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- [00:01]
Narrator
Hey everyone. For Halloween this year we're excited to share an episode of another great show we think you'll love. It's called Spirits. Spirits is a history and comedy podcast focused on everything folklore, mythology and the occult told through the lens of feminism, queerness and modern adulthood. Every week, mythology buff Julia and her childhood best friend Amanda get together to learn about a different story from mythology and folklore. Over drinks, they they talk about everything from the mythological origins of major franchises like Lord of the Rings and Wonder Woman to crash courses on the pantheons of mythologies from around the world to monthly roundups of spooky first hand accounts submitted by their listeners. Start listening with any of the 450 episodes they've released over the last nine years. There's so much to enjoy, whether you're here for analyses of mental health and folklore or creepy modern ghost stories. In this episode, Julia and Amanda revisit one of the most horrifying listener submitted stories they've ever discussed on the show. A tale of terrifying mushrooms, haunted caves, and what lurks in the dark. If you enjoy this episode and want to hear more, dive in@spiritspodcast.com or search for spirits wherever you download your podcasts. Here's the episode.
- [01:44]
Amanda
Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
- [01:52]
Julia
And I'm Julia and I hope you've been enjoying Mushroom Month. I hope it was a pleasant experience for everyone. I love mushrooms. So you know, as the person who mostly gets to pick what topics we talk about on the show, this was a delightful, delightful month and I think we're going to end this month by one revisiting a story that I think has still impacted me the most of all the urban legends that we've talked about on the show. And two makes me think about mushrooms differently. I'm sure that our longtime listeners will recognize the name of this story or like at least evoke images of this story. But we are revisiting Amanda today. The Shuddering of Creekside Mushrooms. The scariest story we have ever told on this podcast.
- [02:40]
Amanda
It is a thousand percent the scariest story we have ever read on the podcast. And Julia, I also think it's the first time we have ever revisited a story in our nearly 400 episodes. This is not a rerun. We are rereading it fresh today in 2024 and bringing our new knowledge of mushrooms to the fore. And I'm really excited we can kind.
- [03:02]
Julia
Look at the story like with a new lens, kind of dig into the stuff that makes mushrooms particularly scary and why this story was so impactful to us.
- [03:12]
Amanda
I am really excited. So this was originally from episode 256, 140 episodes ago. And we are here. Julia, by the grace of Michael K. Hehim. Michael, of course, titled this the shuddering with two Ds of Creekside mushrooms, Michael begins. Hi y'.
- [03:31]
Julia
All.
- [03:31]
Amanda
I've been a fan for a few years now, and ever since the first Urban Legends episode, I knew there was a story I wanted to tell. However, I've never had the motivation to write it all down as it's pretty strange and didn't quite make sense. But after a very recent real life update, I knew I had to make the time. Fair warning, this is a long story, but it has everything. Ghosts, weird fungi, local law enforcement, small orange cats. Trust me, if you stick around to the end, the payoff is worth it.
- [03:58]
Julia
I did truly forget that a cat was so integral to this story. And now the mention of the small orange cat, I'm like, oh yes, I forgot.
- [04:07]
Amanda
The tale takes place just outside the small town of Worthington, Pennsylvania. They recently this is 2021 achieved some mild notoriety when in the midst of Black Lives Matter movement, the owner of a gas station slash hot tub combo store bought an LED billboard and used it to display racial slurs to oncoming traffic.
- [04:26]
Julia
First off, very Pennsylvania. The other thing that's very Pennsylvania about that gas station slash hot tub combo store.
- [04:33]
Amanda
I mean, I can't decide if it's better to like have purchased a hot tub store and be like, you know what? People might need gas. Fair enough. Or to have a gas station and be like, you know what? Someone might stop in and be like, I was meaning to buy a hot tub, so let me just take care of it right here.
- [04:48]
Julia
No, the ladder. The ladder is the wild thing. The ladder makes no sense. I know. Like, oh, something that people will always need gas for their cars, embrace electric cars as a community here in America. What people might not realize they want or need, but are going to realize it once they come into my store. Hot tubs.
- [05:10]
Amanda
Extremely true. Because I think the infrastructure of the gas station is what probably pre exists. You probably buy a gas station that's already been there versus like make a new one in 2024. So yeah, yeah.
- [05:20]
Julia
You don't pay to put in pumps at a hot tub store. You add a hot tub store to a gas station, for sure.
- [05:27]
Amanda
Incredible. That incident was a couple years ago at this point, and since then the business has done so well that he managed to buy a second sign. Typical rural America.
- [05:36]
Julia
Not good. Not good America. We're judging.
- [05:38]
Amanda
Before this, Worthington, Pennsylvania, had a more wholesome claim to fame as the home of the world's largest underground mushroom farm. Operating since 1937 in the bowels of an abandoned limestone quarry, Creekside Mushrooms once employed over a thousand workers around the clock to supply half of the country's population with moonlight brand white button mushrooms.
- [06:01]
Julia
I'm remembering now it's somehow worse that it takes place inside an abandoned limestone quarry, like, already haunted. We've talked now many times about how mining in particular is a truly haunted industry because of how dangerous it is and how those caves are not good for people and labor conditions. And now the fact that first off, they employed a thousand workers around the clock. Already sending off red flags in my labor brain here.
- [06:31]
Amanda
Yeah, and this is, this is so firmly rust belt, Julia. This is like a while outside Pittsburgh. This is closer to like, you know, Canton, Ohio and Youngstown than it is Philadelphia. So we are absolutely, firmly in the already, I'd say firmly haunted zone of post industrial collapse Northeast America.
- [06:52]
Julia
True facts.
- [06:53]
Amanda
Unfortunately, Creekside ceased commercial production in the late 2000s, maybe five or six years before I joined the company that owned it. The official story is they couldn't compete with modern mushroom farms. Shout out Kennett Square after a mysterious mushroom virus began infecting their crops.
