WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Body Under The Bed 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.120 Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.800 There's Josh, and this is short stuff. Like I said twice, 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.720 now I'm wasting time. Let's just go. So this is 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:21.799 about finding your worst nightmare. Realized this is pretty universal 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:25.360 worst nightmare stuff. Yes, this is about the idea that 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.680 if you go to a hotel and you're sleeping, and 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:30.479 you get up in the morning and you're like, what 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.000 is that weird smell? And you check out, you will 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:35.720 probably never know this. I doubt if they would follow 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:37.559 up and let you know, but there could be a 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:42.199 dead body under that bed. Yeah. And what's weird is 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.839 this as an urban legend, very widespread one. The you know, 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.199 some friend of my cousin who he works with, went 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:52.360 to Vegas with his wife once and got on an 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.880 elevator with Eddie Murphy, right, and he had a dog 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.720 and Eddie Murphy said, sit lady, and the wife sat 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.480 down and Eddie Murphy said, no, I was talking to 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:04.040 my dog, and then gave them paid off their mortgage. 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.960 It's right, Uh, No different than that that, Like, you know, 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:11.240 your cousin's friend coworker went to Vegas and this happened 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.160 to him what's weird about this, Chuck is Snopes is 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.720 on the case, and God bless Snopes for doing everything 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:21.520 they do. They said, not only has this happened, this 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.360 has happened many times over. This is one of those 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:29.000 rare urban legends that is actually true. That's right. Uh, 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:32.240 And a lot of hotels there are It's sort of 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.399 a platform me box spring situation where there is a 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:40.679 cavernous area under the box spring, but above that that 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.920 platform that turns out is just right for storing a body. Yeah, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.360 every every criminal knows you want to store a body. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.520 Every motel in America has you covered pretty much. Should 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:53.600 we go through some of these? I think we should, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.800 because again, like this has happened many times um. One 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.840 of the first one Snopes talks about happened in two 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.760 thousand three at the Capri Motel in downtown Kansas City. 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.480 And one of the recurring themes that I've seen, Chuck 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.960 is management sometimes won't do anything. They'll be like, sorry, nothing, 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:11.280 you's gonna be done, And this is the only room 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.240 we have. You have to stay here, and people will 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.560 stay there despite the stench of what turns out to 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.880 be a decomposing body, like in this case, Yet a 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.320 dead thing is a very specific smell. I would not 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.679 for one second even unpack my suitcase and give it 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.720 a shot. Right. Well, this guy in Kansas City not 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.600 only unpacked a suitcase after complaining about the room and 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.440 being told nothing could be done about it. Um, he's 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:37.280 stay there for three nights from July tenth to July 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.560 thirte and finally checked out because of the smell. And 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.440 I looked on those dates in two thousand three in 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.720 Kansas City, it got up to around ninety so I'll 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.320 bet it was pretty smelling. And finally housekeeping was like, well, 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:51.080 let's figure out what this is, and they lift up 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.040 the mattress and there was a body in the state 0:02:54.080 --> 0:03:00.720 of advanced decomposition. July I'm sorry, June, sixty four year 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:07.079 old named saw Hernandez was discovered inside and under her 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.799 bed at the Burgundy Motor d I hate calling out 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:11.480 these hotels, but I guess it is what it is, 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.440 Room one twelve. Yeah, this gets really specific. Don't say 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:18.400 they're in Atlantic City. In fact, it's Atlantic City, so 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:20.359 it may not even be there at this point. Yeah, 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:23.639 I was wondering that myself, but a German couple, God 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:25.320 bless him. They didn't know any better. They spent the 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.200 night there sleeping over his body. They complained to the 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.919 manager about the smell. They said, mind galt do something 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.720 about it, and that's when they found the body. Yeah, 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:38.720 German tourists are recurring motif in this urban legend come 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:42.800 to life, because in in Florida there were two cases 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.400 in Florida alone, and both of them were bodies that 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.120 were discovered after complaints from German tourists. So they have 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.000 really bad luck with this kind of stuff. Lovely Pasadena, California, 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:59.640 the Wonderful Colorado Boulevard Travel Lodge. In July, a woman 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.680 was found under a mattress. They discovered her ten days later, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.640 after guests had complained for several days of a foul odor. 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.000 At this point, I would think if someone says there's 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.520 a bad smell, I would just immediately assume it's a 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.160 body and look. Yeah, you'd think it would be like 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.839 a recurring kind of like column that pops up in 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.760 like the Hotel Times or you know, Motel Industry News 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.839 magazine or something like that, But I guess not, because 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.440 it still continues. Um there this The Snopes traced it 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.560 all the way back to I think two was there 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.480 the first report that they mentioned. I don't know if 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.039 it was the first time it's ever happened, but um, 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:43.640 between two and two thousand ten they found ten cases. 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:46.479 And this is not just a body being discovered in 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.839 a hotel room. Apparently that happens multiple times a day, 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.840 every day everywhere in the world. I guess from what 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.440 this looks like. But what Snopes is saying is like, no, 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.080 we got to stick to the urban legend where somebody 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.920 the body was discovered because somebody slept above it overnight. 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.479 And at least ten times between eighty two and two 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.479 and ten that happened. Yeah, and that's you know that 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.120 cut it off. Like you said in two thousand and ten, 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.360 if you just google a dead body hotel mattress, that 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.200 happens a lot. Still. Yeah, there was there was one 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:21.240 then Austin last year, one the year before, somewhere else 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.720 I can't remember, but they're kind of all over the place. 