DARK WEB: Dear David

Summary

Episode Summary: DARK WEB: Dear David

Podcast Information:

• Title: So Supernatural
• Host/Author: audiochuck | Crime House
• Episode: DARK WEB: Dear David
• Release Date: February 7, 2025
• Description: Most mysteries can be solved by looking at the facts. But sometimes, the truth lies somewhere in the unknown… Enter the realm of true crime’s most bizarre occurrences, and unravel all the possible explanations. No matter how strange or surreal they get.

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Introduction

In the "DARK WEB: Dear David" episode, host Ashley Flowers, alongside co-hosts Yvette Gentile and Racha Pecorero, explores the intriguing and eerie story of Adam Ellis—a Buzzfeed writer whose Twitter thread detailing his haunted experiences captivated the internet. The episode dissects whether Adam's haunting was a genuine supernatural occurrence or a sophisticated hoax crafted for digital-age storytelling.

The Genesis of Dear David

Ashley Flowers sets the stage by addressing the paradox of supernatural phenomena in the digital era: "Even our private moments aren't really that private anymore... wouldn't you think that we'd be catching ghostly phenomena all the time?" [00:02]. She introduces Adam Ellis, whose shocking tweet on August 7, 2017, declared, "so my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he's trying to kill me" [00:02]. This announcement initiated a series of updates that left the online community baffled and intrigued.

Early Haunting Experiences

Yvette Gentile and Racha Pecorero delve into Adam’s initial encounters with the supernatural. Racha shares her own fascination with spirits, mentioning a childhood Ouija board experience with her mother, which parallels Adam’s story [02:02 - 02:57]. Adam's first significant experience occurred during an episode of sleep paralysis, a phenomenon he occasionally faces. He describes seeing a young boy with a severely damaged head seated in a green rocking chair next to his bed [08:04]. Despite his terror, Adam is immobilized, unable to react as the boy approaches him [08:47].

Escalation of Paranormal Activities

As Adam's nightmares persist, the manifestations intensify. "A few days go by... Adam has another dream... Dear David is a ghost, One who visits people in their dreams, always at the stroke of midnight" [10:05]. Adam’s attempts to seek validation lead him to research, but he finds no records of a child named David dying in a department store accident in New York [12:05]. He relocates to a new apartment hoping for peace, but instead, strange occurrences begin anew.

Unsettling Evidence and Public Attention

Yvette recounts Adam’s mounting evidence: his cats exhibiting bizarre behavior at midnight, objects moving without explanation, and his Polaroid camera capturing inexplicable blackness in his hallway photos [19:03 - 24:28]. Adam’s meticulous documentation, including photos, audio files, and videos, fuels public curiosity and skepticism alike. Racha highlights the increasing anomalies, such as the green rocking chair swaying on its own and turtle shells falling mysteriously [24:28].

Public Skepticism and Theories of Hoaxing

The narrative shifts to the growing skepticism surrounding Adam’s claims. Racha posits, "What if he wasn't telling the full story? ... it could hide the signs of photo manipulation too" [35:29]. The possibility of Adam orchestrating the haunting for virality is examined, considering his background in satire and cartooning. The ease of photo editing and video manipulation in the digital age adds credibility to hoax theories.

Movie Adaptation and Eerie Parallels

In 2023, Adam’s story inspired a horror film titled "Dear David." Yvette points out unsettling parallels between the film’s production and Adam’s real-life experiences: "The set was apparently haunted... the rocking chair would sway on its own, too" [42:09]. These coincidences raise questions about whether the spirit of Dear David followed Adam to the movie set, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

Speculations and Open-Ended Conclusions

The episode concludes with unresolved questions about the true nature of Dear David. Did Adam find a way to coexist with the spirit, or did the haunting transcend his apartment? Yvette muses, "Maybe the message of this Dear David story is to stop letting our ignorance make us afraid" [42:51]. The lack of definitive closure leaves listeners pondering the authenticity of the haunting and the power of digital storytelling.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ashley Flowers [00:02]: "Most mysteries can be solved by looking at the facts. But sometimes, the truth lies somewhere in the unknown…"

• Racha Pecorero [02:02]: "I am obsessed with all things Betelgeuse. Even though I'm a big scaredy cat, I cannot get that demon out of my head."

