Lived Once, Buried Twice (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

the truth really is stranger than fiction. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, and you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please steal the fall of buttons car and drive it to the

nearest very busy intersection and simply park it right in the middle and then leave. Okay, let's get into our first story called a bad habit. On the night of September 11, 1899, a 23-year-old student named Alice Nott sat in her bedroom in the Washington DC boarding house where she lived, doing what she did every single night, which was to study.

So Alice rarely left her room.

“She'd spent the last few months preparing to take this really important civil service”

exam, which she had to pass if she wanted to land the stable government job that she desperately wanted.

But studying was not the only reason that Alice seemingly never went out.

Alice was also sort of naturally a reclusive in part because she had a lot of health issues. Like a weak heart and poor circulation, and she just generally got sick a lot. So being out in the world was really tiring for her and also sort of scary. It was just easier and safer to stay inside. Now it was getting late in the night and there was some cold air coming in to her open

bedroom window and it was actually unusually cold outside tonight and since she got sick pretty easily, she didn't want to risk this draft coming in giving her a cold or something. So she said her work down for a moment and she went up to close the window. And then on her way back to her desk, she smiled at the other very important reason that she spent so much time in her room.

Her beloved pet parrot, Polly.

“And Polly was sitting on his typical perch, one of the room's light fixtures, and as”

he saw Alice approaching, he got really excited and began squawking really loudly.

Now Alice knew that basically any minute now she was very likely going to hear a loud

knock at her door about the loud noise because most of the people who lived in this boarding house with her hated Polly. And Polly admittedly was kind of a mean bird, not only was he really loud, but he bit people and made really threatening noises and had some bad disruptive habits that pretty much drove everybody who lived in the building crazy.

Like right now, Polly in addition to squawking really loudly was also pecking the metal frame of the light fixture that it was on, which not only made additional noise, but it also damaged the light fixture, which you know, to most people in the building, they didn't care so much about the light fixture, but the landlord did. And so it was just this general consensus that Polly is sort of nasty and loud and also

damage stuff. So like nobody liked Polly and they really told Alice that she needed to get rid of Polly and soon because he is a real problem, but Alice would not get rid of Polly. She loved Polly, and Polly loved Alice. She wasn't mean to Alice, he followed her around everywhere and was very sweet to her and

so Alice just felt very attached to the spurred. In fact in many ways, she viewed Polly as being sort of like her only family. You know the only reason she was in this boarding house to begin with is because her brother and both her parents had passed away. And so a lot of time it was just Alice and Polly in this room together and so it was just

“a very important relationship, it was like the only relationship that Alice really had.”

So Alice just walked over to Polly who was still squawking loudly and pecking at this light fixture and she just told him to stop what he was doing. Any listen?

He went completely quiet and you know she pet him for a second and then a moment later

she was back at her desk, back to studying and for the next few hours that's where she did until her eyes got too tired to stay open and she went to bed. Alice later in the middle of the night Alice suddenly started awake and she sat up in her bed. She had no idea what caused her to wake up. But what she did know is something just felt wrong or chest felt incredibly tight and

she actually felt kind of dizzy. And so she got out of bed and she stumbled away over to the door to get help. But she didn't get there after taking only a few steps her legs suddenly gave out from under her and she fell to the ground. The next day just before 1pm.

The landlord of the boarding house, bustled around the kitchen, putting some lunch on the table and then when he was done and all the food was laid out for his guests, he called out to the house to let everybody know that lunch was ready and to come on down. And a few moments later all the guests appeared at the table, except for Alice. Now the landlord immediately noticed this and it did bother them.

However, you know they did know that Alice typically stayed up late studying so it wasn't all that unusual for her to sleep in. But even by her standards, one pm was very late and so the landlord decided they would just go up to a room and make sure she was okay. And so the landlord went down the hallway to the last door which was Alice's and they knocked.

But there was no answer. So after trying a few more times and still not getting an answer, it just reached down, turned the knob, it was unlocked, and they opened the door. And immediately as soon as that door opened, the landlord began to gag. So there were a lot of things about Alice's pet parrot poly that really concerned people.

“And Alice, who loved her bird and considered it the only thing saving her from total”

awful loneliness, sort of looked the other way when it came to all those concerns. However, there was one thing that Alice should not have ignored. And that was her parrot's drug problem. So in 1899, interior lighting inside of homes was almost exclusively open flames. And those flames were powered by gas, and it would turn out poly, regularly, liked to inhale

that gas.

He would basically get high.

When he was pecking at the light fixture, he wasn't doing it just to make noise or to damage it. He was doing it to turn the valve in order to suck on this gas until he basically passed out. Now Alice did know Poly did this, but she would typically stop him while he was in the process

of trying to get high and just kind of keep him from doing it, or if after he had turned

“the valve and passed out, she would just move her parrot and then close the valve.”

