TTT #1 Intro

Raven and Tropicus introduce their podcast, "Tuesday Night Trauma Tap," promising to share ghost stories, murders, and trauma. Though based in New Orleans as experienced tour guides, they hail from Connecticut’s eerie history. They recount childhood memories of visiting ancient cemeteries with their mother, who terrified them with tales of being buried alive. Their spooky past includes haunted houses: one with shadow figures knocking on windows and a creepy closet hole; another where voices spoke through paint streaks in a brand-new home. They aim to traumatize listeners with their personal paranormal experiences and absurd family anecdotes, blending humor with genuine fear derived from their neglected upbringings in the Northeast. Alright y'all, it's time. It is time. Go for goats. So, uh, this is the introduction to our lovely podcast, Tuesday Night Trauma Tap. Hi, I'm Raven. And I'm Tropicus. We're gonna be your hosts with the ghosts for, well, as long as you want to listen to us, I guess. Yeah, we're gonna do more than ghosts. I don't know what, what, but we're gonna do more than just ghosts. Yeah, we gotta talk about murder, we gotta talk about trauma, we're gonna bring you things that give you trauma. You're welcome, therapists. Now, uh, as far as our experience, I've been a tour guide in New Orleans for 16 years consistently, and it's brought me a lot of different experiences, a lot of different ghost sightings, a lot of different types of people cross my path. Uh, but we together have more than, how, how many years? Let's see, 26 plus how many years have you worked down there? 16. God, that's a lot. That's a lot of math. Like, I feel like that's like 40,000? Yeah. That sounds like right, yeah. 40,000 years. Am I, am I, am I a ghost? Can you see me? No. Okay, good. But also my eyes are closed. All right. As a ghost, I'm not seeing much of anything right now. It's 42 years. 42, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Now, although, uh, New Orleans is our heart home, that's not where we're actually from. We are from the spooky, spooky, spooky Northeast. Specifically Connecticut. An area of the world called New England. Because it's not the old one. Nope, definitely the new one. We have better accents. Talk. Now, ultimately our goal with this podcast is to traumatize everybody? I mean, I feel like that's a good goal. Which is why we named it what we named it. Yeah. In any case, we hope that you enjoy listening to our absolute nonsense. Yeah. So, let's give you a little background about the two of us. Like I said, we did grow up in Connecticut. Um, I grew up in the 70s and Tropicus grew up in the 80s. Both very neglectful eras. Oh, very much so. We were left in the wild. I used to steal my sister and be like, I'm going to the park, and I would take her to cemeteries, look for ghosts because I'm a terrible person. And our mother... Yeah, we know. Yeah, our mother is equally horrible though. Our mother... So if you've never been to New England, New England is very old. It's been there since before white people, but when white people got there, they started making some cemeteries. And the cemeteries there can date all the way back to the 1500s and 1400s even, depending on where you are. The town that we grew up in, which is Norwalk, Connecticut, has cemeteries that date all the way back to the early 1500s. So these, these tombstones themselves are terrifying to a child because they, what looks like a child, looks like demons, right, Chrissy? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so like... Statues are creepy too. Oh my god, the statues are so creepy. So they have skulls and angel wings, but they really just look like demon wings. And our mother would take us to the cemeteries when we were both little and tell us terrible stories about people being buried alive, and that is a subject we will touch on in our podcast at a later date. But then she would say, hey, can you read this for us and tell me what it says? And both of us could read at a pretty early age, so we were excited to show off for our mom what we could do. And I don't know about you, but I used to get real close to that headstone on that sunken grave, and I'd be trying to read it, and my mom would grab my ankle after talking about people, you know, bursting out of the grave and then they couldn't get so far because their, their hand would come out of the grave and they would just choke on the dirt. By the way, you don't have to choke on the dirt. No? If you find yourself in that situation, you could actually just, uh, turn your head to the side or down, and, uh, the dirt would go like around you instead of in your mouth. That's crazy talk. I feel like our mother would choke on the dirt. Just in case. Our mother would have choked on a lot of things. She tries to choke consistently now. Right? She's like, oh, that's an air, I'm gonna choke on that. A real problem. Yes, she is. But in any case, we're gonna bring our trauma to you. Absolutely. So, um, what brought you into the, uh, ghosty world besides, you know, me? Oh, you mean the forced entry? Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Uh, I don't know, it's always just been fascinating, not to mention they've found me since the very beginning. I never had a problem trying to find a ghost because the ghosts, when they come knocking on your window, you just kind of have to acknowledge them. Wait, they were knocking on your window? Literally. At the house on Elm Street? Yes. Oh my god, tell me the story. There's no story. They literally come knocking on the window. That is crazy talk. You remember we were up in that really old house? Yeah. On the third floor in the attic apartment, right? Yeah. Okay, so the attic apartment, you remember when you looked out of our window, it's just the roof? Yeah, the building that they... Okay. And there, because of the street lights, there was a little band of light that went across our wall. Mm-hmm. And with that little band of light, I would see shadows. Oh. Running back and forth in the light. And obviously there's nobody out there because it's the roof. The only access point was the window from which we were looking at them. Yeah. And so they would knock