not something completely viral if something captured. That's fair. I guess you see a lot of bigfoot stuff too, though, But yeah, see lots of lights in the sky and stuff like that. Yeah, UFOs are still captured, and there's some things where the air, like the Kong Congress and the government's recognize that they have no explanation for something, right. But yeah, still though, make you wonter why somebody hasn't got one of these little black creatures on camera. Yeah, that's a good point. Them gray horned owls really stick together. They had the old population there in that. Yeah, property heard of them. Yeah, I heard of owls. It's kind of terrifying in its own right. Yeah, tacking your house. Man, If that heard of owls attacking my house, I'd be fired through the Waltz too. Yeah, I understand completely. Okay, let's see what somebody else said here. Even smaller stories. People don't believe. Bill Murray walked up to someone's table and ate their fries and said, no one will believe you. Who knows how this story is real? Yeah, I guess that's true, right, I mean, that's don't know fun. But one thing about this particular story, though it was a mainstream I think, like just like any other story, though it changed over time where eventually it was like little greens, right, even though they weren't described like that at all. Yeah, but this story made national attention. Yeah. I mean this was like, you know, right after Oswell happened, you know, not too long after, so like people were on guard for alien stuff and this pops up and it's it's big news. Well I've got the last story of the night. No easy task after what we've laid out thus far, forward to it. Well yeah, yeah, I mean that was a good one. We've had some good ones tonight this will be the last one. Let me get the music going. This is called Terrifying Uber story. I'm sharing this as a precautionary tale, and I understand that most of this was my fault, but maybe if I can help one person by telling my story, it's worth it. It's creepy as hell, and I want people to learn from my experience. I don't drink much as a general rule, but once a month or so I'll go out with friends a few nights ago, my friends and I had a great night at the bar in the city, and then they left. I was chatting with a cute guy, so I decided to stay and went back to his place. The rest of that part was very unsatisfying, and I immediately thought I'm ready to head home. I called an uber to come pick me up. I don't know where I am. I know the city I'm in, but I'm not sure of my exact location. I tried one uber, but it was taking forever, so I canceled it and decided to try again. Pretty soon, a car pulled up and I drunkingly mumbled something along the lines of is this the uber and I hopped in. Drivers are apparently supposed to have some kind of market on the vehicles, but the kind of state I was in at the moment, I didn't pay attention to that. The guy pulls away and starts driving and chatting. I'm fumbling for a cigarette and the next thing I noticed is we're heading down the highway, but in the opposite direction I thought we needed to be driving, and we're going a solid ninety miles per hour. Then I get a call from my herber Uber driver telling me he's there and I'm not because I'm in the car with some random nutcase. I start texting my friend frantically counting off mile markers for her. I realize at that point that's not going to do jack squat because she's probably wasted too. I called nine to one one at this point, but I realize this guy is crazy. If he's willing to do this, he's crazy. He's refusing to let me get out of the car, so I got to do this in a manner that he won't comprehend. It's been over half an hour at this point, and I'm terrified. I don't know where I am, I have no idea who this person is, and we're driving over ninety miles an hour while weaving in and out of traffic in the early morning hours. This guy is trying to get me to hang up my cell phone, saying things like get off the phone, Who the hell are you talking to? You better not be a snitch. I'm terrified, and I don't want to do anything that might provoke a violent reaction from him. I start chatting with the nine to one to one dispatcher as if it's my friend, praying that they'll catch on. Hey girl, it's me. Yeah, I need someone right now. We're driving past this highway exit. Now it's not my where I thought it was as not. It's a shame you can't come meet up and hang out with us, Bring your friend, and bring all of our friends. Thank god. The operator catches on. He gets me to stay on the phone while he sends cops, and we develop a code. If I see cops, I'm supposed to casually put my hand out the window, which looks semi normal because I'm smoking a cigarette. We pulled into some random little housing complex and he busts out some powder and forms two lines. I now understand why he's emotionally unstable. Pretty soon I can see the lights from the cop cars, so I start waving my hand out the window. At this point, I don't care if he's on to me or not. I don't know if he has a weapon, but I slum down in my seat just in case things get a little hot. And then cops