Or she would keep her window open to ensure that the gas wouldn't get trapped in her room. But on this night, it was so cold outside, she shut the window, and then she fell asleep because she was so exhausted from all the studying and it was after she had blown a sleep that Poly pecked the valve open, got high on the gas passed out, and then the room continued to fill with this poisonous gas.

So when the landlord opened up the door, the reason they gagged is they were hit by this the surge of gas that had been trapped inside the room for hours. And then when they looked inside, they saw Alice's body lying on the ground by the bed not moving, and then at the landlord's feet flattened on the ground with their beak wedged under the crack at the bottom of the door, was the parrot.

Alice would die from inhaling the gas, but the parrot survived because he was able to make his way over to the door and breathe in that fresh air. And so the parrot recovered and would continue to hoof gas whenever it got the chance.

“Our next story is called the cancelled vacation.”

Late one night in September of 1993, 43-year-old Linda Gaudy suddenly started a way inside of her bed, in her home in Stona, Massachusetts. She had just had this really horrible nightmare about how she was going to die. So in a few weeks, Linda and her boyfriend whose name was Tim were planning to go on a Caribbean cruise and in Linda's dream that she just had, she had been on that vacation and during

that trip, she had basically seen herself dying in a car.

And this dream, I mean, it was no ordinary dream. It had been so vivid, so awful that even now, you know, she knew she was awake. But her heart was still racing, she was still dripping sweat. It was like she couldn't fully escape from this nightmare. And as she's just kind of sitting there with these horrible thoughts in her mind, she began

to realize that this was no ordinary dream. This was a premonition. So Linda was a doctor. She was an obstetrician and gynecologist who worked at a hospital in Stona, Massachusetts. And by all accounts, she was excellent at her job, not just because she was smart and experienced,

but also because she was just naturally intuitive and had this sort of like sixth sense when it came to her work. In a lot of cases, trusting her gut and going off of her intuition had actually saved the lives of her patients and their babies. And so she had sort of developed a reputation for being this way.

And it had led to many patients actually traveling to her from all over the region to have their babies or just to see her in general. Because it just sort of seemed like she was the person who could handle any problem, mostly because she would get ahead of it and sort of predict complications and treat them before they became complications.

But this sixth sense that she had did not just pertain to work. She also would have, you know, these sort of gut feelings or premonitions like the dream she just had about her personal life.

And almost always, you know, her intuition on these things or her visions of the future

So Linda knew that in order to literally protect herself, she needed to cancel her trip

to the Caribbean. And even though she knew this was the right call, it didn't stop it from being hugely disappointing. She'd planned this whole trip. She'd been really looking forward to it as was her boyfriend, Tim.

“And also, she sort of felt like this was an important trip for her relationship with”

Tim. She had been with Tim now for four years and he too was a doctor and they spent all their time together at the hospital. They both worked at the same hospital, but lately they'd been struggling and fighting a little bit more.

Tim had sort of become pretty overprotective of her. Like he was becoming sort of like controlling. And so it was just sort of exhausting dealing with their relationship issues. And this trip to the Caribbean, she saw as like this easy way to like get out of their normal lives and work on their issues.

But in a happy sort of fun environment, it felt like they needed it for their relationship. But now Linda knew she would not only have to break the news to Tim that they were going to go ahead and cancel this trip, but also she would need to go find something else some other way for her and Tim to reconcile, you know, call it a different vacation or some other outing or something to like break the norm which it becomes sort of toxic.

“So on this night, eventually Linda calmed down from the shock of waking up to this horrible”

nightmare and she laid back down and she just told herself that she would figure it out in the morning like this was obviously bad, but at least she wasn't going to die in a car crash in the Caribbean. A few weeks later on the night of September 30th, Linda stormed down the hallway of the hospital where she worked towards her office.

Linda was fuming. So she should have been leaving for her trip to the Caribbean with Tim in just a few days, but she had gone ahead and canceled the cruise because of her dream, which Tim was very annoyed with her about. He'd been vocal about the fact that her reason for canceling this trip was ridiculous.

And it made things really tense between them and it was already tense between them. So this is like doubly bad. And now just a few minutes ago, they had actually run into each other in the hospital hallway because they both worked there together. And they had gotten into this huge fight about the cancellation of this trip and other co-workers

had actually overheard it.

“And so now Linda was not only mad, but also embarrassed, you know, that other people saw”

her fighting and so as soon as she got into her office, she'd slam the door behind her and sat down and tried to focus on her work, reviewing patient charts and other things like that, but she just couldn't. Now Linda knew that canceling this trip was the right thing to do. She was sure that if she had gone to the Caribbean, she and maybe even Tim would have died

in a car, like she knew that she was preventing that. But at the same time, she also just hated how this premonition was now further complicating her relationship. And so now Linda just told herself to calm down, she took a few deep breaths and told herself, you know, you have other things that are coming up that will help distract her from the drama

of her relationship and this trip, like she had a massage, she'd book for herself on her day off tomorrow, and she also had her college reunion this weekend. Two things she was definitely looking forward to, that so far anyways, she had not had a premonition about so she had not canceled.