• Adam Ellis (as recounted by Yvette) [07:03]: "That's a wild way to start a thread."

• Racha Pecorero [16:38]: "As you set resolutions for 2025, consider how learning a new language can enrich your life."

• Yvette Gentile [28:51]: "Oh, hell no. I mean, you know, you know me so well. If I am put into this scenario, it would be. It's time to move. Thank you, landlord. I need to look for another place."

• Racha Pecorero [35:29]: "Many are starting to wonder if the whole Dear David thread might be a giant hoax."

• Yvette Gentile [42:09]: "Which makes me wonder, was the spirit on the set of Dear David actually the Dear David? Did he follow Adam all the way to Toronto?"

Analysis and Insights

The podcast meticulously analyzes Adam's story, weighing the evidence of supernatural activity against the plausible explanations of hoaxing and psychological phenomena. The integration of digital-age tools like Twitter threads and pet cams serves as a modern method of storytelling that can both enhance and obscure the truth. The eerie coincidences surrounding the movie adaptation amplify the mystery, suggesting either a unique supernatural event or a clever narrative device.

Conclusion

"DARK WEB: Dear David" encapsulates the essence of So Supernatural by presenting a compelling story that straddles the line between reality and fiction. The episode underscores the complexities of interpreting supernatural claims in an era dominated by digital evidence and viral storytelling. As the narrative remains unresolved, it invites listeners to engage in their interpretations, reflecting on the enduring human fascination with the unknown.

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Connect with So Supernatural:

• Instagram: @sosupernaturalpod
• Website: sosupernaturalpodcast.com
• Join Rash and Yvette next Friday for a brand-new episode exploring another mysterious case.

Transcript

[Ashley Flowers]

So I have something I want to get off my chest. Because while I'm a die hard believer through and through, there is one thing that really gets me questioning some supernatural phenomena, particularly ghosts in the digital age. Like, we have so many ways of capturing things. Cameras, social media, ring door cameras. Even our private moments aren't really that private anymore. Which, if that's the case, wouldn't you think that we'd be catching ghostly phenomena all the time? Like, for the whole world to see? Wouldn't we have some concrete validation by now on whether or not this stuff really exists? Well, if you ask reporter Adam Ellis, he'd probably say, good point, Ashley. And lucky for you, I've got it covered. Because on August 7, 2017, Adam posted the tweet of all tweets back when they were called tweets. It read, quote, so my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he's trying to kill me. End quote. For weeks, Adam kept the public updated with every little detail about his experience, including photos, audio files, even videos of his cats going nuts at the door every night around midnight. It made a lot of people wonder. Did Adam just invent a very ingenious method of storytelling a horror story for the digital age? Or was there something really going on in that apartment, one that the entire Internet had a front row seat for? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is so Supernatural.

[Yvette Gentile]

Hello and welcome back to so Supernatural. I'm Yvette Gentile.

[Racha Pecorero]

And I'm her sister Racha Pecorero. And like Ashley, I also have a confession to make. I am obsessed with all things Betelgeuse. Even though I'm a big scaredy cat, I cannot get that demon out of my head. I love Beetlejuice.

[Yvette Gentile]

But regardless of whether you've seen the films or not, you probably know one famous detail about it, that if you say Beetlejuice three times, you summon this chaotic demon.

[Racha Pecorero]

It is comforting to know that these movies that Tim Burton did are a work of fiction. But when you hear about things like this happening in real life, well, that's a whole other story. Because something similar happened to a Buzzfeed writer named Adam Ellis in 2017. He seemed to conjure a clingy little demon of his own after asking him three little questions.

[Yvette Gentile]

And if you believe Adam's story, it sounds like that ghost wasn't going to stop tormenting him until he was actually dead. Aloha.

[Racha Pecorero]

So, supernatural listeners, if you love diving into the strange and unexplained, with us, we have another podcast that we think you'll enjoy. Dark down east that's right.

[Yvette Gentile]

Every week, host Kylie Lowe takes us deep into New England's darkest mysteries. But these are real cases, from unsolved crimes to long buried secrets set in the beautiful, historical and sometimes eerie New England.

[Racha Pecorero]

Kylie's storytelling is so heartfelt and meticulous, you'll feel like you're uncovering the truth right alongside her as she dives deep into the lives behind the cases and the impact they've had on their communities.