surround us, remove me from the car, take me to safety. Then they arrest a guy. They took me to the hospital for evaluation. All the way to the hospital, I find out this guy had been a federal prison for twenty years of his near forty years of existence. That is where my story ends. Hopefully people will learn from my mistake and if nothing else call nine one one, stay on the line. Oh man. That is that is terrifying. That's something that can easily happen, right like all the time. Uber driver? Sure, yeah, I'm uber. Yeah baby, get on it, you know, like, yeah, you wouldn't even if you're in a bad state and even think about it. Yeah, I mean you hear about stuff like this a lot because it constantly happens. People get into what they think is an uber or it could even be an uber, but it's set up for like you know, something crazy happens a lot and all the world, different countries. You get taxi in the wrong area, you can end up someplace you don't want to be. A lot of people are commenting that. Always ask who the huber driver is. Make sure you verify a lot of people are saying things. But I think it's important to mention that the state of this person was doxicated. Yes, she was very drunk. Yeah yeah, so, I mean you're not gonna have much luck there. She mentioned that she understands now that Uber driver is supposed to have some sort of marking and what they do have like a little sign that they put in their window, do they? Yeah, I've only I've only noticed it when I've been into a convention and I gotten a couple of ubers. There's like a oh they have a little light up sign thing that they put in their window. But it's not superniceable at the best of times. This is the night too. Yeah, if you're if you're drunk at night, you're not going to see it. So like at that point you see it at your cosplay convention let alone, Yeah, you barely see it. Yeah, and there was costplay there. It wasn't a cost but anyway, Yeah, it makes sense though, like, uh, this person she could have been it could have got so much worse. She was very smart though too to stay on the line and kind of like you know, they can see like she was talking to a friend and about it. How could this be prevented? Well, why saying you if you're drunk, you need to make sure you check your apps, make sure you get like a notification that your driver's there. Captain Hindsight, the hero of the modern Age. Captain Hindsight, like God, you come. They should have built fire escapes on those windows for the higher floors, then people could have gotten down. Well, it looks like my job here is done. Goodbye everyone, I say you up there. Yeah. Well, you can't plan for the best of times though, right, because like you're gonna make a mistake. No one's gonna be on it all the time. So people are waiting. People are waiting to prey on people. That's a scary part. Yeah, they really are. They'll be uh, you know, people will prowl areas where they know people will get ubers, like clubs and stuff like that. I've seen that on a what would you do? You've seen that shot. It's on ABC. I think it's been on forever. But he they did this scenario where they acted like obviously they're actors, right, the girl and then the fake uber driver was trying to get her to go in the car, and people were like, really helpful, but if nobody's there for you, then you're kind of sol Yeah, it was this exact same it's kind of the same scenario, but there were people nearby and they did react and made sure that they called the cops and everything on this guy man everybody was on it, people were going to fight him and everything, But this poor lady did not have that same scenario. So, yeah, that's a scary one because it could just happen. It will happen again, there's no way it's not gonna happen again. And some that you can't prepare for all the time because only you know, paranoid people are always ready to be attacked. But you're right, she did a great thing by and really good thinking. Though even though it states she was in to do the stay on the phone and describe like all that without giving it away. Yeah, well this person was obviously out of their mind. Yeah, we talked about a lot of these other stories where people don't get on the phone immediately or something like that. It's like, no, yeah, call the cops as soon as you can, you know, if you just have the speakerphone on and you're just letting them hear sounds. That concludes our stories for the night, Luke, we will go to a short clip and we will come back with our favorite story of the night. Let me find that I got one hundred dollars check from my grandma and my dad said I need to put in the bank. So it can grow over the years. Well, that's fantastic, a really smart decision, young man. We can put that check in a money market mutual fund. Then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest. And it's gone. Oh what, it's gone, It's all gone. Scene your favorite story of the night, I'm going to go with that last one, the uber one, because it's it's probably the most realistic and definitely has happened. If you're watching live, let us know what you think. What was your favorite story of the