- [07:09]
Julia
I never pictured that mushrooms could get viruses, I suppose, you know, like bacteria or rot or blight. Make sense to me, but viruses, so, like, that's a thing that happens to animals and people.
- [07:25]
Amanda
Yeah. We as humanity have also personified the virus. We, we ascribe the virus, think like personality and motive and drive and malice in a way that something like a bacterial infection, we don't. And so already. Yeah, the word virus is doing a ton of work here. Also, Julia, a really good reason why monoculture is bad, because if you grow only one kind of thing, which, like, for commercial production, you have to, like. I get it. But also makes you very susceptible to, you know, one thing knocking out your whole thing. Yeah.
- [07:56]
Julia
It's also wild to me that Michael joined this company five or six years after the commercial production ended. Like, what were they, what were you guys doing then? What's going on?
- [08:07]
Amanda
Well, let's see. So being that Creekside was comprised of 150 miles of tunnels layered three dimensionally in the labyrinthine maze, they had no way of completely sanitizing the facility. And so their production never recovered. A small portion of the upper mines were kept operational so the spawn production plant could continue doing research on new strains and product.
- [08:29]
Julia
That's fine. Spawn production seems good. Question mark.
- [08:35]
Amanda
So Michael is anticipating my reaction here because he continues. If the phrases mushroom virus, spawn production, or research on new strains make you uncomfortable, you might want to buckle up, because I know the real reason Creekside shut down.
- [08:50]
Julia
Yeah, you know what? Now that I'm looking at research on new strains, that does seem like the beginning of a sci fi horror movie. And we'll get to that. Like, we'll get to, like, the real sci fi horror of this story. But let's. Let's dig in.
- [09:01]
Amanda
Yeah, we were also pretty in it in lockdown when we first read this story. And so now I have kind of, like, both more and less fear about contamination, I think, than I did before. It's a story that the few remaining farm workers rarely acknowledge, let alone talk about. Something you need to understand about the people in this area. They're the kind who, if they don't understand or like what you're saying, will exchange looks with each other and stare at you until you either change the subject or leave. It wasn't until a colleague of mine had a few too many icy lights at a holiday party years after I joined that I finally learned the truth.
- [09:41]
Julia
Okay, this is also another kind of horror movie trope. The idea of, like, you know, the kids going to a roadside bar or store, and everyone turns around and looks at them and stares and, like, no one talks. Like, it all goes silent. Very classic horror movie.
- [09:56]
Amanda
I love that. The old timer, right, with the beer being like, ah, kid, you don't even know the half of it. Extremely so.
- [10:03]
Julia
Mm.
- [10:04]
Amanda
So you see, the company that owned Creekside had a smaller, more niche branch called the bio products division, which worked with any and every fungus that wasn't button mushrooms.
- [10:15]
Julia
Now, again, this seems like a sci fi horror trope, But I'm sure that there are companies out there that, like, this is just a thing that they say where it's like, oh, yeah, the bioproducts. It's like a umbrella term. But it does sound malicious and bad.
- [10:32]
Amanda
And, I mean, I think it is. Like, there are a lot of agribusiness, you know, conglomerates that will, you know, like, trademark seeds, that will sell seeds to farmers, basically lease intellectual property of the genetics of crops to farmers and not allow them to, like, regrow things from seed because they, like, sterilize the seeds. So there is definitely a lot of potential, like, corporate malfeasance going on.
- [10:53]
Julia
Looking at you Monsanto Google it.
- [10:56]
Amanda
Their two big products were Red Yeast Rice and Blazey or Blase, which are both FDA approved health foods. But for a time, they also dabbled in fungal insecticides. Spores that, when sprayed on corn and soybean seeds before planting, infest and zombify any insects that try to feast on the nascent crops. Julia, it's what Jenna said.
- [11:17]
Julia
We talked about this in the Jenna episode. The idea of these like cordyceps or something like that, that can kind of take over a host and cause them to die, but also to spread to other insects.
- [11:31]
Amanda
I did Google image search this whole thing and Cordyceps while we were recording, and those images haven't left me. So now I have an even richer mind palace to bring to this story.
- [11:41]
Julia
Yeah, I.
- [11:42]
Amanda
It's.
- [11:42]
Julia
It's wild. I can't imagine using it as a insecticide, like purposefully spreading it in order to kill off like ants or bugs or anything like that. So that's wild to me.
- [11:56]
Amanda
Yeah. Michael also adds, you can Google pictures if you want an extra nightmare or two. Or if not, just imagine an army of dead bugs covered in bright green mold.
- [12:03]
Julia
It's worse that it's bright green. It's worse.
- [12:07]
Amanda
Yeah. The one I looked at was like a. Like a. Not quite a neon orange, like a rust burnt orange, which is, you know, also bad, but like a color I associate more with nature than. Yeah, right. Yeah. So sometime in the late 90s, bioproducts tasked Creekside with processing a new strain of killer spores called Metium. Helpful pronunciation there from Michael. The stuff was highly effective, but awful to work with. A whole tunnel in the upper mines was portioned off just to handle it because the smell was so strong that anyone who worked with it too long invariably developed migraines that could last for weeks.
- [12:45]
Julia
Not good.
- [12:47]
Amanda
No, trust me. I've smelled it before and it sucks. Everyone hated it, and so the task was usually assigned to new hires when it came around.
- [12:56]
Julia
I'm looking up Metaresium just so I can like, see if, like, hey, if they breathed that in, that would be bad. Right? But there's. There's a bunch of different stuff. Oh yeah. So, okay, here's an interesting one. It is like, there's a section in the Wikipedia about this where they used it for locust control. Its spore form was effective in killing locusts and other members of the Achrididia family, with no deleterious effects found in field trials on any non target species, except for domesticated silkworm. So basically, like, it only worked on Locusts. So that's why they wanted to use it. Seems bad.
- [13:32]
Amanda
I don't know, dude. Seems wild. One day in the summer of 2007, one of these new hires up and vanished in the middle of her shift. The only description I got of her was that she was from out of town, fairly short, and had a shock of bright red hair. Why is it always the redheads that go missing?