[Yvette Gentile]

Check out Dark down east now. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

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[Yvette Gentile]

As a kid I was a Brownie girl Scout and whenever we went on camping trips I loved sitting around the campfire listening to ghost stories. That said, I do love the suspense and thrill of a good creepy story.

[Racha Pecorero]

I have never been and will never be a camper. But surprisingly, I've always loved stories about spirits and hauntings, and I think that's because mom believed in all of that stuff. You know, in psychics, in mediums and everything supernatural. In fact, I remember one particular sleepover where mom was with me and all of my friends and we did the Ouija board and we ended up conjuring the spirit of George Hodel. And of of course we freaked out. And if you don't know who that is Small Plug, Go check out the podcast Yvette and I did a few years back called Root of Evil. But these days, instead of sleepovers or camping trips, people seem to be getting a lot of ghost stories from online forums, social media, and TikTok. It all started on what was known as Twitter Back on August 7, 2017, when a new York based buzzfeed writer and satirical cartoonist named Adam Ellis put this tweet out into the world. So my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he's trying to kill me.

[Yvette Gentile]

That's a wild way to start a thread. And it's especially weird when you look at Adam's background. Because adam is a 31 year old cartoonist. His bread and butter is making funny cartoons. He's never dabbled in horror or anything like it. So to those that know him or follow his work, this post is out of character for Adam. That's probably why so many people take this thread at face value. When they see it as wild as it sounds, they think there's no reason for Adam to lie.

[Racha Pecorero]

So Adam begins the thread by explaining that at some point earlier that year, he was sleeping in his New York apartment when he had a dream. Well, sort of had a dream. He says he was actually half awake at the time. Adam gets sleep paralysis sometimes, so this isn't totally out of the norm for him. Sleep paralysis can cause people to feel like they are awake in bed, only they can't move or speak.

[Yvette Gentile]

It's a creepy experience for sure. And if you haven't already, you guys gotta check out Ashley's earlier episode on sleep paralysis. It's so fascinating and also it's so terrifying at the same time.

[Racha Pecorero]

Adam claims that night while he's having this episode, he looks over at this green rocking chair that's next to his bed. Only there's a young boy sitting in the chair. He doesn't offer up an age, but from what I can tell, he's anywhere from three to seven years old. And there's something wrong with his head. As in there's a huge chunk missing from it, almost like his skull was smashed in.

[Yvette Gentile]

Adam later draws a sketch of what he sees, and he includes it in the Twitter thread. And y'all, it is freaky. You should check it out on our socials.

[Racha Pecorero]

Yeah, even though it's just a drawing, it is really creepy and really, really disturbing. But things get even creepier because Adam says the boy just sits there staring at him. And while Adam wants to scream and run, all he can do is stare back because of that half dream, half awake sleep paralysis state he was in. Then it gets worse. The little boy gets up and starts walking towards Adam's bed. He gets closer and closer, but no matter how hard Adam tries, he can't just snap himself out of the paralysis. The boy is now almost close enough to touch him. And that's when Adam finally wakes up. He's so scared, he's screaming out loud. But when he looks around the room, the boy is gone. He thinks, okay, it was just a dream after all. He tells himself there's nothing to worry about. All of this is unfortunately common with sleep paralysis, this confusion between being awake and being asleep. He's convinced it was just another episode.

[Yvette Gentile]

A few days go by, and I don't know the exact date, but according to his Twitter thread, Adam has another dream. This time, the little boy isn't actually there, but the nightmare is still about him. You see, Adam dreams that he meets a girl in a library, and he doesn't recognize her, but she walks right up to him and asks, you've seen Dear David, haven't you? At first, Adam has no idea what she's talking about, but after a little bit of back and forth, he realizes Dear David is the boy with the dented skull, the one that he saw the other night. And that's when the girl adds that Dear David is a ghost, One who visits people in their dreams, always at the stroke of midnight. According to her, if you see this spirit, you can ask him whatever you want. Just start by saying Dear David, and he'll answer your question. But you only get to do this twice. If you ask Dear David a third question, he'll kill you. As soon as the girl finishes explaining all of this, Adam wakes up again. Once more, he tells himself, it's just a dream. I don't have nightmares like this. Ones that are so specific and so bone chilling that you're just still thinking about it the next morning. I mean, not to this extent. Rasha, I know that you do suffer from nightmares, and I know that it's Terrifying to you because I get the text messages in the morning from you.

