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- [00:00]
A
Hey, how's it going? Welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Before we begin, I just want to remind you that there is now one week left to get your name in the pot to win a Nintendo Switch 2 bundle. If you want to be eligible to win, join my podcast. For $2.99 a month you get rid of all of the ads, which is really great for sleeping and relaxing. And I might be contacting you to ask where to send your new Nintendo Switch 2 bundle. Also, I do want to say that I'm going to be announcing the winner on the first and I'm also going to be dropping a photo on my Instagram account showing the proof that I have the console, the shipping information that I actually did send it, and by the way, I just got my hands on a PlayStation 5 and I'm going to be giving that away next. So if you want to automatically enter to win the Nintendo Switch 2 bundle, go ahead and subscribe. Get rid of all of the ads and listen to every episode completely interruption free and you'll be automatically entered to win the PlayStation. I'm going to start doing giveaways every single month. And again, I just want to say thank you for being here.
- [01:05]
B
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- [01:22]
C
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- [01:51]
D
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So There goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [02:13]
B
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- [02:27]
E
I have been living with this girl in my last two years of university. Let's call her Gina. It's not her real name obviously. She's the shy and quiet type and I figure she wouldn't be happy if I would air her secret out with her real name. But the thing is, we're in a bit of a pickle here and I know you guys have good knowledge in dealing with gory events, so maybe one of you can help me figure out what to do in situations like this. So let's start from the beginning. I met Gina through a friend. Even though we are not exactly the same character, we always had nice chats. She's shy and quiet, but not the creepy kind. She has a good sense of humor, she's tidy, and she tends to put up with a lot of crap without drama. Last summer we both ended up in a situation where we had to change flats, so we decided that we would go flat hunting together. Long story short, we ended up as flatmates. The first few months were rather uneventful. We got used to each other's quirks, settled in, all was well. Now. One night I was heading home from my workplace. I worked in a bar part time and it closed at 2am that plus cleaning and locking up the place meant that I usually walked home a few around three. By that time, Gina's usually asleep, so I was surprised to see that the kitchen lights were on. Figuring she just left them on, I walked into the kitchen to turn them off. Apparently though, there she was, awake, sobbing in the corner and in front of her a dude laying face down with a dozen stab wounds in his back and a big puddle of blood underneath. All in all, it was a huge mess. Thankfully it was not in the carpeted living room. My first thought is that I really can't be bothered in dealing with this now. I cleaned up a whole damn pub. Now I have to clean up a dead body as well. But I had a feeling that it was not the kind of problem that would just disappear tomorrow. I mean, I could have told Gina that it's her mess so she should deal with it, but I kinda considered her more of a good friend than just a flatmate. And she really didn't look like someone who's on top of the situation sitting there crying in the corner. I tried to ask about what exactly went down, but she kept stammering that she was not in control and she did not know what happened. I briefly considered involving the cops, but I was pretty sure that it would end with the arrest of Gina. Now I don't want to be the one that sends a friend to the pen. And more importantly, I was way too broke to pay the rent alone. And finding a new flatmate was always a hassle. So finally we wrapped the dude up nice and tight, popped him into my car and drove to a nearby forest, to a nice little campfire spot he burned. Alright. Gina was rambling about some dark presents, but I was a bit too busy disposing of the bones to listen too closely. I patted her on the back and told her to forget about it. Now we were even. After I stole her frozen pizzas a few times. Yeah, I'm that kind of flatmate. Don't hate me. She was a bit jumpy and anxious for a few days after, but eventually things went back to normal until like a month after at least, I was coming home from a night out. I was calmly chain smoking, a little bit intoxicated, when I noticed once again the damn kitchen lights. I went into the kitchen and I met with the same scene. A dead guy, stab marks, and Gina sitting in the corner. Yo, we really gotta address this tomorrow, I