- [13:48]
Julia
Julia more recognizable?
- [13:50]
Amanda
I guess so. I. I desperately wanted red, curly hair when I was growing up, and that. This is something that.
- [13:55]
Julia
But then, yeah, you would have been. You would have been more likely to get taken. Amanda. I don't know.
- [13:59]
Amanda
Listen, Do I, you know, live. Live to become a storyteller or die A story? Yeah, it's hard to say. Okay.
- [14:06]
Julia
Ain't that life?
- [14:07]
Amanda
By the end of the day, her car was still in the parking lot, but nobody had seen her in hours. The foreman tried writing her off as a deserter, but all of the workers who saw her last swore they saw her heading deeper into the mines, not out.
- [14:21]
Julia
Also, deserter makes it seem like they're in the military or something. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, they. They no showed, or they. They walked off the job site or something like that. That's one thing. Deserter makes it seem like they're in the army.
- [14:33]
Amanda
Yeah. Or that this happens often enough that there's, like, another one. Like, there's a reason why it was minors in West Virginia that, like, were the stronghold of union labor and, like, fought for union rights because owners were, like, another one. Whatever.
- [14:46]
Julia
Mm.
- [14:46]
Amanda
So the farm was closed for less than a day while local police looked for her. It was plain to everybody that they could only have searched a fraction of the mines in that time. Remember Julia? 150 miles of tunnel and.
- [14:56]
Julia
And 3D, like, levels and levels and levels.
- [14:59]
Amanda
And yet their conclusion was she must have gone above ground with anyone noticing. The next day, when the farm reopened, her car was gone from the parking lot. She didn't have an emergency contact registered with hr, so the company washed their hands of it, or at least they tried to.
- [15:15]
Julia
I was recently having a discussion with someone where I was like, your emergency contact is so important, and I know it. Depending on what you're doing. Like, for example, if I'm on vacation with Jake, I wouldn't make Jake my emergency contact because, like, if there's an accident, it's more likely that he's with me. And so them contacting him would make no sense. However, you need to have an emergency contact. You need to.
- [15:40]
Amanda
I give it to the airlines every time. Not because I love that the airlines have my dad's phone number, but because it's like, I mean, yeah, we need it.
- [15:47]
Julia
You never know.
- [15:48]
Amanda
So a couple of weeks later, all of upper management vanished for a few days without telling anybody where they were going.
- [15:53]
Julia
Suspicious.
- [15:54]
Amanda
Never a good sign. When they came back, they had two major announcements. First, Bioproducts was no longer going to work with Midairisium or any insecticide. Never good. When a company shuts down a line of business, Julia, either it means it was not profitable enough or there is some reason bigger than profit that it shouldn't happen. Which is. Is the scary thing.
- [16:17]
Julia
And for businesses to be like, oh, wait, we're making profit, but we need to shut it down anyway. Red flags. Red flags everywhere.
- [16:26]
Amanda
Their second announcement was that Creekside was to cease production altogether by the end of the year. My colleague was convinced that everything was related. He said that the owners of the company, who were coal and oil barons that also happened to own half of the profitable businesses in the Tri county area, allegedly had very close ties to both police and the local news. So if anybody could make a story vanish, it was them. Hence the farm workers. Eerie silence on the topic.
- [16:54]
Julia
It's all a conspiracy, man. You know, like it.
- [16:57]
Amanda
I truly believe that Not. Not even a conspiracy, like a. A true reflection of power. You know, Like I. The older I get, the more I'm trying to like tease apart those two things. And it's like, yes, it makes utter sense that the. The, you know, person with the most money in a given region, like everybody is logically incentivized to keep them happy and stay on their good side.
- [17:15]
Julia
Yeah, it's one of those things where I truly believe that this story is real, but it feels like it's so real that it feels like fiction. You know what I mean? Like, oh, well, of course the greedy business owners have the police and the local news in their pocket and you're like, yeah, that's what happens in the real world.
- [17:35]
Amanda
Yeah. Yeah, they do.
- [17:36]
Julia
Yeah.
- [17:37]
Amanda
I, however, was less convinced than my colleagues. Everything I thought must have a perfectly rational explanation. Maybe this woman developed a headache and went to leave, only to realize, I don't know, her car was dead. So she had someone pick her up. Maybe she decided to quit. Maybe she had her car towed without saying anything to anyone. And besides, Bioproducts was never really profitable by my understanding, and was changing projects all the time. And in all honesty, Creekside was a 70 year old facility that was kind of falling Apart, I got why it wasn't worth the effort of dragging it into the 21st century.
- [18:11]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [18:11]
Julia
But my thing is, like, all Creekside was a 70 year old facility for growing mushrooms. But I'm pretty sure it probably existed longer than that as a limestone quarry.
- [18:21]
Amanda
So I think.
- [18:22]
Julia
So my question is, like, how fucked up is this mine? You know?
- [18:27]
Amanda
It's gotta be so fucked, Julia.
- [18:28]
Julia
It's gotta be so fucked. It's gotta be so fucked.
- [18:30]
Amanda
I was talking to someone recently again, real rural America country shit. Actually not that far from this area of Pennsylvania. They were, as you do, talking about people, you know, who have died. And one of them was via jumping as a prank into a quarry, which just sounds like a bad idea overall.
- [18:49]
Julia
Kids.
- [18:49]
Amanda
But they were like, well, yeah, one of the reasons why it's bad, it's. It's not just jumping into a quarry, which is a bad idea, like, what do you think is going to happen? But also, they. It's more expensive to recover equipment from the bottom of the quarry than it is just to leave it there and write it off. And so there's just like abandoned equipment laying in the bottom of the quarry. And so that is another new la. This story for me of imagining, like, what kind? Like, why? Of course not. Like, why would you haul a thing through a hundred miles of tunnel and like up 60ft vertically or whatever, if you could just kind of leave it there to dust and rot?