[Racha Pecorero]

I do. And I have recurring nightmares a lot, but they're always a little different each time. And that started happening after mom died. And it's hard. It's hard to recover from nightmares that shake you to your core. I can only imagine what Adam was going through.

[Yvette Gentile]

And just like you're saying, Adam wonders if his latest dream, nightmare, premonition, whatever you want to call it, has meaning somehow. Maybe there's even some truth to what the girl said.

[Racha Pecorero]

Sure enough, a few weeks later, Dear David appears to Adam in another dream. As soon as Adam sees the boy in the rocking chair, he asks a question. Dear David, how did you die? Dear David replies, an accident in a store. Not the most detailed answer, but it's something. So Adam decides to ask a follow up for his second question. He says, dear David, what happened in the store? And again the ghost answers. This time he says, a shelf was pushed on my head. Now that phrasing really gets Adam's attention, because Dear David doesn't say a shelf fell. He says it was pushed. Which shocks Adam so much he can't stop himself from blurting out a third question. Dear David, who pushed the shelf? Dear David doesn't answer. In fact, right then and there, Adam wakes up with his heart racing and sweat soaking the sheets. Immediately, Adam knows he's made a huge mistake. He just asked Dear David a third, third question. He's basically doomed himself. That is, assuming he really is talking to the ghost of a dead boy. Adam still isn't sure. Maybe these are just some really weird dreams and nothing more. So he tries not to worry about it too much.

[Yvette Gentile]

He also doesn't tell anyone about the dreams yet. Remember, this is months before his Twitter thread.

[Racha Pecorero]

And at first, Adam does what any reasonable person living in the 21st century might. He Googles children's deaths in New York department stores. He's looking for a news article, an obituary, anything that can confirm what Dear David told him and prove that he's real after all. But he finds nothing. He even tries searching other d names in case he misunderstood the girl in his dream. But there's no record of a Devin or a Dylan or anyone else dying in a department store either. This reassures Adam that these are just dreams. They're not real. So he just tries to go on about his life.

[Yvette Gentile]

Thankfully, he's got plenty going on to distract him. You see, he's moving from the downstairs unit of his duplex to the upstairs one. The upstairs apartment is a Little bit bigger and it's nicer and it just, just became vacant. So Adam wants to upgrade while he can. And for the first few months in his new place, Adam actually has some peace and quiet. No more dreams about dear David. Nothing to worry about. That is, until the summer of 2017. It's the first week of August when Adam notices his two cats are doing this weird thing. At the stroke of midnight every night, they go sit by the front door like there's something or someone out there and they're just waiting for them to come in. Of course, there's no reason for anybody to be outside of Adam's apartment in the middle of the night, especially if his unit takes up the entire second floor of the two story building. There's no through traffic or neighbors on that floor. Well, Adam looks out the peephole one night just to see if there's someone creeping upstairs after all. And he sees some kind of movement. Only it's too quick for him to know what he's actually looking at. And that's when he gets creeped out enough to hop on Twitter and tell his story. That day in August, he posts a long thread covering everything that we just told you so far.

[Racha Pecorero]

And the next day, on August 8, he posts an update. He says the cats are still staring at the door. So he takes a photo through the peephole to see if his camera can capture something, anything. And it does. He gets a picture of a weird shadow by the stairs leading up to his unit. It looks like something might be lurking just out of sight. Either way, Adam is terrified. He double checks that the door is locked and bolted so nothing can get inside. And he tries to go to sleep. But how do you sleep when you're scared out of your damn mind?

[Yvette Gentile]

I mean, Rasha, you know me, I would not be sleeping at all. No, I would be up and out of that apartment so fast, calling all my friends, like, come and get me. Especially because this continues. We're not talking just one time. This is like night after night. The moment that midnight hits, his cats walk over to the door, sit there and wait. And by the way, this is completely new behavior for his cats. They've never did anything like this before at Adam's old unit. As days pass, Adam tries to get more pictures, but he can never capture anything definitive. So he changes his focus from trying to record images to trying to record sounds.

