Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: There's Josh, and this is short stuff. Like I said twice,
Speaker 1: now I'm wasting time. Let's just go. So this is
Speaker 1: about finding your worst nightmare. Realized this is pretty universal
Speaker 1: worst nightmare stuff. Yes, this is about the idea that
Speaker 1: if you go to a hotel and you're sleeping, and
Speaker 1: you get up in the morning and you're like, what
Speaker 1: is that weird smell? And you check out, you will
Speaker 1: probably never know this. I doubt if they would follow
Speaker 1: up and let you know, but there could be a
Speaker 1: dead body under that bed. Yeah. And what's weird is
Speaker 1: this as an urban legend, very widespread one. The you know,
Speaker 1: some friend of my cousin who he works with, went
Speaker 1: to Vegas with his wife once and got on an
Speaker 1: elevator with Eddie Murphy, right, and he had a dog
Speaker 1: and Eddie Murphy said, sit lady, and the wife sat
Speaker 1: down and Eddie Murphy said, no, I was talking to
Speaker 1: my dog, and then gave them paid off their mortgage.
Speaker 1: It's right, Uh, No different than that that, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: your cousin's friend coworker went to Vegas and this happened
Speaker 1: to him what's weird about this, Chuck is Snopes is
Speaker 1: on the case, and God bless Snopes for doing everything
Speaker 1: they do. They said, not only has this happened, this
Speaker 1: has happened many times over. This is one of those
Speaker 1: rare urban legends that is actually true. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: And a lot of hotels there are It's sort of
Speaker 1: a platform me box spring situation where there is a
Speaker 1: cavernous area under the box spring, but above that that
Speaker 1: platform that turns out is just right for storing a body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every every criminal knows you want to store a body.
Speaker 1: Every motel in America has you covered pretty much. Should
Speaker 1: we go through some of these? I think we should,
Speaker 1: because again, like this has happened many times um. One
Speaker 1: of the first one Snopes talks about happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand three at the Capri Motel in downtown Kansas City.
Speaker 1: And one of the recurring themes that I've seen, Chuck
Speaker 1: is management sometimes won't do anything. They'll be like, sorry, nothing,
Speaker 1: you's gonna be done, And this is the only room
Speaker 1: we have. You have to stay here, and people will
Speaker 1: stay there despite the stench of what turns out to
Speaker 1: be a decomposing body, like in this case, Yet a
Speaker 1: dead thing is a very specific smell. I would not
Speaker 1: for one second even unpack my suitcase and give it
Speaker 1: a shot. Right. Well, this guy in Kansas City not
Speaker 1: only unpacked a suitcase after complaining about the room and
Speaker 1: being told nothing could be done about it. Um, he's
Speaker 1: stay there for three nights from July tenth to July
Speaker 1: thirte and finally checked out because of the smell. And
Speaker 1: I looked on those dates in two thousand three in
Speaker 1: Kansas City, it got up to around ninety so I'll
Speaker 1: bet it was pretty smelling. And finally housekeeping was like, well,
Speaker 1: let's figure out what this is, and they lift up
Speaker 1: the mattress and there was a body in the state
Speaker 1: of advanced decomposition. July I'm sorry, June, sixty four year
Speaker 1: old named saw Hernandez was discovered inside and under her
Speaker 1: bed at the Burgundy Motor d I hate calling out
Speaker 1: these hotels, but I guess it is what it is,
Speaker 1: Room one twelve. Yeah, this gets really specific. Don't say
Speaker 1: they're in Atlantic City. In fact, it's Atlantic City, so
Speaker 1: it may not even be there at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was wondering that myself, but a German couple, God
Speaker 1: bless him. They didn't know any better. They spent the
Speaker 1: night there sleeping over his body. They complained to the
Speaker 1: manager about the smell. They said, mind galt do something
Speaker 1: about it, and that's when they found the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: German tourists are recurring motif in this urban legend come
Speaker 1: to life, because in in Florida there were two cases
Speaker 1: in Florida alone, and both of them were bodies that
Speaker 1: were discovered after complaints from German tourists. So they have
Speaker 1: really bad luck with this kind of stuff. Lovely Pasadena, California,
Speaker 1: the Wonderful Colorado Boulevard Travel Lodge. In July, a woman
Speaker 1: was found under a mattress. They discovered her ten days later,
Speaker 1: after guests had complained for several days of a foul odor.
Speaker 1: At this point, I would think if someone says there's
Speaker 1: a bad smell, I would just immediately assume it's a
Speaker 1: body and look. Yeah, you'd think it would be like
Speaker 1: a recurring kind of like column that pops up in
Speaker 1: like the Hotel Times or you know, Motel Industry News
Speaker 1: magazine or something like that, But I guess not, because
Speaker 1: it still continues. Um there this The Snopes traced it
Speaker 1: all the way back to I think two was there
Speaker 1: the first report that they mentioned. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was the first time it's ever happened, but um,
Speaker 1: between two and two thousand ten they found ten cases.
Speaker 1: And this is not just a body being discovered in
Speaker 1: a hotel room. Apparently that happens multiple times a day,
Speaker 1: every day everywhere in the world. I guess from what
Speaker 1: this looks like. But what Snopes is saying is like, no,
Speaker 1: we got to stick to the urban legend where somebody
Speaker 1: the body was discovered because somebody slept above it overnight.