- [19:22]
Julia
Yeah. Also worth noting, not all quarries end up, like, filled with water when they're abandoned. So this one. Yeah. I'm only saying that because, like, in my mind, quarries are dry. But then I realize also quarries are sometimes like full of water as well. So I was like, how do you jump? Is a prank.
- [19:37]
Amanda
But I assume it was filled with water.
- [19:38]
Julia
Yeah, yeah, yes, of course.
- [19:40]
Amanda
But again, under the surface, detritus, submachines.
- [19:44]
Julia
Rusty old metal for you to impale your body parts onto. Not great.
- [19:49]
Amanda
So a little bit about me and how I fit into all of this. I was hired in 2013 as a research assistant for the company's mushroom breeding program. My job was almost exclusively above ground, creating new crosses based on genetic and morphometric data, while what remained active at Creekside, which was rebranded as the trial farm, actually grew the crops that we were evaluating. Not bad for a first gig right out of college.
- [20:13]
Julia
Now, Michael, it does sound like you are about to create a mushroom monster in a sci fi movie. Like, you need to understand. You're like, oh, yeah, you know, we're just like cross breeding stuff and, like, you know, crossing based on genetics. And I'm like, I've seen a lot of horror movies where genetics goes wrong.
- [20:33]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [20:34]
Amanda
Like, I, I, I fully understand. This is a real job. I know we have tons of researchers and scientists in the audience, and yet when someone says, oh, yes, the morphometric data, I' okay, so you're going to turn into like Norman from Batman immediately. Right.
- [20:47]
Julia
You're going to be the fly in Jeff Goldblums.
- [20:51]
Amanda
The fly.
- [20:51]
Julia
Got it. Cool, cool, cool. Very cool.
- [20:54]
Amanda
After a couple of years, I was assigned the seemingly innocuous task of driving the 20 minutes from the lab to the trial farm to photograph our new strains once a week.
- [21:03]
Julia
That does seem innocuous. That seems fine, Normal.
- [21:06]
Amanda
Also, Julia, I would, I would run, like, checks up to payroll every week when I had my student job at school. And it was the best because I got to, like, say, you got to leave early. Say I was going to go drop off the checks and like, take, you know, twice as long to walk there as I should have. Excellent. So, like, props to you.
- [21:20]
Julia
Solid job.
- [21:21]
Amanda
So being an asocial person, I preferred going down when no one else was milling around, which meant either showing up at five in the morning or three in the afternoon. As you can imagine, as I was in my early twenties, it was mostly the three in the afternoon slot. This routine continued for a couple more years with that issue.
- [21:37]
Julia
Okay, okay.
- [21:38]
Amanda
Then on a Saturday Evening in late January 2017, I received a text from my boss. According to a sensor that he could monitor remotely from his phone, the CO2 levels in one of the trial farms grow rooms were through the roof. If someone didn't go down and reset the climate control mechanism, the crop would be ruined and we'd have to wait months to regrow the material and try again. Someone, of course, was me.
- [22:05]
Julia
I'm thinking about it now. And the fact that, like, this routine continued for a couple more years without issue, that's just enough time for it to feel like, this is normal, this is fine. I'm never going to have a problem if this happened. Three months into you having to go down there to photograph stuff and then shit popped off. That would be like, well, I'm gonna leave this job forever now.
- [22:29]
Amanda
Julia, you're absolutely right. It's been two years. Michael's done this every week for 100 weeks. Why should the 101st one be any different?
- [22:36]
Julia
That's a great question.
- [22:38]
Amanda
Well, we're going to see why exactly it was different and how this became Spirit's creepiest urban legend. Right after the break.
- [22:56]
Julia
Amanda, we're back, and I've made you a tea made out of mushrooms. Don't worry about it. Just drink it. Just drink it, Julie.
- [23:02]
Amanda
I don't want it. I don't want it.
- [23:03]
Julia
Don't drink it, Julia.
- [23:04]
Amanda
I don't want it.
- [23:05]
Julia
Okay, fine, fine. I'll have it.
- [23:08]
Amanda
No, no. Julia's grown eight feet tall, and I'm.
- [23:12]
Julia
Made of mushrooms now.
- [23:15]
Amanda
All right, Julia. So it's January 2017. Michael is going to check on the CO2 meter. It was early in the evening when I left. Since I remember the sky wasn't quite pitch black yet. I told my wife I'd be back in less than an hour, assuming the CO2 sensor was the only thing acting up. Up cell service was patchy even before you got to the front gate of the facility. And once you were underground, forget about it.
- [23:36]
Julia
Sure.
- [23:36]
Amanda
Fair. 25 minutes later, I was parked in front of the old delivery dock, which now served as a makeshift base of operation for the farm's skeleton crew. The surrounding buildings, former cafeterias and storage warehouses and repair bays built into the side of the mine's opening, were all boarded up and crumbling like some generic apocalyptic survival game.
- [23:55]
Julia
A very specific generic apocalyptic survival game. I would say. The Last of us.
- [24:01]
Amanda
Yeah, My friend worked on the. The Fallout TV show in set decoration. They would just, like, send us photos occasionally of, like, in the middle of Namibia, like, building a loading dock. She wasn't there like her team was. And so that's. That's what I'm picturing here.
- [24:14]
Julia
Hell, yeah.
- [24:15]
Amanda
So these buildings had apparently been in disrepair for years, even before the mine shut down, which, if you knew anything about the owners, wouldn't surprise you. I headed in through the only good door left on the building, which was, amusingly enough, still kept locked. When nobody was inside, I fished the key out from under a nearby bush and went in.
- [24:33]
Julia
I think we're about to discover why it was still kept locked.
- [24:36]
Amanda
I love. It's. I love the locked. But the key is under a bush. It makes me laugh.
- [24:40]
Julia
Classic.