Finally, around 8.15 pm, when Linda's shift finally came to an end and she had left

the hospital to make her way home, she actually was in pretty good spirits, you know, even though she had certainly not resolved things with Tim, they were still very much fighting, you know, this Caribbean trip really had become a pain in both of their sides, despite all that, Linda was determined that, you know what, she's not going to let this be just a constant drag on her life.

She needs to just live her life and just go forward and in time things will sort themselves out. Four days later, on the afternoon of Monday, October 4th, one of Linda's friends was driving towards the hospital where Linda worked, and this friend was very worried about Linda. Since she hadn't heard from Linda, since they spoke on the phone last Thursday, which

in and of itself was not a particularly big deal since they didn't speak every day, but this friend had also spoken to one of Linda's co-workers that morning, who was also worried about Linda, because Linda apparently didn't show up for work that morning, and the staff at the hospital were very worried and they had even sent someone to Linda's house to check on her to make sure she was okay, but she wasn't home.

And Linda, she rarely missed work, and if she did, she called in. And so to find out that she hadn't called in and nobody knew where she was, combined with the fact that this friend is not heard from her, like the friend is thinking something's

wrong here, and so they were going to the hospital to basically get together with her co-workers

to just get to the bottom of this to figure out what happened to Linda. But now, as the friend turned into the hospital's parking lot, she could immediately see that something was terribly wrong here, because the lot was crawling with police officers. They'd completely roped off the whole area, and then there was this one big group of people sort of standing over at the perimeter.

to this group to see what they were all looking at. And when she saw, she just gasped.

“It would turn out, Linda's premonition was eerily accurate, but Linda had misinterpreted”

it. So on the previous Thursday, when she had left work after that long shift, and she's looking forward to her massage the next day, and the college reunion that weekend, she's trying not to think about the toxicity with her boyfriend Tim.

She heads out, you know, to head back home and just be done for the weekend, but she never

makes it home. In fact, she never leaves the hospital grounds, because shortly after leaving the hospital, Linda was attacked and strangled to death inside of her car. Linda had been convinced that the death in the car was going to take place in the Caribbean, and so avoid the Caribbean, which she didn't realize is that it had nothing to do with

the Caribbean. It was simply that she was going to die in a car. And she did.

“Meaning, the premonition she had was right, she did die in a car.”

The location was just wrong. So Linda's boyfriend, Tim Striker, was the only suspect in a murder. He had no alibi, and he still went on that cruise to the Caribbean without Linda. Right after her body was found. And he was later caught paying a witness to give the police false information about seeing

Linda with another man at the time of her death.

However, Tim was never officially charged with Linda's murder and denied all involvement.

However, he was convicted of perjury and was sentenced to four years in prison, where he would die in 2011. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Ring. A spring evening in 1705, a middle-aged man named John McCall, sat by his wife's bedside in Lurgen, Ireland, crying so hard he could barely catch his breath.

His wife, Marjorie, had unfortunately just passed away minutes ago from what appeared to be a horrible fever.

“So John was actually a doctor, and a few days ago when his wife came down with this fever.”

Even though John had not been able to actually diagnose what was causing her fever, what he did know is that the fever was just ravaging her body and it was going to kill her. And so over the next couple of days, John just had to watch and horror as his wife basically just shut down. And now in some ways, her death was like a mercy, but it was still devastating for John.

In part, because he felt so helpless, like he's a doctor and he couldn't save his wife. But now, despite how unfair this whole thing seemed, John had to kind of like pick up the pieces. I mean, his wife, in many ways, was like his whole world. They had kids, they had grandkids, you know, they were only in their fifties, but much

of those fifties years have been spent together. And so now it's like he was this lost soul, and so he just looked down at his wife, and he just reached out and he grabbed her hand, you know, the hand that he was so familiar with and he squeezed it. And it was just limp, and it made it even more upsetting that like she was really gone.

And then he looked at her actual hand, and he saw the beautiful gold wedding ring that he had saved all this money for that they both had loved so much. Just seeing that ring on her finger, on that limp hand of hers, it just sort of, it really reinforced the finality of this moment. You know, he couldn't believe this had happened, but it was real, his wife really was

gone. And so now, as John continued to cry and squeeze his wife's hand and just sort of reflect on this horrible situation. He also, in tandem, knew that he had to start thinking about her funeral. He would have to plan it really quickly so they could bury her really quickly.

So at this time in Ireland, it was traditional to hold a multi-day wake when somebody died so that friends and relatives could have time to pay their respects before the actual burial took place. But if somebody died from disease, like obviously John's wife had, something it caused the fever, he didn't know what, but it had to be some sort of disease.