said. We had to get rid of this guy as well, of course. But I really wasn't in a state to drive a car, and any place to safely discard a body was way beyond walking distance. Not to mention that you actually have to carry the body. So my drunk mind conjured up something that until this day, I don't know how, but it worked. I put a puffy jumper and an old coat on the dude and called a cab. I explained that our friend had a bit too much to drink and we're just taking him for a walk. The cab driver nonchalantly accepted the explanation, only asking to make sure that he won't puke. Puke all over the car. It was a Saturday night, so he must have had some customers in a similar state. We had another little bonfire and then headed home. The next day, even though the hangover was bad, I decided it was time to discuss this thing. Gina said that in both cases, something took control over her. She remembers bits and pieces of the deed, but she said she was never in control. Now, I'm not a shrink, but she definitely seemed honest about it. I figured whatever she's doing, she must have a good reason for was a nuisance for sure, but it was not worth breaking our friendship over. So I decided to let it go. It happened again and again, usually before she was particularly stressed. Rambling some Cryptic stuff like the hunger is gnawing at me or it must be fed again. Like talk about some B horror cliches. Whatever floats her boat, I figured. I tried to ask her to at least try and leave the body somewhere else, but considering she was not exactly in control of what she was doing, the corpse always ended up on our kitchen floor. I was hooking up with a girl a few times and coming home to a dead body on the floor could have been a bit of a turn off. But luckily Sheena sort of felt when the killings were about to commence and screwed off God knows where to hunt. So when that happened I knew it's better not to take anyone home and get my cleaning gloves ready. Certainly not an optimal situation, but we managed. You know when something becomes a habit, you sort of get used to it. Whether it's your flatmate not doing the dishes so you do them instead or when she brings home corpses, you burn them. It's just routine. However, here's the thing. I finished my degree and I got a pretty good job offer abroad. Now this means moving out of town and leaving Gina. I don't think she could afford the rent alone and she still has a year to finish. Now I know that another flatmate may have a difficult time of putting up with this habit of hers. So I'm wondering, any of you know any good tips? Tips to train her to be a bit more self sufficient in hiding the bodies. Or alternatively, any tips that could stop this crave for murders. I really don't want to leave her in such deep crap, but I won't pass this job opportunity up either. So if you all have any ideas, I'm listening. There's been two times in my life where I have ever really cried. When I was 11, when I learned that my mother was never coming back and after my father had been buried. My father was a big burly man. The kind who filled a room with both his stature and personality. His jovial exterior concealed the long hidden pain of my mother's leaving. His long shifts as a delivery driver took took him all over the country. In the mornings when he came back, his eyes would be red, the bags beneath them the size of gunny sacks. He would collapse onto the sofa where he wouldn't wake up for hours. And he had done it all for us. Despite his strength, lung cancer had been quick to consume him. The one pack a day habit he had picked up to cope might have had something to do with that. My father had died long before he was ever laid in that coffin. We had watched helplessly as he had wasted away to a skeleton whose graying skin hung from his emaciated body in drooping folds, his haggard, wheezing breaths muffled by the oxygen mask strapped to his face. He was barely coherent. Most times he was conscious due to the multiple medications he was on to ease his pain. When he was, he would hallucinate, screaming that something kept holding him down in the night and trying to squeeze the breath out of him and begging us to get him out of there. His eyes had been emptied of all former soul, now brimming with pure desperation. All his life my father had put on a smile for us when he had been dying. I was determined to do the same for him, to ease the agony of the final few months. Even when he had choked out his last breaths and the weak jolt of his ECG monitor had trailed off into high pitched flatline, the tears had brimmed inside but hadn't spilled. The one thing that kept me from breaking down in the middle of the service was my daughter, Katie. At six months old, she was already vocalizing, babbling and cooing throughout the service, completely oblivious to what was going on. She was like a ray of sunlight that penetrated through the dark, permeating clouds of grief.