Speaker 1: And at least ten times between eighty two and two
Speaker 1: and ten that happened. Yeah, and that's you know that
Speaker 1: cut it off. Like you said in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: if you just google a dead body hotel mattress, that
Speaker 1: happens a lot. Still. Yeah, there was there was one
Speaker 1: then Austin last year, one the year before, somewhere else
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but they're kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1: It seems like an annual event, like the Macy's Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: Day parade or something. Yeah, one smells way worse than
Speaker 1: the other. I'll let you guess. Yeah, So do you
Speaker 1: want to take a break and come back a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll come back in a second talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about another way that bodies find their way to hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: So what we talked about before was specifically, like you said,
Speaker 1: the urban legend of bodies under a mattress under a
Speaker 1: box spring. Uh. My thought was, like, how are they
Speaker 1: getting there? The answer is they're they're all murder cases
Speaker 1: general pretty much murder or say like a couple of
Speaker 1: people are partying in a hotel and one of them
Speaker 1: dies and the other one doesn't want to like get questions,
Speaker 1: mattress man stashed the body. Yeah, Because I think there's
Speaker 1: two things about this, right, There's people like average people
Speaker 1: who check into a hotel. People like you and me,
Speaker 1: We stay in hotels. We stay in hotels, right, um,
Speaker 1: sleeping unknowingly above just inches above a decomposing body. That's
Speaker 1: part one that's horrible. But I think the second part
Speaker 1: of it that makes it so horrible is like the
Speaker 1: indignity of having your body just stuffed under a mattress
Speaker 1: and a CD hotel, you know. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: those two things combined and the fact that it's actually
Speaker 1: happens in real life is just it makes it horrific. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the other ways a body very sadly can
Speaker 1: be found in a hotel and not under a mattress
Speaker 1: is obviously, uh suicide. People apparently check into hotels to
Speaker 1: do this a lot for obvious reasons. You wanna you
Speaker 1: don't want your family to have a mess necessarily. Another
Speaker 1: reason is to avert exposure, maybe to the media. And
Speaker 1: I think it's just sort of gets buried in the
Speaker 1: news if it's just a random hotel suicide kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Casinos apparently had the highest suicide rate, uh, and Las
Speaker 1: Vegas has the high suicide rate in the country. I
Speaker 1: could see that if like you just lost a bunch
Speaker 1: of money, that has something to do with it. They said,
Speaker 1: this is not all of it, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people show up in Vegas desperate and destitute, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to gamble their way back to you know, not
Speaker 1: necessarily even prosperity. Oh man, that's a sad scene you
Speaker 1: just painted. Yeah, but you were joking in the thing
Speaker 1: about it being In the hotel industry, there was an
Speaker 1: article called how to Properly respond to a guest death
Speaker 1: in your Hotel published in a journal for hotel managers
Speaker 1: that I found, and they said a big thing in
Speaker 1: Vegas is they don't and most big hotels now don't
Speaker 1: let you just open the windows, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them do have balcony. Still Vegas they don't even have
Speaker 1: balconies because of the suicide problem. So they said that
Speaker 1: leads some people to make a final leap, like in
Speaker 1: an atrium style lobby. And he says in this article
Speaker 1: that hotel managers should keep a very large, dark colored
Speaker 1: tarp made of impermeable material on hand and available at
Speaker 1: all times, just so you can run out there very
Speaker 1: quickly and covered that mess up. So, but not only
Speaker 1: the mess it's really dangerous. I mean people walk through atrium. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really irresponsible. Yeah, you could land on someone obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm imagine that would probably kill both people. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would think so too. Uh. And you know, we
Speaker 1: did an episode on crime scene clean up times times
Speaker 1: out of a hundred. That's what's going on here. If
Speaker 1: something happens in a hotel room. There's a guy in
Speaker 1: a San Francisco based company called crime Scene Cleaners that
Speaker 1: he said that hotel chains are as big as clients
Speaker 1: and that suicide cleanups is most of his business. I mean,
Speaker 1: it definitely makes sense in a very grizzly way, like
Speaker 1: not wanting to put your family through that, but unfortunately
Speaker 1: you're putting some housekeeper through it. Yeah. The good news
Speaker 1: is is that almost everything is is thrown away. That
Speaker 1: they're not just like pull the sheets and we'll you know,
Speaker 1: watch them. They're like this killo because still mostly good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they like they don't rip up the part of the
Speaker 1: carpet that's stayed. They kind of gut the place basically,
Speaker 1: sometimes even the dry wall. They get rid of all
Speaker 1: the clock, radio and everything. Because they were like, if
Speaker 1: there's a little tiny piece of brain that you don't
Speaker 1: notice on something that heats up like the electricity, that'll stink.
Speaker 1: Plus plus it could be haunted. Now it's obviously haunted.
Speaker 1: But those are in like decent hotels that uh you know,
Speaker 1: even like kind of cruddy hotel chains. I think still
Speaker 1: do a good job. That. The scary part is if
Speaker 1: it happens in a really not great place. Because there's
Speaker 1: a Reddit thread called tails from the front Desk. Oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta get on that where No, don't do it, dude,
Speaker 1: You'll never tour again. You'll never leave your house. Because
Speaker 1: these are all insider stories. And this one guy was like, yeah, guy,
Speaker 1: uh died by suicide on my shift. The owner found
Speaker 1: out how much it costs for a professional cleanup, and
Speaker 1: he said to flip the mattress. No, yes, no they
Speaker 1: ever say where they worked. I don't know, anonymous. I
Speaker 1: think it's probably this one was anonymous man. This is
Speaker 1: just a hotel house cleaner. Um. And the other thing, too,
Speaker 1: is I guess we can close with is when people
Speaker 1: decide to do this, oftentimes they pick like the best room,
Speaker 1: the nicest, sweet because you don't have to pay for it. Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's so. Don't think if you're getting the high
Speaker 1: Roller suite that that room is safe from ghosts. Right. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's something else, Chuck, you really brought it. Thank you. Well.
Speaker 1: Since Chuck brought it and we're out of info, that's
Speaker 1: it for short Stuff. So if short Stuff is out,
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