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:26.440 It seems like an annual event, like the Macy's Thanksgiving 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.960 Day parade or something. Yeah, one smells way worse than 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.040 the other. I'll let you guess. Yeah, So do you 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:35.520 want to take a break and come back a little bit. Yeah, 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:37.160 we'll come back in a second talk a little bit 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.040 about another way that bodies find their way to hotel rooms. 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.960 So what we talked about before was specifically, like you said, 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.919 the urban legend of bodies under a mattress under a 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.000 box spring. Uh. My thought was, like, how are they 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.400 getting there? The answer is they're they're all murder cases 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.560 general pretty much murder or say like a couple of 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:28.680 people are partying in a hotel and one of them 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:30.960 dies and the other one doesn't want to like get questions, 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:35.240 mattress man stashed the body. Yeah, Because I think there's 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.600 two things about this, right, There's people like average people 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:40.520 who check into a hotel. People like you and me, 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.240 We stay in hotels. We stay in hotels, right, um, 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:49.719 sleeping unknowingly above just inches above a decomposing body. That's 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.159 part one that's horrible. But I think the second part 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.680 of it that makes it so horrible is like the 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:58.560 indignity of having your body just stuffed under a mattress 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:01.240 and a CD hotel, you know. Yeah, So I think 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.320 those two things combined and the fact that it's actually 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.720 happens in real life is just it makes it horrific. Well, 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:09.880 one of the other ways a body very sadly can 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.320 be found in a hotel and not under a mattress 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:18.200 is obviously, uh suicide. People apparently check into hotels to 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.360 do this a lot for obvious reasons. You wanna you 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.680 don't want your family to have a mess necessarily. Another 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.760 reason is to avert exposure, maybe to the media. And 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:30.560 I think it's just sort of gets buried in the 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.040 news if it's just a random hotel suicide kind of thing. 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:40.480 Casinos apparently had the highest suicide rate, uh, and Las 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.200 Vegas has the high suicide rate in the country. I 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:45.280 could see that if like you just lost a bunch 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:47.480 of money, that has something to do with it. They said, 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:49.720 this is not all of it, but a lot of 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.600 people show up in Vegas desperate and destitute, you know, 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:55.880 trying to gamble their way back to you know, not 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.960 necessarily even prosperity. Oh man, that's a sad scene you 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.400 just painted. Yeah, but you were joking in the thing 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.360 about it being In the hotel industry, there was an 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.080 article called how to Properly respond to a guest death 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.400 in your Hotel published in a journal for hotel managers 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:14.000 that I found, and they said a big thing in 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.080 Vegas is they don't and most big hotels now don't 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.080 let you just open the windows, but a lot of 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:22.920 them do have balcony. Still Vegas they don't even have 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.640 balconies because of the suicide problem. So they said that 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.000 leads some people to make a final leap, like in 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.440 an atrium style lobby. And he says in this article 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:37.480 that hotel managers should keep a very large, dark colored 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.840 tarp made of impermeable material on hand and available at 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:45.200 all times, just so you can run out there very 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.720 quickly and covered that mess up. So, but not only 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.520 the mess it's really dangerous. I mean people walk through atrium. Yeah, 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.800 that's really irresponsible. Yeah, you could land on someone obviously. Yeah, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.840 and I'm imagine that would probably kill both people. Yes, 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.320 I would think so too. Uh. And you know, we 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:07.000 did an episode on crime scene clean up times times 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.640 out of a hundred. That's what's going on here. If 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:12.240 something happens in a hotel room. There's a guy in 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:15.120 a San Francisco based company called crime Scene Cleaners that 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.400 he said that hotel chains are as big as clients 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.920 and that suicide cleanups is most of his business. I mean, 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:24.480 it definitely makes sense in a very grizzly way, like 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.080 not wanting to put your family through that, but unfortunately 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:31.880 you're putting some housekeeper through it. Yeah. The good news 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.640 is is that almost everything is is thrown away. That 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:37.960 they're not just like pull the sheets and we'll you know, 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.880 watch them. They're like this killo because still mostly good. Yeah, 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:43.640 they like they don't rip up the part of the 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.520 carpet that's stayed. They kind of gut the place basically, 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.800 sometimes even the dry wall. They get rid of all 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:52.760 the clock, radio and everything. Because they were like, if 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.520 there's a little tiny piece of brain that you don't 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.960 notice on something that heats up like the electricity, that'll stink. 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.400 Plus plus it could be haunted. Now it's obviously haunted. 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.640 But those are in like decent hotels that uh you know, 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:11.000 even like kind of cruddy hotel chains. I think still 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:13.760 do a good job. That. The scary part is if 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.840 it happens in a really not great place. Because there's 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.520 a Reddit thread called tails from the front Desk. Oh, 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.040 I gotta get on that where No, don't do it, dude, 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.079 You'll never tour again. You'll never leave your house. Because 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.680 these are all insider stories. And this one guy was like, yeah, guy, 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.400 uh died by suicide on my shift. The owner found 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.880 out how much it costs for a professional cleanup, and 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:43.600 he said to flip the mattress. No, yes, no they 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:47.439 ever say where they worked. I don't know, anonymous. I 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.480 think it's probably this one was anonymous man. This is 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.400 just a hotel house cleaner. Um. And the other thing, too, 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.960 is I guess we can close with is when people 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.560 decide to do this, oftentimes they pick like the best room, 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:05.720 the nicest, sweet because you don't have to pay for it. Sure, yeah, yeah, 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.199 that's that's so. Don't think if you're getting the high 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:13.320 Roller suite that that room is safe from ghosts. Right. Wow, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.200 that's something else, Chuck, you really brought it. Thank you. Well. 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.240 Since Chuck brought it and we're out of info, that's 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.160 it for short Stuff. So if short Stuff is out, 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.200 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:30.920 How Stuff Works. 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