The Monster Missive: Sn. 21 Ep. 5 & Sn. 21 Ep. 6 (Patreon)

Our weekly newsletter, brought to you by MAU team members, Delainey Bowers and Conor Ryan, every Friday.

-Show Notes Spotlight-

A more in-depth look at some of the research covered in this week's Tuesday and Thursday episodes.

You know, we’ve never had better friends than the ominous hooded figures in long black robes that used to hang out by the woodline across the street from all of our childhood homes. Oh, the funny jokes they would tell us wordlessly to cheer us up from our gloomiest moods. In fact, they are what brought us all together! It was nice to hear Gina from Texas relay a similar story on Thursday’s episode.

Unfortunately, not all of the ominous robed figures loitering in the Lone Star State are as friendly as those childhood besties.

Texas has been home to a number of radical religious organizations over the years including the House of Yahweh, Chen Tao (UFOs, baby!), The Family International, Love Has Won/Galactic Federation of Light, and - of course - the Branch Davidians.

There was also a cult that was active in the area during the early 1980s, and it had connections to a famous murder case. 

A shortened version of the saga is that the decomposed remains of a male and female were found in the boggy, wooded swampland just north of Houston in January 1981. It was determined both were victims of homicide, but because no family members came forward to identify the bodies, they were buried as John and Jane Doe. 

Nearly four decades later, the bodies were exhumed, and genetic testing revealed the victims to be Dean and Tina Clouse of Lewisville, TX. At the time of their murder, they had a one year old daughter, nicknamed “Baby Holly,” who was missing. “Holly” was found alive in Oklahoma in 2022. 

After a series of strange incidents in the immediate aftermath of their murders, law enforcement believes Dean and Tina had recently joined “Christ Family,” an extremely religious, nomadic cult known for wearing white robes, adhering to vegetarianism, and traveling barefoot throughout the southwestern United States. As of 2026, no formal arrests have been made. If you want to read the whole story, this article by MaryAnn Martinez has more details.

The obvious difference between this story and Gina’s hooded figures seems to be that this group preferred white robes as opposed to those always cozy pitch-black robes.

From telepathic vibes to disembodied voices, this week we got to dig into some horrifying history in The Wolverine State thanks to Shawn’s call about hearing a ghostly sound in the Borgess Hospital complex. It’s now known as “Beacon Kalamazoo.” There are a number of healthcare buildings along Gull Road, so it’s hard to say exactly which one our caller had his experience in. The following info is a summary of this great article by the Kalamazoo Public Library. 

Before the establishment of Borgess Hospital in 1889, dying folks in Kalamazoo were taken to the “Hospital Room” located inside the jail. Reverend Frank O’Brien was appalled by both the sanitary conditions of the space and the fact that non-criminals were forced to take their last breaths in a jail. 

The original Borgess Hospital building, named after a generous bishop who donated funds to get the project started, was a former residence on Portage Street, and over the next several years enough funding was procured to expand the hospital, including a brand-new 100 bed facility located on Gull Road (formerly the Hazard Estate), which opened in 1917. 

Throughout the decades, Borgess continued to expand and renovate its campus and oversaw services such as radiation therapy, psychiatric therapy, occupational therapy, teaching institutes, as well as open heart surgery and kidney transplant programs.

As far as hauntings are concerned, some witnesses report seeing the ghostly apparitions of several nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph, who staffed the hospital when it first opened. Legends of additional paranormal activity are often conflated with the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital, which is only about 3 miles from Borgess. So, the voice our caller heard could have been anything from a dedicated doctor still working too hard in the afterlife to a nun so devoted to her life of service that she couldn’t abandon her position, even in death.

Also this week - thanks to a call from Daniela about her father’s friend having a run-in with a frog man - we got the chance to learn about some folklore and cryptids from Mexico. First, for some context, Tulum is the largest municipality in the state of Quintana Roo and is located within the Yucatan Peninsula, which was the heart of Mayan civilization. It was one of the last cities built by the Mayans and it’s home to a number of archaeological sites. As far as entities fitting that “frog-like” description, the god Chaac gets pretty close. According to Wikipedia,

“Chaac is the name of the Maya god of rain, thunder, and lightning. With his lightning axe, Chaac strikes the clouds, causing them to produce thunder and rain. 

Among the rituals for the rain deities, the Yucatec Chʼa Cháak ceremony for asking rain centers on a ceremonial banquet for the rain deities. It includes four boys (one for each cardinal point) acting and chanting as frogs.

Chaac is usually depicted with a human body showing reptilian or amphibian scales, and with a non-human head evincing fangs and a long, pendulous nose.”

While Chaac does generally fit the description the caller gave, there is another cryptid that matches even more closely, but unfortunately was only sighted in central Mexico about 600 miles away from Tulum in the city of San Luis Potosi. From Cryptid Wiki,

“On February 12, 1965, while slingshot hunting adjacent to the Santiago River, a 19 year-old by the name of Francisco Estrada Acosta had a face-to-face encounter with an entity that resembled the…[rain god deity]. 

