A Spooky Scary Halloween: The Moth Podcast
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What spooky stories are featured in this Halloween episode?
Welcome to The Moth. I'm Sarah Austin Janess. I've always believed in ghosts. Believed in is such a funny phrase because spirits to me are, of course, around us at all times. I don't find this scary. In fact, I find it comforting. I and the other Moth directors travel the country helping people tell their stories. And we've stayed in a lot of hotels, a number of which are haunted. In fact, once in New Orleans with our pop-up porch, I was at a restaurant on Frenchman Street and I was tapped on the shoulder. Double tapped, actually. I turned around and no one was there. Not only was no one there, but there was no door behind me, no entrance or way to exit. And I told my friend next to me, and she nodded with a smile.
Spirits are everywhere, and I'm into it. On this episode, in celebration of the spookiest of holidays, Halloween, we've got three stories all about the larger forces at play in the universe. Plus, I'll talk with another Moth director about some of the supposedly haunted hotels we've stayed at over the years. First up, a story about Halloween itself. Ophira Eisenberg told this when she was hosting our main stage in East Hampton, New York. Here's Ophira live at the Moth.
I'm just going to share just a couple minutes on a big night story of mine. I was remembering seventh grade. Seventh grade. That was the first year for my life that there was a dance that was co-ed. That was a really big deal. And I will admit to you that I was a girl that just always wanted a boyfriend. I always wanted a boyfriend. Never a pony. Always a boyfriend. And so it was the first school dance and I had a crush on this guy, Brad Moore, did not change his name, Brad Moore. And he was kind of goofy and he had brown floppy hair and he played saxophone. But I just thought he was, I thought he was incredible. I had a huge crush on him. And so I went to get a Halloween costume. We were thrifting at the time, even then.
and I found this purple and gold jumpsuit that was all sparkly, like some Ziggy Stardust cover band fell apart, and they donated all their clothing. And so I bought it, and I was gonna be a space alien. Very seventh grade mentality. And I was getting ready for the evening and I was pretty excited about the dance. And my sister, my older sister, was an aspiring special effects makeup artist. So she was like, I want to do your makeup. Makeup has come such a long way, my friends. because she decided she was gonna put glitter all over my face. But the way there wasn't glitter makeup like there is now, she put sections of white school glue on my face and she would tap the glitter out of the little vial.
and we'd wait for it to dry and then she would do more glue here and tap it. Yeah, and so she did these bands of glitter that were like blue, purple, gold, silver, all with school glue. We had a friend, I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, who had given us some pheasants that he shot to eat and my mother had plucked them and kept all the feathers because they were beautiful. So my sister was like, let's glue the feathers all through your hair. So she glued all these feathers through my hair. So I had all these feathers made my hair huge pheasants feathers and this crazy glued on sparkles and this gold and purple jumpsuit. I look like Big Bird on assets. But I thought it was cool, I thought it was cool.
And I went to the Halloween school dance and I got there and I was so, like, I was impressed by myself. I thought, oh, I'm gonna make a big splash. And I walked in and you know what? Nobody was really dressed up. Like there was some lame, you know, like, I'm an angel, I'm a witch, but like barely. And I felt, I felt over dressed at a Halloween party. And I felt pretty bad. I felt really out of place. And it wasn't unlike how I already felt in my class. I felt different. And I was like, oh my God, I am an alien. Like I literally was like, I am an alien. And Brad Moore did not ask me to dance. He danced with all the other girls. He danced with the lame angel and the dumb witch and the, kitty cat and not me, and I was just stewing in my feathers and jumpsuit.
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