[Racha Pecorero]

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[Yvette Gentile]

He downloads an app that's supposed to tape people talking in their sleep, and he lets it run all night long. In the morning, Adam checks that sleep talking app and there are three clips that make his hair stand on end. Spoiler alert. They're not of him talking. One of the clips is just 16 seconds of a weird staticky buzz. He doesn't know what to make of it, especially because that static isn't audible in any other clip. It's almost like something is interfering with the app, but just for those 16 seconds, the other two videos are snapping or cracking sounds as though something is moving around inside his apartment. Freaky as all this is the cats, the sounds, the nightmares. It sort of just becomes Adam's new normal.

[Racha Pecorero]

But on the night of August 11th, things take a turn. It's a Friday, and Adam can barely keep his eyes open. He's not sure why, but he's exhausted. He goes to bed early. And then he has another one of those nightmares about Dear David. Except in this one, the boy is holding Adam by his arm and dragging him around. Adam is much bigger than this child and he feels that he should be able to fight him off, but he can't make his body move. It's like he's experiencing sleep paralysis again, except this time he's fully aware that he's dreaming. When he wakes up, Adam sort of shrugs it off. Nightmares about Dear David are routine by now. But then he steps into the shower, he looks down, and that's when he sees a bruise on his arm, right where Dear David was holding him in his dream. This solidifies it for Adam. Whatever is haunting him is real. It's physical, and it can harm him.

[Yvette Gentile]

Since early 2017 or so, Adam Ellis has been having nightmares about a ghost named Dear David. Throughout August of that year, he posts almost daily updates on Twitter. Adam even makes a few changes to his apartment in hopes of feng shui ing it all away. He moves that green rocking chair from his bedroom into the living room, and he ends up buying a new Polaroid camera that he plays around with for fun. He walks all around his unit snapping photos, and the pictures inside his apartment are all very normal and boring looking. Until he tries to snap a picture of the hallway outside his unit. It comes out pitch black. Adam is sure that he didn't cover the lens with his finger. It's also not an issue with the lighting in the hallway because he tries taking pictures with his phone and they all come out normal. The problem is only with the Polaroid and only when he's trying to photograph the hall. So he takes a few more pictures from a bunch of different angles. And each time when he presses the shutter, the hallway is well lit. But every photo shows this inky blackness where the hallway should be. I mean, it is wild.

[Racha Pecorero]

By that September, Adam wants to spend as little time in his apartment as possible, which, can you really blame him? I know we'd both be like, get us out of here, let's move. So Adam plans a few different trips. Some are long vacations. Some are brief sleepovers with friends. Every time he's gone, though, Adam leaves a pet cam on in the living room so he can keep an eye on the cats. This camera has a motion detector in it, so it only records when the cats are actually in frame and moving. And it pings Adam's phone each time it's activated. One weekend when Adam's gone, he keeps getting notifications, except when he checks the camera, there's nothing in the living room. His cats aren't in frame, so he doesn't know what's setting off the motion detectors until he notices something impossible. The old green rocking chair is swaying on its own. He even tweets a video of the empty chair swaying back and forth.

[Yvette Gentile]

Adam shares another video, too. It shows a turtle shell hanging on the wall in the same room. And later that same night, the shell goes plummeting to the ground. Nothing touched it. Nothing bumped it. There was no reason for it to fall. But it did.

[Racha Pecorero]

Even when Adam returns home, he leaves the pet camera on. He wants to know if there's anything else going on while he's asleep. Sure enough, he gets clip after clip of his cats staring at the same empty space. This always happens late at night after he's gone to bed. Sometimes they stare for hours. Occasionally, the cats swat at something, only there's nothing there.

[Yvette Gentile]

About two weeks go by before Adam posts another update. He says that since he's gotten back, the electronics in his unit have been acting up. In fact, weird things are happening throughout the building. Remember the hallway outside his door? The one that always shows up black on the Polaroid film? Well, the light bulbs in it keep burning out. They only last a few days before they need to be replaced. Then one morning in October, not too long after he wakes up, Adam hears these scratching noises at his door. It sounds like something is trying to get in. Hoping to catch whatever it is, Adam puts what I think is his cell phone camera up against the peephole and he snaps a picture. When he looks at the result, he sees what appears to be a misshapen, dented human face pressed right up against the door.