on the window and ask to come in. I didn't, I didn't let them in. I would expect not. They had a different experience there. They didn't grow up in that house, you did, so perhaps they felt a more connective... Well, I was younger too, because how old are you, 94? Oh, like 194? God, get your vampire years right, girlfriend. Mm-hmm. But so... Oh yeah, I grew up in the 1770s, let's clarify. No, so when we moved in there, uh, your father, you know, gave me the option of which room to choose, and in later years I always regretted not choosing that one because the room we, you grew up in and we had was, was pretty terrifying. Not only the creepy closet with the creepy hole that went where? Where did it go? Uh, it went straight to hell. Something because I would hear voices coming out of there. Same. Then I saw shadows in the light that came across the... There were kids. Yes! Okay, so I thought it was you because you were a baby, right? And I was like, no, it can't be. And then maybe it was coming from the kitchen because, you know, they had this closet and the space and such. But we, I stuck my head in there a few times with a flashlight and it, it was just like creepy ass dead space in this attic apartment that I swear to god they probably locked children in at some point. Did they? Yeah, they had to. It was really terrifying. Also, Audrey had weird dreams in there too. In the hole? Yeah. Why was she in the hole? Uh, well, she was in a lot of weird places. So she had dreams about being in the hole. She never told me about that. Oh, did she tell... One of her most vivid dreams that she likes to tell me about, and we should talk to her about it at some point in the near future. But she would, she'd stay up drinking and smoking. Yeah. And when she was in the kitchen drinking and smoking, uh, she went into the closet that we had over there. Yeah, the pantry. And she would look downstairs and she said she saw a man just staring back at her. Oh my god. Just sitting in a closet downstairs? What the fuck? Staring at her. There's no hole in that closet. No. But that was what she had the dream of. Yeah, I used to like going in that closet because I liked the way it smelled. I liked the spices, very calming to me. And your father was like, you crazy child, you blah blah blah. He didn't understand. You are a crazy child. He made me crazy. All right. Okay, but that's part of trauma. Yay, trauma! Here's a trauma for you, and a trauma for you, and a trauma for you. We're gonna be like Oprah, but with trauma. But yeah, so that was her dream. She also had the worst night terrors in there. She still has a little bit of night terrors, but not like she used to. I remember I was, uh, up in the middle of the night watching TV because why wouldn't I be? And I'm sitting there staring at the TV, as you do, and she comes out of the bedroom and stomps into the living room and she's like, here, take this all. And I'm like, huh? And then she goes back into her bedroom and she comes out and she throws the pillows at me. And I'm like, okay. And then she goes back in there and then she comes out and she takes all the blankets, the comforters, and she takes this too. I don't want any of this trouble. Leave me alone. And she goes back to bed somehow. She did that to me. Okay, so when you were like a little baby, I was in there watching MTV just come out, you know, so I was sneaking out to watch MTV because your dad did not want me having fun. And uh, she did this, well, similar. She came out, she glared at me, she threw the pillow down, she's like, so there, you happy now? And stormed back. And then she came back, grabbed all the blankets and put them in the bathtub and turned on the water. I was like, what? She'd done that several times then. The woman was crazy. Was? Oh well, yeah. She's not dead yet. No, she is not dead yet, but yeah, I thought she might have gotten sane for a few minutes. No. Oh god. All right. No. So, um, come on, tell these people why I got into all this because you, you were kind of forced into it. I, uh, grew up in a different house. I grew up with a single mom. And, um, the house we lived in, we built. My grandmother and grandfather built the house, so it was not lived in before us, and yet the house was haunted. In my little blue bedroom, I had a little yellow streak of paint on the wall and I don't know why to this day, this tiny little yellow streak. And even when I was in my crib, voices would come through that yellow streak and talk to me. Have you been psychoanalyzed for potential... I have. I was a baby. You don't come out crazy as a baby. That's not true. No, you gotta earn the crazy. It's a rite of passage. You get a badge, okay? Like levels. Yeah, well. When you have more than one voice in your own head, that's a different level. It wasn't my head, I was a baby. I was a baby in my crib and I would hear voices. What did they say? Um, they were just, they weren't telling me to murder or anything. They were just like, how are you doing? That was oddly specific. That was, you weren't right. Well, because most people who hear voices are like, hey, the voices told me that God wants me to kill you, or the voices told me to... This house down and all of you in it. Nobody ever says the voices came to me and told me to pet this dog. Some of them do. They don't tell you about it? What they found for a new hack, if you will, is the people who are suffering with an illness will actually take their cameras and watch themselves. And they'll see if an actual person is with them or not. That's a good hack though. Yeah. That's a good use of technology. Yeah. And that way they can figure out like, is there an actual person with me or am I just crazy? No, I probably saw my first ghost in the basement of the house too. And so, I mean, it's Connecticut, so maybe somebody was murdered. It was a farm at one point. Maybe. Maybe, I mean, maybe. Somebody was murdered over there because it was a farm. It was originally, you know, a dairy farm, the house property we grew up on. And oh shit, you're younger, so you don't remember that Bucko was a milkman. We used to get fresh milk on the. I don't remember that specifically, but I do remember stories. I remember waking up and going downstairs and my grandmother would be like, oh, go get the milk off the porch. I always thought it was particularly hilarious that my grandfather was literally the milkman. I know. Yeah, and your mom, our mom, is not related to her siblings except half, so. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's because our grandmother killed her other husband. She should have. She did. Yeah. I mean, he was an abusive piece of shit. I know. I'm not care, I know. Oh, don't worry y'all, we will get into that story too. We come from a very colorful and exciting family. But I got into ghosts because of the childhood ghost activity on our property. Yeah. And so I had to know, and the cemeteries and all the haunted mansions and all the things that are all over. I was gonna say haunted men. Bro, that's a whole different kind of trauma right there. I was ready for you to say that. I was gonna follow up. Next on Tuesday Night Trauma Tap, haunted men and the damage they cause. Dun dun dun. Well, as far as it goes, that's kind of a little bit about who we are and what we do, or why we do it. Not what yet. No. But I do want to ask you, so when did you, besides with me, you know, on your own, when did you do your first paranormal investigation? Like what age were you? I don't know. That's a good age. My favorite age actually, the I don't know age. Well, it probably was not on Elm Street, so after that, so after I was 12. Okay. When I got really like curious about what I experienced. All right. Because being on School Street, it was not nearly as spooky. Yeah, because that was new build. I had to go find them then. Yeah. It was very inconvenient. How dare you not be right here for the ghosts. But when you don't have access to them, then you have to go find them. Right, absolutely. And that inspires paranormal investigations. Paranormal investigations don't, they're not the ones, the people who are doing paranormal investigations aren't the ones having the consistent experiences. They're the ones who are trying to prove it or not prove it. Yeah, yeah, they just want to be famous. I hate those TV shows. They're like, oh my god, did you see that? Nobody saw that, but they make up that they saw some shit and they, you know. For sure, that twig. AI put it in later like, ooh, spooky ghost. Well, they've been doing that before AI, but yeah. AI has been around a lot longer than everybody thinks. It's been around since the 80s. It's just the government controlled most of that. So they didn't have access to it. Well, I mean, some people had some. But yeah. The part that drives me crazy about those specific shows is that they only have what, 24 hours and they're like, we're gonna positively determine whether this is or is not haunted within these 24 hours. Yeah. Ghosts don't work on our time frame at all. I think the Laurie Mansion has proven that one to us, but that is a story for another show. Yeah. That's gonna be a longer show. All right, myself, I got into paranormal investigations probably, I want to hit my late teens, early 20s, you know, when I was out west. I got with a group of people when I was out in California. They were definitely hippies and probably. Well, yeah, you just said west, so. But they didn't have that super fancy equipment like you do today because it was the early 90s, you know, but they had some cool basic equipment and we went on a lot of investigations, mostly, honestly, out in like gullies and valleys and places where mines were and mining camps were and stuff like that. You would be surprised how many people were murdered around mines. Like a lot. Well, yeah, because that's where all the gold lives. That is where the gold is, but also you could just get rid of a body by shoving it in a hole. Yeah, well, you still can't. Somebody may or may not find them. Without a good hole in the right spot. Right. There is a surprising lack of good holes here in Mississippi. There is. It's all the mud. Look at mud hole, I guess, quicksand. Yeah, problem is it just fills in so quickly. So you can get your hole prepared ahead of time, but then like you go back to use it and it's all filled. It has rained and now it's filled with bugs and crawdads. Very inconvenient. The fucking body's floating. So mine towns. Oh, so anyway, so we started doing the, look, you got me off on a tangent. So we started doing paranormal investigations out there. I really got into it in Salt Lake City because holy cow, Mormons got ghosts, man. You would be surprised how many people who believe in hell do not want to cross over to the other side. Because of all the hell. Because of all the hell they think is there, right? Man, so we started doing a lot of paranormal investigations in Salt Lake City and I do have some great stories that I will enter in later casts for us, for those, the ones I haven't even told you yet. Yeah, I got some for you too. So many stories. This is great. We do like a chop session, a raven session. Sure, or both at the same time. We can talk at the same time, it's fine. Correlate. We'll figure it out. Or not, we just won't have to figure it out either. We'll just talk over each other. The person listening to this while they try to do art in their house is gonna rip their ears out. Yeah, no, I imagine that we're gonna be on some road trips with these people. Absolutely, it's gonna be great. And of course, as we get down into this show, we are gonna want people to go ahead and email us or get on our Facebook page, which is Tuesday Night Trauma Tap on Facebook, and tell us your experiences. Tell us if you got a cool story, if you have something to add to a place that we talk about or an experience that we talk about. If you have any cool pictures, we would love to see them. We'd love to put them up on our website. Eventually we will video this as soon as we get better video equipment than my phone dangling precariously over the computer right now. But right now we're just gonna stick with the audio and I feel that's pretty good intro to us. What do you think? I think this is everything everybody needs to know. I really think so too. Yeah, so immortal vampire here. All right. Yep. All right, so bye. Bye bye. Bye, we miss you, we love you, we'll see you next time.