- [24:41]
Amanda
The lights flickered and hummed to life a minute or so after I turned them on. I was used to being there alone, but since I rarely came at night, there was an extra air of foreboding. I must admit, it was a lot like walking through the halls of your high school at night after an especially late band practice. Only most of these walls were marked with a bright red X that indicated you might get electrocuted if you touched them.
- [25:02]
Julia
What? Hey. Hey.
- [25:05]
Amanda
Listen, Julia, as someone married to A building inspector. What do you think?
- [25:09]
Julia
I'm gonna turn my chair around? Listen, there are certain things that if a building has. You can't go in them anymore. They should be condemned. I think touching a wall that will electrocute you. Having walls that will electrocute you. You. If you touch them.
- [25:28]
Amanda
Yeah.
- [25:28]
Julia
Is one of those things where that building. No one should be in it anymore.
- [25:34]
Amanda
Fix it now, Julia. What if it were cheaper to leave it?
- [25:37]
Julia
I don't give a fuck. Spend some money.
- [25:41]
Amanda
That's what the money is for. As Don Draper said, that's what the money is for. It didn't help either that the heating was kept at a bare minimum to keep the few remaining intact pipes from freezing missing. Which I'm sure would be more expensive than, you know, heating the building properly.
- [25:57]
Julia
Well, yeah, because then they'll explode.
- [25:59]
Amanda
As I made my way to the golf carts at the mouth of the mine, something soft bumped against my leg. I looked down and saw a small orange cat sporting a dirty blue collar decorated with cartoon mushrooms.
- [26:12]
Julia
Oh no, that's so cute.
- [26:14]
Amanda
Hi Moonlight, I said to the cat named in honor of the defunct brand.
- [26:18]
Julia
Oh, that's too cute for the story. Damn it.
- [26:21]
Amanda
I know. I like moonlight is such a beautiful warrior cats coded name for a kitten. But I also hate the idea of the like untouched by the sun underground. Like freaky white mushroom. I'm just like, oh, my palms are sweaty. She meowed gently as I scratched behind her ear. Moonlight had been an employee of the farm before I was hired, and she seemed to survive solely by hunting vermin in the dark recesses of the abandoned building buildings.
- [26:50]
Julia
Yeah, that's just how cats be.
- [26:52]
Amanda
It's like a cat buffet. Basically. The keys were still in the ignition of the only good golf cart left.
- [26:57]
Julia
Then why are there other golf carts there? Just get rid of them.
- [27:01]
Amanda
Would you pay someone to come haul them out? Just leave it there. A mining helmet armed with a dim headlamp was already sitting in the passenger seat. I powered on the cart and drove down the ramp into the upper mines, the dock's metal roof giving way to natural limestone ceiling. As I descended it, moonlight the cat stood at the top of the ramp watching me go. I never seen her go down into the mines, even though it was a balmy 65 degrees down there year round.
- [27:27]
Julia
Well, cuz she knows better. Animals know.
- [27:30]
Amanda
The next few minutes were very routine. I parked the cart outside the offending metal shed that served as our makeshift grow room, powered the lights on, and saw a perfectly normal looking crop of mushrooms. It turned out that the CO2 levels were, in fact, fine. It was the. The sensor that had malfunctioned, not the climate control. Typical.
- [27:48]
Julia
That's usually the case, I feel like.
- [27:50]
Amanda
Yeah, I made a note to text my boss once I got some cell service, and I figured at least my car would still be warm when I got back up there. Yeah, I almost jumped out of my skin when something bumped my leg again, stifling a scream. I aimed the headlamp down at my feet and saw moonlight. How did she get down there so quickly?
- [28:08]
Julia
Also, why is she down there when she never goes down there?
- [28:11]
Amanda
Right?
- [28:11]
Julia
What's going on?
- [28:12]
Amanda
I didn't have much time to think about it because the little orange cat was pacing around me frantically. As soon as she realized she had gotten my attention, she darted toward the main road that led to the lower mines. And once she moved out of the lamp's headlight, she started meowing incessantly.
- [28:28]
Julia
I think another layer here is we are not stressing how dark this probably is and how horror movie coded it is that the only light is the one that is attached to your head.
- [28:40]
Amanda
Yeah. These oil barons are not paying for safety, lighting or motion sensors in this mine. So I. I can't. I can't tell which one is worse. If it was, like, lit up like an office or if it was pitch dark with the headlamp. Nope. As I'm talking, I realized it is pitch dark with the headlamp. That's much worse, Amanda.
- [29:00]
Julia
But halogen light would not be much better. And.
- [29:02]
Amanda
Right. Like, flickering. Then it could go off.
- [29:05]
Julia
Right. Because these oil barons are probably not going to, like, maintain them very well. You're going to have a lot of flickering light, which makes it somewhat worse than the idea of the, like, you know, the office as derelict.
- [29:18]
Amanda
Yes.
- [29:19]
Julia
Being very scary in a lot of horror movies. So. Interesting. Interesting.
- [29:23]
Amanda
Like, objectively, I know that. That physical labor is a lot more dangerous than the sort of, like, simulacrum of, like, white collar work in a, you know, like, an anonymous office environment. But that's my personal horror story. And so I'm. I'm just like. Like, this is bad.
- [29:40]
Julia
Yeah. So.
- [29:41]
Amanda
Michael continues. I could practically hear the opening narration for half a dozen true crime podcasts playing in the background as I decided what to do. Following a cat into a partially abandoned limestone quarry was an objectively very bad idea. But the only other time I'd seen cats act like this was when they were trying to lead people to a new litter of kittens. I didn't think moonlight had Been pregnant. But I'm a mushroom breeder and not a vet, so the animal lover in me won the arc argument.
- [30:09]
Julia
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, she's probably, like, trying to lead you to something. And my assumption would have been like, oh, there's kittens. Like, oh, we need to make sure that they're okay.