- [11:44]
D
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- [12:14]
B
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- [12:44]
D
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- [13:13]
E
Dad had adored her. She had been his first grandchild, one he had waited for for years. When she had been born, he had been there at the hospital, his arms brimming with presents, a bright picture pink helium filled balloon emblazoned with the airy text It's a girl tied to his wrist that bumped against the white hospital corridors. He had been there for me when Katie's father had wanted nothing to do with her. His favorite thing to do was whisk her out of her cot and spin her around in the air where she would kick her stubby legs in the air and giggle in delight. Even after Aide started coughing up blood and the doctors had forbidden him from doing any strenuous activity, he would still sneak out of bed to rock her in his arms. I hadn't just cried for my own loss, but for Katie's. She would never get to know him like I had. What a wonderful man he really was. I just wanted to give all the opportunities that he had given me to her and maybe even be half the parent he was. Rain pattered down, soaking through our black funeral garb. As the priest had spoken the last rites, Katie had been sheltered from the rain by my umbrella, joined at my hip in the pink baby sling she was strapped to. I held her close all throughout as my father's coffin was lowered into the ground. After my siblings and the rest of the mourners had dispersed, returning the plot to its former undisturbed green, I had decided to come back with Katie for my own private goodbye. Far from prying eyes, I couldn't help but wonder whether I was an emotional masochist for returning. The wind shivered the bright green grass, the heads of wildflowers pushing through the dewy heads. After a winter spent long dormant, I marveled at how there was such life in a place with so much death, and the still healing wounds inside me reopened with a searing vengeance. By then Katie was asleep. Her tiny pink hand rested against my collarbone, her face fixed into an expression of absolute serenity. I found myself longing to experience that perfect, undisturbed, and dreamless sleep again. The sleep of the innocent. I knelt to face my father's tombstone, staring at the golden thread font chiseled into the polished marvel surface. Loving father, Husband, and Friend. It was reading over those indelible words that it finally bowled over me. He was gone. It was there in the middle of that empty cemetery that I finally allowed myself to cry. A tiny noise from the swaddled bundle against my breast caught my ears. I blinked down my eyes, still blurry with tears, which I hurriedly wiped away, thinking that Katie had just woken up just as I had been about to take her back to the car for her afternoon feed. I looked down. Her half open mouth was stretched into a toothless smile. Despite both eyes being closed, she wriggled around in my grasp like a puppy eager to escape the confines of the cocoon bursting with trilling gurgles. She was laughing the way she always did when he Daddy. I choked out, somewhere between a laugh and a saw. Even in death he still couldn't help but love her. I lifted her up, cautious not to stir her, and planted a gentle kiss on the fleshy dome of her head amidst the sparse hairs that grew there. I left the that cemetery with my head lifted towards the sun that peeked through the clouds, embracing all its warmth as it dried my tears while my daughter still slept. It was only when we were in the car that the first strange things started to happen. Just after I had strapped Katie into her car seat, a sudden chill prickled down my spine. Even after I had boosted the air conditioner to the maximum heat heating settings, it refused to disperse. All the warmth had been sucked out of my body, replaced with an inexplicable feeling of dread. Although it was just the two of us in the car as we drove home, I felt the heaviness of another presence, as if someone else was with us. But every time I checked my rear view mirror, there was only Katie. I started to regret ever returning to the cemetery, but the thought was lost. As we pulled up into the driveway, the growing fears inside me were washed away by the familiar sight of our house sandwiched in the middle of our little residential neighborhood, where dogs barked and children played. Far removed from the eerie silence of the standing headstones and monuments, I resettled myself back into our normal routine, feeding diaper changes, playing. By seven, after her latest bottle, Katie had once again succumbed to sleep, her head slumped on the side of her rocker as it had blared out electronic nursery rhymes, milky drool seeping from the corner of her half open mouth. After placing her in her crib, I stayed awake for a few more hours. I took the opportunity to indulge in some rare time for myself, sitting on my sofa in my pajamas, sipping a freshly brewed cup of coffee and losing myself in the safe mindlessness of reality tv. The incident still played in the back of My mind. But the joy of the memory had dulled. It felt colder. Somehow. I knew that the