[It was] a tall figure with a large oval-shaped head, huge reddish, phosphorescent eyes and a large toad-like mouth.’

The flabbergasted Acosta could only stare in what one must assume was abject terror as the bizarre being extended its ‘flipper-like hand’ towards him, touching his hand. The youthful hunter would later recall the sensation of the thing’s flesh as being ‘cold and scaly,’ not unlike that of a reptile. The creature then flew away to the heavens.”

Now we don’t know about where you are, but here at MAU HQ there are swarms of flies that like to visit us in the summer. We would personally like to extend an invitation to the frogman to come hang out at the HQ and eat his heart out so we don’t have to be constantly swatting them away! Plus, Derek somehow always accidentally sticks his hands together with that special super-sticky fly paper Delainey bought in an alley last summer…

We actually wrote a great script a few years ago about a man that turned into a beautiful frog-man when he was kissed by the love of his life, but for some reason Disney keeps turning it down! Because of that, here’s a lot of info about Disneyland that they’ve tried their darndest to sweep under their mouse-shaped rug. Well, that and we were inspired by Annie’s call on Thursday’s episode about a Disney employee’s encounter with the ghost of a little girl sprinting away from the Jungle Cruise ride.

First of all, if you want to read through some great first-hand accounts, this Reddit thread of current and former cast members sharing their spooky experiences is a fun rabbit-hole. Here are just a few of our favorite stories from that thread: 

“My personal favorite is all the crazy stuff that happens in the basement of Mickey's House. Creepy voices, shadows in the mirror behind you, and things moving like trash cans when you’re the only one there.”

“One cast bathroom [at the Disneyland Hotel] has a flickering problem with the lights, and also allegedly has a shadow man that will chase you out of the bathroom. People have straight up quit their jobs after being chased by this entity.”

“Cast Member friends have said it's not the rides that are creepy at night, but when they had to clean up Main Street and the open areas after hours. They would hear random people talking, sounds from attractions completely shut down, and just an insecure feeling of being watched. This would happen while they were working in groups as well.”

There’s also the legend of “Mr. One Way” who haunts the Space Mountain ride. According to Snopes, “[He]...interacts with guests in line, rides with single riders, and even has appeared in the cast locker room." His story and many others are told directly from the mouths of Disney Staff in this video by Most Amazing Elite. On the flip side, this video by Eff Your Review covers the story of Disco Debbie, the ghost of a cast member who supposedly died behind Space Mountain.

And if you, as a Disney Adult, still aren’t too scared to go back to The Happiest Place on Earth, here are four more stories courtesy of Wander Wisdom,

“On Main Street, there have been sightings of a ‘Lady in White.’ She appears in and around the stores on Main Street and is dressed in clothing from the turn of the 20th century. Legend says that she died on the property in the early 1900s but never moved on.”

“In 1966, a 19-year-old boy tried to sneak into Disneyland for a Grad Night. (Every June, Disneyland is open overnight for high school graduates.) Thomas Cleveland snuck over a perimeter fence and onto the Monorail track…he was hit by a monorail train and dragged 30-40 feet before the train stopped.

Rumors claim that cast members driving the Monorail would see a young man running along the Monorail tracks at the back of the Park, in the spot where Thomas died. One minute the figure was there and the next he was gone.”

“In 1984, Dolly Young was riding on the Matterhorn, on the Tomorrowland side. Dolly was alone in the back seat and a child was alone in the front seat. In the middle of the ride, Dolly unbuckled herself, supposedly to assist the child in the seat in front of her. She stood up just before the dip where the other track crosses over the track she was riding on. She hit her head on the bridge and fell onto the track. When the next sled came along, Dolly got run over. The story is that they had to dismantle the track to dislodge her body.”

“The first ghost story happened when the Haunted Mansion was still being built back in the 1960s. One of the sound designers was in the Séance Room and heard music coming from behind a wall. He thought it was a radio, but there was never any talking or commercials, just music. He kept hearing the music for days. Finally, he decided to just put a speaker near the spot the music was coming from to mask it.”

And in case you were wondering about the validity of these stories, unfortunately there is a whole Wikipedia page that lists just a few of the people that have died at the theme park. So, next time you give Mickey Mouse a hug, just remember all the horrors his beady eyes have seen!

Thursday’s episode was also jam-packed with tales of strange crafts in our skies. First, there was Marv’s call about seeing a dozen orange lights while driving southbound on the 215 Freeway in San Bernardino, CA on February 28th, 2025 at 8:55 AM. While we weren’t able to find any matching reports on NUFORC for that specific date, time, or location, Delainey was able to dig up a few older reports that were similar.

According to NUFORC Sighting 102103 from Riverside, CA in September 2013, 

“Bright Orange Orbs began to appear low on the Western horizon, they began to appear in intervals of about seven seconds apart in pairs, they rose high in the sky and formed a curved string heading east then taking a southern turn, after about seven seconds from taking the turn then they disappeared. They all pulsated. There were approximately 20 to 25 orbs.”