If that was the case, the wake was off the table. And the person was buried pretty much right away just to prevent the sickness from spreading further. But even though John knew this, he couldn't quite bring himself to face that reality, the idea that his wife would be in the ground as soon as like tomorrow, but for right

the second, John did not get up and you know start making arrangements here, he just

wanted to soak up the last few moments he had with his wife before she was in the ground. Following day, John stood beside his wife's casket as it was lowered into the ground at their local cemetery in front of a crowd of other mourners. Even though Marjorie, because of the disease factor, had not had a wake, John had still

he loved about his wife.

“But instead he found himself on this particular day, very fixated on something else.”

His wife's wedding ring, so John really wanted his wife's wedding ring just to have something

to remind him of Marjorie, you know, and he loved that ring of something that meant a lot to him. But pretty much right after Marjorie had died, as part of the decomposition process, her fingers had begun to swell really badly and he could not remove the ring from his wife's finger.

Nobody could. Other people tried they couldn't do it. And so ultimately the decision was made to just bury her with the ring. And so of course that in and of itself was sad for John, he really wanted that ring. But also as John stood there watching her casket get lowered into the ground with this ring

inside. He was worried that now her grave site could potentially become a target for grave robbers. Now grave robbing has been a thing as long as there have been graves.

“But it was especially common in Ireland in the early 1700s when the story took place.”

Because the country at the time was experiencing widespread famine and poverty and people were desperate. And so things like gold wedding rings inside of graves became things worth taking.

And so John just felt like, "Am I always going to be worried that my wife's final resting

place is going to at some point be disturbed?" But you know, by the time Marjorie was actually buried that day and people had sort of moved on, you know, as much as John really wished that ring wasn't in there that he had it. It's nothing he could do.

And so he decided he would just try to honor his wife's memory in other ways. That night, John was back in his home and front of the fire with his kids and his relatives all around him. And they were all crying and laughing and sharing their favorite memories of Marjorie and then every time someone told a story about Marjorie, they would all lift their drinks and

they would toast to her. Now for John, this was very cathartic.

“I mean, this definitely was helping him grave.”

But John was also just exhausted from his grief and also the whirlwind of the last few days and just how wretched they had been. And so even though people definitely were intending to stay up for quite a while here, John at some point in a law in all the stories and laughter and crying, he stood up to head off to bed.

But as soon as he did, as he began leaving the crowd and they were all kind of watching him, he heard a knock at the door. And so John sighed and headed towards the door, assuming it had to be one or more mourners who want to come in and pay their respects and just sort of be there for him. But when he opened the door, it was not a mourner.

It was something else entirely. And when he saw what was out there, it made his breath catch in his chest and then suddenly he felt the shooting pain rocketing through his chest, then he felt his legs buckle underneath him and before he knew it, he was falling to the ground. He would turn out John had been right to be worried about the fact that his wife was buried

with her wedding ring. Because not long after she was laid to rest, we were to got out that there was this ring inside of a grave and grave robbers, they'd dung her up, but just like John and everybody else who tried, the grave robbers also could not get the ring to come off of Marjorie's swollen finger, so they had to cut off her finger to get the ring.

So when they did that, a very unexpected thing happened, Marjorie sat up and started screaming. So even though John was a doctor, he had been wrong when he thought she had died. I mean, he wasn't the only one, lots of people thought she had died. However, nobody caught it and they were so quick to bury her because they were fearful of whatever had caused her fever that disease that it would continue to spread that

they buried her while she was alive, just nobody knew. And then those grave robbers, when they cut off her finger, while the pain of having her

finger locked off, basically jolted her out of this catatonic state she was in, and she

sat up and she was fully alive again. But when Marjorie, basically stumbled from the cemetery, fresh from her grave, back to her home to tell her husband that, "Hey, I'm still here. When John opened the door and he saw his wife standing there covered a dirt and missing a finger and looking horrible, he was so shocked and so scared that he had a heart attack and

he actually died." John was buried in the same plot that Marjorie had just been dug out of. In Marjorie, you know, despite what happened to her, she went on to live for many more years, just without her ring finger. And then when she finally did die, she was buried in the same cemetery and was given

a headstone with the inscription "Lived Once" buried twice. That headstone is still at Shankil Cemetery in Ireland today.

But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized

for dramatic purposes.

“The Mr. Ballem Podcast, strange-dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced”

by me, Mr. Ballem.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn and Colacasio.

“This episode was written by Kate Murdock, story editing by Evan Allen and by Luke Barats.”

Search and fact-checking by Shelley Chu, Samantha Banhous, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway,

Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano.

“Research and fact-checking supervision by Steven Eher.”

Audio editing and post-produced by Whitlicasio and Jordan Stitham. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross plugged in.