door was safely shut and bolted. I still couldn't shake off the feeling that another person was in the house with us, watching from the shadow. Shadows. Some sentimental part of me still wanted to believe that it was my father watching over us. But it didn't feel like him at all. It was almost threatening. When I had retired to my own bed, I had expected to stay awake for another hour or two. But the moment my head hit the pillow, my vision had blinked into darkness. It was the crackle of the baby monitor on the bedside table that had woken me up. At around 2:30 in the morning, after struggling out from under the blankets, I had stared dazedly at the glowing digits on my alarm clock. Usually Katie woke up at around 1230 with near mechanical precision for a midnight feed. For both of us, to sleep that long was nothing short of a miracle. I had already slipped one foot into a bedroom slipper when I heard her more clearly. I froze on the side of the bed. Katie was laughing again, but this time instead of the muted gurgle, it was a high pitched, full on hysterical laughter. My throat tightened as I swallowed. Usually there was no sound more beautiful in the world than my little girl laughing. But hearing it unprovoked in the middle of the night was more than a little unnerving. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was just something wrong about it. There was almost a hint of pain in it. Suddenly the laughter stopped. Instead, it was replaced by a prolonged silence. I had risen off the bed when a sudden wail blasted through the speakers and I almost toppled to the floor. It was my daughter, crying out for me, struggling to breathe, her tiny voice strained and watery as if she was choking. I raced to her nursery with my thoughts drowned out by the pounding of my own heart. As I flicked on the lights, I saw that my daughter's face was blue, dark veins throbbing in her forehead. I ran over to pick her up, but it was like trying to lift a semi truck. It was as if I was fighting against someone else for her. Her limbs juddered up in the air as her little lungs were crushed by an immense, invisible pressure. I couldn't lose her. Katie was the last light left in my life. Even when my arms felt as if they were about to snap from the sheer strain of it all, I refused to let go for her. After what seemed like an eternity, I managed to wrestle her away into my arms. She laid there, her arms hanging limply over the crook of my shoulder. My own breath was frozen in my throat as I searched for any signs of life. I almost cried when she coughed and let out a weak cry. I wanted to hold her to my chest and never let go, but I was afraid of hurting her any further. As I rushed down to the kitchen searching for the phone to call 91 1, my sight was drawn to a dark purplish mark beneath the strawberry patterned collar of her baby grove just above her windpipe. With my mind still rattled, I found myself laying her down on the kitchen table while I undid the buttons and peeled back her vest. The tremor in my fingers grew stronger to the point I could barely get a grip when the full sight was revealed. Nausea broke in the back of my throat as I clapped a hand to my mouth. Stretched across her narrow chest was a bruise in the perfect impression of a large four fingered hand.
- [22:40]
B
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- [23:00]
D
The 250mg 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLYS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglisco. Before starting Epglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection searching for real relief?
- [23:33]
B
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- [24:10]
D
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- [24:43]
E
When I was a kid, I lived in the country in a little village. It was quite tightly packed, but I lived right at the end, the second to the last house house on the road. So instead of houses being my view, I had fields. Fields across the road in front of my house. Fields as far as you could see to the east, past the very last house, the fields stretching to forever beyond our garden. Most of them were crop fields, and as a country girl I learned quickly not to walk through them. But the field that bordered our back fence was empty. Well, I say empty. It was full of long grass and flowers with beautiful BlackBerry bushes round the edges. Just no crops. The grass was coarse and the brambles scratched me when I climbed over the fence. But to a bored little kid, it was magical. I never saw anyone in it. I didn't even know who owned it, so in my mind, it was my special field. I must have hauled myself over our wobbly old fence thousands of times over the years. One of those times I was around 13 and I wanted to pick some of the blue flowers that grew in the middle of the field. So naturally I just clamored over the fence and started wading through the grass towards them. I picked as many as I wanted, but as I was walking back, I heard a voice. What are you doing, sir? Sweetheart. I jumped out of my skin. I was terrified I'd get in trouble and spun around trying to see who had spoken. Over here, dear, the voice said, and I turned towards the fence of the