[Racha Pecorero]

I had to stare at this photo for quite a while to see what Adam saw, but when it finally clicked, I couldn't unsee it.

[Yvette Gentile]

Needless to say, after that, things quiet down for a while. Adam tweets about bad dreams he's been having, but he goes a couple weeks without giving a Dear David update at all. Until one night in late October, Adam is home when he happens to glance out his window. It's pretty late. I mean, it's somewhere between 11pm and midnight. The building next to his is only one story tall, so Adam's second floor unit looks out over that building's roof. And to be clear, this isn't a roof with a deck or anything. People don't usually hang out or go up there. Except Adam sees someone standing there. It's dark, so he can't make out much, but he can tell that they're watching him, staring right into his home through his window. Adam immediately freaks out. I mean, Rightfully so, But he still thinks, I've got to document this. So he grabs a camera, and even though he snaps two pictures, neither one clearly shows the figure. The first is blurry, so there could be someone on the roof, but you really can't tell. And the second picture just shows an empty rooftop, like that mysterious person just vanished.

[Racha Pecorero]

And it gets worse, because over the next few nights, Adam begins hearing noises from above his unit. Thumps and thuds, like someone is walking around right over his head. And remember, Adam's living in the top apartment. He doesn't have upstairs neighbors. From what I can tell, he doesn't have a roof deck either. But he feels like there isn't much else to do besides keep sharing his story. Then, on the night of November 5th, Adam has another nightmare about Dear David. And it's just like the first one. The ghost appears in a chair and watches Adam lie there. Now, Adam has been obsessing about this boy for over three months. Looking at pet cam footage, taking pictures, recording sounds. It's second nature for him to document everything that happens to him. So the moment Dear David shows up, Adam picks up his phone and takes a picture of him. And to be clear, this is all happening in his dream. Then Dear David gets up out of his chair and walks towards Adam's bed. Each time he takes a step closer, Adam gets another picture. It goes on like that until Dear David is right at Adam's side. And then Adam wakes up. But the next day, when Adam is looking through the photos on his phone, he doesn't expect to see pictures from the night before. After all, he thinks that he didn't actually take any photos. He just dreamed he did. Except right at the top of the gallery with his most recent images, he sees a bunch of photos of his bedroom at night, including one with a very distinct human figure sitting in a chair. It's hard to make out much because the room is so dark, but if you turn up the brightness on whatever device you're using, you can see it very clearly. It looks like a boy who's no taller than the back of the chair. He seems to be wearing a striped shirt, and one side of his head is completely caved in.

[Yvette Gentile]

Oh, hell no. I mean, you know, you know me so well. If I am put into this scenario, it would be. It's time to move. Thank you, landlord. I need to look for another place. Like get me out of this apartment.

[Racha Pecorero]

But Adam, no. Adam sees this as an opportunity to double down and prove this thing exists once and for all. Beginning in mid December, he sets up a camera to photograph his room every few seconds. So he's not recording a video exactly. More like a time lapse. He ends up with thousands of pictures. And after one long, restless night of tossing and turning, combing through all the photos, sure enough, he sees Dear David a lot. The first image shows him standing at the foot of Adam's bed, just watching him sleep. There's a bunch of pictures like that, like he's just standing there for a while. Another image shows Dear David in the chair, and then he vanishes. Later that same night, he reappears, except this time, Dear David is right next to Adam's head. Then he climbs onto the bed, stands on Adam's chest, and he turns his face to look right at the camera lens. It's like Dear David knows he's being recorded. The last picture shows Dear David's dented head in an extreme. Close up, it looks like he's charging toward the camera to try and grab it or stop it from filming.

[Yvette Gentile]

This guy is very courageous for. For again staying in this apartment because I could not handle this. This is just too creepy for me. So, luckily for Adam, it's almost Christmas, and he's planning to visit some family out of state in Montana. So he's putting some serious distance between himself and Dear David. Except when he gets to Montana, weird things keep happening. Sometimes Adam wakes up early in the morning to find human footprints, prints in the snow outside of the house. Now, no one else is awake yet, and the prints weren't there the night before. It makes him think someone is walking around casing the house while everyone is asleep. And worst of all, these footprints are small. Like child size small.