night? Luke is going with the last one because you're right, it does seem the most realistic. Yeah, and it seems like that's the worst. That's like the most nightmarish scenario to be in. Yeah. It sounds like the person was so out of their mind, like so out of their mind though that they're able to get out of that scenario. Yeah, Like they were so unhinged. That guy was so unhinged. They said that he had spent was it twenty of his forty years if exists, it's about forty years old what they're saying. Yeah, he said twenty of them in prison. That's like whole adult life and they were so crazy they just pulled over and start. There are lines of coeah. Yeah, eh, yeah it's what he did. Yeah, insane, But okay, we got a lot of people going with the Max Headroom. Those were all good stories, honestly, from the clown through the uh what was the other one you did? It was the one with the family or out in that desert where yeah, creepy shadow person they could see the figures. Yeah, to Maxizinrooms, to the Alien, to the Uber. Yeah, it's it's a really tough one for me. Yeah, Max Headroom, because I came up, I'm always gonna favor of mine, I guess. But I liked the Alien one a lot. I think I like doing different sharing different things like the Alien one. Like last week we did the deep dive on the Joplin tornado, yeah, and then we did Max Headroom also, like it's kind of like different scary stories. Yeah. I like the different vibes. You know, last week was definitely a much more somber story, and you know, because it was a tragedy. Yeah, but this one, that one could have ended like that, I mean could have ended some tragedy. So like one thing I liked about the alien one is because it's such a well documented case. This's so not so much like I'm sharing a story with no one I's ever heard before. I'm sharing a story that I really enjoy, that I had heard many times over the years, and like, I'm like, this is one of my favorite stories of aliens. It's crazy. These people in this house, all my fighting aliens that are trying to break in. It's terrifying. I mean, it's it's terrifying. On the other hand, it also sounds kind of fun, one thing's for sure. And they shot up the house. Yeah, they're trying to get to these aliens one way or another. Edith, there was an aliens. It was a very dangerous place to be it. It's crazy. Much more could have aided, much more worse, I guess, is what I was saying. Yeah, especially if it was like a prank by like teenagers or something, you know, something like that. Yeah, somebody could have got hurt really bad. I don't know a lot of people are going with the Max Headroom though, So Max Headroom, that's a crazy one perpetrated by crazy people. The fact that it is, I don't know that one's a well documented one too, because you know it was on TV. You know, people saw us all over the place. I really like that story. I like any story where people are exposed to something that they see every day, like television, and something goes wrong. You know, technologies that we we embrace on a day to day basis fail us in some way. That's a great story. People always figure out a way to take advantage of the situation though, no matter if it's technology or anything. Yeah. Well, Luke, this comes to the conclusion of this week's stream live recording of your Scary Stories. It was another fun episode with five awesome stories. That It's it's harder and harder to find awesome stories, you know, It's like, how can you keep topping it? But there's so many out there. I've got a couple that I have lined up for next week, actually already. I try to stay a week ahead and if I see another one that really like, I'll try to add it. But so far I've kept that too. We might have three next week. Right. Check out the YouTube. It's that podcast father of my YouTube, Joe Townsend Media. We're uploading new videos every day of stories, so I encourage you to listen to It's also available in podcasts form audio, but I definitely encourage the video. Live interaction Mondays at ten thirty pm Eastern Ish Ish is the way to go. Would you agree with that? The live experience is awesome. Live experience is my personal favorite for a lot of things like this, and so yes, definitely, if you can make it for our live broadcast, it's definitely the best way to do it. What's if our broadcast got hijacked by Max Headroom, I would poop my pants. Yeah, maybe I can. Just maybe I'll save that for the future. One day, Right, You'll just be in the middle of telling your story and I'll just and Max head pop up getting spanked with the flyswater. Oh that sounds sounds terrifying. Just think about every normal day live getting interrupted by Max Headroom. It's terrifying. Yeah, that's pretty pretty crazy. We're gonna put a book in on this one though, until next week, until next episode, until next moment, until the next stories. Make sure you get in on these stories too, submit them your Scary stories dot com. Until then though, Keep being you, keep being great. Jeff Townsend Media sees you. Good night, and the question is do I stay here? Will you be back Are you gonna come back, will you be back? Are you coming back?