Rattled & Shook

This is still one of my favorite spooky “true” story podcasts, but in the past season or two, their voice actors telling the stories sound so obviously like voice actors. Before, you could easily imagine it was a professional recording of the person the story happened to. But now the actors are playing it up too much and it takes me out of the stories. I really hope they address this.

…So, I don’t want to embarrass myself by sharing my /actual/ irrational fear, but here we go: Do you remember/have you heard of the movie “Congo”? [1995, adapted from the Michael Crichton novel.] Well, ever since I saw it as a kid, I do not like walking upstairs. More specifically, I cannot go up a flight of stairs in the dark without feeling the need to run. Especially if the flight of stairs is ascending from a basement or generally dark environment. If you’re unfamiliar, a telecommunications company is trying to find a rare diamond to use as a component in an early high speed communication device… teams are sent to The Congo, in search of it, immediately leading to disaster… there are these “killer apes” in the specific area that they are trying to find these diamonds. (Leaving out significant plot points here, because for anyone who has not seen it., It actually does hold up pretty well and it’s worth a watch.) Anyway, at one point in the movie, there’s this flight of stairs, one of the killer apes absolutely demolishes someone as their back is turned, trying to run away up the stairs. I think that about explains it; to this day I am quite uncomfortable just going up a flight of stairs, and if I’m alone and it’s dark, put your money on me running lol So yeah, absolutely irrational, but I guess the scene just got deep enough into some part of my brain. Even though I obviously know that a terrifying, nonexisting killer ape is not going to blink into existence as I begin to ascend a mundane flight of stairs solely to go full donkey Kong on my spine, I just can’t shake the sudden, deep-seeded feeling that as soon as I put my foot on the first step, I’m going to be lucky just to make it up to the second one. Oh yeah, and velvet. (Apparently an actual phobia- “Haptodysphoria” -although I’ve never met anyone else who suffers with it.) Very unrelated to the stunt performers in furry, gray sasquatch-reject suits… but I can not stand velvet. My completely involuntary reaction is comparable to how some react to nails on a chalkboard, but magnify by about 1000. I’m having a hard time even writing this, because even thinking of the stuff makes me cringe so badly that I have to really focus my mind on something else as I’m talking about it. Whenever I encounter anything with that nasty, manufactured, uniform fuzz, I have to scramble away from the offending item before all of my muscles start to contract, and I begin to gag relentlessly… Hopefully, each rapid escape doesn’t involve going up to the next floor. I worked in haunted houses as a lead special effects makeup artist for years, as well as all sorts of other production positions… no problem. Demented King Kong and conglomerates of vertically-positioned synthetic fibers? NOPE. JUST NOPE. …Forget waterboarding: my ultimate torture would be being forced to stand in front of a dark stairway with just six steps in front of me, carpeted with an even nylon fuzz, with a person in an ugly, gray monkey suit, simply lurking behind me. Thank you for everything that you guys do, Meredith, and team. Your creepy, spooky, funny, high-quality show has gotten in my head just the right amount each week since the very beginning. I hope my ridiculous, irrational [verifiably true] fears could make you laugh a bit, then it would all be worth something haha

Have asked for a refund from the tenderfoot joke of an enterprise?

I love this show. It is awesome. And I like the music :)