[Racha Pecorero]

When Adam gets back home to New York, he keeps photographing himself in his sleep. Even though most of the pictures are of him alone in bed, he still has the uneasy feeling that he's being watched. He also starts hearing things when he's awake, like someone is talking to him when no one's there.

[Yvette Gentile]

Now, for context, Adam posted the first tweet about Dear David in early August 2017. But he's still having bad dreams and feels haunted by the end of January 2018. So we're talking about nearly six months of escalation, escalating weirdness. And during that time, it's worth noting, Adam does everything he could think of to get rid of the spirit. He sprinkled a line of salt across his doorway. He burned sage, but none of it worked. The haunting went on.

[Racha Pecorero]

But it does sound like he finds a solution somewhere along the way. I wish I could tell you what the solution is, but Adam never specifies. All I know is on February 2nd of 2018, he just tweets everything is fine. The next Update comes almost two weeks later. On February 13, Adam posts, Please don't worry about me. I'm okay and everything will be like it was before. He ends the tweet with a smiley face. And to be clear, I don't mean a smiley face emoji. He tweets an emoticon. You know, a colon and a parentheses right next to each other, which is what people used in the days before emojis.

[Yvette Gentile]

This is weird for a few different reasons. First, Adam has been so detailed in all of his posts up until now. He's shared photos, clips from his pet cams, audio from the sleep tracking app. The list goes on and on. So for him to now say that everything's fine and drop it there, it's just weird. Almost like, what changed? What are you hiding?

[Racha Pecorero]

Well, also, the tweet doesn't sound like something Adam would write. Most of his tweets before now have been grammatically correct, with capitalization at the beginning of each sentence and a period at the end. Basic stuff, but the everything is fine and I'm okay tweets both have little errors in them. Sentences that begin with lowercase letters, missing punctuation, plus when he types everything is fine, there's an extra space between is and fine. Then there's the smiley emoticon. According to his followers, Adam doesn't use emoticons. That's completely out of character for him. It's as if someone else has gotten access to more than just his Twitter account, like maybe his body.

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[Racha Pecorero]

In February of 2018, Adam Ellis tweets that he's fine after months of strange occurrences and eerie encounters with the ghost of a dead child. Except his followers believe he's anything but fine. There are wild rumors going around that he's been possessed by the spirit of Dear David.

[Yvette Gentile]

Now look, I have to say, this seems a little far fetched even for me. We've covered cases about possessions on this show before and they are devastating. You can't live a normal life when something else has control of your body like that. But Adam seems to maintain his high profile job writing and making cartoons for buzzfeed. During this time, he still sees his friends and co workers regularly, and nobody who knows him thinks anything is wrong.

[Racha Pecorero]

People have been taking Adam's tweets at face value as truth. But what if he wasn't telling the full story? At this point, many are starting to wonder if the whole Dear David thread might be a giant hoax. When Adam talks about his bad dreams, Adam hearing scratching noises at the door, or his lights flickering on and off, he could be making all of that up. As for the photo and video evidence, it could have been photoshopped. It's not that hard to snap a picture through a peephole and edit it to look like a face. Or to add a creepy little boy to a photo of an empty rocking chair. Or to make that boy stand on top of you while you sleep. After all, so many of the pictures Adam tweeted were either blurry or very dark. That makes them look more mysterious and spooky. But it could hide the signs of photo manipulation too. When it comes to motive, consider Adam is a professional writer. A viral Twitter thread could help his career. It's evidence he's a good storyteller. And that Twitter thread, for what it's worth, didn't only go viral. Professional ghost hunters and mediums were calling Adam nonstop. They all wanted to meet Dear David for themselves. Adam even sold the rights for a Dear David movie. The horror film came out in 2023, right around Halloween time, and the title is, logically enough, Dear David.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, but here's what I found interesting. When Adam promoted the movie, people kept asking him in interviews how much of what you posted was real, And Adam said, I've Never been interested in convincing anyone that ghosts are real. I just wanted to tell my story. If it was fiction, I probably would have updated more than once every couple weeks. Which I gotta say is a fair point. It's not like he was tweeting about Dear David every day or even every week. If this was all made up, you'd think that he'd be adding details on a regular basis, right? I mean, keeping the momentum going and keeping the audience engaged. But according to Adam, he only wrote about the haunting when there was a new development to share. So the fact that the story played out so slowly with so many gaps between posts. Well, some think that's evidence he's telling the truth. And then there's the fact that Adam doesn't write horror. He's a comic writer, and his specialty is satire. So if he's going to make something up, why would it be something so horrific, so close to home?