- [30:17]
Amanda
Something's injured. Yeah. Damn it, Jim. I'm a mushroom breeder, not a vet. I checked the battery levels on both my cell phone and my headlamp, which were good enough for a small incursion. As soon as I moved toward her, moonlight slinked off into the darkness. I followed on foot, afraid that starting up the golf cart again might spook car.
- [30:35]
Julia
No, no, too scary. Should have taken the golf cart. Could have gotten out of there quicker.
- [30:40]
Amanda
I. I think I would just feel like I have some layer of defense around me.
- [30:44]
Julia
Yes.
- [30:45]
Amanda
I don't know. I don't know.
- [30:46]
Julia
The, like, similacrum of an enclosure around you.
- [30:49]
Amanda
I get you. Yes, exactly.
- [30:50]
Julia
Like, it's.
- [30:50]
Amanda
It's literally open, and it's probably a battery powered cart with, like, half horsepower.
- [30:54]
Julia
But still, it's probably faster than me trying to run is all I'm saying.
- [30:58]
Amanda
Yeah, no, not. Not faster than. Than moonlight, but faster than me. H. So some combination of adrenaline and the monotony of the endless caverns made me kind of disassociate from the concept of time. I don't really know how long I followed her, how many blocked off or caved inside tunnels we passed as we traveled ever deeper through the bones of the earth. The old mining paths were a lot like a vascular system with one wide artery at the top that branched exponentially into smaller capillaries. The whole time, moonlight danced in and out of the bobbing beam of my headlamp, her cries periodically piercing the relative qu of the caves.
- [31:35]
Julia
Scary, you know, because, like, you know it's a cat, right? You know it's a cat. But it's that idea of, you know, when you're, like, out in an unfamiliar wilderness at night. Like, let's say you're renting a cabin or something like that. And this is also, like, kind of our fault for not being, like, rural people. We're city and suburbia people. So the idea of, like, being in the woods and hearing the, like, animal noises that are so unfamiliar at night is very scary. So this idea of, like. Like a crying cat in the darkness ahead of you, you're like, yeah, it could be a cat, but it could be something else.
- [32:07]
Amanda
Oh, totally. And I imagine Too. In that environment, with, like, all hard surfaces, the echoes would, like, drive me panicked. Like, I would be so unable to judge, like, how far away or loud or much of a threat something actually is.
- [32:25]
Julia
I just realized something, Amanda. It's kind of blowing my mind a little bit. Okay, so we talked earlier in the episode and in the Jenna episode as well. This idea that certain mushrooms take over a host and will basically corrupt their minds, But a more scientific reason for that. Corrupt their minds so that their physical actions are not, like, what they would usually be.
- [32:50]
Amanda
Yeah, they, like, overwrite their programming and they replace their instincts with. With instincts that are bad for them.
- [32:56]
Julia
Yes, but the whole thing is to spread to other hosts, right? Is it possible that this cat might have been a version of that?
- [33:09]
Amanda
No.
- [33:10]
Julia
Leading them deeper, Julia.
- [33:12]
Amanda
Fuck you. Why would you say that?
- [33:14]
Julia
Into the caves.
- [33:15]
Amanda
Why would you say that? Not Moonlight?
- [33:18]
Julia
No.
- [33:19]
Amanda
Was the cat covered in green fungus? You have to tell us, Michael.
- [33:23]
Julia
I think that Michael would have mentioned that if that was the case. Maybe it just hasn't gotten to that point yet. Yeah, like the part of a zombie virus where, like, you know, you've bitten and you're, like, slowly becoming infected, but they haven't gotten, like, violent yet.
- [33:36]
Amanda
You're, like, hiding the rot under, like, a collared shirt. Oh, no. Oh, Moonlight. Were her eyes green? I have to know.
- [33:43]
Julia
Who knows?
- [33:45]
Amanda
Shit.
- [33:46]
Julia
Sorry. The idea struck me and I was like, hold the fuck on.
- [33:51]
Amanda
Abruptly, moonlight dashed into a narrow chasm barely wide enough for me to walk through. And I nearly followed her before realizing my mistake. Until now, I had been confident I could find my way back out. But with this departure from the main road, I knew I could easily get lost. I considered turning around then and there, but Moonlight's cries were nearly constant now. I figured we had to be close to whatever she was leading me to. What if it's the mother's poor? Okay. Thinking quickly, I ditched the headlamp from my helmet and laid it on the ground, aimed at the entrance to the passage to mark my way. I turned my phone's flashlight on for the rest of the walk before proceeding. So up until this point, I hadn't noticed anything weird about the smell in the mines. It was the usual mixture of damp limestone and stale dirt, Kind of like an old cellar if you've ever been in one of those. But now it was being replaced by a new odor. This was sharp, earthy, with the faintest hint of sickly, sweet decay. It wasn't the outright putridity of rotting flesh.
- [34:52]
Narrator
Oh, good.
- [34:55]
Amanda
But it was a little bit familiar, and my eyes started to water. Moonlight suddenly rounded a sharp corner and vanished. I followed in turn before adjusting the angle of the light and almost tripped over something hard and metallic with a loud thrum that echoed all around me.
- [35:12]
Julia
As I kept victim.
- [35:13]
Amanda
Flailing wildly to prevent myself from falling, I scanned the ground in front of me to see what I'd hit. I'd expected, I don't know, a piece of old mining equipment or something. It wasn't. As my brain scrambled to process what it was seeing in those moments after entering the chasm, I'm sure I realized that moonlight was nowhere to be seen. She'd stop meowing entirely, plunging the room into silence. But she was, at this point, the least of my concerns. The thing I had tripped over was a canoe, because moonlight had led me to the shore of an underground lake hundreds of feet in diameter.
- [35:50]
Julia
Huh?
- [35:51]
Amanda
What the fuck?
- [35:52]
Julia
Like, so this must have existed when it was a limestone quarry, right? Like, maybe they hit something and it flooded.
- [36:01]
Amanda
Yeah, maybe they tapped into it. Right? Or like you said, Julia, it's one of the situations where, like, the groundwater or rainfall or something collects and forms a pool in what was once just rock and quarry.