An earlier report from Riverside in December 2009, NUFORC Sighting 73842, reads,

“Orange balls of light over Riverside, California. We witnessed multiple formations by these 5 orange colored crafts. They moved silently, and more quickly than anything I've ever seen. They formed a vertical line, then a diamond and what appeared to be a crescent shape with a line, like the profile of a baseball cap. They continued to move, then the light began fading and reappearing. Eventually they disappeared in an upward direction.”

Another similar sighting right in San Bernardino, CA in September 2015, NUFORC Sighting 122343, 

“Around 7:25PM I witnessed in the sky coming from the south heading east a large group of what seemed to be orange flickering lights, almost like birds flying over the sky but they weren't. No form of an object, just scattered dots of lights of about 30 of them.”

Finally, there’s NUFORC Sighting 187986 from Colton, CA in February 2025. This is the closest in time frame to our caller’s report. Could these have been the same balls of light, but before they got to Marv’s location?

“I was driving north on Riverside Blvd at approx 5:40am when I saw in the sky 4 red orbs that looked to be around the size of a basketball/ beach ball. They were traveling south from the Rialto/San Bernardino area. They got over the Kinder Morgan tank farm, drifted apart, then just faded out.”

Whatever our caller saw that morning, one thing is clear that they certainly aren’t the only ones in the area to ever have witnessed it!

Another caller from California, Brittany, told us all about how she saw a mysterious flash light up the sky one night while she was driving. Unfortunately, we’re going to go be a little lame about our explanation for this one. While we all know it was probably aliens, it’s always good to cover our bases. There were two Starlink launches in California during the fall/winter of 2021. One on September 13, 2021 and the other on December 15, 2021. It’s classic Falcon 9 booster stuff we’ve covered before. 

However, on November 23, 2021, SpaceX launched its first-ever DART mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base along the coast of California. Per their website, 

“On Tuesday, November 23 at 10:21 p.m. PST, Falcon 9 launched NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to an interplanetary transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. DART is humanity’s first planetary defense test mission to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. This was SpaceX’s first inter-planetary mission.” 

Okay, Armageddon. 

Finally on this Thursday’s episode, we got to explore the skies of Morocco thanks to Mohamed’s call about a potential UFO sighting there while stargazing on a rooftop sometime in 2005/2006. We were able to find NUFORC Sighting 177108, which took place way later in 2023, but under similar circumstances as our caller’s story,

“I was stargazing on my roof in Morocco, when I saw what looked like a star, but it didn't look like it was moving like the other stars, so I kept watching it until it stopped moving, emitted a light, and then went NW quickly.”

If we want to go way back in time, Delainey stumbled upon this document compiled by the CIA of newspaper and news broadcast reports of UFOs sighted over Morocco in 1952. Here’s a quick summary,

July 3, 1952 Fast-moving, flat, tapered object emitting blue and red flames over Dakar.

July 12, 1952 Two flying saucers witnessed by two policemen, fast-moving, tapered, followed by a trail of white light near Mechra bel Ksiri. Several eyewitnesses report a yellow flying disc moving rapidly from east to west.

July 13, 1952 Fast-moving, blue-green ball-shaped object followed by a trail of white light “melts” into the sky. 40 witnesses report a “luminous flying object” over the skies of Casablanca. Two eyewitnesses report seeing three “white fires” in the sky. Additional reports of flying objects emerge from Chichaoua, Bouznika, and Baulhaut.

July 14, 1952 A husband and wife report seeing a flying object for ~30 seconds over Ifrane.

We also found that WikiLeaks published a now-classified document in connection with UFO sightings over the Moroccan skies in September 1976. From the initial report, 

“ACCORDING TO COL BENSLIMANE, THE GENDARMERIE HAD RECEIVED CALLS FROM AGADIR, THE MARRAKECH AREA, CASABLANCA, RABAT, KENITRA AND OTHER AREAS REPORTING THE SIGHTING OF UFO'S BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 0100 AND 0130, THE NIGHT OF 18-19 SEPTEMBER.  REPORTS FROM THESE WIDELY SEPARATE LOCATIONS WERE REMARKABLY SIMILAR, I.E., THAT THE OBJECT WAS ON A GENERALLY SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST COURSE, IT WAS A SILVERY LUMINOUS CIRCULAR SHAPE AND GAVE OFF INTERMITTENT TRAILS OF BRIGHT SPARKS AND FRAGMENTS, AND MADE NO NOISE.”

In due course, it was revealed these objects were Soviet space debris. However, we believe in our heart of hearts that our caller did truly see an intergalactic alien spacecraft cruising through our galaxy! Just watch out for those weird clouds they’ve been seeing in the sky, you never know what they are hiding…

-Here There Be Headlines-

A round-up of bizarre, curious, head-scratching news stories that leave you saying "huh."

Well, we have to go place our bets at the new robot wolf fighting arena that just opened around the corner from our HQ, but we hope you all have a great weekend! Here are a few odd stories to hold you over until next time.

Could be ghosts. Could be infrasound.

Once again, Zoltar comes in clutch

$4,000 for a Monster Wolf? Sure.

Oh, to be a bright blue blob!

Haunted Historical Headline