[Racha Pecorero]

Of course, there's always the possibility that Adam was telling the truth, but maybe he was mistaken about what was really going on. Because, you know, sometimes you hear a scary story and that it gets into your head and then suddenly everything seems dangerous and high stakes. So picture this. Adam has a creepy dream about this little boy with a dent in his head. Afterward, he can't get it out of his mind. And then he notices little things like noises in the wall or lights burning out. Instead of chalking it up to mice or faulty electrical wiring. He assumes these are all signs of a ghost.

[Yvette Gentile]

Okay, but to play devil's advocate, what about when he visited his family in Montana? He found child sized footprints in the snow that wasn't all in his head. I mean, he took pictures. Could some of this stuff be photoshopped or edited? Of course. But there's some evidence Adam tweeted, that would be kinda hard to fake on your own. Particularly the videos like making his rocking chair move on its own or knocking the turtle shell off the wall without touching it. Plus, are we supposed to believe that he trained his cats to stare into space and swat at things we can't see. And okay, I know that Adam couldn't find evidence of a boy named David dying in a department store accident in New York. But who knows? Maybe he passed decades before or even as much as a century ago. After all, some of the mythology surrounding him turned out to be inaccurate. For example, Adam learned in a dream that Dear David would kill anyone who asked him more than two questions. But Adam is still alive. Dear David scared him an awful lot. Maybe gave him a bruise or Two. But he lived to tell the tale, and we don't know why that is.

[Racha Pecorero]

Frankly, we don't know why any of this happened or why Dear David appeared to Adam in the first place. We don't know what he was hoping to accomplish the whole time he was scaring Adam out of his skin, or why he seemingly went away just as quickly as he appeared. All of which were problems for the people who adapted Adam's Twitter thread into a feature film. So it should be no surprise that the writers of the Dear David movie changed up the story in some major ways to give it a full narrative. For example, they added a whole backstory where Dear David hated bullies, and in the film, Adam was a huge bully. That's why Dear David chose to torment him. In the movie, Adam also defeats Dear David by burning his own home to the ground. But that's something that didn't happen at all in real life. Except while the Dear David movie was a work of fiction in a lot of ways, there was one eerie parallel between the film and real life. Or two, if you count the fact that Adam had a brief cameo in the film. Anyway, when they shot in an empty house in Toronto, the set was apparently haunted. On filming days, the stars would get to hair and makeup early, which means that only a few members of the crew were there. But they said during that time, the lights would turn themselves on and off. They also had a prop rocking chair on set, which was a replica of Adam's. And just like with the real version, they. This one would sway on its own, too.

[Yvette Gentile]

Which makes me wonder, was the spirit on the set of Dear David actually the Dear David? Did he follow Adam all the way to Toronto? After all, Adam never publicly said that he got rid of the little boy's ghost, just that everything was fine and he was okay. Now, he didn't offer any more context for those weird tweets or all their typos, but maybe we can read between the lines and speculate. Did he find a way to get along with the specter that was haunting him? Or maybe he and Dear David just agreed on a way to coexist.

[Racha Pecorero]

I don't know if that's incredibly sweet or incredibly creepy. Maybe both, which is often the case with these scary stories. We don't always know what the supernatural wants or why it chooses the people it does, but that's part of the intrigue. Maybe the message of this Dear David story is to stop letting our ignorance make us afraid. Maybe when we encounter the unknown, we should respond with curiosity and empathy and find a way to make peace with the things that truly terrify us.

[Yvette Gentile]

This is so supernatural. An Audio Chuck Original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram @sosupernaturalpod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com join Rash and me next Friday for for an all new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

[Racha Pecorero]

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Oh, that sounds easier than I thought.

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[Racha Pecorero]

Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys?

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[Yvette Gentile]

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[Racha Pecorero]

Neighbor, State Farm is there and we'll.

[Yvette Gentile]

Help get you back in business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.