- [36:13]
Julia
The idea of it being a metal canoe, though, that seems more modern than, like, you know, the late 1800s, early 1900s kind of thing like that feels more like 50s, 60s and beyond.
- [36:28]
Amanda
Yeah, I get the sense that this is probably in the mushroom farm era and not the limestone quarry era, etc, you know? Yeah. So let's, let's. Let's get further into this, Julie, because we're almost done with this episode and with the story. There's the canoe, right? The water line of the lake was just a couple inches from my shoes. At least I think it was. It was hard to tell because every surface in the whole cavern was covered by a thick layer of bright green mold.
- [36:59]
Julia
That's the one that he mentioned before. That's the one that they used as the insecticide.
- [37:05]
Amanda
That's why I recognized the smell. A slight pressure behind my eyes foretold the coming of a headache, but I couldn't leave because there was something floating in the middle of the lake. The mold was so thick that it blanketed the details of the object, but I could tell even from 30ft away that this was vaguely human proportioned. As I strained to see what it was, the utter noiselessness of the room I was in triggered my tinnitus, and my ears began to ring. The ringing grew louder as I stared, transfixed. I moved the light from side to side, hoping to see something new at a new angle. But it was useless. I held my breath to steady my shaking arm and could now hear my own heartbeat through the buzzing in my head. It moved without warning. The water surface ripples like the muscles of a giant beast filling. Filling the air with the dense fog of pestilent spores. It was like the room came to life with a sudden burst, Like a predator was lunging from the shadows once its prey was too close to escape. And listeners, Amanda, here, if, like me, you are saying, how the is Michael alive to tell me this story? Here we go. The next memory I have was staring out the windshield of my car. Car driving on the highway back to my house. I was drenched in sweat. I was shivering in the cold winter air. The back of my eyes itched and was tight with pressure. I have no memory of anything in between the lake and the car, of flying back through those tunnels. I probably didn't even lock the door behind me. I realized my wife forgave me for being gone nearly two hours at that point, once I told her what happened.
- [38:55]
Julia
All right, real quick, math, because Michael said earlier in the episode, 25 minutes to get from his house to the thing, assuming same amount of time to go back, that is an hour and 10 minutes inside the caves.
- [39:08]
Amanda
Mm.
- [39:09]
Julia
That's a lot of lost time. I would say.
- [39:13]
Amanda
That's a lot of walking. I mean, at an average pace, Michael was, like, well over a mile into the underground labyrinth of these.
- [39:22]
Julia
But don't forget, had the golf cart for at least some of it.
- [39:25]
Amanda
Ooh, yeah, very true. So who knows how much distance he traveled at the first leg.
- [39:30]
Julia
Now I'm like, he has to go back and, like, see if the golf cart was back where he should have left it. Did the golf cart get abandoned inside of the facility? Like, what?
- [39:40]
Amanda
Did he have the headlamp? Yeah, like, I. I need to know.
- [39:42]
Julia
I need to know.
- [39:44]
Amanda
So Michael's wife forgave him for being gone almost two hours. Ever the pragmatist, her first questions were about what I did with the headlamp in the golf cart.
- [39:52]
Julia
Thank you, Michael's wife.
- [39:54]
Amanda
Of course, she didn't care, but she had correctly guessed that my boss might be a little bit curious. So we both agreed. I couldn't tell anyone at work what had happened without sounding nuts. So I came up with a convincing partial truth to share at the lab on Monday. I told them I went down to the grow room to check on the mushrooms. Thought I smelled mold, went exploring, lost my headlamp. And by the time I got back to the golf cart, it refused to start. Flustered, I left without locking the door. I thought this was pretty good. A believable story. My boss was pretty understanding and joked that he would have one of the workers go find the headlamp so I didn't need to buy them a new one.
- [40:30]
Julia
God, corporate America. Off.
- [40:34]
Amanda
It's not the worker's job to replace equipment that they lose or break on the job. Come on, it's your job.
- [40:39]
Julia
You have money. Use it.
- [40:41]
Amanda
I almost got into a rant, but yeah, I spent the rest of that week figuring out how I was going to get out of taking pictures in the mines ever again. It turns out I didn't have to be worried. My boss took an unannounced leave of absence a couple days later. No one knew where he went, not even his secretary. And Julia, that is the most chilling line in this story. If your admin assistant doesn't know where you are, you are dead. Okay? Those are the rules.
- [41:11]
Julia
I mean, you're not wrong. You're truly not wrong.
- [41:14]
Amanda
I'm not wrong. Corporate admin assistants sound off. You know the details of your boss's lives, okay? If you don't know where they are, they are dead or committing a crime.
- [41:24]
Julia
Amanda, truly. I started reading a book a couple of days ago where that is 100% the truth. A character died in the first chapter, and then the secretary is like, I simply don't know where he went.
- [41:37]
Amanda
If the admin doesn't know, the. There is nothing to be known. It's not possible. You're dead.
- [41:41]
Julia
Sorry.
- [41:43]
Amanda
The following Monday. So, okay, about like, eight days after, right? Or nine days after, I was greeted with an email stating that the owners were selling the company effective immediately. Creekside was being condemned over, quote, safety concerns.
- [41:56]
Julia
I mean, to be fair, there were walls that could electrocute people.
- [41:59]
Amanda
There were safety concerns, but I want to know why. By now, the trial farm must be relocated to a more modern building, which was recently vacated Ever since bioproducts got their own facility closer to Pittsburgh. I could walk to the new farm from the lab, which was nice. But amidst the chaos of the sale and the relocation, I all but forgot my final day in Creekside, as I did the story of that missing employee. And being a progressive socialist in the heart of Trump country, usa, I'd been disinclined to talk to any of the remaining farm workers beyond the exchange of a few police polite greetings. For the last couple of years, even that seemed like it was asking too much. Sometimes the crew's attitude toward me had grown icy, but I sort of attributed that to the one time I wore a Pride shirt around them and figured that was the problem.