neighboring house. Peering over the fence in a stiff straw hat was a wrinkled old woman with fluffy gray hair and wrinkled lipstick, looking like an illustration in an Enid Blyton book. Betty had lived next door since I'd been a baby, but we had never really spoken. She threw my lost balls back over the fence, and sometimes I heard her grumbling as she did her laundry, but that was the extent of our interaction. My hands were trembling a little, but I played it off. Sorry Betty, I shouted back. Is this your field? I was just picking flowers. I waved the stalks in her direction. It is my field, dear, but that's alright. My stomach dropped. I was a very nervous child and the thought of getting in trouble pulled the blood from my face. Don't look so scared dear. I'm not upset. Why don't we make a deal? You can keep the flowers so long as you give me your first boy child. I smiled, both out of gratitude and amusement. And then I made the gravest mistake of my life. Alright, Betty, I laughed. If I ever have a baby, you're welcome to it. Betty smiled and went back home. I almost instantly forgot the deal I had made and went on with my life as usual. I studied for not quite hard enough, did my GCSEs, went to college, met the love of my life. I never thought I would meet someone so amazing but so different. To me. He was a theater student, I was a business student. He barely had any time outside of rehearsals, but we made it work. My God, I loved him. We somehow stayed together after we graduated, ended up buying a house to together. It was small, essentially a bungalow, but we converted the attic into another room and hosted many a sleepover with our college friends, the ones we stayed in contact with. We never got married, much to his mother's dismay, but we lived together for 10 beautiful years. But the most incredible thing of all was that we got pregnant. I was so sure throughout my early 20s that I never wanted children. I was terrified that I would raise them wrong, that I'd be a bad mother, that my child would grow to resent me. Even once we started living together, I knew I wouldn't change my mind. But one day I woke up and looked over at him sleeping beside me and knew that I wanted to have a child with him. I knew that it wouldn't be my child, it would be our child and that they would be so loved, so cared for and cherished. I would learn from everything I didn't want to be and raise that child right. So we got pregnant. I swear I had never felt joy like that before. Looking down at that test and realizing I was going to be a mother. I was overflowing with happiness. We felt like we were floating on air. Over the months my stomach grew. We painted the nursery, thought about names, googled nurseries and baby playgroups, did baby yoga, played Mozart against my stomach. Nothing was too cheesy. We would have done anything for our beautiful bump. Then things Started to change. I would wake up at night with the bedroom window open when I was sure I had shut it the evening before. Knives started to disappear from the kitchen, only to be under our duvet or once stabbed into the mattress. The animals that we painted in the nursery stared out at us with blank, faded eyes when we were sure we had painted them. Neither of us had any idea what was happening. I had forgotten all about Betty. We tried to laugh it off. We were so preoccupied with the baby. We had gone a bit scatty, but we knew this wasn't us. We continued in that state of unease, confused, unsure, but afraid. Until the scratch marks started. The newly painted crib had swaths of paint scratched off as if someone had pulled their hand along the wood. Our door, our window sill, the floor beneath our bed, all scratched in the same way. We were terrified. But one night I woke up to a searing pain on my stomach. I sat upright and shook my boyfriend awake, thinking the baby was coming. But the pain was coming from the skin across my stomach, not inside it. My boyfriend turned the lamp on and I almost cried out in fear. On my beautiful bump, three red lines stretched out across, raised and puffy. There was no blood, not even a cut. It looked just as though I had scratched my stomach in my sleep. But I hadn't. Just like I hadn't scratched the floor or the window sill or the door or the crib. We were so afraid. My boyfriend decided. I wish I could remember his name. He decided that we should stay in a hotel hotel for the night. So we packed a bag and drove to the nearest hotel. Faces pale and drawn, we settled into our room, agreed to keep the lights on, and tried to forget the terror we had felt. The scratches had faded from my bum. You could barely tell they had been there at all. And at least here we wouldn't be followed by whatever was tormenting us. We were worried that whatever it was would destroy. Destroy the house while we were out. But that was better than it destroying us. I had forgotten all about Betty. When I woke up, I felt lighter. It was dark, pitch black in the room. All the lights turned out. I reached for my husband and felt nothing. No, that's not true. I felt cold. Something cold and almost solid, like touching the early morning mist. I was instantly terrified that something had happened to him, that something would happen to me or the beautiful baby I had promised to look after. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw my husband lying in the bed next to me, sleeping soundly. I instantly relaxed. I must have missed. When I reached for him, I must have imagined the cold. I felt so stupid. I reached for his hand, but I missed again and again. I got up from the bed and walked around to stand in front of him, a little frantic now. I stood facing him and slowly and deliberately lowered my hand onto his back. It went straight through him. I went to run my hands protectively over my bump, terror pounding through me, and my hands were met with nothing but air. My bump, my beautiful baby, was gone, and my stomach looked as though I had never been pregnant. I pulled up my night skirt and craned my neck and there was no scar, no mark. It was as though my baby had never existed. I turned towards my side of the bed and stopped dead in my tracks. Laying on the bed, staring shrewdly at me, was Betty. In a single horrifying moment, I remembered that day, that joke from so many years ago. And it was all I could do to not collapse from terror and misery. Betty hadn't aged a day. Her gray hair and lipstick were just as I remembered them. As she stared at me, she ran her hands over my stomach, over my bump. She had my bump sitting unnaturally on her frail form, straining under her nightdress as if it were her child. I made a strangled noise, speech far beyond me, and lunged towards her, blind with misery. My hands went straight through. Under my own useless hands, I watched her change. Her features morphed and shifted. Her hair lengthened, her skin smoothed. Her eyes changed color, shape, size. As I watched, she became me, morphed into a perfect copy of me, every little detail perfectly caught. I could hardly tell the difference, and I knew my boyfriend wouldn't be able to. And when she spoke, she had my voice. Enjoy the flowers, dear, she said, her tone so indifferent, so easy, as if this really was just business to her. I screamed and wailed. A noise of pure loss, misery and suffering went through me as everything I loved was torn from me in a moment. I must have screamed and sobbed for hours on that floor, begging and pleading for my baby, for my love. But the morning was worse. Watching him kill, kiss her awake like she was me. Watching him whisper hello to my baby, kissing the skin of her belly when it should have been mine. I couldn't stand it. I must have cried myself raw 100 times over. But I promised, I swore to my baby and to my love that I wouldn't leave them and I would stay and watch over them, that I would try and protect them from her. And I did. I followed them everywhere. I slept by their bed. I protected them, alternately watching my boyfriend and my baby. But I couldn't keep going. After the birth, watching her sweat my effort, watching her birth my child, my beautiful baby, watching her cry my tears and whisper my first hellos. I felt sick. I couldn't stand to watch my baby girl grow up. With her, I couldn't do it. I left. I ran far away, far from anyone. I ran to a solitary house in the countryside and tried to remember my beautiful family, tried to remember their faces. My boyfriend's face, my boyfriend's voice, the way he would hold my hand at night. But one by one, the details slipped away and I was left alone. I aged and withered alone while Betty stole my baby's first steps, first words, first day of school, their exams, their partner, their life. I lived in silence and mourning. Eventually, as I grew older and older, expansion caught up to me and the remote house I lived in became part of a village. Houses sprung up in the distance, but only on one side. Mine was the last house in the village. A family moved in next door, and I ignored them as much as I could. I could barely think of anything now except my beautiful family. How they looked all those years ago, how small my baby was, how wide my boyfriend smiled, how I would do anything to have them back. Over time, those though, I became familiar with the family next door. I didn't talk to them, but I heard their children playing. I heard their cat yowling. After a decade or so, their daughter started climbing into my field, playing pirates, picking fruit. Betty had taken everything from me. She had taken my baby, my happiness, my life. And I would do anything to get get them back. Hello, dear. I called to the girl in the field, enjoying the flowers. Foreign.
- [62:07]
D
New chaos in college football. Let's go. Big stage, big opportunity this Labor Day weekend. The wildness lives on ABC, ESPN and the AllNew ESPN app.
- [62:15]
E
What a way to start.
- [62:17]
D
Featuring top 10 teams like Clemson, Notre Dame, Alabama and LSU. And Bill Belichick's debut at North Carolina.
- [62:23]
E
It's so special. These teams collide.
- [62:25]
D
Don't miss a lineup filled with electric matchups. Welcome back to College Football Kickoff Week presented by Modelo Labor Day weekend on ESPN and abc. Also available to stream on the all new ESPN app. Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday.
- [62:56]
E
Your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.