- [42:47]
Julia
Fair.
- [42:47]
Amanda
Fair. Which brings us to a couple of weeks ago in August 2021. It's my real life update thanks to that quote unquote labor shortage at Creekside, I was asked to spend a day at the new trial farm helping out. The worst part was running out of things to talk about with my co workers after the first five minutes or so. Time had tampered my feelings about that night I spent in the caves, and I was left with a question I'd never gotten an answer to. So I figured, okay, we're here. Nothing to talk about. Now is as good a time as any to ask. Hey. I asked the room, whatever happened to Moonlight? I was met with an all too familiar wall of blank stares and shared glances. It was in that moment I remembered. Of course, I had named the cat moonlight. And I never said it to anyone else. They probably didn't know what I was talking about. So I said, you know. You know the little cat from Creekside? Anyone know what happened to her? One of the women, Tina, spoke up after what felt like an eternally long, awkward pause.
- [43:52]
Julia
Good for Tina.
- [43:53]
Amanda
Her response cracked the dam on a deluge of memories I had tried for so long to keep keep bricked up. They washed over me, filling in the gaps to a story I was unprepared to see. Both times, Creekside had shut down, first partially and then completely. I've been precipitated by unexplained events occurring deep underground. Each involving those wretched spores was the reason the farm crew became cold toward me. The same reason they never talked about that missing woman. What were the owners so afraid of down the down there? What were they trying to hide? If we're lucky, the world may never know. Tina said to me in a blunt and tired tone, what cat? Chef's kiss emoji. Mushroom emoji, Cat emoji, Ghost emoji, Redhead lady emoji.
- [44:45]
Julia
Oh, the fact that the cat was ginger too. And the redhead lady going missing. Oh my God.
- [44:52]
Amanda
The mushroom collar. Like it Nothing.
- [44:55]
Julia
Who put the mushroom collar on the cat? Did the cat even exist? What's happening? What the fuck?
- [45:01]
Amanda
What the fuck? What the fuck, Michael? Three years later this shit is haunting me and I love it.
- [45:07]
Julia
It's like I picture this story so much in my mind, and the fact that it still scares and surprises me. Reading it several years later is so fucking Amazing. Also, so my one complaint and note, we were just rolling with it, so I didn't want to stop and talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Michael, did you not wear masks down in the mines where the mushrooms are?
- [45:31]
Amanda
Well, Julie, this was before 2020, so no one's ever heard of masks or workplace safety. He's a scientist, but he is a scientist and they are doing research. Especially, like, the idea of a spore. Man, like, I've seen too many episodes of House. I've seen Osmosis Jones at a formative age. I just. I picture those little guys going in my mouth and like, and making a.
- [45:49]
Julia
Whole lake of that. I was like, dude, are you wearing a mask? Which was. The water's coagulated surface rippled like the muscles of a great eldritch beast, filling the air with a dense fog of pestilent spores. I'm like, you breathe those in. You breathe them in.
- [46:06]
Amanda
You sure do. You sure do, old buddy, old pal.
- [46:10]
Julia
Oh, Michael, I hope you're okay. We have one follow up email from Michael just letting us know like, everything's okay. Like, we're doing all right now, but I hope you're still okay, Michael.
- [46:20]
Amanda
I hope Michael is still okay. I'm. I'm gonna drop him a note to let him know that we're gonna be revisiting this. This episode. And Julia, you're right in the follow up email where he was just like, this is so flattering. I can't believe you, you know, gave me a whole episode. He does say I didn't have space in my email to talk about the time a group of people broke into the mines armed with AR15s and flashbangs. This real event happened a few years ago. And the official account, that they were kids looking to steal stuff for drug money, but I can't believe that's the last time.
- [46:48]
Julia
Okay, first off, that sounds like a local news story to cover up something for sure.
- [46:54]
Amanda
Yeah. Kids and drugs, you know? Yeah.
- [46:56]
Julia
AR15s and flash. Like, why would you need flash grenades to go steal things? I mean, why would you need an AR15 ever in your life? Separate question, Separate question, different question. But flash grenades makes it seem like, oh, we're going to run into some shit that we're going to need to stun and get away from or take down. And that sounds like a black ops team going in there.
- [47:20]
Amanda
Well, Julia, I'm. I'm so delighted that you suggested we revisit the shuddering of Creekside Mushrooms. I'm going to be thinking about moonlight, the Catwoman, and that Green Lake and that floating form for the rest of my life, but especially the rest of the week. I would say, listeners, if you. If this brought up things for you, if this reminded you of something, if you work in research, if you have either real biological facts that are creepy as or memories and experiences doing research working in mining or in quarries, we would absolutely love to hear from you. This is clearly like the zone of rust belt biological horror that John Darnell and me are obsessed with with.
- [48:07]
Julia
Also, do yourself a favor and Google Creekside Mushrooms, Worthington, Pennsylvania and look at those images.
- [48:13]
Amanda
No, no, no.
- [48:14]
Julia
You will be scared. No, I'm letting you know right now.
- [48:17]
Amanda
No, no, no, no.
- [48:17]
Julia
It's big spooky. Even they're like marketing photos are big spooky.
- [48:22]
Amanda
I mean, just rows and rows of white button mushrooms is spooky. Like, my brain does not want that much symmetry and pale flesh in front of me. Facts. So. So you're welcome.
- [48:34]
Julia
We're sorry.
- [48:34]
Amanda
I'm glad this is our job. Thank you for listening and thank you for coming along on Mushroom Month.
- [48:41]
Julia
Yeah. And remember, the next time that you are surrounded by pestilent spores, stay creepy.
- [48:50]
Amanda
Stay cool. Put on a fucking mask.
- [49:19]
Narrator
You've been listening to an episode of Spirits, a podcast about folklore, mythology and the occult. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, dive in@spiritspodcast.com or search for Spirits wherever you download your podcasts.